Searching for Petronius Totem

by Peter Unwin

  “I didn’t steal it, Jack. I borrowed it for a project I was working on, Planet Porno of the Apes. Get this, pornography accounts for only thirty percent of all Internet use worldwide. Why so low, Jack? What’s going wrong? What are those other creeps doing up there in the dark with the curtains drawn and all that bandwidth? That other seventy percent? What are they up to? That’s the scary part. Freaks, Jack. Neck deep in game theory. Those depraved freaks are an untapped resource, believe me. They’ve been identified. Big data. There’s not too many of those untapped resources left. Once they’ve tapped into those untapped resources, Jack, the entire planet is tapped out. You got everyone, there’s nothing left to tap, nothing at all. We’re talking the Alberta tar sands of the human race here. Everyone, Jack, digitized on a flash drive, every possible image, every facial expression. Every orgasmic face you’ve ever made. Every groan. It’s out there in the cloud. It’s not just every picture ever taken, Jack, it’s every possible picture in between. Get it? That’s the beauty of it. Full spectrum recognition, FSR. The Israelis have this stuff down cold. Every position available, in combination, just waiting around in storage. Imagination-on-a-Stick. You see where they’re going with this?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t see anything.

  “Reality, Jack. It’s a mess. It’s done like dinner. It’s proprietary now. Everyone’s going to have to pay for it. It’s all in the hands of patent lawyers. Monthly rate on a bundled package.” He stared at me, his eyes slightly feverish. “Reality no longer exists beyond market value parameters. It’s been outsourced too. I’m not shitting you about this. Leggit’s International Fibre Optic and Fast Food Incorporated have bought reality. Monthly rates based on usage. The deal is done, they’re working on licensing rights as we speak. Face it, Jack, they’ve got reality working for minimum wage in a call centre in Bangladesh eating Leggit-made fibre optic chicken shawarmas and playing the Hindustan version of Constant Brutal Death on a Chinese-made cellphone. It’s over.”

  “Just like that? Reality is over?”

  “You are such a product of the nineties, Jack.” He softened somewhat. “Look, I know what you’re thinking. Guys like you and me, we have a soft spot for reality. Sure we do. Why not? We invented the damn thing for Christ’s sake, or just about. We wrote it, we performed it, we lived its traditions and acted out its rituals, we painted it, we slept with it, we smoked it, we put reality through the ringer, I mean really, Jack, we invented this country from the ground up, we taught it how to dance, but that was back then, when it was still possible to invent countries and dance and shit like that. Now you can’t. Now it’s violation of copyright. Things have changed. The global economy, free trade, universal incarceration and the extreme fried chicken industry, corporate terrorism, corporate anti-terrorism … zero tolerance … killer cops … Who do you think is going to get the contract to feed those prisoners? Aunt Jemima? She’s a trademark, Jack, a meme. And what do you think they’re going to eat in there? Momma’s homemade meatloaf? I don’t think so. It’s done. The deal is done. We’ve been mediated, commodified, signified, digitized, deconstructed, neo-liberalized, and now we’re getting chickenized.”

  “You know what you’re saying?”

  “I’m saying reality is finished. Done. Sure, they’ll find some use for it, they always find some use for it. Games shows, TV, newspapers, stuff like that. But the reality that you and I knew, the good stuff, homegrown stuff, the grade A-quality lying in farmer Taskerham’s field smelling cow shit, watching Melanie Slazenger unbutton her shirt, forget it. It’s a download. It’s been stuffed into the cargo hold of a freighter flying a Liberian flag and it is on its way to the third world along with the DDT and the leaded gasoline and the American sitcom reruns with the commercials still in them. It’s something we’re dumping on the third world. Reality is over, Jack. Like the revolution.”

  The room was spinning. The revolution, I thought. “What revolution?”

  “The revolution that we wrought. Me and you, Jack. The revolution that we forged with our own unstoppable artistic and sexual appetites. We waved the raised middle finger of our mighty members into the face of the world, remember?”

  I stared at him. I remembered being drunk and doing several things I wish I hadn’t, but nothing like that.

  “We did, Jack. Only no one was looking. They were all online or texting or ordering chicken or playing Grand Theft Auto or writing on their blogs. Still. Our cocks saved us. Our mighty cocks, what used to be called our manhood. The lit wick of our dicks, Jack. We illuminated the world with it, like always. We shone the light on every Jane Dick and Mary who’d written some book that some witless lit crit had a shit fit over. We refused to lick. We refused to do the schtick.”

  “I don’t know.”

  He looked at me hard. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “I think we did do a schtick, Petro. We did. We put on the monkey suit too, like the rest of them. We started out pure. We did the whole ‘value of art’ etc. thing. We’re as guilty as anyone. We tried to fight the dictatorship of visual literacy using old-fashioned words. We lost. We got smeared. We got hammered, brother. The shit was literally kicked right out of us. We did a shtick, just like the rest of them. We wrote books. While the world was going down the toilet we were up all night being creative. We did a shtick. I’m sorry.”

  The silence in Petro’s dark room was broken by the blue hum of computers. Petro nodded glumly. “We did the Funky Chicken is what we did. That’s the thing, Jack, we had no choice. You got to get with the chicken or the chicken’s going to get you. Sure I licked. They had that bear trap open and I tossed in my ten thousand busted chunks of rotted chicken meat. That’s what they wanted, and they snapped their jaws so tight around it that they couldn’t get them open. They choked on it. They never like that. Of course I did a shtick, Jack, and I stuck to that shtick and I got schtooped for it. Stick to your shtick and they’ll schtoop you every time.”

  “Everyone hates you. There’s people out there who want to kill you. There are grandmothers with a taste for historical fiction who want you dead. That’s not even to mention those fibre optic chicken gangsters. They want me dead too. Just for knowing you.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that, Jack, but of course they hate me. The country has gone down on its knees in a doughnut-store parking lot, beneath a surveillance camera while our so-called artists dress up in monkey suits, accept awards, order chicken like it was some morally neutral activity. There they are, Jack, glugging down the vino and yapping about the value of art. Of course they hate me, Jack, your average Canadian views poetry as a self-negating imitation of Heraclitean fluidity and always has, that’s it, case closed. You got people out there, grown men, who don’t know their dactylic-epitre metre from their triadic structure. That’s how low we’ve sunk. I went beyond that. So did you. We were men, capital M, back in the age of reality, capital R, when a man’s duty was to moon over and long for women and write books and have multiple orgasms and stuff. Remember, Jack, how we mooned and how we longed. Remember how orgasmic we were? All those mortal coils we busted? We were full-time ejaculators. We lusted, we chased, wooed, cajoled, flattered, amused, and then screwed up in some spectacular manner so that the woman had no choice but to leave us and take the kids. Remember?”

  “Sure I remember.”

  Petro exhaled and forced himself to calm down. When he was finished he tapped the keyboard and a hissing white ectoplasm of snow filled the screen. A head emerged, a primal skull floating in a bath of amniotic goo. It was Petro’s head, the striking face of Petronius Totem from years earlier, before the broken nose that had not set, the car accidents, the buckshot pellets, and the punch-outs.

  “That’s me.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t think you do. It’s me. In there. Entirely in there.” He brought both his hands to his face and scrubbed hard. “That’s no image, Jack, graven or otherwise. I was inside that thing. Completely, entirely in th
ere. Think about it. For twenty-seven seconds I was virtual man! It was like the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk. It can be done. The cybernetic moment, Jack. The moment everyone’s been dreaming about. I’ve done it. I can go entirely virtual.” He paused for a moment and stared at me intently. “Mind you, there’s interface issues, so coming back’s a bit of a problem, but who cares? What’s there to come back to? This frail world? Twenty-four seven? Zero tolerance? You can come in with me, Jack. There’s room. Of course there’s room. We’re the first in, the pioneers. The women in there, Jack, are you kidding: digital Amazons. Bombshells. You can make them up as you go along if you want. You saw 2.0? You had a sneak preview of 5.1. Wait till you see 9.3. They got 9.3 in there, I’m not kidding you she makes Blonde in a Thong look like Bearded Russian Weightlifter on a Stick. Chicks, Jack. Chicks without the Chick Lit. Think about it. What could be better than that?”

  I had to admit to myself it sounded good. It sounded too good. It sounded to me like another technological quick fix.

  “What about Elaine’s back?”

  “Elaine’s back?”

  “You heard me, what about Elaine’s back?”

  The truth was that Elaine had a back so full and expansive that the glorious landscape of love spanned the shoulder blades of that back. For ten years I had cooked myself on it, through the course of every night, I cooked like a pot roast, turning repeatedly on simmer, until I reached an even heat through my body. Forget the carrots and onions. There was a mole there on that back, an unforgettable mole, dark and soft like a fur-covered nipple. Either way, with or without that mole, she had a back that stretched like Canada from one ocean to the other and my place was there, my chest pressed against that back, my left nipple snug against Moose Jaw and my right tickling downtown Timmins. “Jack,” she whispered, I remembered the way she whispered, I painfully remembered it, her moaning, half-awake, “scratch my back please.” And I did, I scratched her beautiful back. Just thinking about the way we spooned together brought tears to my eyes.

  “Elaine’s back,” I whispered, defiantly.

  Petro shook his head “Jack. I love you. But you got to cut it out with this nineties thing. So what about Elaine’s back? You screwed it up with Elaine. You thought you’d cuddle up all mommy-and-daddy style in front of a great pile of old-fashioned non-digital books, park the kidlets on your knees and introduce them to the ramifying elements in D.H. Lawrence, while sidestepping the excoriating racism of Celine, right? Do you know how old that is? Meanwhile you’ve got global economy and vested interests and digital tofu crashing through the sky? Forget it, my friend. It does not work that way. Elaine is done. Finished, Jack, that narrative’s been marginalized.”

  “Everything I know about humanity I learned from Elaine’s back.”

  Petro shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you? I’ll show you Elaine’s back.” He touched the keyboard. Immediately I saw a back, a broad, river-wide back flowing from top to bottom, enveloping the screen. The backness of backs. It all came back to me.

  “Elaine’s back,” I cried out.

  There it was in all its elemental grandeur: the Back of Elaine, her back, the white contours, the shaded recesses, the beauty of all female backs inherent in the groves and recesses of Elaine’s back. There was the mole, the Mole of Elaine! There was the brassiere, the Brassiere of Elaine, the unmistakable stooping of the shoulders, the iconic gesture of the unfastening of the brassiere, black for preference, the blind reaching of the fingers, the shoulders arched, the gob-smacking beauty of the female back about to cast its last formal restraint into the laundry bin of love, or in Elaine’s case, on the floor.

  “Elaine,” I cried, but Elaine was far away and ideologically immune to me. Her back was turned.

  “She doesn’t even own the rights to that back anymore. The high school yearbook picture is where they start.”

  “Where who starts? Leggit?”

  “Leggit, all of them. You start with a fibre optic fried chicken consortium, the next thing you know the feds are in on it, the big data boys, Facebook, the Mounties, SNC-Lavalin, Bell Tel, Tim Hortons, for Christ’s sake, Jack, they’re putting digestible digital sensors in the TimBits, I’m not making this shit up. It starts with the high school yearbook. They go backward or forwards from there, it doesn’t matter, up down, young old, fat skinny, black white. Completely multicultural. Trust me, they love the multicultural. Diversity, baby, all the way to the bank. A hundred and fifty billion channels. This time something is on, Jack. Skin, skin big time, a hundred and fifty billion channels of skin. Facial Action Coding System, FACS. They’re teaching it in high school. It’s all part of the digital blob, swallowing the world jpeg by jpeg. It can’t be stopped. Planet Porno. They’re doing it. Don’t you see?” He stabbed a small device into the side of his computer, expertly tweaked several keys, withdrew the flash drive, and handed it to me.

  “There you go. Elaine’s back. All of it. Young and old, tickled, tanned, untanned, with tattoos and without. Here you go. Put it on your mantle. Or your hard drive. Hang on to that thing, Jack, it’s all there is anymore. Trust me.”

  I stared at the shining silver stick. I reached for it. I had the thing in my fingers. I held the entire pictorial history of Elaine’s back in my sweaty grip. It burned hot against my skin. It made promises I wanted to believe. I shoved the device deep into my pocket next to my genitals. In the distant background, beyond the hum of Petro’s computer, the low ominous drone grew louder.

  “Jack?” Petro looked up at the ceiling. “They’re coming. It’s time for us to get with the future, buddy.”

  17.0

  IN-COMING

  THE FIRST CYBER-CHICKEN hit the roof and rocked the room, sending down droppings of yellow plaster. The table shook. Petro’s computer blinked; the screen vanished but regained a faint, reluctant light that oozed through the room. A grinding noise sounded from the roof tiles overhead, and a moment later a shapeless form slid past the window.

  Dashing to the glass I saw the thing lying on the ground: a wounded protoplasm of meatish matter sprawled on its back, wrapping and unwrapping its wings with the pitiful intensity of something that knows the jig is up. Clearly it wanted to speak, but it had no functioning head to speak with — only the neatly tapered belly-button thing that stood in for a head. The creature had no head. Imagine. No mouth to cackle with, no language, no metaphors or similes to express the agony of dying, or even living. It stared mutely at me with folded wings flapping spasmodically. It gasped for life. It gasped for life to be over. In that moment, looking down, I was devastated with pity for that meatish thing. Why not? Surely the death throes of digital matter deserve as much pity as those people on the TV who are forever starving to death and getting shot by the government? Did it feel pain, the poor bastard? Did it have a protoplasmic digital spouse that it told lies to and cheated on and made and broke promises to and finally loved from the depth of its heart? Did it belong to a book club? Was it gay? Did it have a Facebook presence? I’m no philosopher. Just the opposite. I don’t pretend to have answers to these questions. Who does? Hegel, maybe? The meat of life, the death of meat; it was all there in front of me, writhing on the broken pavement beneath the window.

  Two more heavy contacts hammered the roof, knocking plaster into the room, sprinkling yellow dust onto Petro’s bare mattress and onto the keys of his computer. Petro threw himself under the table and squatted beneath it on his haunches, his wide, troubled eyes raised to the ceiling. He closed them and softly counted a measured ten count as if panting or praying. He got as far as six when the bombardment stopped. He opened his eyes, swivelled them from one side of his room to the other, came back to the centre where he looked at me oddly, as if he’d forgotten I was in the room with him. He got up, dusting himself.

  “With or without a head your chicken is not an exceptionally smart animal, Jack. That’s a good thing for us, but, still, they’re starting to get the range. They’ll be flying in through the chimney next. W
ith each new upgrade they evolve.” He went to the window, peered out, and drew the curtains. “We’re running out of time.”

  Petro went to his chair, swept the plaster off the seat, and sat down. “They’re coming, Jack. They know, they’ve known for a while. They know that I know. They know that you know that I know. We got to get out of here.” With a trembling reverence he withdrew two dented aluminum pie plates from beneath the table, a clutch of wires and electrodes dangling from them. The apparatus resembled a grade-school science project, and not the winning one either.

  “It’s now, Jack.” He looked at me, and thrust the pie plates forward. I saw a few clumps of pie crust still clinging to them, a rude smudge of filling, blueberry it looked like.

  “What is that thing?”

  “It’s the Crown of Oblivion, Jack, wetware, a little thing Morgana le Fay and I put together when she was still speaking to me. Trust me. We’re going straight to Avalon. You go first.”

  “Go first?”

  “Go, get out of here.” He pulled the plates apart and demonstrated. “Like this.” Petro attempted to fit the apparatus on his head, which was not an easy thing to do. He’d strung the plates together with a frayed hockey skate lace and was attempting to fit the lace around his head, and at the same time angle the pie plates, like headphones, to cover both his ears. He tugged two jacks loose from a tangle of wires strung to each plate and snapped them into the side of his computer.

  “It doesn’t hurt, Jack, believe me. You feel a twinge and brief moment of wonder and that’s it.” He looked at me. “I won’t be here anymore, Jack, I hit enter and that’s it, gonzo. Outta here. You understand?”

  “Petro, you have two disposable pie plates on your head.”

  “For wetware it looks low tech, I know. It’s a prototype only but it works, it worked for Odin, it’ll work for you. Now watch this, watch this carefully. When I’m gone do exactly what I do. Don’t improvise. Whatever you do, don’t improvise.” He extended his index finger, held it for a moment, like a pianist, in the air.