by Don DeLillo
“Am I awake?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Good, because that’s necessary.”
“Good.”
“Because without it I wouldn’t be able to feel I was definitely myself really.”
“Can I ask what time it is? I don’t see a clock but maybe you have a watch in your clothes.”
“I know the time in my head. I’ve been keeping time to help me stay awake. It’s past dawn, I think it’s well past dawn. That’s generally where we are. I’ve been keeping mental track.”
“Good.”
“Why is this good?”
“Because this way we have hours before it happens because I think this is the day it might happen, whatever might happen, if anything, and I’d hate it to be only minutes. Otherwise, if not today, why wouldn’t there be a calendar or something in Endor’s room showing the date too? I wanted to tell you. Then I have to get back down and let the others know.”
“Did you ever not feel your body was yours?”
The overprettiness was gone, the sense as well that she’d made a space between what she thought and what she sometimes said, the girlish lilt, the winsomeness that halfway guards fitful pain, questions of fearful intelligence. Lost too was a feeling of what poured forth from her, what lights, signs of sustained engagement, that earthly luck of youth unculled, the connections, net measures of being, and her willed incompleteness, the not quite committed nature of her self-acquaintance, a mind that partly clings (till now, the agon) to some ghost of otherness. What remained could be called the experimental beginning of it all. She thought it might be what had always been there. She glimpsed it now and then, obscurely conscious of what there was in common between this and that, struggling to remain awake, to think and be, to see the incurable self. Always the buried hope of an auroral moment. That magnetic dawn of first existence. What remained was not subject to analysis. It was simply what had been won, or yielded to, depending on your view.
“Did you ever not feel the presence of one particular part of you, like when you were little and you wondered under the covers if your foot was really there and being afraid to look or feel?”
“It’s probably something I’ll remember better when I’m older.”
“Assuming you make it.”
“Descartes was buried without his right hand.”
“What happened to it?” she said.
“Someone took it.”
“Souvenir?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s a wonderful story,” she said. “It’ll keep me awake for hours.”
Edna Lown in the one-armed chair studied the old photo on the desk nearby, failing as always to see the humor Bolin saw in that stilted pairing of figures. They worked for a long time then. Lester told her about his idea for a Nazi typeface to provide a graphic stress of the contrast between Logicon and meta-Logicon. Ideal lead-in to a rest period, she announced. Again she studied the photograph, realizing finally what it was that had troubled her about the picture all these years, what (besides its failure to reward one’s comic sense or to mellow the dead ends of reminiscence) had led her to feel something was faintly irregular about the whole thing. It had nothing to do with that dumb jug or the ceremonious adherence to strict relationships or her miserably ill-fitting clothes. It was a question of left and right. When the picture had been taken, her place was to the left of the container, her right leg extended. This long it had taken her to recall it clearly, the gothic arches in the distance, the elms, the armored Buicks full of existential freshmen, her own body in relation to all of these, the tennis courts, the dousing sprinklers on the lawn. In the picture she is being “pointed at” by the jug’s rightside handle and it’s her left leg that is extended. Of course, the reverse was true of Lester. Fact versus picture. The photo had always had this indistinct tone of wrongness about it. Now she knew what caused it all. The picture was flopped. Somehow the negative had been reversed and on the resulting print she and Lester had not only changed places in relation to the container but had undergone a corresponding adjustment in individual left-rightness. There and here. Then and now. It was almost as though they’d spent the intervening years contesting each other’s placement on either side of a vertical axis of symmetry.
“I understand Mainwaring’s got something already.”
“What’s he got?”
“I understand he’s got a mohole,” Bolin said.
In his swivel chair Mainwaring was readying himself to report the latest findings to Softly. He didn’t at this stage know quite how to fit this information into the model they were on the verge of completing, lacking only the final touches on the transgalactic language itself, the means by which they’d be able to “reply” to the ARS extants. In a sense it was odd to be replying to people who (in a sense) no longer existed. But the important thing, according to Rob, is that Wu has postulated a novel evolutionary sequence and that I have traced the radio signals back to Earth. The very uselessness of Logicon, according to Rob, is what makes the project a pure act of the intellect and therefore supremely enriching. If it had been determined that the ARS extants were not Earth-dwellers but extraterrestrials (the message originating, say, in a solar system on the other side of the galaxy), the entire project, according to Rob, would have been endangered. To transmit an actual reply to the actual message-senders (or their succeeding generations) would be to miss the point of the whole thing. Besides, spoke Rob, we are the succeeding generations. Mainwaring sighed. He headed down the path toward Softly’s cubicle. He was eager to leave, to get back to Cosmic Techniques and some semblance of normality, if you could call mohole identification a normal sort of pursuit. What he’d learned from his sylphing teams came as a shock and a half. They’d done it, all right. On their color-contour map (generated by telescopic data and computer analysis), they’d found themselves staring into the colorless puddle of an absorption hole, a spot on the map indicating an area in space where every kind of emission from every type of source is being absorbed by exo-ionic sylphing compounds.
“Lock it behind you,” Jean said.
Softly in bed listened as Mainwaring with that uncharacteristic dampness on his brow explained that this was the first hard evidence ever gathered of the presence of moholes in the universe.
“And you’ve analyzed the compounds and therefore confirmed the path of the radio signals.”
“True,” Mainwaring said.
“Thank you, Walter. You’re a winner in every way.”
“There’s more to it, Rob.”
“Important?”
“I don’t know. I’m honestly not sure at this point.”
“Because we’re about ready to call it a night.”
“This is something hard to evaluate right on the spot.”
“So if it’s not tremendously urgent, let’s let it go for some other time.”
“What they’ve apparently discovered is that we are in the mohole, if that’s the way to phrase it. This solar system appears to be what we call mohole-intense. We are part of the value-dark dimension. All along we’ve been anxious to identify a mohole somewhere out there. We felt it would help us confirm the path of the radio message. And it has, it has. In a wider application we were sure it would shed valuable light on the mohole phenomenon itself. But we never anticipated finding a mohole so close to right here, to us right here. Evidently it’s just happened, it’s extremely recent, we’re right in it. Everything around us on out at least to the most distant planet and right in to the sun itself, our sun, we ourselves, all of us, people, matter, energy, we’re part of a mohole, we’re in it, we’re mohole-intense.”
“I don’t feel any different,” Softly said.
“Rob, we don’t know. That’s it. We don’t know what it means. This is space-time sylphed. We’re dealing with Moholean relativity here. Possibly dimensions more numerous than we’ve ever before imagined.”
“All that’s boring. What the senses can perceive. What the senses can’t
perceive. Nimbus fizgig remora.”
“We used zorgs,” Mainwaring said.
“I thought you used zorgs in tracing the signal.”
“We didn’t need them for that. We needed them for validating the existence of the mohole.”
“That was the original plan. To use zorgs in tracing the signal. That’s where zorgs were supposed to fit in.”
“It didn’t work out that way.”
“Not important,” Softly said. “Nothing to worry about.”
Mainwaring watched him get out of bed and dress. Then both men left for the elevator. Softly looked into the darkness as Mainwaring explained that he wanted to check incoming cables for more news from his sylphing teams. Slowly the elevator climbed, making the usual noises.
It isn’t necessary to write down the words. You know what it will look like page by page and that’s enough to know. That’s everything really. There’s a whole class of writers who don’t want their books to be read. This to some extent explains their crazed prose. To express what is expressible isn’t why you write if you’re in this class of writers. To be understood is faintly embarrassing. What you want to express is the violence of your desire not to be read. The friction of an audience is what drives writers crazy. These people are going to read what you write. The more they understand, the crazier you get. You can’t let them know what you’re writing about. Once they know, you’re finished. If you’re in this class, what you have to do is either not publish or make absolutely sure your work leaves readers strewn along the margins. This not only causes literature to happen but is indispensable to your mental health as well. But me, see, she thought, but me now, that’s another side of it. Blank pages. The prose stays with me, the characters, the story, the setting. Only I know what’s on those pages. Those pages are intelligible, nonviolent and sane. This is the sane way to write if you’re insanity-prone and I’ve found it all by myself when Softly entered her from a kneeling position, her lower back and pelvis upcurved from the surface of the bed, his hands at her hips drawing her into him, body (hers) swollen and bruised, arms (hers) extended back toward the headboard, hands pushing out from that panel to drive her more fully onto his body or to make his body unconditionally part of hers. It was the briefest of sexual episodes. She was nearly herself, she felt, a body restored to its secret petitioner, her voice as she spoke into his furry ear (a routine oozing curse) reminding her of the street croak of diggers in vacant lots along the edges of that ultrasculptural city you might have scanned from the windows of your undependable train. He backed off the bed with spit on his lips and that streamlined marine glisten at the center of his body, aquatic flopping cold-blooded organ, neon gleam of it, wet with her vulval wash. His strength did not surprise her. It is something we all superstitiously assume. One’s various afflictions provide the material for secret competence. Pulled from the bed she reached back instinctively to find a grip, a hold, a firm piece of something, coming away with a sheet in her hand, warm, she thought, dragged along the floor, not the least surprised by his strength, left then, the closet door coming open, waiting politely with her warm sheet, pushed and bounced inside, homunculus, madman, my child-sized lover, all buttoned in this little dark, this orphaning eye of the night, a-choo, coats and dresses in my hair, hate to wait the fate of the turning key.
But he didn’t bother locking the door this time. He closed it, left it, dressed and returned to his quarters. Lester was boiling water for tea. Edna as well was in the kitchen area. Their voices dulled by fatigue. Excessive reflex action, Softly thought. Restlessness, excitation, over-alertness. Need to supply myself with some enforced relaxation. He undressed, put on his thermal pajamas, tossed his briefcase on the bed and then crawled in under it. He undid the straps and searched inside for something to sniff, swallow or lick, anything at all as long as it contained an appropriate moderating agent. Mainwaring stood in the entrance. He was dressed in jungle fatigues. Stenciled on the flap of his breast pocket were the initials WXM.
“Rob, it’s me again.”
“Sure, why not?”
“I was working on a letter of resignation. I’d planned to leave it on your desk. But since you’re here I think it’s only right we do it face to face.”
“What brought this on?”
“Man to man,” Mainwaring said. “What brought this on? What brought this on was the most recent communication. It’s all in my letter. Do you want to see it?”
“You decide.”
“It’s in my pocket.”
“Neatly folded, I presume. Either that or it’s the tiniest resignation in corporate history.”
“Do you want to see it now?”
“Read it to me.”
“Maybe that’s best.”
“Whatever,” Softly said.
Mainwaring remained in the entranceway.
“To Robert Hopper Softly,” he read. “As you may or may not know, Rob, our parent organization, OmCo Research, has just been acquired in a complicated stock deal by ACRONYM, a long-term international speculative monopoly that operates beyond maritime limits. In cases such as this, reorganization is standard procedure. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that such wholly owned OmCo subsidiaries as Cosmic Techniques Redevelopment Corporation, the Center for the Refinement of Ideational Structures, the Relativity Rethink Priorities Council, Field Experiment Number One, the Affiliated Friends of the Logicon Project, the Chinese-American Science Sodality and other model-building organizations will either become defunct or will be restructured beyond present recognition. At the very least we can be certain that the services of all current personnel involved in policy-making will no longer be needed. It is therefore with sincere regret that I submit my resignation.”
“Is that it?”
“End of statement.”
“Acquired by ACRONYM.”
“Elux Troxl.”
“None other.”
“Or whatever his name is.”
“Guano holdings,” Softly said.
“Right.”
“A nonabstract proponent of actual living shit.”
“Guano stockpiling, price-fixing and eventual distribution,” Mainwaring said. “The whole operation computerized to an extent and level of complexity never before known.”
“I like your outfit, Walt.”
“Rob, since your identification with OmCo is greater than anyone’s, I assume you’ll also choose to resign. It’s best all around. I personally urge it. This is what I honestly think and feel and believe.”
I MAKE AN ENTRANCE
He knows enough to know he doesn’t have to lock the closet door. It happens in stages like my pages. Coats, dresses, fabrics, materials, yard goods, cloth. Plenty to do here. Many ways to keep awake. No lack of activities. Touch the cloth, smell the fabric, cover my feet with the sheet. Sleep is no help. The period before sleep is my time of greatest mental helplessness, in fact. Sleep itself is an improvement but not always. The period after sleep is usually not as bad as the period before sleep but there are times when it is worse. Death is creeping logic. It is creepingly logical. Death and something else. SYNONYMS, she thought: insanity, lunacy, madness, mania, dementia. Those nouns denote conditions of mental disability. Insanity is a pronounced and usually prolonged condition of mental disorder that legally renders a person not responsible for hĭs or hûr actions. Lunacy, a romantic form of insanity, can denote derangement relieved intermittently by periods of madness. Madness, a more general term, often stresses the crazy side of mental illness. Mania refers principally to the excited phase of manic-depressive psychosis and we all know who suffers from that particular disorder, his hyperactive priapic clock ticking to its own internal time. Dementia implies irreversible mental deterioration brought on by obsessive thoughts of such organic disorders as death. I could easily easily easily open the door. Or:
They had tea in Softly’s quarters for a change. After listening to Mainwaring read his letter of resignation, Softly had decided to switch from a relaxant
to a stimulant. He sat among his pillows, cup in hand, and smelled the dark souchong.
“What happens now?”
“You keep working, Lester-pet. You finish the notation.”
“What about Mainwaring and Wu?” Edna Lown said.
“I guess they’ll be leaving soon.”
“I have this urge,” Bolin said.
“Tell us, Les.”
“I want to call you Bobby.”
Softly felt his brain racing toward some chemical event of a highly suspect nature. He sipped his tea. Pulse rate. Blink rate. Degree of nausea. Sweatiness of palms. Flushedness of face. He sipped his tea once more. Edna makes good tea if Edna made this tea. But I think it was Lester, who wants to call me Bobby.
“Forget it.”
“Watch my lips,” Bolin said.
“Really, Les, forget it.”
“Watch my lips.”
“All right, I’m watching.”
“Bobby.”
“An experience I wouldn’t have missed,” Softly said.
“Were you watching?”
“Very carefully,” Softly said. “What about Edna? Was Edna watching?”
“Intently,” she said.
“Bobby.”
“Forget it,” Softly said.
“I’ve always had the urge. I don’t know why really. Odds are we won’t be here much longer. Notation’s coming along. So I thought I’d indulge myself once and for all. Indulge the urge. It’s kind of fun to say.”
“Bobby,” Edna said.
“Exactly.”
“Bobby, Bobby.”
“I’ve really enjoyed it here,” Lester said. “Never guessed I’d be able to produce steadily in this kind of isolation. I feel like Kepler in his little black tent. Kepler had this tent he used to carry around with him. Whenever he felt like making some observations, he set it up in a field or wherever. A one-man tent. Small, tight and dark. A tiny hole for his telescope to fit through. He’d sit in the dark and observe. The whole sky pouring through that little hole.”