by Tao Lin
One day Michael e-mailed Andrew saying he was giving up on his novel.
He had priorities in life and was getting old and did not have enough energy for the novel.
Andrew emailed back, “Hmm.”
At the movie theatre where Andrew worked Andrew’s manager said he was quitting. He said he was moving out of the city, to grow a garden. He gave Andrew a note that recommended Andrew take his place as manager. Andrew used the note and was promoted to manager. The manager that had quit then came back and was rehired. Then they decided there were too many managers, and Andrew was let go. This all happened in one week. On Sunday of that week Andrew went to a literary event and met Shawn, who referred Andrew for a job at the financial corporation he worked at. Andrew received an e-mail from the financial corporation asking for a cover letter, resume, and expository writing sample. Andrew e-mailed the financial corporation a blank document instead of his resume. He found out the day after. He e-mailed the financial corporation again and apologized and attached his resume, but it was a blank document again. Finally he e-mailed his resume and not a blank document, but it was in RTF, and wouldn’t open for some reason. Then he e-mailed his resume as a Word document. The next day he went with Shawn to a book party for a young writer at a bar on Tenth Avenue. “I didn’t know there was a tenth avenue,” Andrew said. “There is no way I am going to enjoy myself at a book party in a bar on Tenth Avenue,” Andrew thought. He stood in a corner and drank a free beer and talked to Shawn’s friend Lelu, a photographer.
“How do you know Shawn?” Andrew said.
Lelu said they lived near each other, or something. They had seen each other across the street, through windows. She asked Andrew the same question. She was very tall—taller than Andrew.
“Why didn’t you go to Shawn’s reading Saturday?” Andrew said.
“I was in Washington, D.C.”
“For what?”
Lelu said for a casting call. She said she wouldn’t be chosen. She said it was in one room and all the girls were there and it was crowded and they were videotaped very quickly and that was it. Andrew for some reason thought they secretly filmed the girls while they interacted with one another naturally, and there was some miscommunication about that for a while. Finally Andrew understood that the girls had lined up against the wall, and sort of modeled—went in profile, turned around, etc.—and been taped a few minutes. Andrew said Lelu should be angry that she went just for that. Lelu said she was. Andrew said Lelu should have done something, like stolen something or destroyed something. “What did you do?” Andrew said. Lelu said she came back to New York. “Oh,” Andrew said. Lelu asked Andrew about his own job prospects. Andrew said he had an interview but lied to the person and the person knew he lied. Andrew thought about admitting that he had just lied about that—he hadn’t lied, actually, at the job interview—but then there was a small table that had no one there and Andrew and Lelu went and sat. Shawn came and grinned and asked if Andrew was enjoying himself. Shawn introduced Andrew to someone. “He’s in a band,” Shawn said. Andrew shook hands with the person. There were three people in a row behind the person. Andrew asked Shawn who those people were. “Is that his band?” Andrew said. Shawn said they were his cousins from France, or something. Andrew nodded. Shawn left. Andrew grinned at Lelu. Lelu grinned at Andrew. Someone passed an art book—Girls—down the table. Lelu took it and looked at it. Andrew looked at Lelu looking at the art book called Girls. Someone introduced himself to Andrew and Lelu. He said he was also named Shawn—the book party was for a person named Shawn; the person who Andrew came here with was named Shawn—and had written a novel called Girls. He said he was writing a book called Video Game Art. He pointed at his editor and Andrew looked at the editor. Andrew said something about the title Video Game Art; he did not know what he was saying while saying it. Shawn talked about Video Game Art, his book, for five minutes without stopping. After one of those minutes Andrew stopped looking at Shawn’s face and Shawn talked exclusively to Lelu. Lelu laughed and told some anecdotes. Andrew felt jealous that Lelu didn’t tell those anecdotes to him. Shawn, author of Girls and Video Game Art, left. A dolphin came and introduced itself to Andrew and Lelu then spilled a green alcoholic drink on itself. The dolphin blushed. It took a smoke bomb and some matches out and dropped the smoke bomb before it was lit. The dolphin began very loudly to go, “EEEEE EEE EEEE.” Someone punched the dolphin in its face and the dolphin fell. The same person picked up the dolphin and put it on a table by a window facing the street, then pushed the dolphin out the window while looking in the other direction. The other Shawn came and sat at the table Andrew was at and then a lot of other people came and sat and pulled up some more tables to create an enormous table, where everyone, including the young writer named Shawn, who the party was for, sat and looked at each other. Some talked to each other. Andrew was staring around, at the ceiling, mostly, when the young writer named Shawn loudly said Andrew’s name and asked Andrew what he thought the apocalypse would be like. Andrew didn’t know how the young writer who had written a book about rich, drug-addicted young people knew his name. Andrew said the train station under Union Square. Andrew cited the movie Total Recall. There was a silence. Andrew looked at the faces that were looking at him. Some people disagreed with Andrew. One person agreed. Andrew couldn’t tell who; maybe the girl to his left. Andrew began to elaborate, citing how people in the Union Square station looked like mutants, like in Total Recall; also citing the sludge that was everywhere in the train station under Union Square; and the screeching noises. Then he interrupted himself in a louder voice and said that maybe the young writer should write a novel about the apocalypse. The young writer looked offended, or else bored; or, rather, Andrew felt that he had offended the young writer. Maybe the young writer had already written a book about the apocalypse. Andrew felt embarrassed and slowly turned his head so that he was looking again at the ceiling. Lelu was still looking at the art book called Girls. Shawn stood and went outside to smoke. Lelu stood five minutes later and said she was leaving. Andrew stood and said he was also leaving. He didn’t know anyone here. He thought about maybe stealing Girls, the art book. He and Lelu went outside. Shawn was smoking. Shawn said the word ‘Networking’ in a way that indicated at once his disdain, interest, and amusement with ‘Networking.’ Andrew said that the young writer whose book party this was for looked like a rock star. Lelu said she didn’t think so. Andrew said a movie star. Lelu said she could see that. Shawn said the guy he introduced Andrew to who was in a band—that one time Shawn went to his apartment and saw a strange, metallic thing on a chair. It was three laptops stacked on top of one another. At the subway station the president came out. Shawn, Lelu, and Andrew were in a networking mood and it would be good to network with the president. They invited the president to eat sushi. At the sushi bar the president said it was stupid to be president.
“Power is stupid,” the president said.
The president said he was an alien. He was from a different planet. He came here and was bored. “I felt I needed a goal,” he said. “Now I’m the president. I have no human preconceptions, because I’m from a different galaxy. Listen to me, since I’m the ruler. You chose me. People need to process what I say. I’m the—I’m the fucking president. Patriotism is the belief that not all human lives are worth the same. Actually there is a oneness in the world because of consciousness and this oneness—what does it want, mostly. To avoid pain and suffering, seek pleasure and happiness. Patriotism and everything else like language denies the oneness; makes a twoness, threeness, so on. Why are we born? Why do we die? Where do we go when we die? Where did consciousness come from? Politics does not acknowledge those questions. Politics says, ‘Have we blocked out enough information so that the word “progress” has meaning? How do we distract from the mystery and oneness of existence?’ Politics is a pretend game where it is very important to block out the information that it is a pretend game. I’m the president, I think. There is no good or ba
d. You arrive. Here you are. No one tells you what to do. So you make assumptions. Or you believe someone else’s assumption. A common assumption is that pain and suffering is bad. But how do you know if an action will increase or decrease net pain and suffering in the universe from now until the end of time? You can’t know. Impossible. You don’t know if drawing your friend a picture will or will not cause fifty thousand years of suffering to ten million organisms on Alpha Centauri one billion years from now. So you create context. A common context is one’s life plus the next few generations, not including animals, plants, or inanimate objects, and only on Earth, with emphasis on one’s own country. So now you’ve made an assumption and also blocked out more than 99.9% of the universe, 99.9% of all life on Earth, and an infinite or unknown amount of time. You live a horribly distorted life. You don’t know anything. Fuck you if feel angry at someone else. I’ll kill you. You are stupid and boring. Killing isn’t bad. The only thing to be angry at is existence itself. We all force our assumptions and contexts onto other people. Each thought influences our actions and each action exists inside—and so influences—the world. That is politics. But who cares? How can you be angry at someone else’s assumption or context that was as arbitrarily chosen or adopted as your own? If you unsarcastically feel anger at anything except everything it means your context does not include the information that assumptions have been made and contexts have been created; so anger is okay, I guess. But any unsarcastic thought or action is a horrible distortion. Anything is a horrible distortion. We need to stop breeding. There are assumptions and contexts and we go around pretending and playing games by overlapping our assumptions and contexts with others until there is no more time left. Death is the taking away of assumption and context. Consciousness is being forced to assume and then block out information in order to be conscious. I don’t know how to think about that. Everything is preempted by the knowledge of death anyway. How do we stop death? How do we actualize the oneness of consciousness? I think we build robots. We fill the universe with microprocessors and match the expansion of the universe with the expansion of our microprocessors. We make the universe one unconscious mass, one computer program, one assumptionless thing whose context is everything. One lonely, meaningless robot programmed to not feel lonely or meaningless, or think or know anything. Thank you for listening to me. It doesn’t matter. The noises coming out of my mouth are the result of the physical laws of the universe, probably, of cause and effect, of my choiceless birth, which itself was the effect of the beginning of the universe. I didn’t choose for the universe to begin. I guess, to be practical, uh, distribution of wealth, uninhibited sharing of material possessions, debasement and de-evaluation of human power and authority. Wariness against any kind of progress that involves numbers. I don’t know. Thank you. Good night.”
“You just told us ‘thank you’ and ‘good night,’ ” Shawn said. “Uh.”
“Thank you,” the president said.
“Don’t you need bodyguards?” Andrew said.
“Bodyguards are stupid,” the president said. “But yeah. They’re coming. They missed the train.”
The president’s cell phone rang.
It was coconut noises.
Shawn looked at Andrew.
Andrew grinned.
“Coconuts,” Andrew said.
“Or bowling,” Lelu said.
“Now it sounds like bowling,” Andrew said.
“Coconuts is better,” Shawn said.
“Now it’s coconuts again,” Andrew said.
“We’re in a sushi place,” the president said into his phone.
Andrew went to the bathroom.
In the bathroom Andrew felt bored. He looked in the mirror and there he was.
Andrew left the bathroom.
There was a moose, a bear, a dolphin, and an alien standing around the president.
Andrew tried to not look at the alien.
He looked at the dolphin.
“I’m Andrew,” he said.
Andrew put out a hand to shake hands.
The president slapped Andrew’s hand away.
Andrew glared at the president a moment then grinned.
“They don’t have names,” the president said. “You don’t have to introduce yourself.”
The waitress asked if Andrew wanted ice water.
“Okay,” Andrew said.
“You don’t do that with bodyguards,” the president said. “I’m annoyed. How stupid is that.”
“Why did you become president if you think it’s stupid,” Shawn said.
“I don’t know,” the president said. “Life is meaningless. Everyone knows this. Look at Fernando Pessoa. He knew the most that life was meaningless. But he was always worrying about things. If life was really meaningless you wouldn’t worry about things.”
“You’ve read Fernando Pessoa?” Lelu said.
“You have?” Andrew said to Lelu.
“Yeah, you?”
“Yeah,” Andrew said.
“You?” Andrew said to the dolphin.
“Yeah,” the dolphin said.
“Have you?” Andrew said to Shawn.
“No,” Shawn said. “Who is he?”
“A Portuguese author,” the moose said.
The bear slapped the moose.
“Who hasn’t read this person?” Shawn said loudly.
Everyone had read Fernando Pessoa.
“You should just leave,” the president said to Shawn.
“I already ordered,” Shawn said.
“Just leave money for what you ordered,” the president said.
Shawn took out his wallet.
He only had a hundred dollar bill.
“Leave it,” the president said. “Wait. Is that counterfeit money?”
“It’s real,” Shawn said.
The president took it and put it in his pocket.
“You can leave now,” the president said. “You can go home now.”
Shawn left.
“That was mean,” Lelu said. “I bet we won’t even talk about Fernando Pessoa.”
“He probably believes the moon is really Australia and that they’re talking about Australia when they talk about the moon hoax, which he believes in,” the president said. “Which means he doesn’t believe in Australia.”
The alien sat where Shawn had been sitting, next to Andrew.
Andrew felt afraid.
He went to the bathroom.
When he came back the alien was still there.
Andrew thought about sitting somewhere else but saw the alien looking at him.
The alien was talking and it stared at Andrew a little then calmly averted its eyes as it kept talking.
Andrew sat in his seat next to the alien.
“Fernando Pessoa said he respected Buddhists and monks and whoever,” the alien was saying, “because they tried to escape life, to not accept what was given us—this life, this stupid life.” The alien had a British accent. “I’m from Wales,” he said to Andrew.
Andrew tried to nod but his neck was tense and it trembled a little.
“Pessoa said art was fun and beautiful because it was useless and had no meaning,” the alien said. “And that life is not fun because there is always a goal; you always need a goal each day. He admired Buddhists and monks but that is not art. Buddhists and monks have goals.”
“You can’t be aware of the meaninglessness of life and all that if you’re a Buddhist monk,” the bear said. “It’s just stupid. Everything is stupid.” The bear took out a blanket and put it on the moose’s head.
“If art is fun and beautiful you can’t say it’s useless,” the president said. “You’re wrong.”
“What do you think?” Andrew said to the dolphin.
Andrew liked the dolphin.
“I want to sit,” the dolphin said.
Lelu stood. “You can sit,” Lelu said.
“I want to sit down on a large soft sofa,” the dolphin said.
“Oh,�
� Lelu said, and sat.
“Pessoa talked about there being no escape,” the bear said. “He was right. Buddhist monks do not escape. No one escapes. If there were an escape it would be an escape to another place that you would have the possibility to escape from, so the only possible escape is to be in the act of escaping. Therefore the only way to escape is to not escape. Talking about this is stupid. Escaping is not the same as having escaped. It’s stupid.”
The moose bumped into a table and knocked the table over.
“I know someone,” the president said. “He emailed me and said he wanted to invent a suicide gun. A special gun that you wouldn’t need to use your toes to kill yourself with. That’s a good idea.”
“I have two wishes left,” the bear said.
“Don’t waste it on a suicide gun,” the president said.
“No,” the bear said. “I don’t care.”
“Thank you,” the president said.
The bear wished for a suicide gun.
A shotgun appeared on the table.
“It’s just a shotgun,” Andrew said. “That’s not fair.”
“We should have been more specific,” the bear said.
“We should have thought about it first,” the president said.
“It’s our fault,” the bear said.
“Can you wish me a Concorde Jet?” Lelu said.
“I wish Lelu had a Concorde Jet,” the bear said.
“Thank you,” Lelu said. “Where is it?”
“Probably outside.”
Lelu went outside.
She came back. “It’s there,” she said. “I’m going to Easter Island.”
She left.
She came back and sat.
“Just kidding,” she said. “I don’t know how to fly it.”
“Sell it,” the bear said.
“Too much work,” Lelu said.
“You wasted my wish,” the bear said.
“Sorry,” Lelu said.
“No, I don’t care,” the bear said. “I was just saying a fact.”