Variation 3. Breanne’s Ritual
In a chamber filling up with light, she uses a metal instrument to push a concoction of milk-dampened flakes into her mouth, enabling her throat to tighten and produce a feeling similar to choking. She will mash the concoction with her teeth and contract throat muscles to pull the material deep within her, thus enabling the initial feeling to shift registers and become a feeling similar to nausea. She will repeat this process over and over, for what feels like an endless period of time, and then, the next day, she will begin the ritual again.
Variation 4. The Preparations of Alice and Jeff
As they prepare to leave a chamber full of light, she informs him that the product trapped inside her is moving again. But when he presses his hand to her belly, once again he can feel no movement. When he takes his hand away and resumes his preparations, she informs him that the product is moving again. But when he returns his hand, once again he can feel no movement. As they prepare to leave the chamber he will continue moving his hand to her belly and away again, wishing that the product were trapped inside him.
Variation 5. Barbara’s Diminishing Returns
Before leaving the chamber, she checks to make sure that she has turned off the stove. After checking, she exits the chamber and locks it with a key. She begins to walk away but returns to make sure that she has locked the chamber. After checking, she unlocks the chamber and enters to make sure that she has turned off the stove. After checking, she exits the chamber and locks it with a key. She begins to walk away but returns to make sure that she has locked the door. After checking, she unlocks the chamber and enters to make sure that when she previously entered to check that the stove was turned off she didn’t accidentally turn it on.
Variation 6. Trevor’s Process
In an effort to leave the chamber he binds two squirming products in items that cover their feet and torsos. As he binds one product, the other frees itself, and he must begin the process again. With each new cycle the squirming products acquire more features: a soft stuffed donkey held by the ear, a paper crown, a carrot to feed the neighbors’ rabbit, a sore finger, a bandage, a song to sing throughout the day. Trevor responds by making his own additions to the process: motivational chanting, juice bribes, puppet-based methods of distraction. He hopes these additions will help the cycles to accelerate and eventually bring about the miraculous exit, a sequence involving transport, body squeezes, and reluctantly depositing the products in another chamber where they will squirm amidst others. After a period of toil, he will return to collect the products so they can be fed, rinsed and rested, and the process can begin again.
Variation 7. Timothy Spins
In a chamber there is a box, which he knows contains an item that is round and flat and pointy all at once. He sits on the floor and takes the item from the box. He whirls it between his finger and thumb and watches as it spins. He makes it spin but it spins without him. He feels it as a part of him. It belongs to him and him alone, and yet it spins on its own and belongs to no one. A mean product grabs the item and carries it away. Timothy weeps and begs a tall female product to have the item back. The tall product makes low sounds at the mean product, who moves his face into an alternate shape and returns the item. Timothy spins the item again, trying to forget that it was and can be taken away. But he knows that this mean product or another will come again to take the item. Now he cannot remember a time when the item was really just for him, when other products did not sneak up and grab it as it spun. And now he cannot be sure if he ever really spun the item for the pleasure that it brought or only for the hope that this time the others would not come for it. And now he cannot be sure if the way in which the others come for and take the item has not always been the main part of the item and the reason that he spins it. Soon another mean product grabs the item and carries it away. Timothy weeps and begs the tall female product to have the item back.
Variation 8. Xio Flees
In a chamber echoing with hard rubber squeaking and pattering against varnished wood, she enters a configuration of products fleeing a single product. If this product catches another, the old product will flee, and the new product will become the chaser. Xio is terrified by the screaming giggles that exit her mouth as she flees and by the possibility that she might stumble on the varnished wood or lose her breath and slow. Although Xio knows that products catch one another all the time, she fears that if she is caught she will become the chaser forever and never catch another product. But just as bad is the condition of fleeing, of having a product getting ever closer, its eyes fixed on her as screaming giggles exit its mouth. Xio wishes she could escape the configuration, but she will not, she knows, because if she does she will be forgotten and fade away as the configuration continues to make its patterns without her.
Variation 9. Ewan Replays
He sits in a chamber where it will soon be his turn to speak. But he cannot remember what he is supposed to say. A chirping bird chasing light tries to enter the chamber. He puts the crashing sound inside him and replays it over and over.
Variation 10. Natalie Imagines
Her acquaintance, Becky, lies in a chamber that she cannot leave, her leg immobilized in a hard white casing. Sometimes other products enter the chamber and write on the casing. Becky longs only to be outside in the sunshine amongst the flowers and the puddles. Natalie spends her days imagining that it is she, not Becky, who cannot leave the chamber; she, not Becky, whose leg is immobilized in the hard white casing that other products sometimes write on; she, not Becky, who longs only to be outside in the sunshine amongst the flowers and the puddles.
Variation 11. Allen Enters
In a chamber strewn with fabric, he enters a female product. He is excited, but he does not enjoy being here. Being here feels all wrong. Once the excitement and the feeling of nonenjoyment accelerate and combine to produce a cold spasm, he exits the female product and the chamber. He then enters a chamber furnished with metal cabinets and washing facilities in which he relays some of the details of his previous experience to a series of male products who strike his shoulder, slap his back, and recite a list of viruses that he might have obtained from the female product. The product reenacts the scenario as often as he is able. The only variation is the female product involved.
Variation 12. Jimmy’s Procedure
He enters a chamber and sits in a rigid device, expertly designed to hold his body in place. He stares at something bright and maneuvers the bones and ligaments of his wrists and fingers into a series of damaging arrangements. The bright thing has been crafted to maximize a dull throbbing sensation in the backs of the product’s eyes. The chamber is furnished with a number of other products engaging in similar operations. As far as we are able to deduce from the available data, the purpose of the other products is to inhibit the emotional breakdown facilitated by the operation. We therefore estimate that the overarching purpose of the procedure as a whole is to enable the product to achieve a prolonged proximity to emotional breakdown without attaining such breakdown—a process that we conclude produces an exquisite tension, since the product enters the chamber and enacts the procedure again and again and again.
Variation 13. Helen’s Collapse
In a chamber furnished with a large plastic container of water, she encounters a male product at precisely 14:45. The male product wears a length of fabric tightened around his neck. The length of fabric bears the images of large-eyed quadrupeds wearing garments and standing on their hind legs. The male product says a series of words, presumably a code or incantation, and Helen makes a loud noise and collapses while still managing to remain on her feet. We infer, from his length of fabric, that the male product wishes quadrupeds to stand like bipeds. We therefore deduce that the collapses he facilitates in the product constitute his efforts to make her fall to the floor and go about on her hands and knees like a quadruped. Perhaps then he would embroider an image of her on some new length of fabric that he would tighten around his neck.
But the product has him outmaneuvered. She only keeps her appointment five out of every seven days and thus gives her body time to recover so that she can enjoy the collapses without toppling completely and endangering her status as a biped.
Variation 14. Desiring Stuart
Within his chamber is a smaller chamber beyond a screen in which products desire other products and utilize many accessories. When he shuts the smaller chamber, he finds that he desires several of the products from the chamber as well as other products that resemble these. He does not know how to go about purchasing such products, but he finds that purchasing many of the accessories from the smaller chamber is very easy, so easy that he often does not recall desiring them or choosing to purchase them, but finds them already there in the larger chamber lurking around him, a discovery that cues him to push his face into his hands and then reopen the smaller chamber beyond the screen to look for more products to desire.
Variation 15. Astrid Makes a Mark
In her chamber, she makes a mark. The mark brings a feeling of exhilaration, so she makes another. The second mark brings a feeling of disappointment, so, trying to bring back the exhilaration, she makes another mark like the first. Although similar to the first, this third mark does not bring back the exhilaration, but instead produces a sickening feeling that this is only a stupid imitation of the first mark and does not even have the distinctness of the second. Now she looks at the second mark in a new way. It is not so bad, she sees. Caught between these three marks, she makes a fourth. This mark does not feel like anything. And yet, she sees, it is the best mark she has made. She wishes she could make another one like it—a mark that brings neither exhilaration nor disappointment nor the sickening feeling. But she knows the next mark will not be like this at all. Instead, it will carry the pressure of adding to the four marks she has already made, which now seem to possess a harmony that she fears she will never again achieve but that she knows is incomplete and still needs something more. But the mark after that, she decides, that will be something else altogether.
Variation 16. The Reenactments of Shirley and Renee
A chamber containing lights and machines causes them to shout at one another until fluid leaks from Renee’s eyes. A seated male product speaks loudly and Shirley and Renee attempt to reenact what previously occurred as accurately as possible. However, some of the male product’s words have infected their reenactment, causing slight variations, although they still shout at one another until fluid leaks from Renee’s eyes. The seated product again speaks loudly, now using a slightly different strain of words, and the reenactment experiences new variations. The process repeats until the reenactment has mutated to the point where the male product produces no new strain of words but a copy of the final reenactment that he will play again and again, until he begins to feel that it is infecting him.
Variation 17. Product Removal via Mildred
Again returning to a chamber surrounded by curtains, she screams and heaves and spreads her legs until the cloaked attendant removes a small working product from inside her. She regards this as a favorable transaction, preferring to experience the removal of working products to the removal of products that no longer function.
Variation 18. The Parkers Animate
In a chamber normally reserved for meals, six products, some of which resemble one another, sit at a table with a cardboard box on it. Within the box they locate images of expired products that they resemble. The older the images they locate, the less they resemble them. The freer the products become from resemblance to the images, the more animated they get and the greater their efforts to locate prototypes of themselves in the products that have expired.
Variation 19. Billy Reassembles
As she moves from one chamber to the next, she dismantles and reassembles. Speaking to the products that occupy this chamber, she begins to feel as though it were not she but other products that have assembled her: the products in this chamber, the products she has shared beds with, a mother product far away. When she exits the chamber and enters another, she again dismantles and reassembles. But soon she will again feel as though it were not she but other products that have assembled her, and she will again dismantle and reassemble.
Variation 20. Matthew’s Storage
On days of sun provision, small items usher him into a chamber that amplifies light and command him to store them in pots of soil. The product, in turn, stores these days within him and hides sun traces in his skin. When he is away from this chamber, at home with the product that he retired in order to spend more time with, he feels the commands of the small items and longs to be here performing his storage functions. But when he is here he imagines the day when, released from these functions, he will present a glistening bowl of sliced tomatoes to the product with whom he dwells, their dazzling light beaming back from her eyes. We deduce that the small items facilitate storage as a form of hiding, but from what we are not yet certain.
Variation 21. Franklin Repeats
He enters a chamber and sits in front of a wooden item. He knows that the item is a box. Lately he has been inside many similar chambers and sat in front of many similar boxes. The boxes contain products that no longer function. Each signals the removal of sequences from his remaining days and weeks and months. Without these, his hours have filled up with repetitions of sequences from the past and with his efforts, through repeating them, to make them transform and acquire new life. But with each new box this process becomes more difficult, and although the repetitions fill his hours, they are starting to feel like shapes without contents. Where once the products all seemed different, they are beginning to feel like variations of the same thing. And between the words repeated in front of him and the restless silence behind him, he feels himself becoming one with the series of products overtaking him.
Variation 22. Latisha Suspends
In a chamber there is a pit full of dense moisture that inhibits the movements of limbs through space. Here she suspends herself and climbs horizontally, gasping steadily at the air above. When she gets to the end, she turns around and begins her climb to the other side, and when she gets there she again reverses her trajectory. She continues climbing in horizontal lines, paying careful attention to her movements, trying with all of her effort to minimize the factors that bring exhaustion, and trying with all her effort to exhaust herself completely. Beyond the chamber, a decision awaits her, one that will affect many other products. She wonders how long she can keep making these lines, and whether, when she cannot, she will float or sink below.
Variation 23. Harold Relays
In a chamber at a table where products gather, he relays information about the product beside him. The information involves the second product’s concern over baking a special cake for a special event. In her concern (he tells the gathering) she practiced baking the cake many times over several weeks, again and again, trying to get it just right; however, when it came to baking the cake that would be eaten on the day of the event, her concern led to unsteady hands and poor timing, resulting in an unsuccessful cake, a failure that no one at the event took notice of. As Harold relays this information his face illuminates and his hands wave in the air. Some of the products wheeze and buckle, some smile but look away. The product beside Harold nudges him under the table. Harold does not know why he is relaying this information or why he relays it whenever he gathers with products in chambers such as this. He does not enjoy the nudging of the product beside him or the way that products smile but look away. He once enjoyed the products buckling and wheezing, but he no longer does so. Each time he relays this information he finds himself wondering if this will be the final time.
Variation 24. Oscar’s Recreations
In a cold chamber he cuts into a product that no longer functions. Through this technique, he attempts to induce internal sequences that recreate the nonfunctioning product’s final moments. Once he has successfully completed the recreation, the nonfunctioning product will be taken away and
a new one will arrive. Oscar’s only concern, as he cuts through layers of flesh, is to make the recreation as vivid and precise as possible. The more vivid and precise the recreation becomes, the greater his sorrow, his hatred, and mistrust of the world around him, and his confidence in the value he adds, not to this world, but to a second world, a realm of products that no longer function and those that, while still functioning, will soon cease their operations.
Variation 25. Yolanda’s Sculptures
She enters a chamber and sits in front of an item featuring a long line of black and white rectangles bound to small hammers obscured by wood and affected by pedals that she sometimes presses down with her foot. She pushes the rectangles with delicate fingers (sometimes at great speeds), a process that causes the hammers to strike metal strings and send vibrations through wood, producing a four-dimensional acoustic sculpture. She then produces another sculpture bearing a different shape but constructed out of similar elements. She then produces a third sculpture bearing a different shape but again constructed out of similar elements. She pushes the rectangles until she has produced thirty-one sculptures, each different in shape, but constructed out of similar elements. And then she reconstructs the first sculpture to make a thirty-second. She then repeats the process. She repeats the process again and again, day after day, attempting to bind herself so thoroughly to the sculptures that her previous attributes break down and dissolve, so that by the time she enters a larger chamber and produces the sculptures in front of a set of products adorned in colors that mimic the rectangles she pushes and the products rise to their feet and slap their hands together, the gesture will not be directed at the product, but at the series of sculptures that have overtaken her.
Other Aliens Page 24