Miss Mary, more concerned about her financial outlays than the lives of the human subjects, asked if there was any way to maintain the subjects’ quarters. Captain Down shook his head. “Complete disinfection. From here, we have no way of knowing what areas have been compromised. And Professor Korterly may well have had external assistance.”
Apparently, this had not yet occurred to Tynee. He began to stare at me with the suspicious eyes of a bitter late-night convenience store clerk. I smiled weakly, feeling guilty though I had done nothing, as if I had just walked out of his fat, salt, caffeine, sugar, nicotine, and alcohol store without purchasing something. Tynee disconnected his phone. “There’s no answer on Volt’s cellular.”
“We’re terminating,” General Kiljoy responded starkly, his words as bare as Blip had been, but more pornographic. “It is decided.”
“I agree,” Tynee nodded. General Kiljoy and Captain Down pulled out their remote controls.
“Enter your codes. It terminates with three simultaneous signals,” General Kiljoy reminded them. “On three?” They nodded, and Miss Mary stalked to the windows in a huff, sulking as if her favorite soap had just been canceled. “Three, two,” he paused just long enough for a kitten to sneeze on a dust mite. “One.” At that, they each pressed the big red button on their respective remote controls, and in the space of a second, an impulse that had begun as an idea in their heads traveled through their nervous systems and out their fingers, transformed from an electrical impulse to an infrared signal in their remote controls, converged and converted back into a single electrical impulse at the infrared receiver on the wall, and, fifty feet underground, hell froze over.
90 A feeling of surreality crept over me like a sand-filled gust of cool wind, making my skin prickle and tingle and causing me to squint my eyes. Watching the three men in front of me engage one another in an utterly serious conversation about how to stave off the end of civilization was like watching bad actors congratulating one another on their talent. The real seemed unreal, and the severity of the situation commanded about as much of my attention as the understudy of an ingenue. I slipped away from their frantic planning, their frenzied disagreement, discussion, and debate, and returned to the windows. Miss Mary now had the middle window, and so I took the one farthest to the right. Like men at a wall of urinals, I avoided getting too close.
As General Kiljoy, Tynee, and Captain Down busied themselves making phone calls to appropriate heads of government agencies, planning a blockade and an emergency quarantine of the city along the freeway outerbelt, the oblivious masses below were still just drunk and having a generally bad time. The helicopters continued to slap at the atmosphere above their heads, beating out a staccato rhythm accompanied by an unreflecting voice tossing out imperatives with the frequency of department store Santas throwing “Merry Christmas” around. This technocratic symphony apparently passed for music in some circles, and scattered individuals were still trying to find their groove.
But even they ceased their jerky dancing when the helicopters suddenly flew away in opposite directions, taking their industrial celebration of dissonance, the perfect frontispiece for a society as ridiculously inharmonious as our own, with them. They were headed for the perimeter blockade.
A rustle passed through the crowd as people began chattering like autumn leaves before an Indian summer thunderstorm. After a few experimental notes, the musicians again began to play, at first quite dissonant themselves, but gradually evolving into a spirited rhythm of wild drumming augmented by an unlikely harmony of instruments. This had the immediate effect of healing the wound the choppers had cut in the crowd. The sea rushed together once again, drowning any would-be oppressors, and those who had been divided embraced one another like teeth in a zipper, with hugs of a sort only known among survivors of air raids.
And what of Blip, my best friend, the brave naked man who alone had crossed the parted sea? Well, that’s a matter I cannot discuss right now, but suffice it to say that he transcended the allegory.
91 If I am to describe this crowd as a sea, then I feel compelled to say that a volcano was brewing beneath the depths of its collective unconscious. But why talk of such grand events when a flame beneath a mere pot of water, a simple teakettle, would do the trick? Thus, the heating coils on the electric stove were glowing red-hot and swirling inward toward infinity. Or on the gas range, if you prefer, the flames were licking high and curling around the edge of the kettle of consciousness, scorching the finish, the enamel of language. The shared embarrassment of being busted, the civil inattention paid each other for being stuck at a lame party, for failing in their attempt to make merry, was forgotten like a misunderstanding between true lovers. The party that had been placed on the back burner, nay, off the stove altogether, was back up front and turned on full blast. The temperature was rising, the molecules were getting excited, vibrating, releasing energy, rising momentum feeding the band and being channeled right back, pushing it further, further, ever further.
The musicians, who had been only mediocre previously, had now found a groove fifty feet deep and were flowing through it like spring melt through a mountain gorge. Loud, dangerous, and beautiful, they tore past the point of no return and plummeted over a cliff, a moment of pandemonium at the edge of understanding, then splashed down, reemerging in a pool of trickling notes that immediately rushed still further downstream. The drummer tapped his cymbals enticingly while the others laid aside their guitars and keyboards and took out their brass. Within moments the insistent rhythms of swing took over, and wild children swung effortlessly around and through one another in impeccable chaos as they roared their approval and hopped in their socks at the Glenn Miller score that ensued.
As any child with spunk can attest, when you are punished by being made to spend half an hour standing in the corner, you don’t think about what you did wrong. You mope, pick at the wallpaper, or daydream that your parents will have a change of heart and release you. Such reveries are rarely realized. Even if you are fortunate enough to have parents with the vision to fathom the value of half an hour of childhood and they grant you an early probationary release, you’re certainly not let go without a stern warning. This is the same for all those paying a debt to society, from the brat who throws a temper tantrum to the child who eats his boogers, from the shoplifter to the murderer. We’re never really convinced that what we did was wrong, not as a result of punishment anyway.
But here, the in loco parentis role of the university had flown off without so much as a slap on the butt or an emphatic “I mean it!” Here, the fantasy had been fulfilled, Ma and Pa Kettle had ruffled their child’s hair and all but given their blessing, and it was playtime again. Happy Halloween! A party that had been a kick simply because it was illegal became a party with a real purpose, a whimsical frolic of freedom regained. Things were back in full swing, I say, legs pumping hard, hands pulling back on the chains once again, one childhood fantasy fulfilled, going for another. They danced to the brass and scoffed at the physicists who claimed that it’s impossible to go all the way around, that they would inevitably reach a point of free fall at the apex of the swing’s rotation, at least in the absence of a push from Frankenstein’s monster. Here, it was happening, higher and higher, the world spinning and racing past. Frankenstein’s benevolent beast didn’t know his own strength, pushing them harder, still harder, until all potential energy became kinetic, and instead of going all the way around, their chains snapped at the apogee, and they rocketed toward the heavens.
THE BOOK O’ BILLETS-DOUX
Rosehips: Good eve and good night, may your peeves all be light, may you leave every fight, and cleave to the light. I boast with my toast, like a host at a roast, salubrious statements serving to send sincerest salutes to selfish myselfless. (P.S. I am discovering that this is a growing pastime of mine, a knowing pastiche of rhyme.)
Sweetlick: Such an outcry of whiskey and rye heralds immediacy absent leniency. Stop this nonsense lest I�
�m driven to recompense and given to answer hence: I haven’t the time to play with a rhyme, I haven’t the space to give a good chase.
Rosehips: Are there no rules for riddlers and fools and fiddlers and ghouls? A posthumous pattern emergent from chatter, a titter, a tatter, and we’re all a bit fatter?
Sweetlick: Must we participate? Must we pontificate? Is it ever our fate to perpetually obfuscate? Here lies an answer, there fibs a question, a fabrication of exaggeration, a mastication of our own creation.
Rosehips: Chew the fat and write a rhyme! Hurl the cud and compose the chyme! What the hell, oh bardic belle, the farma’ in the dell, the dharma in the tell!
Sweetlick: Oh my. Have we defeated our find and cheated our mind? Are we conceited or are we kind? Are our incantations prideful, our invocations invidious? Are our words really hideous, our intentions so piteous? Can we communicate in competitive elucidate, in pompous parades of toplofty tirades?
Rosehips: It does not matter, a me or a we, a he or a she, a to or a fro, a dart or a bow. It is comparative, a cooperative narrative, a take and a give dare for to live.
Sweetlick: Perhaps. But does not categorization hide us from realization, from seeking sensation and peaking perception? It may be so simple, a frown or a dimple, but must we divide to trust and confide?
92 The bubbles that form when water is boiled are, of course, steam—water that has been liberated from its liquid state of existence into its gaseous form. In the crowd below, which itself was fast approaching the boiling point, bodies in various stages of undress were beginning to pop up like the first tiny bubbles in a teakettle. And despite aphorisms to the contrary, I tell you, I stood there and watched the frigging pot boil.
It is difficult to say for certain what role the Pied Piper virus was playing. After all, scarcely half an hour had passed since Blip’s unabashed gallop. Nevertheless, it seemed that the general state of intoxication was contributing to the pace of the progression of symptoms. Every few minutes a new wave of intensity broke from the center and rippled outward, as if an enormous boulder had just kerplunked into a churning sea. This ripple lost no energy as it expanded. It only rushed outward, and people whirled faster and danced more untamedly in its wake, never slowing down.
Any way you look at it, from the kettle to the caldera, from the stove to the sea, great forces were building. The pot was boiling, the volcano was erupting, the indefatigable crowd was overflowing its boundaries. The National Guardsmen, cut off from any chain of command and nervous as inbred puppies, had retreated into their armored vehicles to await orders that would never come.
Then came the laughter, unmistakable in its source, for no frivolity was as ferocious and unfettered, and never was merriment quite so contagious as this infectious epidemic of uninhibited hilarity. The decibel level rose so quickly as this next swell swept the crowd that the conspirators’ conversation was drowned before whomever was speaking could finish their sentence. General Kiljoy, Tynee, and Captain Down thus joined Miss Mary and me at the windows to see what all the ruckus was about. And so there we stood, five of us peering timidly at the mob. I couldn’t help but feel rather dim-witted, instinctively wondering what was so funny. I’m sure my miserable companions shared this sensation. When one hundred thousand members of your species are seized with mirth of such absurd proportions, who wants to be left out of the joke, scratching their head and muttering, “I don’t get it”?
Tynee, pretending he didn’t care what was so funny, I initially surmised, busied himself examining the windows. Upon inspecting them myself, however, I discovered the glass in front of me vibrating like an imbalanced washing machine in an earthquake. The sound of the crowd was relentlessly throbbing against the thick glass, pushing it to such a high pitch that it numbed my fingertips to touch its surface.
Tynee appeared quite concerned, and General Kiljoy was shouting unheard at someone or everyone. In spite of the overwhelming volume he was competing with, his voice gradually began to become audible at predictable intervals. A most uncanny thing was occurring. Every other fraction of a second, the crowd became ridiculously silent, like an auditory strobe. It seemed that their mad glee had fallen into synchronicity with itself, such that every individual’s rate of ha-ha eventually became identical. General Kiljoy continued his attempt to communicate, but, just as a strobe light makes movements appear jerky and unconnected, so were his words hopelessly garbled.
And stranger things were yet afoot.
93 Consider Crater Lake, on top of Mount Mazama in the Cascades of Oregon. Mount Mazama is actually a volcano that experienced a series of violent eruptions about seven thousand years ago. The explosions darkened the sky for weeks, throwing volcanic ash for thousands of miles across the continent and the ocean. But even these geological upheavals paled in comparison with what was to come. Mount Mazama soon spent itself, and the magma chamber underneath the mountain was left empty. Deprived of any underground support, the entire mountain collapsed upon itself, creating a caldera four thousand feet deep and five miles across, which eventually filled with water over the course of six hundred years and became a scene of overwhelming beauty and tranquillity.
Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this particular event in geological history is that it was observed, that is to say, there were humans around, specifically, the Makalak Indians. Their take on this topographical twitch was that there was a great battle between Llao, chief of the underworld, and Skell, chief of the world above. Skell ultimately drove Llao back underground, collapsing the mountain upon him, and the heavens were victorious. Now understand, this was no tree falling noiselessly in the woods. It made a sound, a sound impossible to ignore, a thunderous and resounding . . . boom. If you’ve ever stood under a railroad bridge while a freight train passes at full speed fifteen feet over your head, you still have no conception of how it sounds when the Earth quivers.
Nor do I, of course. I’m only pointing it out. I do, however, have an idea of what it sounds like when humanity kicks in its sleep, when history sneezes. I dare not suggest an exaggerated comparison between the two, but I do go so far as to suggest that the murmur of a hundred thousand people being tickled well past the point of abuse certainly lies far beyond that of the freight train. And in any case, I reckon it’s considerably more hair-raising than either the mountain or the train, seeing as how it’s emanating from your brothers and sisters. To put it simply and understatedly, it was as unnerving as hearing a thief in the night.
Mountains collapsing, trees falling, books toppling over, these are all examples of a phenomenon called punctuated equilibrium. When I first learned about this in graduate school, the professor likened it to a kaleidoscope. When you look through a kaleidoscope and turn it, the pattern very slowly unfolds and changes. This is continuous change. But every so often, the beads tumble over and the pattern collapses into an entirely new one. When this happens, discontinuous change has occurred. Punctuated equilibrium is the norm in nature, from genetic evolution to tectonic tantrums. Periods of continuous change are peppered with periods of discontinuous change. Stability and instability exist together, and both should be expected.
And so, watching the crowd below begin to explode outward, chaos spilling off campus and into the streets, it was apparent that the kaleidoscope of human history was in the process of shifting. Indeed, I felt I was witnessing the beginning of a rather jarring tumble into instability. Pondering all of this, I touched the feverishly vibrating glass and, discontinuous change be damned, a fracture appeared in the window, growing by perceptible millimeters and tracing a crooked path in front of me like a tributary off a lightning bolt.
94 The Pied Piper, it seemed, had traded his pipe for a flute, a Pan flute, to be precise, and there was no mistaking the Earthly roar of his primal music. Inevitably, panic was stinging my perception like a jellyfish congratulating a tourist. It riveted my attention to the cracking window and stapled it to all the fuss outside. But let me be clear, yonder maniacs weren’t panicking. R
ather, they were the embodiment of Pan-ia, the vibration of the reeds in the old devil’s hands, the presence that produces panic, the cerebral stampede of divine madness, the skull-shattering orgasm of raw existence. Possessed of the Pied Piper’s charm, horrified or overjoyed, they were riding the shock wave of Blip’s ground zero like nuclear surfers. They skipped and danced and clicked their heels, flawlessly out of control.
Entranced by the novelty of the entire experience, my terror was akin to a goat staring down a pair of headlights. I didn’t quite know what was going on or how to react toward it, so my mind retreated to the oft-omitted freeze reaction. In a desperate situation, it’s actually fight or flight or freeze. I froze, and if the Pied Piper virus wasn’t drunkenly driving my kind collectively mad, he would have had time to say, “Tickle tickle hee haw, whenever we get bored,” before colliding with me.
As it turned out, it was the Piper’s former caretaker who blindsided me. Before I realized what was happening, General Kiljoy had me behind his head and across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. The flight reaction. In five steps he had me at the elevator, where he hurled me down like Paul Bunyan swinging an ax. Next I saw Captain Down help him with Tynee and Miss Mary, both of whom had fainted upon seeing the windows crack. As the two of them dragged the three of us into the elevator, garbled franticities were whistling about my head like starving vultures. Somehow I was kicked in the face by Tynee, who, along with Miss Mary, was coming around and greatly agitated, ready to kill or be killed. The fight reaction. See what I mean?
Just a Couple of Days Page 20