by Nick Mamatas
Does the consultee still own the problem and the solution?
Have I ever?
How, where or when did I go with the flow?
Have I ever?
Timing errors or opportunities taken?
Maybe I should have walked Liz out, maybe down to the end of the block and then down to the end of the next. My heart’s in my throat even writing this, thinking that Julia would walk by somehow and see me with Liz and freak. No, I’d be the one freaking.
Was I (positively, constructively, and cautiously) opportunistic with confrontive interventions?
I can’t help but giggle and think about the “second date” after reading this question.
What were my errors? What did I learn?
Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia
Did I share the problem?
Did I share anything else?
MARIJUANA. College flings. That big bubble of flesh from those wasps in mama’s basement. Raymond puzzled over the assessment form Liz had given him for a long moment, then realized that he had spent all of their first date talking about Julia, telling Liz virtually everything that thenewspapers and blogosphere couldn’t. How she liked kids but hated babies as they had no personalities but an endless number of drives. That she pledged a sorority and washed out, and that her pledge nickname was “Jew Spot,” her boyfriend of the time having been Jewish. (As was that one girl with whom she had had a fling). How she wrote letters on behalf of imprisoned Koreans and Afghanis, but only once or twice a year after Pacifica radio or The Nation had really gotten to her. How she would weave these fantasies of taking on whaling ships with Greenpeace but satisfied herself with $100 checks here and there.
Julia had been a part of the same systems of the world, and comfortable there. Just like Raymond was. Now Julia was gone, and Raymond, still enmeshed in the worlds of commerce and sexual stimulation and resource management and primate games, wasn’t comfortable at all. He looked around the restaurant, eyes wide, looking for … Julia? Escape? Then he tapped a few notes into his Sidekick.
BRIEF PSYCHOTIC DISORDER. SIMILAR TO “AMOK” (MALAY) OR LATAH? (WHO IS COMMANDING HER TO KILL/ACT?) NEW KIND OF CULTURE LEADS TO NEW KIND OF CULTURALLY-BOUND PSYCHOSIS?
POSSIBILITY: JULIA NOT SPARK OF MOVEMENT, BUT TIP OF ICEBERG. NOTICED BECAUSE SHE IS WOMAN? RARITY: PENIS PANIC/KORO AMONG WOMEN. WHAT IS PENIS OF POSTMODERN/INFORMATION ECONOMY. INTELLECTUAL/SEMIOTIC REPRODUCTION?
Finally, a busboy of indeterminate ethnicity hit Raymond’s feet with his mop twice. Raymond got the hint, paid his part of the bill and a 30 percent tip, and left for home, alone.
10
DREW Schnell was attempting an insanity defense, we decided. Why not blame the wasps for once? Raymond was questioned by Schnell’s lawyer: did Julia have any drug connections? An interest in hypnosis? Was she ever recruited by the FBI or CIA?
“What?” Raymond asked.
“It’s true,” said the lawyer, a man of plastic and calm nerves by the name of Smith. “Exceptional high-schoolers, especially those who achieve high in math and the sciences, often receive birthday cards and the like from various federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. To start grooming them for possible post-collegiate jobs.”
“Did you get one of those when you were a kid?”
Smith winked. Raymond said he doubted that Julia was on the FBI’s radar in high school.
The questions continued.
Did Raymond have Julia’s “half”? Half of what? Perhaps you can tell me. I don’t know.
Was Raymond familiar with role-playing games? Raymond was a boy in the 1970s, of course he was. Did Julia play any of the major massive multi-player games, like World of Warcraft? Did she have a character in Second Life. No, nothing like that. Why?
“Drew Schnell was quite a powerful and influential figure on some of these games. We thought there might have been some contact between them on one of the … virtual worlds.” Smith’s plastic façade loosened when he said those last two words. The smile he offered seemed less calculated.
“Of course,” said Raymond. He had guessed that much from newspaper photos.
Did Julia try to make you do anything? Give money to rogue elements? No. We had no money.
“You live in the West Village, have tenure, four books out, and you have no money?” Smith asked.
“Rent control. Tenure track at CUNY. Four books, with small academic presses. With the royalties I can sock away enough money for a ski trip up to Vermont, by bus, every year and that’s about it. Liberals don’t believe in money, you know. That’s why we all end up in academia. Conservative intellectuals, they become … well, lawyers.”
“Tax lawyers,” said Smith. “Investment bankers.”
“Yeah, the masters of the universe.”
“Exactly.”
Smith flagged and wilted, while Raymond was pleased just to have someone being so attentive and so willing to ask about Julia without judging, offering advice, threatening arrest, or teasing him with the tiniest whisper of a promise of sex. Raymond was energized, blooming in the spotlight.
What did Raymond think of … Smith waved his hand. The Elgin marbles in the British Museum had been secretly sprayed with syphilis the other day, Raymond said. Penicillin was sufficient to stop any long-term problems, but it was a shame that the plot was discovered when a small girl became symptomatic after visiting the museum. Smith rubbed his nose subconsciously. Raymond smiled and said that he was against violence and vandalism.
“Is there anything else to”—Smith waved his hand again—“except violence and vandalism?”
“Well, there are the performances, the reclaiming of the public sphere. The concrete ironizing of certain policies—”
“Such as?”
“All those actors hired and made up to look like various Senators who started impeachment hearings in a
mock-up of the Capitol that was all over the web and even picked up by some TV stations.”
Smith shrugged. “Yeah, that wasn’t too bad. Anyway—”
“And then they had the Presidential impersonator surrendering to Star Wars stormtroopers and apologizing in tears.”
“Moving on …” Smith stopped. Raymond waited.
“Is there anything you can tell us that you think might be of help in Mr. Schnell’s plea.”
“Actually, yes,” Raymond said. “I’ve been writing a paper for the past few months, based partially on my own contemplation of Julia. Ever hear of penis panic?”
Smith’s mouth hung open for moment. “Let’s pretend that I’ve not, professor. Enlighten me.”
“It’s a culturally bound mental disorder, a psychosis. Common … well, not common, but present in Southeast Asia and Africa. Men believe that their penises are shrinking, melting, or retracting back into their abdomens due to a curse or, in some cases, propaganda enemies. Cell phones, Zionists, chemical warfare. It’s a social disorder too. Once one man decides that his penis is withering thanks to a sorceress or Israel, he cannot help but complain about it. Then other men start thinking that their penises are shrinking too. Hysteria breaks out. They get together in the streets, these men, and go on rampages, smashing store windows, running through marketplaces, attacking elderly women. It starts local but becomes regional. Sometimes thousands of men fly into penis panics over the course of a few weeks, especially if the local media picks up the story.”
Smith said, “I cannot help but be reminded of the Twinkie defense.” And then he laughed.
“Anyway, in patriarchal, phallocentric, hierarchal, shame-based societies all the ingredients are there. The penis is infused with immense personal and social power. Men at or near the bottom of the social hierarchy are especially anxious because there are no social safety nets, and there isimmense pressure to succeed and substantial entrenched corruption that keeps them at the bottom of the heap.
“Sounds a bit like Drew Schnell to me, doesn’t it to you? He has a penis panic, and there was even a phallic exchange of
sorts with the hot dog. He probably has some kind of sexual dysfunction, maybe a fetish or two. Hmm, is that right, would you say?”
Smith dipped his head in acknowledgment.
“And he’s a clerk. Bob Cratchit working for the world’s biggest Scrooge. No wife, no girlfriend, right?” “Right.”
“So there you go.”
“Penis panic made Drew Schnell embezzle money and turn it over to the Iraqis, and your wife, who pulled a gun on you the night she left you then killed a man and went into hiding, was the catalyst?” said Smith. “Right.”
“All right, Doctor Hernandez. That should be all,” Smith said.
When Raymond got home, there were letters from three refereed journals turning down his paper on the subject of his wife.
DAVAN was working on his novel. Alysse was playing a computer game called Central Planner in which the object was to maximize outputs and gulag populations of a wintry mid-twentieth-century country while fighting off imperialism. They sat on the futon, laptops on laps, hair in eyes, their cat Stymie between them.
“Tractors?” asked Alysse.
“Films about tractors.”
“Hmm.” She typed and clicked.
“Tractors are capital-intensive. Factories, steel mills, rubber, and galvanization. Lots of skilled labor, so hard to coerce too. Movies, on the other hand, they’re all chicken wire and papier-mâché,” Davan said. “You can be like Roger Corman, using stock footage over and over, the same damn tractor for that matter, a Stalin impersonator to play Stalin, public domain musical numbers with revolutionary lyrics, shoot it all in the daylight so lighting isn’t a big deal. Crank it out on the cheap and keep the peasants happy.”
“And then ship them off the gulag, and they’ll think it’s Disneyland until they get there.”
“The Disneyland of tractors, yes.”
The cat saw us. She raised her head so slightly, like a queen.
More typing. “How’s your chapter?” Alysse asked.
“Slow.”
“You’re typing a lot.”
“I’m on the Sans Nom bulletin board,” Davan said, and he wiggled his hand in representation of the nameless movement. “Got into a stupid flame war with stupid fucking Brian.”
“All flame wars are stupid,” said Alysse. “But what makes Brian stupid?”
“You mean other than the fact that he abandoned Williamsburgist after we wouldn’t have a threesome with him and moved to Georgia because his grandma doesn’t charge rent?”
“All right, all right. But you can’t deny that all flame wars are stupid, and if Brian is stupid for being a pig, then you’re not much less stupid for still talking to him”
“You know how difficult it is for me when I see someone who is wrong on the Internet,” Davan said. He tilted his laptop toward Alysse, upsetting Stymie, who leapt from the couch and walked toward us. We were near the television, warming ourselves on the vents of the digital converter box. Alysse didn’t bother to turn her head away from her own monitor. “It’s about whether or not a bulletin board about”—this time he waggled his hand—“is actually part of it, or the objective enemy of the movement. If we sit here and plan things out and talk about them and judge our actions or set limits, then it cannot be part of the movement.”
“What about Nazis?” Alysse said absently.
“Godwin’s Law!”
Alysse rolled her eyes. “I guess I should stop talking now then.”
“Actually, that’s part of the flame war too: someone said Nazi, and then we invoked Godwin’s law, but he said that Godwin’s law only applies if one compares one’s rhetorical opponents to Nazis or Hitler. Either way, we didn’t want to talk anymore, but then someone else pointed out that Godwin’s Law doesn’t state that a conversation ends when someone says Nazi, but that all the signal-to-noise ratio just skews all the way to noise.”
“Well, if that’s the argument now, then Godwin’s law is right,” Alysse said. “Godwin’s law is self-invoking too, isn’t it? The second someone invokes it, the real fight is crowded out by Godwin’s law, because of its articulation.”
“Ouroboros.”
“It’s all rather head-up-the-ass anyway.”
“Dark and wondrous,” Davan said. “Like the collective unconscious.” He started to type and then he said, “Ooh, I should use that in my book somewhere.”
Alysse startled, and then pumped her fist. “Yay! Got my first million!”
“The first million is always the hardest.” Davan kissed her cheek.
“Thanks, babe.”
The cat pounced.
We lost sight of Alysse and Davan for over an hour. Coincidence, like the wasp Hymenoepimescis sp. nearly always militates against us. Indeed, after the cat had jumped upon and consumed one of us, knocking the digital signal converter off its precarious mount of old textbooks and DVD cases, Alysse and Davan lost their Internet connection. Soon enough, the line buzzed in Julia’s apartment.
“Hello, this is Undrehuh. How may I help you today?” she said.
“Uh, yeah, hi,” said Alysse, her voice tinny and distant. “We have a problem with our cable and our cat.”
“Well, I’d be pleased to assist you with the cable,” Julia said. Then she stepped off script. “Did you say cat?”
“Yes, my cat knocked over the converter box. Now it doesn’t work.”
Julia led Alysse through the process of power cycling—unplugging everything and leaving it to idle for a minute—and Alysse, being a friendly sort, decided to play a little movement game.
“Yeah, we really need our cable back right away, and the Internet too. Speaking of,” she said, though she wasn’t speaking of anything, “ever get the feeling that everyone else in the world has free will, but you are a slave to forces beyond your control. Or, how about vice-versa?”
“Afraid I’ve never thought of either of those.”
“Why are you afraid?” Alysse wasn’t very good at this sort of thing, which occasionally made her stomp her foot.
“Oh, nothing to be afraid of. At worst we’ll send a technician out. Let’s power up the converter, then the wireless router, then the laptop, in that order, okay?” Alysse did, and the system did not reboot. Julia, as Undrehuh, ran a test signal through the devices and turned up significant packet loss. It was probably a short from our little comrade-self, squashed across the green field of a circuit board.
“It looks like we’ll have to get a technician out to you; he’ll probably just bring a whole new converter for you.”
“Is there anything I can do in the meantime?” Alysse asked. “I pay all my bills through the Internet, have work to do. My boyfriend does graphic design; he talks to clients via IM all day. I mean, what are we supposed to do?”
“Nothing right now, to be honest with you. Nothing I can help you with here. We will credit your account and we’ll have someone out in three days at the latest. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”
“Whatever,” said Alysse.
“Yahbye,” said Julia.
WE don’t know everything, cannot be absolutely everywhere. If we could, we would have destroyed Hymenoepimescis sp. long ago, a genocide unparalleled by human endeavor. Our numbers are considerable but not infinite. We can only assume that “Yahbye” was sufficient for Alysse to make the leap that Julia was still alive, and that she had a job as a telephone service rep. Thankfully, as per the posting she made on a movement message board the next day, from the public library, Alysse was sufficiently confused by Julia’s faux accent that she declared that Julia had moved to India. A fundraising party committee was immediately initiated to send Davan and Alysse to Mumbai to find her.
11
THIS is how Drew Schnell appeared to those outside the Simulacrum.
DUNGEON MASTER: DREW SCHNELL, HOW HE WENT FROM ‘QUIET GUY’ TO THE NERDMAN OF ALCATRAZ
Scott Schatz | Staff Writer, Rolling Stone Nov 4, 20__
SAN FRANCISCO, CA—Drew Schnell is the type of
man who lives alone. The Jersey City financial services worker, age 33, has no wife and had no roommates. His days were spent in the bowels of the Bank of New York, and evenings in a tiny Jersey City efficiency apartment, eating take-out alone, reaching out to a few acquaintances via the Internet, and going to sleep alone. After being implicated in the illegal transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars to Iraqi nationals, many of whom have ties to the continuing insurgent movements, Schnell still lives alone, on waterfront property. Alcatraz Island.
Schnell may be a Homeland Security nightmare, but he was a defense attorney’s dream. Schnell is white and a native-born American, apolitical, had no criminal record or ties to extremist groups, and allegedly engaged in what was essentially a nonviolent act of embezzlement. Further, a number of the groups to which Schnell allegedly wired funds were U.S. allies—hardly a way to aid and abet the cause of terror. Were money to be traced back to terror attacks or the insurgency via the Iraqi-American Committee or the Brotherhood for Progressive Islam, it wouldn’t only be Schell on the hot seat. The Supreme Court ruled that Schnell would need a trial and could not be held incommunicado at Guantanamo Bay, nor any military prison.
Perhaps to keep up the aura of danger, the federal government developed an alternative for Schnell: Alcatraz National Park was shut down and the tourist attraction transformed into a fortress of solitude for the imprisoned finance professional. Media access to the island, and thus to Schnell, is tightly constrained, but Rolling Stone managed an exclusive interview with the latest, lone, and likely last prisoner of “The Rock.”
We were given all of ten minutes with Schnell, and due to security concerns Schnell’s answered were limited to three words per question. A guard was stationed by a button that cut off the phone connection between this reporter and Schnell after the third word Schnell uttered, regardless of what it was to be or whether the sentence would even be comprehensible from such a sort stem of a statement. Longer utterances, we were told, could be used to transmit messages to terrorists.