Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, Found Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts

by David Shields

  At this point the important issue of why you should absolutely not talk during a fire drill has certainly been clarified in more than one way. However, there is no doubt in my mind that more can be said on this issue which has fascinated the minds of various thinkers since mankind became civilized and outgrew the habits of apes and related primates. If a tribe of monkeys were to participate in a fire drill they would probably go right on chattering and scratching their armpits and hopping on each other no matter what Mrs. DeMella said, and this would be terribly upsetting for her and the other teachers because the high noise level would make them think all the monkeys would get burned to a crisp in the event of a real fire. But fortunately thanks to Charles Darwin and his assistants mankind has evolved and has discovered the concept of self-control which is very beautiful. Surely we can feel proud of the human species when we see the entire ninth grade standing in alphabetical rows by the flagpole with nobody saying a single word, standing there in a condition of total and complete silence and pretending that something important is going on even when everybody knows there is no fire and we could all do the entire drill in our sleep.

  In conclusion, possibly a few words should be said on the question of why a person might make the mistake of talking during a fire drill. Here is an example. Bryce Carter grabbed my Screaming Blue Messiahs tape and I had to get it back fast before he wrecked it.

  5

  Problems for Self-Study

  Charles Yu

  * * *

  1. TIME T EQUALS ZERO

  A is on a train traveling due west along the x-axis at a constant velocity of seventy kilometers per hour (70 km/h). He stands at the rear of the train, looking back with some fondness at the town of (6,3), his point of departure, the location of the university and his few friends. He is carrying a suitcase (30 kg) and a small bound volume (his thesis: 0.7 kg; 7 years).

  Using the information given, calculate A’s final position.

  2. Assume A is lonely. Assume A is leaving (6,3) in order to find someone who could equal his love of pure theory. A says to himself, “No one in a town like (6,3) could possibly equal my love of pure theory.” Not even P, his esteemed adviser and mentor.

  A suspects P is a closet empiricist, checking his theory against the world instead of the other way around.

  A once barged in and caught P, hunched over his desk, with a guilty but pleasured look on his face, approximating, right there in his office.

  3. RELATIVE MOTION

  Across the train car, A spots B. Assume B is lovely.

  (a) A immediately recognizes that B is not a physicist.

  (b) Still, he calculates his approach.

  (c) A wonders, Into what formula do I plug the various quantitative values of B?

  Could B, A wonders, though she dearly lacks formal training in mechanics, ever be taught, in some rudimentary sense, to understand the world as I do?

  (d) A notes her inconsistent postulates. Her wasted assumptions. Her lovely inexactness.

  (e) He decides to give her a test.

  (f) A says, If a projectile is launched at a 30-degree angle to the earth, with an initial velocity of 100 m/s, how far does it travel?

  (g) B notes his nervous and strange confidence, his razor-nicked chin, his tie too short by an inch, an uncombed tuft of hair. She is charmed.

  (h) B humors A.

  (i) B says, Well, doesn’t it depend on how windy it is?

  (j) Ignore the wind, says A.

  (k) But how can I ignore the wind?

  (l) Ignore the wind, says A.

  (m) Are you saying there is no wind?

  (n) A says, The wind is negligible. He says this with a certain pleasure. The other passengers roll their eyes.

  (o) A says, It does not matter for the purposes of the problem. Besides, A says, it makes the math too hard.

  (p) A looks at B’s dumb, expectant, beautiful face. He feels pity for her meager understanding of physics. How can he explain to her what must be ignored: wind, elephants, cookies, air resistance. And: the morning dew, almost everything in newspapers, almost everything owing to random heat dissipation, the taste of papaya. And: the mass of the projectile, the shape of the projectile, what other people think, statistical noise, the capital of Luxembourg.

  (q) A wonders, Can I be with a woman who, however lovely, does not understand how to hold all else constant? How to isolate a variable?

  A thinks:

  i. she will see it my way;

  ii. she will change for me;

  iii. I will educate her.

  B thinks:

  iv. he is lonely;

  v. I can make him less so;

  vi. I will change for him.

  4. A spent seven years (2,557 days, 4,191 cups of coffee) in the town of (6,3).

  He was writing his thesis (79 pages, 81 separate equations). A’s thesis is on nonlinear dynamic equations.

  (a) In it, he discovered a tiny truth.

  (b) When he had written the last step in his proof, A smiled.

  (c) A’s tiny truth is about a tiny part of a tiny sliver of a tiny subset of all possible outcomes of the world.

  (d) When A brought it to his adviser and mentor, the esteemed P, P smiled. A’s heart leapt.

  (e) P said: What it lacks in elegance, it makes up for in rigor.

  (f) P also said: What a wonderful minor result.

  5. A and B are sliding down a frictionless inclined plane. They are accelerating toward the inevitable. Domesticity. Some marriages are driven by love, some by gravity.

  6. THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM

  Things continue to get more complicated for A, now traveling in an elliptical path around B. B remains fixed, giving birth to their first child. Doctors and nurses orbit B periodically.

  (a) Given the mass of A (now 80kg) and the mass of B (now 55kg), calculate the gravitational force between A and B using Newton’s universal gravitational formula: Fg= G(mA)(mB)/r2, where R is the gravitational constant.

  (b) Imagine the situation from the stationary perspective of B. As bodies whirl around you, you focus on the pain, the quiet place, the baby. Look at A, who so lovingly paces around you, worried about your health. You wonder: What is A thinking?

  (c) Now imagine the situation from A’s perspective. You wonder: What if the child turns out like its mother? What if the child does not understand theory? You’ve spent so many nights lying awake with B, trying to teach her how to see the world, its governing principles, the functions lying under it all. Hours spent with B as she cries, frustrated, uncomprehending.

  (d) This is what is well-known in the field of celestial dynamics as the three-body problem.

  (e) Put simply, this is the problem of computing the mutual gravitational interaction of three separate and different masses.

  (f) Astronomers since the time of Kepler have known that this problem is surprisingly difficult to solve.

  (g) With two bodies, the problem is trivial. With two bodies, we can simplify the universe, empty it of everything but, say, the moon and the earth, an A and a B, the sun and a speck of dust. The equations are solved analytically.

  (h) Unfortunately, when we add a third body to our equations of motion, the equations become intractable. It turns out the mathematics gets very complicated, very fast.

  (i) A has only recently begun to feel comfortable predicting B’s path, B’s behavior, her perturbations and eccentricity of orbit. And now this, he thinks. Another body.

  (j) B screams with the agony of natural childbirth. She looks into A’s eyes. What is he thinking, her A, her odd, impenetrable husband? Will he make a good father?

  (k) A thinks generally about the concept of pain. A has a witty thought and would like to write it down.

  7. MOMENT OF INERTIA

  (a) A and B are not moving (VA = VB = 0). A is in his study, hidden in the corner. He is talking in a low voice.

  (b) B, across the house, is watching television.

  (c) A is talking to J, who is married to S.
S is a good friend of A.

  (d) J is thinner than B. S is older than A.

  (e) B is listening to A. S is listening to J.

  (f) Also listening: the neighborhoods Theta and Sigma, Delta and Phi.

  (g) Also listening: the social circle: Phi, Chi, and Psi. Eta, Zeta, and Nu. Even Lambda has been known to listen.

  (h) Others, just speculating, say that A and J would make a good-looking couple. A says no, thinks yes. J blushes.

  (i) S exerts a force on J. A exerts a force on B. A wants to exert a force on J, and J would like it if A would exert a considerable force on her.

  (j) B is walking down the hall. A can hear B. B can hear A’s voice growing softer with each step she takes. A freezes in anticipation, ready to hang up the phone.

  (k) B changes velocity, turns, goes into the kitchen, pretending not to hear.

  (l) A does not move. B does not move. The forces cancel out. Everyone remains at rest.

  8. PARTIAL SOLUTIONS

  (a) renovate the kitchen;

  (b) renovate themselves;

  (c) go on safari;

  (d) go to a “seminar”;

  (e) make large purchases of luxury durable consumer goods;

  (f) make small overtures to an object of lust at work;

  (g) take up golf;

  (h) find a disorder and self-diagnose;

  (i) get a purebred dog;

  (j) get religion;

  (k) landscape the backyard;

  (l) have another child.

  9. GEDANKENEXPERIMENT

  (a) Imagine A is building a spaceship. He is tired of being pushed, pulled, torqued, accelerated, collided on a daily basis. Losing momentum. He is tired of his thesis failing, time and again. Every day an exception to A’s Theorem. Every day he recognizes it a little less—once a shiny unused tool, a slender, immaculate volume. Now riddled with holes, supported with makeshift, untenable assumptions. A’s Theorem has not so much predicted the future with success as it has recorded a history of its own exceptions.

  (b) It is simplest to approach the problem of satellite motion from the point of view of energy.

  (c) Every night for a year, A and B eat dinner in silence. Every night for a year, A lights a cigarette, opens a beer, goes to the garage to work on his imaginary spaceship. Sometimes, he has doubts. Sometimes, he gets frustrated, wondering if it is worth all the imaginary trouble.

  (d) And then, one day, A finishes his spaceship. Even imaginary work pays off.

  (e) A turns on his imaginary vehicle, listens to it roar. It makes a lot of imaginary noise. B tries to talk over it, but the engine is deafeningly loud.

  (f) B shouts at A right in front of his face. A sees B gesturing wildly. Why is she acting so crazy?

  (g) The energy of a body in satellite motion is the sum of its kinetic and potential energies. It is given by the following:

  E=K+U=1/2mv2-GmN/r2

  (h) A watches B moving frantically around the garage. A notes that B looks rather desperate, as if she is trying to stop him, trying to hold him, trying to keep him from leaving Earth.

  (i) A’s spaceship is heating up. It is time, he thinks. He holds the imaginary levers and calculates his trajectory. He enjoys for a minute the low frequency hum as it vibrates through his whole body. His future opens up in front of him.

  (j) He is moving now. His past sealing itself off, trailing farther and farther behind him.

  (k) The escape velocity, vesc, of a projectile launched from the surface of the earth is the minimum speed with which the projectile must launch from the surface in order to overcome gravity and leave the vicinity of the earth forever.

  (l) His imperfect theorem, his imperfect credit, his imperfect house, his imperfect bladder, his imperfect hemorrhoids, his imperfect gum disease, his imperfect career, his imperfect penis: gone. Also gone: the history of his interactions, his past collisions, his past. A has finally achieved his major result. He is free from the unceasing pull of gravitational memory.

  10. A is in deep space. The solar wind is at his back, pushing him along at a rate of 0.000000001 m/s.

  At this rate, it will take the rest of his life to travel a distance of just over eight feet. B is on a space rock, watching A drift by glacially. Imagine you are B.

  (a) Imagine you are 20m from A. Close enough to see his face. Close enough to know his shape. Close enough to imagine Contact.

  (b) You have a rope. If you can throw it just right, you may be able to tie yourself to A, turn his course, affect his trajectory. You will not be able to stop him, but you may be able to make sure that wherever it is he drifts to you end up there as well.

  (c) Assume you are of average strength. Assume you are of above-average compassion, patience, will, and determination.

  (d) If you throw the rope and miss, what happens? If you never throw the rope, what happens?

  (e) Imagine you will spend a period of eighty years within a few meters of this astronaut, a man in an insulated space suit. Imagine it is possible to drift by this man, staring at him, as he makes his way into the infinite ocean of space.

  (f) You will never know any other points, other problems, the mysteries of biochemistry, the magic of literature, the pleasures of topology. You will know only physics.

  (g) You will never know what it feels like inside his suit.

  (h) You will never know why you are on this rock.

  11. INITIAL CONDITIONS

  A is on a train traveling due west along the x-axis at a constant velocity of seventy kilometers per hour (70 km/h). He is carrying a suitcase (30kg) and a small bound volume (his thesis; 0.7 kg; 7 years).

  He stands at the rear of the train, looking back at the town of (6,3): a point full of sadness, an origin of vectors, a locus of desire; a point like any other point.

  * * *

  6

  Permission Slip

  Caron A. Levis

  Hell-o.

  This on?

  Think I’m hearin me. Me.

  This reverbin either in the buildin or in my head. Whatever. Ha.

  Nobody listnin anyways right?

  Mos all you out the building by now, an who listens to the announcements they makin evry five minutes like they tryin to give all of evybody in the whole Bronx a holla or somethin anyway.

  Thing is, this NOT your principal speakin.

  This. Is. Nessa. And today I didn do nothin.

  I’m jus a surge cloud, thas all.

  Yeah. I didn’t ever hear of it either till last week when miss wahzerfuck—EXCUSE ME, miss whazerface, said something bout it in science.

  I’m passin that one. I even turn in summa the homework and if she don’t pass me, she gonna have to see me in there again nex year, and you know she don’t want that cause Ima surge cloud.

  She say it’s this super hot air that comes offa lava. Like outta a volcano. An it jus as deadly as the lava itself. It can kill. Even though it’s invisible it can kill. How you like that? Ha, Yeah. I like that. That is me. Ima get it tattooed.

  All I’m sayin is people best watch out. All I’m sayin is if somebody got burnt, not my fault. I didn do nothin. Is just my invisible hotness.

  I was jus sittin there, fourth floor hall, where I always be, not standin or stalkin, screamin, playin beats, or nothin—jus chillin, an mister principal, he come over and he axing me where my sposed to be?

  An I am axing him the same thing with my mind but he not seein my mind only my shoulders doin the shruggin and so he axing me again, louder, where my sposed to be?

  Damn.

  Dults always wantin you to be minding your own biz til the exact moment you do. Right? He think I don’t know why he beastin on me steada evybody else runnin round this hall. He think I didn hear my gramma on the phone withim yesterday.

  I given her to you, she says. I puttin her in your hands now, she says.

  Course he don’t know she meaning that on the literal. She can’t tell him she kickin me out, cause maybe it ain’t legal. But she do it anywa
y. She say she too tired for a teenager.

  But he’s not knowin any a that. He jus want to do his job so he axing me again about where my where my where my.

  So I say,

  You know, Mister Sobers, you my favorite princiPAL I ever had? For real. They tell you about the pal in elementary but I never saw it in nobody til now. It’s the truth. You really—

  But then some baby-brawl break out down the other end, probaly eight-oh-two—you know it’s gotta be—jumpin eight-ten class again, an he book it down there like he gonna try to do somethin bout it. Nobody can do nothin bout eight-oh-two. They hopeless. But they makin it so he leave fore he get his answer from me an thas fine since thas what I’m workin on anyway, right now, that answer of where my sposed to be.

  I wonder if Ida been put with the eight-ten or eight-oh-two class Ida made it to grade eight this year.

  An jus in case anybody out there listnin who dont know, I’m in six-oh-three. Three years. Thas right. Ima get it tattooed.

  You hearin me?

  This thing still on right?

  Whateva.

  Check it. Principal always tryin to get us to go to class by axing us where you sposed to be, right? If they wanted us to be in the classes then they shoulda built this school with some walls, for real, steada this halfway-up-walls-made-outta-paper Open Air bullshit. Only rooms that got real walls and doors be the computer lab and the science room and this one right here across from me where the new special arts program is at.