Same Same

by Peter Mendelsund

  “Denatured” is good. I remind myself to whisper that down to my device, later.

  Now he says something, and she says something.

  (Him again; then her. Her; him…or maybe they don’t alternate, and it is the same voice all along. Idk.)

  Another gap.

  “Percy?” Miss Fairfax says, and again, a bit louder.

  “Sorry.”

  “We’ll see you tonight,” she says.

  “Don’t be late,” Mr. Royal drawls, waggling a finger. Miss Fairfax swats at him with an Institute brochure, before sliding it neatly into the breast pocket of my jacket.

  Miss Fairfax concludes with a quick smile, and a friendly embrace. Mr. Royal holds out a limp hand for me as if to kiss. I shake it.

  * * *

  —

  Mission accomplished. I’m back in the car alone, a driver only implied.

  Out on the Institute thoroughfare, I finally see the denizens of the place, leaking from the widely spaced, large concrete buildings—one is an outsized column punctuated by irregularly spaced windows; another a distorted triangle; a third is an enormous piece of Brutalist shrapnel. A scheduled period must have just ended. Fellows are swarming like ants from a hill; everyone dressed in uniforms, admins dressed in blue. Here and there, work crews, in pink coveralls and caps.

  By the side of the road, a woman is sitting on a bench by the artificial lake. She is drawn, ascetic, virginal. Reading on her device. She doesn’t look up as the car passes. She’s wearing a similar getup to that worn by the other fellows. Her aspect and posture. So bony and severe. Her (I want to say: foreign) eyes. They are alert and bright, clear, newly minted. Her eyes. Her eyes as she reads.

  I’ve passed her, and I whisper to my purring device as the car continues back down the palm-lined avenue toward the Residential Enclave. “Dramatis Personae,” I say, and then I list everyone—Pale Man: Mr. Dennis Royal; Admin: Miss Fairfax, adding in “the Mysterious Woman” as an afterthought, and tagging her “Tbd.”

  The car continues north, toward the Institute’s interior—its nucleus—and away from the dome and its subtle boundary. I twist around in my seat to look out the car’s rear window, and can see behind me, receding through the dome, the world of sand, stones, and senseless things; the lifeless world of heat and torpor. Farther out even, far off, I can still make out (barely) a dark gulf, scored like an old piece of slate. Beyond that is the white, illegible city.

  Such epic spaces.

  I think of my home, and its clutter—but here is empty and endless and I find these unbroken spans truly hard to fathom, or stomach.

  Pivoting round again, I see the main campus approaching slowly through the front windscreen. I slink down farther in my seat, and find the tops of two Institute buildings to focus on. My mind relaxes and expands. These buildings move in relation to one another as my car continues along the road. Two buildings on two independent strata, as if painted on two distinct theater scrims: one in front of the other. (Three scrims actually, as the sky presses in from behind the buildings.) As the car moves, the buildings begin to shift positions; gradually. Eventually the structures drift together—line up into a single building. I feel something shift. A deep sense of being new to the planet emerges inside me, as a feeling remembered. I knew something once—what I knew was that I live on a large, planar surface. And that I was an object upon that plane, and shared this plane with other objects; people, structures, so on. And that I was like all of these other objects and elements present upon this planar surface. And life is made up of events such as these—events such as: two buildings and the sky behind them and me the observer all forming a sequence. We three objects are arranged: just like so. The two buildings, there; and me, moving among them, here.

  It is a strange feeling. And the feeling is very old.

  And eerily familiar.

  I’d like to remember these buildings, take stock. There’s an important lesson here, I think; a rare and valuable intuition.

  But suddenly now, my device chimes out a shrill little ping! and I’m startled from my reverie.

  Pity.

  The device, adamant, pings again.

  “I’m coming,” I say, as I dig it out.

  A message from elsewhere. From someone I don’t know, or don’t wish to remember. I didn’t give out a forwarding number or address for just this reason.

  It’s an emoji. Of a smiling face.

  A face, but…denatured.

  (Delete.)

  THE INSTITUTE WELCOMES YOU

  …Core values representing…innovative models of…society of makers…Nurturing…Guided, encouraged, assisted…inspired…free play…outstanding…creatives…the future.

  A man at the center of an installation of some sort. Another man, holding up some kind of molecular model, the structure of which appears to be made from bright and hard candies, light gleaming off of its lacquered surfaces. A woman crouches over a diorama. Four people in front of a whiteboard, greasy with hieroglyphics. An admin, proctoring.

  …facilities set upon…one hundred hectares…land-art intervention…bleeding-edge…state-of-the-art…

  The Campus—overhead shot. The Enclave from the outside. The swimming pools. Slender palms. The Landau-Schmidt glacier in its hangar. Hulking concrete pavilions, bright planes, geometric shadows.

  …rejuvenation…world-renowned spa…sports facilities…the wellness center…dynamic results with caring empowerment…

  Baths, saunas, pools, lounge chairs, massage rooms, gym equipment, medical gear, fellows beached on lounge chairs, half turned to one another, glowing with good digestion, scoured pores, and smiling conspiratorially. Towels, shower caps, paper gowns, slippers, etc.

  …Supporting and operating programs in the designated mission areas…excellence…innovation…key thought-leadership…provocation…collaboration…success!

  A glowing stage. A bright screen. The Institute’s logo. An illustrious fellow: Jawbone miced, spotlit. A Discourse™ in progress, that is. I can hear the applause; the introductory music and: this, this is the dream right here. The dream. A Discourse.™ My Discourse.™ Mine.

  …Staffed by…to differing needs…& which require diverse levels of…specialized…wide range of…fully licensed & accredited…

  An enormously obese, bald man in a uniquely bright tunic, a long medallion around his neck. The profound dignity of his office. Next to him on either side, dwarfed, his admins. Everyone massed below an unseen photographer, who must be up on a ladder, or shooting down from a balcony, everyone looking up, and smiling, eyes shining, the composite form of all these Institute professionals forming a rough, dense circle, or something else. What, exactly, is unclear.

  New possibilities…far-flung…adventure…exotic…novelties for…fostering ambitious…creatives…building…measurably better…imagining the coming world…

  The Freehold itself. Ruins, malls, mines, camel rides, men and their retainers—in thobes, dishdashas, their heads banded by black agals—hunting with peregrines, Range Rovers out in the sand. (You get the picture.)

  “Become the best you.”

  Sheesh.

  I try to close the pamphlet, managing only to crumple it badly.

  2

  A solitary suitcase is trundled into my flat at the Residential Enclave. My identity papers go into the safe in the closet; my toothbrush peals into a glass by the sink. The enormous novel I intend to read during my stay here thumps onto a bedside table. My ratty coat is slung upon a hanger. I barely have a chance to look around before I am off to the Institute’s Cavity Yard for a gathering of the fellows, this creative aristocracy: enfants terribles, singularities, radical highfliers from leading universities, captains of industry, prodigies of nature, mavens, the Institute’s own gilt-edge investments. Everyone top of their class and fiel
d.

  “I was just dazzled when I first arrived,” Miss Fairfax says, handing me a fizzing glass. She’s been here a year already. Learned a bit of the local language, and even picked up the shadow of a tan. “Some of those pesky rays get through. God knows how.”

  She’s already made Senior Admin. Admin5, her name tag reads.

  “For me—and I assume this is true for you now, as well,” she says, “it’s really like having arrived. To have the acknowledgment, the prestige, the—”

  Rubbing my fingers, “The money?”

  “An astronomical amount has been spent throughout the Freehold. The colonization of this desert cost, in currency sure, though also in labor.”

  We cannot contemplate the conditions under which this oasis was coaxed to blossom, can we, as we all tacitly agreed, by accepting this invitation, not to dwell on prices paid. We fellows would like to maintain a frictionless sojourn upon these inhospitable shores.

  Meanwhile, these same fellows are everywhere in evidence—appropriately diverse—though all wearing the uniform. I’ve put on mine. And it fits. It fits very well actually, Imho. A marked improvement over my rumpled civvies. Looks and feels: good. But it smells odd; synthetic, sterile. And I didn’t sign up for a cult, after all. W/e. Frankly, it is comforting to look, at last, like (I want to say: no one? Certainly like no one in particular).

  “Looking spiffy,” Miss Fairfax says, admiring my duds. “One of us.”

  Us, everyone, all the sundry creatives, promenading under the strings of the little lanterns. Hors d’oeuvres, smiles and simpers, chatter. Moving across the manicured grounds, avoiding the sprinklers, canapés in hand, gossiping, networking, making small provocations, navigating the stylized landscape with its barbered tufts of sage grass, its silvered pools, its sculpted totems. I hold tightly to Miss Fairfax’s arm.

  “Amazing, isn’t it,” she says, indicating the sky, the mediated sky; and that mediation itself, the metastructure.

  Under the old dispensation, the zoning commissions and world bodies claiming some degree of oversight in these matters permitted the construction of large, air-conditioned open-air sites—but these (buildings, parks, stadia…) Swiss-cheesed the atmosphere to such an extent that we will never see their like again. So, the new outdoors is indoors.

  “Out is in; in is out,” she says.

  Depending on the time of day, the metastructure reveals or hides itself, but now, the sunset is made prismatic by the dome’s proprietary materials—its silicates and embedded filaments. The sky glitches, causing subtle artifacts, chrominance noise, wow and flutter. I must admit the effect, this aurora, is beautiful. We watch the sky slowly ooze and warp like antique glass. The lightest of breezes carries a slight but comfortable chill. Miss Fairfax shivers happily, and—as if the result of a molecular chain reaction bridging the gap between us—my body mirrors hers, and shivers in unison.

  I take out my device, and, stepping back a couple of paces, point it at Miss Fairfax.

  “Percy, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Smile!”

  Click. (Got her.)

  Walking toward us is Dennis Royal now, in conversation with another man. Dennis sees us and in greeting, minimally adjusts the height of an eyebrow (he looks—as I’m guessing he must always look—terribly bored). The man at his side seems much more animated. He is smaller, darker, with a trim, stiff little beard. Kind eyes. He’s from here, I’m guessing—given his accent, and the kaffiyeh fastidiously wrapped about his neck. (In my typology, I think of him as “the Local.”) The scarf contrasts with his donnish habitus—but the overall effect is academic-radical chic.

  “Mr. Ousman Al’Hatif,” Miss Fairfax tells me.

  The dark man shakes my hand warmly. “Mr. Percy, I was told that you’d be coming and I’ve been eager to meet you.” His voice is soft, and he vaguely trills his r’s.

  Mr. Royal, sipping through a red cocktail straw, comes to the end of the liquid in his glass with a long sucking sound.

  “Mr. Al’Hatif is the Archeologist,” Miss Fairfax tells me, over this rudeness, “as well as a long-term resident here. Ousman knows all the ins-and-outs.”

  “I’ve been at the Institute as long as anyone here,” he agrees, “so please let me know if I can advise you in any way, or help you to adapt to your new life here. We will all, of course, be seeing a lot more of one another.”

  “There’s no avoiding it,” sneers Mr. Royal.

  “Yes, well,” Miss Fairfax puts in, still perhaps rankled by his comments earlier, “that is rather the point, Dennis, isn’t it. Cross-pollinating with the other fellows. Speaking of which, we mustn’t monopolize our newest member.”

  She tugs on my arm, and off we go to greet a succession of name tags: the Cryptographer, the Sculptor, the Philosopher, the Actor, the Translator, the Set Theorist, the Miniaturist, the Critic, the Sociologist, the Composer, the Developer, the Astronomer, the Hedonic Psychometrician, the Philologist, the Financial Modeler, the Developer of Social Platforms, the Computational Linguist, the Urban Planner, the Percussionist, so on.

  “When did you…?” “The trip out…?” “Jet lag…?” “Culture shock…?” “Frobisher, was it?”

  My name tag reads, merely, Percy F., yet despite this withholding (or perhaps because of it) I’m expelling my facts in a slow but seemingly unstanchable leak. I can’t manage to guard against it. The group feel, the institutional vibe overall, is one of inquisitiveness, curiosity, fierce intelligence, cattiness. So many questions. Sidelong looks. It goes on for a while, this bit, and I’m having trouble modulating my energies, but now, just as I am replying to yet another inquiry about the nature of my work, happily, someone begins clinking a glass, and everyone turns away from me and toward the sound.

  Ding, ding, ding.

  We draw closer together on the gently tiered lawns, murmuring, echolocating as a group, toward the toast-giver, and I can see, through the throng, that colossal man from the brochure, who must be the Director (paradigmatic case of “fat man”; heaving body, shiny pate). He is raising his glass up like a lantern, and I find myself on the outside rim of the large circle which surrounds him, and so can see only bits of the proceeding. Mostly, I see it all fractured onto the screens of the fellows’ devices in front of me, each scene in miniature. Everyone assembled upon the darkening terrace is trying to capture the moment—the fat Director, and the occasion he embodies—and the scene comes to me like a broken monitor, an uneven scattering of pixels; the individual screens contributing to the general impression while also capturing it as well as themselves, these recursions, these mises en abymes, as if there were an infinity of parties like this one, going on and on; scores of identical Directors, identical guests…

  He clinks his glass one last time for good measure, looks around him until the silence is total, and begins speaking.

  As I listen to the Director’s speech from the periphery of the gathering, I notice that the audience encircling our master of ceremonies has been made (I want to say: biddable?). It is the theater of the thing. They cease to be an aggregation of individuals and instead have become a single organism: a creature that responds quickly and obediently to the prompts provided it; clapping, grumbling, cheering, etc. We are enjoying ourselves, I think. Or, they are. All of them. Committed, fervent. Feelings I simply can’t manage.

  I cannot merge. Never could. Recognizing this fact, I feel a pang.

  My admin, Miss Fairfax, finely tuned to sense ebbing spirits, slides between several fellows to stand beside me, slipping her arm back again into mine. She looks up at me kindly.

  “You’re here,” she says, smiling, stating the obvious, though I know what she means. She means that it is real.

  The Director wraps up his address, and we, gently, applaud.

  * * *

  —

  Alone again, back in my rooms, just befo
re sleep, I examine my pics from the day. Time-stamped, most recent first. Airport. Road. Desert. Campus. Dennis Royal and Ousman Al’Hatif. Here’s the one of Miss Fairfax; her look of embarrassment, but also of warmth. I enlarge it, shrink it, adjust the tints and levels, apply and then remove a series of filters. I put my nose to the device and inhale deeply, and am surprised to receive a sharp little electrical charge. I put the device down and reach for a glass sitting primly on a doily by the bed. Bring it to the bathroom, take the pleated skirt off the top, and run the tap. The world outside the dome is hot, but everything inside of it, including the water, is nice and cold.

  Looking up, I notice something in the mirror. It seems to be on my chest. I reach up, and my uniform is damp to the touch.

  Looking away from my reflection and down, there is a splotch—a moist spot, small, but spreading. A dark blue stain on the breast pocket of my uniform.

  My pen.

  Gingerly, with a tissue, I extract the pen, sticky with ink, wrap it in more tissue, and place the damaged article, like an amputated digit, on the edge of the sink.

  I wash my hands, dab my fingers into the glass, and then rub them on the uniform, worrying the stain between my wet fingers.

  But I’m only making things worse: it’s only growing. (“You only get the one,” Miss Fairfax said.)

  Just the one. Fml.

  Give up. Brush my teeth.

  Time passes.

  I suddenly feel the minty foam blooming its way down my throat and gag.

  Spit. Ugh.

  3

  I am still wearing my robe—barely, it’s dilating open—there are sheet marks on my chest and face; the hair’s an apocalypse. The rug is softly burled under my swollen toes. I’m fighting a fierce jet lag, tinged with the faint peripheral throb of a day-old hangover and/or withdrawal from said hangover’s root cause. Further state of the union: the throat is scratchy; the mouth is dry; the eyes are itchy; cheeks rough.