by Camden Joy
“Strictly junior league stuff,” had complained one committee member. “Inconceivable,” I had to agree, aghast that something so elemental as format incompatibilities could potentially derail the integrity of an enterprise of this magnitude. The word “sabotage” was used more than once in connection with David of the twenty-fifth floor.
I found myself still standing awkwardly beside David in the grey corridor. I was unclear as to the point of our continued conversation. Assuming the MJ-97’s successful launch, he asked my feedback regarding the imminent implementation of the AI chip, aimed at bypassing individual contributions to the network. I meekly confessed unease. We both enjoyed a good, hearty laugh over this.
Word from the AI manufacturers is that TQ-305s and SES are green-lighted, and full implementation—“a walking, talking Michael”—is expected within six to nine weeks. Within that time period, the committee’s brochure has warned us, our job descriptions will undergo a radical transformation. Of course, such a thing has been regularly threatened before, and, in the end, it’s always deemed simpler to continue maintaining the enterprise—whether the MJ-97, the MJ-96, or one of the earlier simulations (supplemented by closely managed “real world sightings” of MJ-lookalikes)—from our building rather than unleash too many unpredictable manipulations upon “unscreened environments.”
In the bland tones of office chit-chat, David asked my understanding of the ancillary TQ features which permit so-called “time vaults.” I admitted complete ignorance, silently puzzled as to what gave rise to such speculation on his part. Was this related perhaps to our articulated Beowulf desires, or did David see in the possibility of “time vaults” a chance to repath his MJ-96 programming error before it “actually” occurred?
David unsuccessfully sought to probe my knowledge of the committee’s top-secret funding of a project to isolate the much-rumored “rock star” gene, their determination to periodically uncouple that reputed DNA trigger of hollow-cheeked charisma in furthering issues of master profitability. How many of our coffee breaks and water cooler roundtables had already been wasted on such speculations! Once more, yet again, the question arose that if a star’s faux frontier frightfulness can be shown to’ve evolved as a biogenetic predisposition, then far greater exploitations were possible. No big news there. Perhaps to relax my guard, David quoted with uncharacteristic vehemence from “Transcription Attributes Identified in Chinese Hamsters Suggesting Variants of Chromosomal Stage Authority and Romantic Appeal” (published out of North Carolina) a paper which, he persuasively insisted, posed some interesting riddles. (Note: subsequent investigations turned up no such paper.)
By now, the launch was almost upon us, and we both had done very little work. David turned in an almost comically secretive manner to ask me this: Would I enjoy a gift of mazur? I could not fathom his secretiveness, though naturally I assented. I no longer possessed mazur, this was true, but its consumption was quite openly encouraged in our building. Following him to his cubicle, I received several of the usual capsules, yellowish in shade, perhaps ¾″ in length but quite slender. I walked to the water fountain and swallowed the capsules without difficulty, and thereupon I returned to my desk.
For those unaware of mazur, the most elusive of psychotaraxic compounds, perhaps a few words of explanation. Mazur had become a sort of energy vitamin for all of us on Floor Twenty-Two. As I say, it was well known that we took it, and no one on the network committee had, as yet, disapproved. Since its introduction into the workplace, productivity had soared amongst everyone involved in information compilation (within the aegis of our particular subcommittee). We met our annual quota without difficulty—four months early. We spoke regularly of the peaked mental clarity and euphoric imaginings attributable to this uncommon substance.
Upstairs, the gentlemen were performing last-minute vertex manipulations on the MJ-97 in preparation for its great launch—four minutes “Live from Neverland Valley” in heartfelt defense against charges of child molestation (charges solely manufactured by us to distract from the MJ-97 launch, while affirming the “humanity” of the new model). There would be, to the untrained eye, no discernible difference between this new model and the MJ-96. There “he” would be, the celebrity we knew so well, with the ink-black ringlets and the improbable nostrils, appearing to look into the camera, appearing to speak, haltingly, as if with great emotion, the words our subcommittee had hammered out several weeks earlier.
I had watched this demonstration already a hundred times and despite the launch’s arguably “live” nature truly saw no need to withstand it any longer. I did not share the glee of my co-workers that at noon the words “penis” and “buttocks” would be stammered live over CNN, CBS, ABC, and NBC. The MJ-97 too would be a profitable success in simulation.
I sat with my column of figures, rechecking again what had been handed to me earlier in the day. The next task of our endeavor would be undertaken in mere weeks, but no clear standout in our polling could yet be discerned. The union of the MJ-97 with . . . well, with what? Yesterday’s market supported just two candidates—Brooke Shields or Madonna—but both, as of the last hour, had suffered dramatic downturns in global feasibility, and a new name found itself floated: Naomi Campbell. And there remained of course the others, the Shannon Doughertys, the Oprah Winfreys, the Princess Carolines, the Lisa Marie Presleys.
Something leapt on my screen in an agile flash, and as quickly as my eye could follow I was made aware of the most recent feedback compiled from the Southern Hemisphere. But it scarcely seemed to matter anymore. “Gary Indiana,” someone breathed, quite close to my ear, a name balanced in my background between “place” and “song,” balanced on an LP rack somewhere (in my brother’s room!): Shirley Jones staring out, ready for marriage. But no one was near enough to have spoken, and I must have simply imagined hearing that great musical referenced.
Mazur. I have noted herein our floor’s escalated productivity under its influence, but I must also acknowledge that the reverse was always a possibility—an undependable realignment of the senses, an awkward deception of sight. This happened to each consumer once every several months. As a numbers man, I dreaded these occasional hallucinations although this was, some said, the truest nature of mazur. They spoke of mazur (Mazargyreia nervosa) as having been the exclusive province of Arctic primitives for hundreds of generations. I can vouch for none of this, but mazur—an edible moss, most effective when dried and consumed with liquids—would thus be a bryophyte, a discovery of huge botanical significance as the first hallucinogen in that branch of the plant kingdom. Its efficacy among the undisturbed northern tribes was implicit in an indolic alkaloid composition structurally related to the neurohumoral tryptamine serotonin (5-hydroxydimenthyl tryptamine) of all warm-blooded animals.
I recalled David’s strange secretiveness, our dully routine assertions for the taste of Beowulf’s “hostile grasp” and “ruinous bonds.” Surely this saboteur had not taken me literally . . . or had he?! Had David tricked me into the consumption of some far wilder ingredient, teonanacatl or toloache (Datura inoxia), something terrifyingly unreliable in its effects? No more—I swore—would I mull over replacement bulbs with him in the supply closet! This David! I had played into enemy hands perfectly! I had betrayed it all, the marketing data was theirs to thumb through and contaminate! Here, the day of the launch of the MJ-97, a moment of historic consequence, and I was reduced to nothing but the recipient of ecstatic visions. Some part of me understood this to be what one would term “a bad thing” while simultaneously, shutting my eyes in the monitor glow to feel the glorious warmth of its radiance, I could only be . . . pleased.
I next heard, of all things, a transistor radio (—!) playing, of all things, “Standing in the Shadows of Love” by the Jackson 5. There, standing in the shadows at work! Marie, how could you write me that letter, so apt, so right, which she did, when I was nineteen, flooring me with her conviction that we were so completely perfect for one another, as she heard a
ttested to in the shadows of “Standing in the Shadows of Love” when we had been darkly parked together two years earlier. Oh Marie, incessantly I kick across toys that take me back to you. Where to have you fled, small-wristed creature? No more can you be found lobbing ping-pong balls at the goldfish bowls, pulling up fillings on bubble gum and banana taffy as the ferris wheel blurs its landing lights against the sooty ambers and oranges that make up our sunsets. Are you lost in the madhouses of furrow-browed adults? Whose handlebars do you ride now, troubled one? I remain devastated still from the final day of class, and your family was moving that summer, and the smell of blazing asphalt overcame me, in the volleyball courts by the woodwind shack, as we dismantled our school clarinets, shaking out the spit and weeping forever goodbyes, desires unspooling from great heights like full rolls of toilet paper tossed from rooftops. You were right, we were made for each other. Coquette! Tease! Arbitrageur! Dear Marie, how my heart has never been right since our union dissolved that summer and now look at you, happily married to the wrong character. But you cannot hear me now.
I immediately left work to purchase a slice of pizza. My thoughts were busy important streets. I had to cross them before I could get to the restaurant safely. It began to snow on me, unlike in Neverland where the sun always shines and winter never falls. Snowflakes swarmed the streetlight, bees in a windstorm. My movements were exaggerated, or perhaps only seemed so. I was unclear. One could read the wind weaving the snow’s path. In blowing on my pizza to cool it off I could no longer sense how long it was appropriate to blow, whether I had been blowing so long as to embarrass myself in front of these more sober pizza-blowers, whether I was blowing neither hard nor long enough and I would burn my benumbed mouth. . . . The snow danced on the street in patterns reminding me of desert sand. How many thoughts came and went as I stood there with my slice.
It seemed years since I’d been blowing on the pizza! My watch indicated only 45 minutes since I had consumed the mazur. For most of that, I must’ve been blowing. My hands, so yellow and small! Like Ryan White! How lucky brother Jermaine, his tendency toward honesty at a very young age, seemingly unafraid to get in terrible trouble and thus immuning him to what others make of him now. My pulse was holding steady at 56 BPM. It occurred to me again that any magazine would buy an interview called “Raising Michael Milken,” in which I interview ten mothers about how they might raise Michael Milken were he a sunken vessel. Such a thing would be unprecedented! Free rides in cars would ensue! Notice from the Hays Commission!
I came to believe that, once I got home, I would put early Motown on my Walkman and step out again to rent some pornography. That done, this is what I would see: a businessman busy with a refrigerator door. I would see a happy couple in the porn section of the videostore! I would see people studying me, wondering, as I passed, as I eavesdropped on their conversations between Temptations songs. I would grasp, in crossing a street, the power in a crosswalk, when all cars stand at attention, parade horses before the monarchy, their headlights halted to light your stroll. And this graffiti would appear upon the streetside wall of a parts shop: “Pardon the Cartesian paraphrase but if Michael Jackson did not exist we would have to invent him.” And I would think: very funny.
A sort of premonition became known to me as my awareness expanded. This epiphany will be difficult to express. Gradually I noticed that some of us are dogs made in one motion, sleek and decisive, burly and fierce, one per street, wearing wry grins, haughtily cracking in our grizzly bear jaws the bones of once-prouder beasts, our eyes brimming with contempt. And the rest of us, a pack hobbled with runover limbs, chewed ears, mangled tails, mange and fleas and thirsty as hell, sniffing damaged metal, unsure where dirt ends and food begins, mindful of the fleeting satisfactions of victory, of how those handsome pups are never happy for long, of justice, all of us essential to the other, one with good math skills, one with talents in drafting, one can hit southpaw pitching, one has a swift right jab, one’s a diplomat, another an encyclopedia, every one of us a poorly drawn cartoon, flat of vision and oft-surprised, and there’s always one collapsing, the trail guide or the acupuncturist, the telepath or the inventor, leaning on a telephone pole to catch his breath, one weak paw curling in, involuntarily, signaling vulnerability to attack. You know what I mean?
I sit sorrowfully on a folding chair in a laundromat. Here we wash the widow’s black veil, the sheets of the syphilitic, the refugee’s scarves. We wash shirts that have no arms and pants with one leg. They patiently spin through their soapy cycles—a swirl of loss itself—foamed to the brim, whited from view as if erased. And in the dryers the frail items tumble to pieces, toppled by temperatures and torn, becoming a clutter of glass eyes and hearing aids, canes and crutches and leprosy bracelets. Until a boy orphan’s glance, so courteously averted, has me sobbing.
I have fallen in with a superstitious people, a gypsy offering cheap fortunes and a tired healer promising anything, our lives lost to any larger significance but for the germs we carry (which we well know will outlive us all). And now my hands, muddied though mute, and my tongue itself, tied by kite string. Someone amongst us attempts to make a meal, someone with crushed tins to make mirrors and thus extend the votive light deeper into the establishment. There is a television there.
Someone brings out a rooster with one wing whose beak pecks the bass line of “Beat It” from a toy Casio. He has others: a pair of identical twin midgets who in tandem offer a stark, even chilling, recitation of “Black and White”; a goat in a Victory Tour necktie bleating a Grammy acceptance speech while a caged dove coos the melody to “We Are the World”; and a miniature elephant that moonwalks.
Children, their heads seemingly of fruit, claw their way over to me—a pineapple-faced boy, a pomegranate girl, two apple-heads and a lop-eared banana sort—clamoring for coins to purchase souvenirs. I buy them balloons emblazoned with the Dangerous record album design. So handsomely they draw themselves up, quite deliberately, proud and overjoyed, and each kisses me in gratitude.
I look up at a television screen bigger than any one person can entirely see; a set to dwarf the earth and heavens, its edges defining the known universe. The television plays the only thing it can play and once more we succumb, as at dusk we no more hold back night than unplant the dead to beg for wisdoms. Programmed to every channel is a man asking us to release him from this ordeal, to pray with him. Naturally, I know the words by heart: “I am doing well and I am doing strong.” I do not need to identify this man because he lives within each of us—“In no way do I think that I am God but I try to be god-like in my heart.” At night the fronds atop palm trees, elegant and aloof, slapping in the watery wind and hidden in the gulch behind the stadium, pass his name into the dreams of children in sensing all hope has ceased. “I have been forced to submit to a dehumanizing and humiliating examination by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department and the Los Angeles Police Department earlier this week.”
The boy orphan scampers onto my lap. His teeth are the color of the sharps and flats of a piano. “Is it true,” the child sighs, “he has a Ferris wheel?” I hear the bones clicking in his body, the tidal pools in his lungs, the breaths drawn with difficulty.
“Yes.”
He waits, wanting to hear more.
“And an exotic managerie,” I continue, “and a movie theater and a personal security staff of forty.” The child weakly nods. I wipe his nose with my sleeve. The child speaks, still watching the television. “How I love him.” Then his small head falls against me as if to listen to my heart.
“He’s done nothing wrong,” I assure the child, light as a bird in my hands, more air than boy. “He’s done nothing.” I peer to see if he hears me. He seems not to be moving. Should I worry? I cannot be sure. Perhaps he’s simply fallen asleep?
THE GREATEST RECORD ALBUM SINGER EVER
BROTHERS AND SISTERS, as you turn to this tonight, do not seek To Escape but rather To Examine and critically to scrutinize your own selfish
selves—to discover how best you will purvey these oft-suppressed teachings around the squat chilly pancake known to us this night as “the Known Universe”—for if you teach, indeed teachers have pupils (—do they not?!), editors have newspapers, chefs have staffs; lawyers and masseuses and architects all have clients; if born in the spring months (I am told) you possess winning Charms and Charisma, if born in the autumn months you possess Luck and good Resources—EMBRACE THESE ORACULARLY FORETOLD ATTRIBUTES—if you are one to entertain, well, entertainers have their hangers-on, even Crafts-brothers and -sisters from Labor-Intensive Production Capacities yet still possess dependents—surely there is at least someone over whom you hold sway, someone who searchingly looks to you for guidance—and unto seekers such as these I encourage that you pass along these words. It is only this hope—that being a fly that flies in the face of the ointment of the Advertocracy you will take these long-suppressed teachings, strap them to your winged back and physically buzz them back out to the People (where they belong!)—that allows me now to continue. Must I be disappointed?
Part One
To speak rationally of the greatest record album singer that ever was, whose name we forget a little more each and every day, we must first invoke the name (Sefton Delmer) of a man already oft-forgot, the author (Sefton Delmer) himself of a lost pamphlet called Black Boomerang, the son (again! this bastard Delmer!) of a British constable and the father (co-father with P.J. Goebbels) of modern propaganda. In 1929 Delmer met a short, dark Austrian—he initially detailed this meeting richly though in later editions of Black Boomerang all detail was inexplicably withdrawn until by the pamphlet’s fifth edition Delmer describes their meeting as merely a glimpse: “He sat in a rail carriage in the Munich depot, his eyes softening to an occasional blue as he contemplated the train platform. Even at rest, he was thoroughly engaging; quite clearly, I would later hear much more from him.”