Alien Accounts
Page 13
‘Yes, yes, I know. And then the caduceus turned into a crozier, and fo on. It’s a common enough dream, nothing to worry about. Everyone does those things you fpeak of. And believe me, cutting off your arm was no folution. It wouldn’t even help to cut off your other arm; you’d be at it with your toes. And now, if you’ll go with Miss Bunne to the testing room, we’d like to give you a few fimple tests and a couple of forms to fill out.’
Their left hands clasped, then Ray backed awkwardly out of the room.
ARM CASSEROLE À LA MOM
Ingredients: 1 lean arm, 3 tbs. butter, 1 clove minced garlic, 3 onions minced, 2 cups stewed or canned tomatoes, 4 cups cooked egg noodles, 1 tbs. brown sugar, 1 can mushroom soup, salt and pepper to taste.
Skin and devein arm, cut carefully away from bones (which may be saved for soup), and dice. Sauté meat in butter for minutes, then add garlic and onions and cook over medium flame for 10 more minutes. Add tomatoes, sugar, spices. Mix with cooked noodles, fill glass casserole dish and bake 45 minutes in hot oven.
Note: Some people like to save the fingers and hand with the bones for soup. I prefer to boil the hand, oven-brown it, and serve it (palm up) on the casserole for a festive garnish.
Twenty-four tiny perfect freckles done, seven to go. Marty refilled the pen from the ink dropper and poised it. An air-hammer began clattering in the street, and he turned to look out.
A telephone crew seemed to be working down there. At least their truck was a telephone truck. But instead of the familiar black bell on the door, there was a snare drum.
Then Drum Inc. really did make telephone equipment! It was all real, or at least ‘real’! Even the rows of faces in wax, printed on plastic film?
His pacemaker began to act up, trying to cope with the multiple rhythms of his racing heart, the air-hammer, others … a different drum.
The last drop of his living sweat grew, gathered itself in an armpit, began the slow journey down the inside of his arm. But can I really afford Heaven? It’s much more expensive than Hawaii. Out of the question now. Maybe in a few years …
The drop zig-zagged, crossed his wrist-pulse and ran down the pen. From there it dripped black on the face of the freckled girl.
‘Hello, Marilyn? He loves you.’
‘Who does?’
A crew from the telephone company, the other one, were tearing up the street near a manhole. On the windshield of a passing car was a sticker reading ‘Hello, Charlie!’
The driver leaned out, looked at the snare drum on the door of the telephone truck, and waved. ‘Hello, Charlie!’ he called. The crew foreman gave him the finger.
EXPLAIN THIS SCENE. Look at this example:
1. Why were the crew digging near a manhole?
a) For extra light.
b) They were rescuing a man.
c) They were outflanking it.
d) Never mind.
The correct answer (c) has been marked. Now do the rest of the problems in the same way.
2. Why did the driver call out?
a) The foreman was Charlie.
b) He looked like Charlie.
3. Why else?
a) ‘Hello, Charlie!’ is the unofficial password for employees of the Bell Telephone System.
b) The crew were Viet Cong.
4. What is Drum, Inc.?
a) One name of the Bell Telephone System in some regions.
b) The official telephone company.
c) The real owner of the Bell Telephone System.
d) A private telephone company with a vendetta against the Bell near-monopoly.
e) Vietnam.
f) It is to the Bell Telephone System as the ‘Aggressor Force’ is to the Army: an imaginary enemy, set up for training purposes. Bell employees who play rôles in it speak Esperanto, count in a duodecimal system, wear the snare-drum insignia, color-code their cables (unlike the Bell code): fuchsia, mimosa, rose, primrose, lavender, cerise and mauve.
‘Hello, Marilyn? He loves you.’
‘Listen, you, I’ve had about enough! You make me feel dirty all over, dirty with deep-brown ground-in dirt, the kind that makes washday a chore and plays havoc with delicate complexions. Do you hear?’
I tried making the general a Negro and a Nazi, then I opened my eyes and sat up on the table.
‘David sees reality as – ah – refrangible.’
In the next panel, the ‘doctor’, an elderly scientist from another comic book, held up a red tube. His balloon read: ‘Tell me, Herr Heiliger, what is this?’
‘A laser? The famous mail-order elixir?’
‘Ha. You are interested in its contents.’ Camera 3 in on Dr Born, seeing him from about chest level, deep shadows as in Return of the Son of Man. ‘Now let us ask David.’
I said, ‘It’s an ink drawing. Red wash and white airbrush highlight.’
‘I came all the way from Washington, or Africa, for this?’ The general picked up his attaché case and made to walk out of the picture. I changed his typeface to Garamond, adopted for myself Univers, a Frutiger-designed face suited to I.B.M. ‘That man is nuts, “doctor”. I have no time …’
‘Wait!’ Exhibit B is an infra-red Polaroid shot of Born holding up his hand to count upon the fingers. ‘Let me pose for you the four great “reality” problems. One: are physical objects real, or only sense perceptions?’
‘But …’
‘Wait …’
‘I have …’
The page was getting covered with dashes, interrupted thoughts; I set it aside and began over with a story called ‘The Sinister Bean’.
‘Two: do others have thoughts and feelings as I do, or are their thoughts and feeling clever simulations? Three: are the entities of science, like atoms and quasars, real, or only convenient fictions? Four: …’
‘I offered to come to work for Drum only on condition that I be given vital communications work,’ the general indicated. ‘Heliograph, semaphore …’
Born speaks with his back to him, make this a circular panel, set at the end of the top right-hand page, so the reader’s eye will be drawn to it twice: once as he reads the top row, again as he reads the second row. The doctor’s glasses heliographed an urgent message: Esperanto, duodecimal number system …
‘Certifiably nuts.’
‘David, I’m going to lock you in this solid closet, and you are to get out without opening the door.’
‘I’ went in the ‘closet’. Nothing much to examine: the cellular plastic sponge, good replica of animal organisation; broomstraws to draw for randomising next move; cleaning ether to change words to sounds, to make a centrifuge, to help David understand what it is the mop and pail are getting at.
Nothing to it; one side of the closet had to be left open, so the reader could see I was really in there. I just stepped out of that side and around and back into the room.
‘A trick!’ said Heiliger. ‘A trick?’
‘Of course,’ David communicated. A cough code was sufficient.
THE SINISTER BEAN
It lay there, perfectly harmless-looking, on a plate or plane or whatever, in the middle of a lot of places. Perhaps the most sinister thing about it was …
‘Transmission of …?’ the general opined, using the old opinion poll code. ‘Twins?’
I tore the money of his words in half, in quarters, and so on, five times, until they were too big a wad to handle. Then David opened my eyes and sat up on the table.
‘… sees reality as – ah – refrangible.’
‘And repeatable,’ I denoted.
Replacing his cracked monocle, the general said, ‘Tell me something, Herr Bland.’
‘Blandings,’ I said.
‘Blandish?’
‘No, Blandworth.’
‘Blanders, then. Tell me, what is it you – see?’
The pages of the calendar flipped past, indicating passage of time. The drivers of a locomotive, then a stationary plane, pasted against droning clouds, indicated movement in space. The slow
dissolve of a wavering image indicated recollection. Then the background music came up full and newspapers rolled off the presses, to indicate an important event.
Dr Ortiz of the Lion Oil Research Branch addressed the stockholders, describing a number of new projects his group was engaged in: ‘Organic computers’ could be constructed of cheap, simple organisms; bacteria and fungi from common products like cheese had already been tested in this connection. ‘Cheese farms’ were a related project involving the use of deadly viruses to ‘grow’ cheeses from common materials. Using less potent forms in a ‘stepped’ or ‘cascaded’ system, he explained, would cut down on the type of unfortunate accident that had so far plagued his project. ‘Organic-to-inorganic’ processes would use a similar virus system to ‘grow’ from human cadavers such popular products as phonograph records and bowling balls.
INDIANA NAME OPINION REGISTER
Q-Q-QQ
1937
Name ……………………………………………………….
Address …………………………………………………….
Age ………… (Give latest date) ……………………………
1. Give your own name in full: ………………………………..
……………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………
2. Print your name in block capitals: ………………………….
……………………………………………………………
3. State surname, Christian name, middle name: ………………….
……………………………………………………………
4. Now give your NAME: ……………………………………….
……………………………………………………………
READ the instructions CAREFULLY and do not begin until the teacher tells you. In the first part, you will be expected to write as many names as you can in the time available, but you need not have every name correct. In the second part, tell what it is that you have named, and do so correctly.
NOW BEGIN PART ONE:
Part One. Name as many things as you can before the teacher says STOP. Begin with your own name, then add other names. Now stop. Begin with other names. Then stop. Begin. BEGIN.
1. ……………………….
2. ……………………….
3. ……………………….
4. ……………………….
5. ……………………….
6. ……………………….
Part Two. Fill in the blanks, then explain:
7. My name is ……………………………………………..
8. The name of ………. is ………………………………..
9. This is the name of ……………………………………..
10. This is my name: ……………………………………….
11. ………………………………………………………
12. Explain the names given above, and explain: ……………….
…………… ……………………………………………
…………………………………………………….. ….
Marilyn, the girl with the birthmark, had so far forgotten herself as to take away the hankie with which she had been dabbing at it. Her palms-up hands lay on her knees, and the ball of pink linen lay on the carpet.
‘… this frail heat. Daddy was a Justice of the Peace; I don’t suppose you know what that … I was eight, Eric was six, and Billy, the baby. Daddy was an engineer. We had a log cabin by the lake, with a log of visitors and everything. Daddy accidentally broke Eric’s nylon fishing rod, and he said he would give him a pair of nylons to replace it. A fish swallowed Daddy’s nylon log log slide rule, and …’
The apparent Negro behind the desk smiled sympathetically. His withered left hand lay before him on the desk like a horrible trophy, while with his good one he toyed with a syringe and a burnt spoon. ‘Go on?’
‘Well. I, Marilyn Hartsock, had to take care of the baby. I liked that, I liked to squeeze him till he kept giggling and I couldn’t stop. They had to take us to the hospital to remove Billy from me. Sometimes I think that’s how I got my withered hand, I mean my – oh!’
She snatched up the handkerchief and began dabbing at the hideous mark once more.
‘No use, it’s indelible,’ sighed the Negro, a Mr Travers. ‘I’ve tried everything myself. Even …’ The apparently tortured eyes in his drawn face sought, and connected with, the syringe.
Dr Reynolds of Lion Pharmaceutical Laboratories addressed the stockholders, describing new drugs his team is working on:
Dilasurg is a new hormone which promises to fix human growth at any pre-adolescent age. Tiresan II, a sex-change drug, requires hardly more testing before it is marketed. Estiviotrol causes a person to go into a state of suspended animation within minutes. Researchers are now working with police riot-control units in developing an effective aerosol delivery system.
Dr Gibbel of Lion Oil Electronics United addressed the stock holders, describing a new ‘surprise’ computer. After complex pre-programming by a team who does not know the computer’s ultimate use, it is leased to someone who does not know the pre-programming routines.
‘Ultimately,’ he said, ‘and without warning, the computer may do something either very stupid or very shrewd.’
Dr Lionel Logan, head of the Lion Oil Automotive Research Foundation, addressed the stockholders, describing a number of new advances. Talked about during his two-hour talk were hover-shoes, ‘chameleon’ body paints, and the use of hallucinogens to give a car ‘that new, yet strangely familiar feel’.
Something is troubling Marilyn, thought Eric. She keeps that pink hankie in front of her nose all the time.
But no matter I’ll just sit here on this train very quietly, I’ll just sit here and look at that young man No he’s looking back maybe thinks I’m queer and hates queers or maybe is queer I’ll look
I’ll sit here and look at that young woman No she thinks I’m trying to pick her up my god the man next to her is her husband or something now he’s looking at me they’re both looking at me I’d better
Sit here and look at that young woman very good looking who has taken the place of the queer or queer hater Christ she gave me a funny contemptuous look and opened a book she knows too well what nasty thoughts were starting
I wish I had a book I’ll just sit here and look at that man with the briefcase god he’s a cop he’s looking back like a cop would quick look anywhere No not too fast better casually glance over
To this old woman what harm could she do me but I just know she’s the type that imagines every young man who looks at her is some kind of rapist look away quick not too quick to the respectable well-dressed young Negro obviously a Black Power person hates all whiteys thinks I stare at him because he’s black I’ll just glance over at that innocent child is that a piercing glance I’m getting back from the mother what does she think I’m a pervert of some kind oh well how about the nice old immigrant workman across from me surely I can look at him his fly’s open others are looking at me looking studying my reaction none look over at that man reading a newspaper interesting half of a headline he sees I’m reading rattles his paper and folds it with the headline inside I may never know who is To Drive ‘Bad-Luck’ Lotus is that the knee of the man next to me touching mine yes Christ the car is full of queers now what I can’t move away without giving up some of my lebensraum but if I push him back he’ll think it’s a signal follow me home is that pair of teenaged girls giggling about me just two more stops hold on I’ll just look at that fat lady No she sees I see how fat she is do I look fat to her too she looks firmly at the advertisement over my head I look firmly at the advertisement over her head stalemate.
Dr Stoneweg spoke to the assembled stockh
olders of Lion Oil and Drum Inc. on his work at the Hannibal (Missouri) Institute for Adanced Studies, in particular the ‘solar bomb’ project. ‘I pray to God we’ll never need this big baby,’ he said, referring to the weapon, which could cause the sun to become a supernova. ‘But if we do need it, we’re ready.’
Drs Freag, Born, Ortiz, Reynolds, Gibbel, Logan and Stoneweg then asked if the stockholders had any questions.
Mr Fenster Moold asked what was the point of all this talk, talk, talk? Wasn’t it time for action? Mr H. Greubhel asked if any of these airy inventions meant anything in hard dollars and cents. Mrs Rose Garland said that she, a Gold Star mother, was not going to sit here and let anyone run down America that way. Mr Joyce Britt asked if there were anyone in the hall who doubted that Jesus Christ was a regular fellow. If so, would that person care to step outside for a thrashing?
(Radio-TV Advertisement)
A Modern Miracle.
A Modern Miracle of action.
Double action. Quick-acting deep-down action,
Where it counts.
Yes, deep-down action,
Truly,
A Modern Miracle.
(Radio-TV Advertisement)
Wherever you see this sign
It means a place you can trust,
People you can rely upon …
Friendly people.
Wherever you see this sign,
It means good things in store for you.
‘EMPLOYEE OF THE YEAR’ DIES – PACEMAKER FAULTY
Grave to be marked with Suggestion Box
DISASSEMBLY OF THE G18-OKO-II HUMAN BEING
Fig. 1 G18-OKO-II HUMAN BEING
Marilyn listed all possible men who loved her:
Ray
Eric
her father
her brother, Bill
Jesus?