Same Same

by Peter Mendelsund

  “I understand.”

  “More oversight.”

  To which I merely sigh.

  “ ‘Rigor’ and ‘discipline’ are the watchwords here,” she, catching on, sighs.

  I sigh back.

  “So, good, we are in agreement,” she sighs.

  Me: nodding; sighing.

  “Everything seems in order then. Any further questions?” she sighs.

  “No. Thank you for your time,” I sigh.

  She sighs; I sigh.

  The room sighs.

  I rise and she rises; we are both still pulsating, slightly. There is a sighing tenderness in both of us. As a result of this brief entanglement. We shake hands professionally, and I leave.

  “Don’t forget your afternoon workshops!” she sighs after me.

  And the door behind me sighs shut.

  * * *

  —

  (In the refectory, I’m back again at “the good table.” This scene is skipped.)

  * * *

  —

  Outside of the Residential Enclave—which has, imperceptibly, taken on the proprietary and familiar feeling of home and hearth (how quickly this happens)—I stop just shy of the stairs to look at its lit-up swimming pool. The very idea of the pool gives me a brief feeling of satisfaction: of robust (if unearned) good health. But then I see something warbling at the bottom, a blot of some sort or a smudge on the lining. But maybe it now seems that perhaps a thirsty animal fell in and died, sank to the bottom right by the refrigeration inlet. Not an animal, a person? Now I can see that this furtive shadow, slowly bobbing in the depths abetted by the recirculation of the pool pumps, is me. I stand there for I’m not sure how long, hypnotized by the play of darkness on the pool’s bottom, and then I draw my attention out from the depths, until my focus surfaces, and as I reach to touch the water, I see my reflection clearly in the water, my hand now reaching toward my shade-hand, and even in the mutating surface I think I can make out the stain on my uniform.

  There it is, starting right beside my heart. It is asymmetrical, if roughly round.

  Dark, like a lesion.

  Nothing I can hide.

  And no way is that coming out.

  8

  I’ve established a routine. Here is what it looks like.

  My day begins when I am awoken by the Institute’s morning bell, which rings early. Then I take a breakfast, consisting of the varied, minimalist nourishments our Tea Boys discreetly slide under our doors; each portion nestled in its own unit of an elegant, sectional tray. I linger, eating food at my leisure, listening to the crazed chorus of bird-samples coming from the audio-mangrove. Then, once I am comfortably arranged at a little table, I begin whispering down some new ideas. For me, the late morning is the magic hour for ideation, and so I have to be at the ready if an interesting notion presents itself. After a period, I shower and put on my uniform.

  Next, I trod out to my Group gatherings and forms of project-maintenance, all held in an annex of the Residential Enclave or the higher floors of the Arts Pavilion. These are guided by various admins, all dressed more or less identically. These admins are swapped out with such frequency that I rarely catch a single one of their names or numbers. Then comes Personal Coding & Identity Trimming, after which I proceed down the main trails past the contemplation berths and obelisks, all the way back to my flat, watching nervously all the while lest the Director appear unexpectedly, blue amanuenses, orderlies, admins at his side, rounding a corner, dropping from the sky, or popping from the earth. I am left with some time, then, with which to ponder the project in peace. A nice chunk of the day in which I am unmolested.

  Lunch.

  Then, a postprandial meander about the grounds, staticky with sprinklers. These walks take me all about the park, around the perimeter of the artificial lake, to each of the eight major concrete structures as if completing an obscure constellation.

  I do occasionally find myself revisiting my Observation Point bench out at the perimeter, and when I do, everything falls away for a period and I find some peace. I stare at the sand, and this happens to be all I do there. The heat quickly becomes intolerable, so I never last long. The campus has better, air-conditioned areas for reflection. I might loiter at one of the rock gardens, say, or one of the deliberation arenas—pause there to recalibrate my thinking, though I am never alone for long. Mr. 鼎福 the Architect might pop up to say hello, or Miss ☺ the Brand Analyst. And there’s the Historian-of-Prosthesis, the Hypnotist, and the Conceptual Artist. The Philosopher latches himself on to me, having immediately determined that I make a good disciple (or, at least, a passive listener). Fellows work alongside me, under the trees, splayed, or sitting cross-legged upon the cool grasses—Disputant 1 and Disputant 2, for instance—or, on a few occasions, various groups of start-up wizards—the techno-mages who frequent retreats such as these—splayed out, quarreling in code; plotting funding. Sometimes I’ll see Dennis, and I might pepper him with questions, indulging his testiness, and through sheer perseverance might earn a kind of sideways smile from him—a smile which says that we both know that whatever subject we happen to be speaking of can’t matter all that much, at least not to Dennis, and that I have a long way to go before I can truly understand the absurdity of it all; his brand of jadedness having developed flavor over a long simmer. Though Mr. Royal’s smile furthermore acknowledges my understanding of all this. And though I don’t feel any particular camaraderie with Dennis, I certainly will ratify this feeling in him. And so I might shrug my arms up, as if to say, “What are we doing in a place like this?”

  My interactions with Mr. Al’Hatif are simpler affairs.

  I like to visit him in his studio, and observe as he and his fellow conservators unbox the various shards of rock; label the dark red and gray fragments, and begin adding them together. Nothing of the as-yet-unreconstructed statue can be made out—though it is beginning to accumulate. A column of sorts is beginning to form, which I assume will eventually become one of the statue’s enormous legs. The process is meticulous and agonizingly slow. I find it soothing to watch.

  As it happens, Mr. Al’Hatif and I have discovered a mutual love of checkers, and are quite evenly matched. So, on occasion, we will leave his atelier to play several games at the outdoor tables. We lose hours here. And as we clack and slide our pieces about the board, chatting in our small way, everyone else clacks and slides around us.

  I do, albeit rarely, catch sight of the resident phantom, the Mysterious Woman, lingering, melancholic, about the place. Floating around corners, submerging into obscurity. There she is: usually reading; always a book open, and canted out between her hands as she walks, as if to catch something which threatens to tumble out from her lips. And I watch her and think that she promises, perhaps, to be, despite her insubstantiality, a weighty presence in this account. Tbd, Tbd.

  Everything here is “Tbd,” and I fully inhabit this Tbd; each moment revealing itself to me unpredicted. I have only been here a week—one week only; or is it more? And yet the outside world has begun to seem ever vaguer a notion; more so with each passing day, and I cannot say that I think too much about that life, my life before. Such forgetting is fine though. This is precisely why I chose to live in such an isolated polity. How wonderful to have escaped here, to avoid having to endure that other, meatspace life, the real Irl—where the rubber meets the road, and matter and wills collide. Here there is none of that. Just projects, and fellows, checkers, meals, and walks.

  It is idyllic, Imho, and I am just beginning to relax. Because of this, perhaps, I am just beginning to get that sense where life feels, suddenly, as if it may be seen from a particular vantage point, and that this life takes on an almost chronicled aspect, where you can see the arc of it, as a yawning projection of now; you can see the timeline, no matter how fictive, and you are present as a point in this timeline—in my case rig
ht at the beginning. And this feeling is somewhat similar to the feeling of being dwarfed by large spaces, as before, when I saw the three buildings, and that chasmic feeling I felt, or like the vantage looking down on the Institute from high buildings as I am wont to do, though what I am now referring to is being situated in time. Of my position in time; not space. That is.

  What I do know is that the thrust of this timeline of mine—what the line, my line, is moving toward—is the project.

  The project.

  The project.

  The project, which I only get so much time to complete and which is proving more obstinate than I imagined it would.

  Nevertheless, the afternoons are maximized for thinking.

  The evenings are for making, though nothing as yet has been made.

  And after my strolls, toward the end of the day, I return, alone, to the Enclave, in order to settle myself before the dinner service. The nights, which I spend with my colleagues—in thought-huddles or social pods—are brilliant. And Tuesday nights (naturally) are set aside for the Discourses™.

  9

  The speaker, the star of tonight’s Discourse™, is dynamic. The speaker is charming. The speaker is good-looking. The speaker is one of us (the speaker is relatable). The speaker’s dynamic range is mezzo-piano. The speaker is confident, at ease, unruffled. The speaker is merely chatting, which is to say that the speaker delivers the Discourse™ as if for the first time, as if the ideas which comprise the Discourse™ had just now simply dawned upon the speaker. The speaker’s ideas are transmissible, scalable, and viable. The speaker’s Discourse™ is “a big idea,” and “a journey.” The speaker erects an edifice; engenders confidence; receives traction. The speaker entreats, consoles, and catalyzes. The speaker carries on two halves of an argument; though the speaker is never argumentative. The speaker proposes an original and surprising solution to this dialectic, as well as to a breathtaking array of other wide-ranging problems. The speaker puts forward—not overtly, but tacitly—the notion that every difficulty should resolve simply. The speaker contends that problems will practically solve themselves. The speaker physicalizes such ideas through a syntax of formalized hand gestures. The speaker uses plosives and pulmonic aggressions and liquid consonants and glottal stops, all to wonderful effect. The speaker evokes contagious emotions—for instance, anger, and surprise. The speaker provides generalized life wisdom, effortlessly extrapolated from their extremely abstruse métier. The speaker packages ideas. The speaker utilizes a familiar rhetoric—that well-worn, focus-tested intonation and gestural choreography we all know and love. That is: the speaker performs a kabuki. The speaker begins softly, then the speaker ratchets up the intensity. The speaker concludes in high optimism. The speaker’s optimism—the speaker’s call to optimism—is the manner in which the speaker fulfills and gratifies us. The speaker sparks within us a sense of wonder, curiosity, eagerness, a galvanizing faith, etc., etc. The speaker will have, by Discourse™’s end, filled us each to the brim with talk-response-feelings. (This rewards packet of talk-response-feelings is not to be confused with the conferral of actual wonder, curiosity, and eagerness, so on.)

  Of course, it is uncanny. To be here, in this auditorium, attending a Discourse™, an Irl talk, to be in this singular, brightly branded space; this space I have visited virtually, on-screen that is, so many times. As soon as I heard that introductory music, those triumphalist, swelling, and portentous strains, that synthesized orchestral strike, and the spotlight hit the backdrop…well. “Here I am,” I thought, echoing Miss Fairfax.

  Here I am, though: Do I belong?

  Meanwhile, the speaker is approaching the conclusion of the Discourse™, and, strangely, I begin to worry. Worry for the speaker. And as the Discourse™ comes closer to its preordained apogee, this worry intensifies. When the audience, as one, looks up at the final slide, baroque with infographics, does the speaker convey something privately? Sign a word in the air? Point? Silently mouth something or wink? Maybe not. I am not sure. It feels as though the speaker is addressing me personally, confidentially, though not in the manner the speaker intends; which is to say that the speaker of the Discourse™ betrays something. It begins to dawn on me with greater and greater certainty that the speaker is—with smile intact, but with ever-increasing desperation—attempting to communicate an emotion which lies outside the ambit of the Discourse™. Something important. The speaker is making an idea understood, and is forced, it seems, to communicate this crucial message in a channel just above—or just below—the channel in which the Discourse™ is being delivered. Through a prearranged code perhaps—of taps and clicks, or a system of linguistic cues, certain emphases, cryptograms, anagrams, acrostics. Which is to say that the speaker seems to me now like a hostage, reading a prepared list of kidnapper demands while simultaneously endeavoring to reveal hints as to the kidnapper’s whereabouts. I.e., the discourse has a hidden descant. There is a submerged intensity about the speaker’s eyes, visible, it seems, only to me. Is this another formalized gesture in the Discourse™ itself?

  I look around the arena, and see no signs of anything out of the ordinary on the faces of my compatriots. I presume that, from the standpoint of the other audience members, the speaker’s look of solemn intelligence, enthusiasm, and kind forbearance never wavers. But I see something different. That the veins on the speaker’s neck protrude. That the whites of the speaker’s eyes grow, and that the speaker’s dense pupils collapse into themselves. Impotence, isolation, fear—all vibrating on a sub-audible frequency. Amid the approval.

  I have to look away. I turn toward the back of the room, and I see, at the far end of the full auditorium, first, the Mysterious Woman, watching the performance. But then, then, several rows behind, I spot the Director, in the very last row, leaning back, arms spread to full and awesome wingspan on the seat backs around him, with his shaved and waxed head, a menacing golem, smiling strangely at the performance. The thought comes to me “This man holds the solution to the problem,” and I abruptly turn back around, just in time for the speaker to wrap up the Discourse™.

  Applause. Standing O.

  In the immediate aftermath of the talk, people are speaking in small groups.

  Most of the fellows are here. Pale Dennis is staring out onto the campus. He’s sullen and evasive. I follow his gaze and see very little: the semidarkness; a couple of prematurely lit walkways; the periodic flashing red glow atop the metastructure; a canal, catching the last of the light; some pedestrian bridges.

  Miss ☺ the Brand Analyst is here tonight, with the Architect, 鼎福. They are speaking with the Woman-Whose-Face-and-Hands-Are-Covered-in-Yarn, who watches them both guardedly through her woolen mask. Other fellows are clustered elsewhere. It is all very cordial. The Cylinder Maker stands by himself, cradling a new geometric solid in his arms. The Technologists huddle together.

  Miss Fairfax, admin5, meanwhile, rests upon a single elbow, legs up beneath her.

  As I step toward her, suddenly, the Director emerges from a door, moving through the middle of several fellows, breaching the group, annexing the space. Conversations disband. He’s coming toward me.

  Miss Fairfax jumps to her feet and heads over to meet the oncoming collision.

  “YOU there,” he rumbles, the sound of his voice coming out of a face which is more a series of folds than a set of features.

  The Director reaches down. He seizes my hand in his own huge one; then he takes my arm in his other hand, so that now I am detained in a three-handed handshake. (Though it’s not really a “shake,” but rather a very slow, methodical movement: an impressive, quasi-masonic gesture.)

  “ALL WELL, Mr. Frobisher? Adjusting to life at the Institute? Taking to it, are you? Found YOUR FOOTING? I am told this project of yours shows great promise.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And it is proceeding on schedule, of course.”

 
; “I hope so.”

  “HOPE?”

  The Director leans in closer and gives me the hairy eyeball. My palm is beginning to burn and itch in his insistent grasp.

  “What Mr. Frobisher means, sir,” Miss Fairfax advocates for me, rapid-fire, “is that the project is on schedule, and will succeed. Mr. Frobisher has no doubts on this matter. Why would he when we went to all the trouble and expense to bring him here. Right, Percy?”

  “Yes, of course. That’s what I meant.”

  There’s one more pump of my insensate hand, and the Director leans farther in and down:

  “We expect no less. Speed, intensity, ruthlessness. The PERFECT project and Discourse™. Relatable, marketable, profound, digestible, fun, fresh, smart…a masterful theorization of the Now. No effort on behalf of such a project would be wasted and any effort falling short of these standards would constitute failure. We expect TOTAL COMMITMENT.”

  “Yes, sir,” replies Miss Fairfax on my behalf.

  “CREATIVITY, in our view,” he continues, warming to his topic and straightening again to his full height, “is more or less a technology. One which requires the same methodical application used in developing any other technical product: R&D, ideation, iteration, debugging, beta-testing; market research; analytics, the implementation of a maintenance infrastructure, not to mention an upgrade cycle. Your project will be, Percy, in other words (as I emphasized in my speech at the ceremony), HARD WORK. Of course it will—no one, no fellow—while en-laddered here at the Institute—will be allowed to shirk hard work. But more importantly it will require your complete buy-in. FULL bandwidth. Every aspect of the process running in concert with the seamless integration of your talent/application stack within the Institute’s own, every layer contributing. End-to-end; ERROR-FREE channels. Proactivity. Actualization. You see, we—your investors, your developers, your core management team—would like to see this project of yours achieve coordinated, PRIME fulfillment, and it should go without saying that we would like it to reach its actionable phase, an inflexion point, GROWTH, that is—which might, in turn, generate all of the resource-leveling, interoperable meta-services to credibly realize and onboard all of our covalent infomediaries. Simultaneous, PLURIFORM construction of accelerated global production chains. Rendering: DEFINITE. Tomorrow: YOURS. Maximized provider-efficiencies in networked space. Personalized, multisensory, effortless, horizontal interface fabrication/consumption, expropriating effective power-patterns in deeply incepted data-noise. Repetition, affirmation, voluntary development of EMOTIONALIZED syntaxes; converting DESIRE into FACT. Harnessing atmosphere, making it serve as a means of instantaneous COMMUNICATION with ALL PEOPLE in EVERY PLACE. So if you find you are WEAK in PERSISTENCE, center attentions upon the instructions in the program entitled ‘POTENCY—’ ”