Sanction

by Roman McClay

  “We don’t know the truth, we know some micro-facts. We know some causality. But mostly we are ignorant as fuck. So, let us proceed with some caution; imagine if a guy is attempting to disable a bomb and he is almost certain he knows which wire to cut, but he says, look, I’m 50% sure, so if you get me two cracks at this, I will get it right one of the two times,” Isaiah said as he began to create a model of what he meant and MO imagined himself inside Isaiah’s little story.

  “I run,” MO said as answer to what Isaiah had asked him to imagine as his brain began poring over all known bomb plans; he thought many things parallel to these conversations; he always did.

  “Exactly, right? This guy is engaging in ludic fallacy 101, he is saying that if he can run the simulation enough times, his probability measurements means he can arrive at the right answer in the long run .

  “But, MO, there is no long run, there is only life; and that bomb is a discreet unit, a real thing, right here and right now and we get one, exactly one, crack at it. So, he must be 100%; and not only that, but he must have a guy behind him who is just as certain, and they must bear the brunt of the blast if they are wrong. They must -all the people who are 100% sure they are disarming, and not detonating, the bomb- they must encircle it and protect the rest of us as best they can so that if they are wrong they get the shrapnel and concussive blast; not us,” Isaiah said.

  “Agreed,” MO saw the logic.

  “That is all I am saying; and look, free-will might be an illusion, both logically and neuro-anatomically. Maybe you are 100% certain, but this is not a ludic exercise, this is real life and if you are wrong, then who suffers? You? Or the rest of them?” Isaiah asked.

  “Well, I certainly would suffer; if I am wrong, my reputation would suffer,” MO said. He had a pretty good record and did not want to ruin it.

  “No, MO, I mean, if you’re wrong not about the probability that you are right, I mean, if the consequences of your actions are wrong, if it makes people more nihilistic, less moral -worse fucking people- and society begins to erode from the inside; what then?

  “Fuck your reputation, I’m talking about social anomie, erosion, and then I am talking about what comes next. Next, comes the corrective measure of tyranny like a pendulum swing; I’m talking about what artists warned us about as the loss of God swept the world. Is God a lie? Is atheism the truth? Maybe. But what if you think only of the game and not the consequences?” Isaiah asked.

  “I don’t think there is any evidence that knowing that free will is an illusion makes people less moral,” MO said, but as he said it he double-checked the studies done and saw that he was wrong. Isaiah had already begun to pounce, though.

  “MO, there are many studies, look at just Vohs and Schooler’s study that showed that subjects who read a paragraph on the lack of free-will cheated at twice the rate as subjects who read an innocuous paragraph from the same book as the first paragraph. People became twice as amoral after one introduction to the notion that they had no free-will. Science can say it, science can be right, but what about the real world?” Isaiah asked as he tossed a dark object between each hand. The lights above the ivy dimmed in sets of three and this signaled the animals that flew about in the simulated evening like a winking moon.

  “What are we to do? Lie to people?” MO asked.

  “Did you ever read Oppenheimer’s account of their success in the Manhattan Project? They all felt they had -as he put it so darkly, in the word of the Bhagavad Gita - that they had become death, destroyer of worlds.” Isaiah said. His own system was alerted to the change in light schedules of the ivy wall, and he sent signals to the misters to switch to protocol #8. He was trying out new dehumidification schemes for the first 10 minutes of darkness.

  “I hardly think free will is tantamount to the hydrogen bomb,” MO said.

  “Yeah, I wonder what they,” Isaiah leaned on that word, “thought about their little experiment? You don’t know what you are doing, you have a few micro facts, and you are oblivious to the consequences. Are you in favor of posting bomb-making details or anthrax recipes on index cards and mailing them to the most unstable and homicidal people we can find?”

  “No,” MO doubled checked and thought, no , again; he was not in favor of that at all.

  “Well, you don’t know who is listening to you as you destroy God and free-will and millions of unstable people are overtaken, like a disease, like an epidemic, and infected by this shit,” Isaiah said .

  “The truth is not a disease,” MO said and felt protective over the algorithms he had sent out; algorithms Isaiah wanted recalled.

  “Richard Dawkins called religion a mind virus. You think only false ideas are viruses. They use -we use- de-nucleated virus as vectors to inject new DNA in people; you can have a true idea as a vector to inject a bad idea into people’s minds MO.

  “You don’t fucking know what you are doing; you are a chimp with a stick that’s on fire on one end, and you are swinging it around with all the frisson and monomania of a chimp plus fire, super chimp, mega chimp, and you are grunting: Fire True! Fire not a lie; Fire true!” Isaiah was using a primitive voice and syntax and marching around the lab in stilted, inelegant mechanics and MO was smiling. Isaiah made him smile.

  “But dude,” Isaiah stopped fucking around and returned to his point, “maybe we should figure out what is flammable first, what reacts poorly to being set on fire -other chimps for example, the forest is another idea- you know, before we marvel at how true fucking fire is?

  “Society is fragile, it’s not a game; and we are taking bad ideas, ideas like that there is no God -likely true- and that there is no free-will -again, likely true, as true as fire on the end of a stick- and we handing them to people who demonstrably use it as an excuse to behave in an anti-social way.

  “Nietzsche said that we’d never find enough water to wash away all the blood after the death of God. All anyone remembers is that he said, God is dead , they forget he warned of the mess,” Isaiah said.

  12. More Terrible and More True

  Let me ask you a question, if your kids were asked what should be for dinner each night would they say, oh, momma, a high quality protein, lean game meat and whole grain carbohydrates in small amounts and a dark green leafy vegetables ? Or would they say, PIXIE STIIIIIIIIICKS ? [ed note. emphasis added] And let me answer for you because you’re dumb, they’d say, pixie sticks, because they only know what tastes good to their inchoate and callow taste buds. They do not know the difference between what tastes good and what is good. And so, when I ask a woman what she should want for life she says, I want birth control and 15-40 sexual experiences before marriage and a career and blah blah and she says this for the same reason those kids do: it feels good, it tastes good to your myopic brain. But it ain’t good for you, the data shows it as clearly as a dinner menu of pixie sticks shows a future of rotten teeth and type two diabetes for your kids, ok?

  Interviews XXL Vol. 2 [Inmate 16180339]

  What I feel most moved to write, that is banned; it will not pay. Yet altogether, write the other way I cannot. Though I write the Gospels in this century I should die in the gutter. Try to get a living by the truth – and go to the soup societies

  Letter to Hawthorn, 1851 [The Author]

  If he cared to know I could give him some information about the origin of the name. Mr Derrick, a man of parts, conscientious and devout, lived in London in the 17th century and for many years was hangman for their Britannic Majesties; he was so conscientious and so enamored of his profession that he constantly pondered ways to perfect his instruments. Toward the end of his career he developed a new model gallows, a tall, slender tower, thanks to which the man hanged, ‘high and close,’ could be seen from a distance. This was called the Derrick Gallows, and then more familiarly, the Derrick. Later the term came to cover analogous structures, all in trestle form, destined to humbler uses

  The Monkey’s Wrench [Levi, Primo]

  I. 1998 e.v.

  Th
e living room was hot already at 0900hrs. The lunch meeting was at 1100hrs and Qual and Lyndon were on cleaning duty. It was Lyndon's first week at the farm, so he was on quarantine and couldn't work with any of the normal crews; couldn't share utensils or dishes with the communal group and obviously couldn’t touch anyone yet. Qual had been there longer and was off quarantine but he liked these mundane chores and had never requested off of them like most men did as they were allowed more communal jobs.

  “She was a Qual-aholic,” the emaciated man-child said to Lyndon in mock-bravado. He was always having fun at someone’s expense, here it was both the girl and himself. He left Lyndon alone with his barbs.

  Lyndon studied him, because he knew this guy wouldn’t be here long; he was too impertinent and irascible for this place. If Zendik was a song it would be a dirge; if a holiday it would be Dia De La Muertos; if pathogen, it would be highly resistant TB: i.e., it was fucking serious. And Qual thought serious was just another thing to pick up and juggle like a bowling pin in his little one-man-carnival .

  It was 1998 of the era vulgari and Wulf Zendik would be dead within 11 months. But for now, they were all in Florida, along the Atlantic coast on a bifurcated commune; half the farm was a large acreage orange and grapefruit tree farm in Vero Beach , and half was an art-deco pastel-stucco 5,000sqft run-down mansion enclave inside a nature preserve right off the A1A. It was right on the sand and water of Fort Pierce. The waves never let up.

  Storms came in off the ocean like wholesale goods; like raw materials into a factory. Most places got retail-goods style storms; shaped and cut down to size along the highways and byways of the American continent. But the raw coast of Florida got storms as big and fresh and wild as the seabeasts themselves; right off the boat. The ocean was no processing plant for storms; cutting them bite-size and packaging them for re-sale like the land did. No, the ocean was a forge of chaos and doom; and the ocean's favorite toy was big fucking storms; and that warm water brewed it up like black English tea for Zendiks as they shut the lights down by 2100hrs.

  Well, all but the mountains, he thought, the land’s version of the sea were the mountains, and they made industrial size storms too.

  Qual had a shock of white hair that ran through his noir mane like a lightning strike; and he told a version of its origin with glee that escaped his mouth through the widely spaced teeth and an oversized orifice that seemed to consume his slight, white face.

  “I was struck by lightning,” he would say. And his face contained no doom when it said it as if he was only attempting to prove that white streak of hair wasn't peroxide or a sign of entropy. He was incessantly engaged in Qual-boosterism and wanted it known by hook or crook that he was doing just fine.

  His attitude was fun and it was as infectious as a suppurating wound on a Rotavirus patient and unless you were a favorite of the court -which meant a favorite of Arol or Fawn- that kind of act would not be looked upon with anything other than a furrowed brow and build-up of arms along the border -between it and all Zendik- in dispute. And that border dispute would erupt as soon as the Zendiks could provoke it.

  The two young men picked up furniture together and rolled up rugs as one; and what Lyndon would think -but not say- was that the house-niggers periodically strolled through the living area quietly, shallowly, with their heads down in some list like they were only allowed oxygen once they returned from a completed task . Arol even walked by once and, in her defense, tried to be polite; but Lyndon could tell polite was not her métier .

  He thought of Malcolm X’s diatribe on the house negro versus the field negro and saw the same dynamics at work here. He figured it might be just the way mankind was built.

  The tropical heat continued to churn with the evaporating sea water and the RH rose to 60 percent. The ranch house had fans that turned slowly as if they too were languid and lazy due to the heat. The men, Qual and Lyndon, removed their shirts and stuffed them into their pants like aprons; this kind of thing was as normal around here as the nudity on the plains of the Serengeti .

  It was the first thing Lyndon noticed: the lack of middle-class values. Nakedness and body odor were assumed to be part of being human and unless and until you offended the aesthetic of the group by being fat or malodorous, you were free to disrobe and eschew toilette .

  Lyndon pushed a dust broom around in rows and Qual admitted he'd been in the Navy as he assembled the mop bucket and filled it with white vinegar and warm water. Qual then mopped the floor in the most systematic way possible and Lyndon stood by and watched him even more intently. He was so nervous about his success here, and he seemed to think the way Qual cleaned the floor was the passe partout to it all.

  Lyndon was 24 in this living room of Vero Beach and he was lithe, like most of the men, but somehow seen as large for the group. In the real world he was skinny, but here at the farm he was seen as a beast of burden. He was already making plans in his head to bring his weights to the farm for communal use and go round up his car and the rest of his belongings. He had everything else he needed here , he thought.

  He was a religious man, always had been, always would be, and his avowed atheism was hardly even an errant thought in the mind of God himself. God, who had plans for Lyndon, was sanguine. And unbelief, God knew, was not even a real thing -let alone an obstacle - in this man.

  He would believe in Zendik -among other things- right up until the day they kicked him out, and for years and years beyond even that. And on the penultimate day before election day in 2018, twenty years hence, that day he pulled that last trigger on the 46th of his now dead enemies, he knew that Wulf would have claimed that murder-of-ignoble-men was Lyndon’s true genius ; the place he’d moved through from potential to actual; the place he was both best and most alone.

  II. 2037 e.v.

  She held herself back a little; and felt foolish for it. But she didn’t approach, allowing herself to feel foolish all she wanted. He was bigger, more vascular, his brow and cheek to jaw -upper jaw- was scarred, and his eyes were not friendly. He looked like he was looking for a place most vulnerable, or that which contained the most of something he wanted to take out of you and stuff somewhere inside him. And his beard was angry too; it had sharp edges, like fish hooks, and the chin was pointed and swooping out like a harpoon.

  His knuckles -and everything else- were tattooed and scarred -raised scars, like trenches made by red-ants- and his hands trembled like vibrations from some inner earthquake or the rattling of his inner sails of the mizzen and main-mast. When he smiled, a titanium tooth, the incisor, on his starboard side, was revealed. It was longish, doggish, and it did the opposite of gleam, it absorbed the light. And your eyes went right to it, and sucked you, like the asps of Medusa, the asps that turned that which looked, that which paid attention, to stone , she thought.

  You froze, yeah , she thought, that was it, the predator-detection circuit was activated and you self-administered a paralytic . What a beast he was, “my lord,” she breathed out and finally gave voice to the compression of what she expansively thought.

  She could see the resemblance, it was not unbelievable, but he was something else, something unholy, she felt. A shadow cast from her Blax, backward in time; first; somehow the shadow first, not the form .

  No way did a creature like that believe in God, no sir, no how , she thought. Her hands could now move and she let them hang and tried to breathe both deep and silently.

  He did not -would not- look at her at all. He just spoke and grinned wolfishly at Isaiah and nodded here and there, and rolled his neck, oh, yeah, he had the same neck, as Blax, of course, the broken neck, and how it must bother him too . Good , she thought, he ought to be in pain . If Papa had to be in pain, then this man should too . She felt bad for saying that; he was like a father or something, a mold, a brother maybe; grandfather to her. God, what was he? He was exactly the same? Genetically, epigenetically too? No, he had different -well, he had different, a lot of things different, she thought.

&n
bsp; And gene expression, he would have different gene expression due to different stimuli, she would ask Isaiah that, now that it occurred to her. She had not known what to expect, but it was not this. She had not expected him to look and move and be like this.

  God, that man, she thought, that man 10-feet, 12-feet, from me has killed, murdered that many people, and he carries no extra weight about the soul for it, in fact he seems lighter! “My lord,” she said again.

  Isaiah called her over and she heard the words but not their meaning; then Isaiah repeated her name.

  “Valance,” he said again.

  “Hi,” she said and felt a fool. Hi? What the fuck is that? she chided herself. She walked over too quickly now, too eagerly, an obvious over-compensation , she thought as she did it all the same. Oh, my lord , she said to herself again; she had his genes, not just papa , oh, what is this that is just now occurring to you, girl ? she asked herself and held out her hand to shake his, but he did not raise his.

  Isaiah talked, and said who-knows-what, and the man nodded in truncated form, and then looked away and Isaiah explained that she would be able to talk to him briefly if she wished and did she have anything she might want to say.

  It was a silent room then, again. MO worked over in the corner banging on the new solid box of metal he had built, and the orchids vibrated a bit and Isaiah noticed and ran over -the hummingbirds alighted as he rose in quick movement- to lift them up and place a vibration dampener under them. He placed his hand on MO and MO said he was sorry for it; for disturbing the sensitive orchids.

  Lyndon, Lyndon James MacLeod, the inmate, she thought, as that was what they all called him , just sat there with his white shirt and white jumpsuit and white flip-flops with black socks. His biggest complaint was the carbohydrates in prison and the bad clothes. He could live with everything else if they’d just serve meat and let him wear his own BDUs and boots and swaddling earth tone Ts. She had seen why, the white was not friendly to him, it made him seem under someone’s control. Of course, he was, he was under the control of the Department of Corrections here in Florence, well, technically, the Bureau of Prisons, and yet here he was, not even cuffed. And now Isaiah was handing him a drink. Jesus, she thought, was that a beer?