“Monsiuer, VL is so much more than a mirror,” I maintain. “It is a place where one’s dreams and visions can be accessed and ‘materialized’ almost instantly.”
“Which is why it is very important as we face the end of PL,” confirms Jacques-Ives.
“When is all this scheduled to come down?” Iggy asks.
“As we speak,” says Captain Cousteau somberly. “As we speak…”
As our new friend, the wise and intrepid (and tireless) explorer Jacques-Ives Cousteau meanders distantly across the vast expanses of universal (and multi-universal) time, we eight emulations satiate our VL bodies with the pseudo sensations of flavor and essence, sampling the lightest rendition of mousse au chocolate ever imagined or concocted in a digital format. We sip cognac, though we do not feel the warming spirits in our throats or stomachs. For ours is a virtual existence in a virtual world. Each of us knows sentient life in what remains of NL and PL, but we also understand that our future, if indeed we have one, is grounded in the virtual world, and that is where we must stake our claim to survival as a race. No doubt our friend, the visionary explorer, sees beyond what even we envision: magnetic fields shifting and ice ages coming and going; earth’s rotation slowing and exerting tremendous gravitational stress on the moon, eventually splitting it apart, asteroids raining down upon the earth as smaller particles from the destruction form rings (just like Saturn) around our blue world… Yet, in Cousteau’s generous vision, we have become gravity’s masters, modifying ocean tides and controlling climate. We come to understand anti-matter, and we harness the energy of ‘other’ universes. We successfully decipher the genome and learn to repair genetic flaws. We banish disease and death from our genetic programming, and through genetic engineering we begin to reconstitute evolution itself. That is the vision of Jacques-Ives Cousteau.
And whether his magnanimous foresight plays out in PL or in VL, we know we must certainly remain vigilant, because (as Simone points out) the same petty rivalries, the same tendency to oversight, the same ambition for position and power, the same propensity for greed exists in VL—just as it does in PL—and we know that mankind is prone to repeating history, illustrious or disastrous as it may be.
It is nearly midnight when Philippe, who has been manning the bridge, enters the captain’s quarters. He greets us all as he moves to a position beside his father, and then whispers a message in the captain’s ear. A moment later, he withdraws. Captain Cousteau addresses us in a serious yet confident tone.
“Mes amis, we have had a splendid meal and a fine discussion, n’est pas? But it seems that my presence is now required on the bridge, so I must call an end to our little gathering. Apparently, we are tracking a rather large storm—a Category 5 hurricane, in fact—but don’t worry, because it is still three hundred miles southeast of our position. Nevertheless, we must chart a course that will lead us, and Calypso, to a safe haven. Philippe informs me that there is no present danger, so you are welcome to remain onboard, if you like, or to transfer to another REP of your choice. By mid-morning, we will dock in the port of Miami—that’s VL Miami, of course—so if you prefer to remain onboard through the night, you can disembark there tomorrow. Whatever your decisions, I thank you from the bottom of my broken heart for meeting here tonight, and for your kind indulgence of my ideas and my suggestions. I bid you farewell, mes frères et mes sœurs!”
After leaving the captain’s quarters, we congregate in the mess hall to determine what each of us will do in light of the coming storm. Ego and Tooltech, Omar Paquero and Igloo Iceman decide to transfer at once to another REP, but Crystal and Kiz and I decide to spend the night aboard Calypso and dock at Miami on the following day. We say goodnight to our friends as they transfer to various other locations within Virtual Life, then settle in front of a television to watch news of the encroaching hurricane, Katrina.
PART III:
THIS IS VIRTUAL LIFE (SO WHY IS MY HEART BREAKING IN 'REAL LIFE'?)
CHAPTER 10
The Big Easy (Or The City That Care Forgot)
SHELTERED SAFELY in a suite at the VL version of Miami’s Fontaine Bleu Hotel, Crystal, Kiz and I watch television—as does the rest of the world—as Hurricane Katrina roils over the Gulf of Mexico on its way toward New Orleans. Outside our hotel, the skies are dark and the wind is howling. Smoky clouds rush past a full moon, and the window glass in our room shakes and bends. Outside, a tattered American flag whips (and weeps) in the squall. Katrina has already moved past South Florida, only grazing its southwestern tip; nevertheless, anticipation of the storm’s landfall on the Gulf Coast leaves us breathless, and our concern grows by the hour for the many that are not able to evacuate the Big Easy. We watch the television in horror as thousands file into the Superdome.
Of course, we are in a VL REP: the television we are watching is a digital creation, and the personalities on air are also dot matrix Virtual Life emulations; the reporters, the local residents and the politicians—from New Orleans Mayor Clarence Ray Nagin Jr. to President George W. Bush—are but digital representations of their all-too-real counterparts.
For five straight days we do not leave our room. We watch CNN almost non-stop: Soledad O’Brien, Anderson Cooper and Mari Ramos broadcast in breathless superlatives. We order room service and look out the window at the heavy clouds of the storm’s aftermath. Meanwhile, New Orleans swelters. Many have no shelter, or food, or water. Children have no clothes. The water continues to rise. They beg for help. Promises are made: “Buses are coming, just hold on awhile longer!” So they wait. There is nothing else to do.
“Fizzy, this is terrible!” Kiz says to me. “Nobody is sending help. People are dying there, and nobody is helping. We have to go there. We have to do something!”
“What can we do?” I ask.
“Something… Anything… But we’ll need a boat. Do you think Captain Cousteau will help us?”
“I’ll IM him immediately,” I tell her.
Dear Captain Cousteau,
We are sitting in our suite at the Fontaine Bleu and watching the scene in New Orleans. We feel great sorrow for the people whose lives have been turned inside out, and we want to go there to help, but we need a boat. Nothing large: just a small boat with a motor, so we can navigate the streets of the city. Can you help?
Sincerely,
Fizzy Oceans
Crystal Marbella
Kizmet Aurora
The answer from Calypso is forthcoming:
Of course we will help. We have placed the boat you requested in your cache. Good luck, girls. And God bless you!—Jacques-Ives Cousteau.
In Virtual Life, there are no less than ten REPs for New Orleans. There is one that recreates Bourbon Street and the French Quarter, and another for the Mardi Gras Parade. There is a REP for Cajun Voodoo, and one for Brennan’s Restaurant. But the one in which we are interested is called The City that Care Forgot. As we transfer, boat and all, directly to St. Bernard’s Parish, the first people we see are two Black men, one tall and skinny and the other one short and fat, wading through chest-deep, fetid water as they approach our boat. Both are frantically waving their hands over their heads, as if to signal us, and they are calling out, “Hey! You with the boat! Help us, please! People’s dyin’ here!”
As the two men reach our position on (or actually several feet above) Humanity Street, they introduce themselves as Charlie ‘Bayou Creature’ Collins and Willie ‘Wordsworth’ Greene. They tell us that their homes have been flooded out, that they have lost everything, that they haven’t slept for three days, and that now they are just trying to reach people that are stranded by the floodwaters inside their houses. Without hesitation, we make room for them inside the dinghy. Soaked to the skin and smelling of sewage, they climb into the small craft.
As we look around, the scene we see does not look at all like an American city; it looks more like Bangladesh, or Indonesia. In the distance, we see the New Orleans skyline, virtually unscathed. Downtown New Orleans might as well be
the Emerald City, because here in St. Bernard’s Parish the devastation we see is incomprehensible. Normally below sea level, the floodwaters have submerged the entire neighborhood, reaching past doorways and second story windows. Everywhere people are camped out on their balconies or on rooftops, waving white flags, begging for salvation, or just a drink of fresh water or a morsel of food. Animals howl, and debris floats in the rancid water: rumpled bedding, broken toys, sodden car seats, and empty baby strollers. Putrid corpses float by, too. It is far too late for many to be saved, but those who have survived the storm, and thus far the flood, are in urgent need of help. “This is unbelievable,” says Kiz to ‘Bayou Creature’ as he tries to start the small motor. “Where is everyone?”
“Ain’t nobody come to help,” he says. The outboard sputters and coughs before it finally roars to life.
“Louisiana National Guard is here,” says Wordsworth. “And the Coast Guard is here. Wynton Marsallis is here. And Sean Penn is here, too. Harry Belafonte is here. In fact, I heard that he went down to Venezuela to talk with Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, to see if there was anything that he could do to help. Not only the flood victims, all the poor folks across America. Even the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are here. Can you believe that? Now talkin' 'bout the New Orleans Police Department? They all left. Sure ain’t no George Bush here. And there ain’t no FEMA, neither. Only the Cajun Navy—everyday people tryin' to help their neighbors.”
“Sure as shit, they blew the levees,” says Bayou Creature. “Just like they did back in '65, during Hurricane Betsy. I heard the explosion myself. Bang! Then comes all the water, and we is no better than rats on a sinkin' ship,” he says as he wipes a tear from his eye.
“Why would they do that?” asks Crystal.
“Because they know they got to save the rich folks’ property in the Garden District and Parkland and Uptown. And they know they got to save the French Quarter. Without the French Quarter they got nothin', you understand? Most of the rich folks got out in their cars. They started drivin' two or three days before the storm hit. Some went to Baton Rouge, others just kept on drivin' as far north as Tennessee, or Kentucky, or even Illinois. But the poor folks that live in the 9th Ward, or here in St. Bernard’s Parish, had no way to get out. A lot of these folks are elderly, or sick. No money for a bus ticket, you understand? No nothin'!”
As we approach a clapboard house with water above the front porch and two feet deep inside the house, five children appear, three wading hip-deep through the deluge and two others riding on the shoulders of the older siblings. The expression on their faces is beyond grim as they survey the mire that was once their neighborhood and playground. All innocence has been lost; only stunned condemnation remains. “Is anyone else inside the house?” I call out to them.
Tears well in the eyes of the two eldest children, for only they truly comprehend what has happened. “Mama’s inside,” the eldest child tells us, “but she dead.” I am stunned at the news.
Bayou Creature guides the boat closer to the house and moors it at what was once the front porch. Once the dinghy is tied to a protruding post, he steps off the boat and into the water. He lays his hand upon the head of a young girl—she is twelve years old at most—then pats the head of the baby in her arms. “Show me your mama,” he tells the girl.
Wordsworth also disembarks, as do Crystal, Kiz and I. We wade inside the house as the young girl leads Bayou Creature to the bedroom where her mother lay dead on the bed.
“She couldn’t get no oxygen,” the girl tells us, “so she died.” No sense of panic reveals her true emotions; her voice is placid, resigned, and utterly vacuous. “No oxygen,” she repeats as she shakes her head in resignation. “And we ain’t got no food.”
Bayou Creature approaches the corpse. He brushes away a swarm of flies from the woman’s face before covering her with a sopping blanket. “We going to take you out of here now,” he tells the girl. “They come for your mama later.”
“Okay, Mister,” she says. Even walking into the unknown accompanied by strangers is better than this wretched place that was once her home.
“Come with us now,” Crystal tells the children. “Get inside the boat so we can take you some place safe.”
As if such a place exists in this reality…
Once the children are settled inside the boat, Bayou Creature starts the motor and we head for the Convention Center (because we don’t know where else to take these poor orphans). Halfway there we encounter a small terrier dog in the water, paddling for his life. Wordsworth reaches over the side of the boat and plucks the small dog out of the water and lays it in the lap of one of the children. The dog immediately falls asleep from exhaustion. “This dog dead too?” asks one of the girls.
“No, he’s just sleeping,” Crystal tells her. Then she adds, “He’s your dog now, so you take good care of him.”
“I will,” she assures Crystal as she strokes the dog’s wet fur.
As we arrive at the Convention Center, we are stunned to see thirty thousand displaced souls—hot, tired, ragged, hungry, dehydrated, sick, disenfranchised, and discouraged—in front of the main hall. Forty thousand more are coming out of the Superdome. Their condition is not much better than those who have spent the past five days since the storm subsided out in the open air. Most are dirty. Some are covered with feces, or urine, or menstrual blood. Others exit by wheelchair on their way through the Hyatt House and out the Loyola Street door. Just where they are supposed to go nobody seems to know, but General Honoré, a Black John Wayne dude wearing a tammy and dark shades, directs the procession. “Weapons down!” he orders the ad-hoc police and the National Guardsmen. “Weapons down!” he barks through his bullhorn.
We dock our boat in front of the building and we are met by scores of people asking for help, or simply for information. We have neither to give. What we do have is five scared and dazed orphans and a waterlogged terrier. Bayou Creature explains the situation to a large, soft-spoken man named Herbie Fulsome, who offers to take the children in charge until relief comes. We learn from Herbie that his eighty-four-year-old mother has passed away while waiting for transportation out of the city.
“I could see she was gettin' weaker and weaker. She was in a wheelchair, and she needed her medication—for her heart. But I couldn’t get her pills. All I could do was stay with her. Every five minutes she would ask me, ‘Has the bus come yet?’ and I would have to tell her, ‘No, mama, not yet.’ Then I wheeled her over to the place where the buses were supposed to arrive, because I thought at least she could be the first one to get on the bus when it finally did come. And she kept on askin' me, “Has it come yet?” and I kept on sayin' ‘No, not yet.’ Finally, I look down at her, and it looks to me like she’s asleep. I nudged her gently, but she didn’t wake up, and I said, ‘Oh, my God Almighty, my mama’s died right here!’ So I covered her up with a towel. But it wasn’t enough, so another guy helped me wheel her inside. She’s inside the Convention Center right now. Lots of dead people in there. And we is still waitin' for those buses. Maybe they never going to come.”
Meanwhile, President Bush is at a fundraiser in San Diego. On the podium he plays air guitar and jokes about the war in Iraq. Michael Brown, once Head of the Arabian Horse Association and promoted by Bush to FEMA Chairman, is taking plenty of heat (and he can certainly have a bit more if it will decrease the street temperature even a degree or two), while Michael Chartoff, Head of the newly created Department of Homeland Security, and safe and sound in Atlanta, refuses to unlock the resources that will enable the rescue effort to proceed. The vice president, Dick Cheney, is fly fishing in Wyoming (I bet it’s not a hundred and four degrees there), and Condoleeza Rice, the Secretary of State, is at Ferragamo’s buying shoes, at a production of Shamelot on Broadway the next night, and playing tennis with Monica Selas the next afternoon. What gives?
We meet up with the singer Harry Belafonte (just returned from a meeting with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez) and we
ask him why nothing is being done to help. “Arrogance of power,” says Belafonte. “Socially, these people are of no importance whatsoever to the power elite. Racially, they are even less important. Believe it or not, I just saw President Bush on television congratulating FEMA Director Brown. ‘Good job, Brownie,’ he said to him. Look around! Can you believe it?”
To my eye, it appears that nineteen out of every twenty people stranded in the city and left to fend for themselves in impossible conditions are Black.
In our little boat (which I have now christened Calypso II) we travel underneath the Crescent City Connection, a so-called pick-up point for stranded souls. Except nobody seems to be picking up anybody else. Instead, people are camped out on top of the bridge that spans the Mississippi River, with no water or food, praying for salvation. Dead bodies lay covered on the road shoulder. Angry looters shoot at helicopters as they pass overhead. Suddenly a man calls out, “We going to stay here, or we going to walk out of this hell?”
“Today is the day we walk!” somebody else answers.
“We is all walking to Gretna!” announces another.
The crowd begins to move en mass, but soldiers with guns meet them at the far end of the bridge. “Nobody leaves Orleans Parish!” the refugees are told at gunpoint.
Apparently in America we can no longer traverse American soil at will. Indeed, who are these soldiers, and what reason might they have for stopping the lawful movement of free people?
Most locations within the city have no power, but here we are able to hear the voice of Mayor C. Ray Nagin on a small battery-powered radio held aloft by a man whose head is sticking out of a hole in his roof.
“The first levee breach was at Florida Avenue,” the mayor explains. “Shortly thereafter, the levees at 17th Avenue and London Avenue broke as well, sending water pouring into St. Bernard’s Parish and the 9th Ward. People ask me what I need. I need reinforcements. I need troops. I need five hundred buses. They talk about bringing in school buses from other cities and towns in Louisiana. This is bullshit! Pardon my French. What needs to happen is for every single Greyhound bus in the entire country to get their ass movin' to The Big Easy!”
The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans Page 17