Mr. Al’Hatif and I are back at the Pleasure Center, there’s cake, and someone has put on the music, which has been edging louder. Another evening’s Discourse™ completed. Some of the fellows are inebriated and dancing with abandon; the Woman-Whose-Face-and-Hands-Are-Covered-in-Yarn is among them. Dissipation and dissolution. Mucky behavior. Perhaps everyone here needs, requires, distraction from their monomanias, their projects. The whole thing is beginning to feel festive almost to the looming edge of disreputable. I see one fellow’s tunic is unbuttoned, and some other signs of subtly encroaching disorder. Some fellows go rumbling and giggling off into a dark doorway. Another fellow I don’t know weaves about the place brandishing a magnum of champagne in each of her hands like she’s about to begin juggling bowling pins. The mean litterbug is here. Miss ☺ the Brand Analyst and 鼎福 the Architect are off by the exit, chatting, keeping to themselves, but looking over at us. Quick little crinkles of laughter. Everyone flourishing, it seems. Meanwhile, Mr. Al’Hatif seems pleased with my Same Saming success.
“It will work, as I told you. Now—now you can really focus—no more getting sidetracked, Mr. Percy. Complete the project you outlined for the Institute. They are not infinitely patient here. You wouldn’t want that Director breathing down your neck. The Institute is paying attention—don’t forget.”
“I won’t,” I say.
(How could I?)
* * *
—
Later now, back at the flat, alone again, depleted by the day and night, the trip, the return, the mask I wear for human interaction, I move through the channels of my room screen again. Meme-ified clips, trollish snark, comments eating their own tails, shopping, ads (me finding out more about myself from the ads I have on offer—the ads a pixelated mirror, a portrait of me, holding up my proclivities for me to buy back into, double down on), more football, games, pornography…like vaporous messages from another world. But I am only truly arrested by a weather report. Or is it a news report? News of the weather. Overlays of vectors and currents, and his look is the anchor’s universal affect of calm gravity. Embedded in the corner of the map above the man’s shoulder is footage of what appears to be a vast sandstorm engulfing a city. People seeking shelter, wrapped head to toe, scarves covering faces, leaning into the wind, trees bending, rattling windows, torn flags hastily lowered, tarps sailing loose like wild mantas through the sky, detritus flung everywhere. Ambulances, military vehicles. Glyphs, foreign ideograms crowd the scrolling feed at the bottom of the newscast.
Somewhere there is a state of emergency. Irl. Out there.
I reflexively look out my window, my window which I had left, oddly, open, out past the reflection of the room lamps, and my own reflection, to the calm of the night.
But not here. Not in the Institute.
Then, closing the window and turning, I notice something. The blotter on my desk is empty. Where are my pages? On the bed? There was a stack of paper here before. Wasn’t there? Paper, upon which the Fundaments of my project were written out. Where did they—? Then I remember.
The Same Same!
On the counter.
For fuck’s sake.
I’ll have to go back again.
Paper always betrays me, I think. One way or another.
And so I worm my way under the covers, and settle in for another night of arduous reading, slicing open the big hardback using its ribbon marker, and begin to make further inroads on this goddam, towering bildungsroman.
14
(THE PAPER)
Meanwhile, deep in the Freehold’s capital, at the end of an unlit alley, in a ramshackle building, inside of the Same Same shop’s murky back room: a light passes back and forth. Once, twice, in quick succession. Like a light from an airborne surveillance vehicle, sweeping below it for a crime. The light is bluish and very bright. It whirrs with each passage, on a geared carriage, making a flat, blaring sound: waaah, waaaah. Not like a baby crying, nothing so needful nor fleshed out. More like an electronic noise. Born of circuitry, of electrostasis, of photoconductors, of motors, of networks expressing functions. Of amalgamation and transference. Gears are whirring.
Each time the light flares, it does so, always, in twos, in sweeps, in pairs, back, and forth—Same Same—back and forth—Same Same, Same Same…
In the room, a man is watching the light. The light flashes upon his face, highlighting his features, before returning him to darkness. Each time the light blazes and moves, the man becomes briefly visible, then disappears.
Then the process is complete and the mechanism is silent; he reaches for the finished article. Examines it. Turns it this way and that. It looks good.
Good as new.
Better than new.
Satisfied that the uniform has come out as he had intended, the Same Same man nods to himself, clucks his tongue a couple of times, and walks over to another table, where he folds the garment and wraps it in plastic. He places this new bundle inside of a small gray box, puts a lid on it, and brings the parcel to the front of the shop.
He takes out the roll of packing tape, and is just about to seal it all up, when he notices something sitting on the far end of the counter.
A small stack of paper.
He picks it up, considers it, and, parting the curtain, returns to the back.
PART II
DOUBTS AND CONSIDERATIONS
15
(SNOW)
“Percy, you have a guest.”
I don’t believe it; not at first. I am supposed to be the visitor here—and visitors don’t have visitors—yet here she is, bag in hand. A distant relative, barely known to me. A person who, having some undisclosed work in the region, has shown up unannounced and seems to be intent on staying for a while. Her work is most likely a pretext—I am being checked up on. Someone back home has sent a spy, conscripted to report back. Provide intel. Persuade me to leave, even. Idk. It is futile, and predictably awkward. I guide her about the grounds, just as Ousman Al’Hatif guided me, and I introduce her to several fellows—each of whom my guest finds more confusing than the last. We trudge to the daily open studios; we dine in the refectory. I attempt to “prompt” her several times, though she doesn’t pick up on my cues; only looks at me, perplexed. The more time I spend in her presence, the less familiar she seems to me. Could she be an imposter? Either way, what is she hoping to gain; to discover? Each night she returns to her hotel in the city, and I attempt to retrench, to regain some lost momentum. However, only two days since her arrival, it is becoming clear that she cannot leave fast enough for the both of us.
And on the third day of her stopover, after suffering a desultory breakfast, I find myself watching the back of her head—a pupil in the eye of the car’s rear window—as it recedes, down the Institute’s allée, and (thank god) disappears. After it is clear she has gone, I stand in the roundabout outside of the Enclave, flickering between old and new lives. I stand here for a while, that is, until all memory of the previous week evaporates. It is as if she were never here at all. Episode skipped. All ambiguous feelings having ebbed, I walk back toward this life, donning fully that Institute persona of mine, gratified in the idea that this relation’s visit might have been the very last sign of my prior life I’ll need contend with, that life’s last attempt to retrieve and reclaim me. A strangely clear landmark I think, on what has been a rather hazy timeline. So little here of note, otherwise. Except for the work of course. After so much hard thinking about my project—its underlying philosophy, the forms it might take, its narrative arc, character, and nature—I am beginning to feel that I have stalled.
I am still the same old me. My predicted personal transformation has not yet occurred. No signs of growth, or molting. Nothing substantially changed. Not yet. I have not even made much progress reading my torturously long-winded novel. (A couple of chapters, at most.) There it sits on my bedside table—de
nse, deliberately vexing. The ribbon marker falls through its pages reluctantly, and I begin to think of its advancement downward as a measurement of time: sand in a clogged hourglass, a hand of a broken clock. More disappointing still, after several unproductive weeks—a homogeneous lump—I realize, while playing checkers with Ousman Al’Hatif, that I don’t even feel any particular urgency w/r/t the project.
“You’d like to complete the work, certainly,” Mr. Al’Hatif insists, scrutinizing the board.
“Sure, I would. Of course. That is: I want the project done, but I just don’t want to actually have to, you know: do it. I want desperately for it to have been done.”
“Has there been any progress?”
“Not…as such.”
“Mr. Percy.”
“I know.”
He shrugs, adding, “King me.”
With some benchmarks looming—I clearly have entered a kind of doldrums; become dulled by exactly those longueurs I had previously been enjoying. Namely: the endless meditations on process. Reverie-states which I thought would become productive; a boredom which I counted on turning vital. I should, I think, take the turn toward boredom as a sign that I am now ready, as Miss Fairfax has said I am, for a new rung on the Ladder—a new rung. It does feel, certainly, like it is high time to matriculate out of the “Encouragement” phase of the project, and muscle into the harder phases. And completing the work itself feels as distant a prospect to me now as one of those enormous rococo cloud-gods one sees, way far off at desert’s end, not close enough for rain or comfort, but portending both.
How much of the project have I completed by this point? About a third. Bit less. A sketchy third. Rough, and unfocused. Vague ideas concerning vague beginnings. No hard choices made, no definitive decisions, no gauntlets thrown. The Fundaments were pretty much ready from the get-go, of course. They count for something (despite the fact that they, in their actual physical form, remain unaccounted for. They count as unaccounted. Zimzim, set a reminder for me to return to S.S. in order to retrieve Fundaments). I am, however, still, merely, investigating the space. That is to say that I have produced less than Miss Fairfax has projected, certainly. Not as far along as any of us had hoped I’d be by now. (I am tempted at this point to say that I am low on inspiration, but “inspiration” is such a shoddy word, isn’t it?) I know that I need a prod; some rule of law. Negative consequences, even.
Finding other ways to combat the ennui, I exercise. I am no athlete, but I throw myself headlong into physical contests. At first, I run the sandy track down at the Athletics Oval. Disconcertingly, I am watched throughout these runs by small groups of fellows, standing in the warning area, following my laps in wonder and suspicion. Consequently, in search of privacy, I leave the track and attempt to run the grounds instead. I set off down the palmed alleé, but I find myself, once again, observed: tailed by a mute jumpsuit, riding a small ATV at a discreet distance. So much for the running.
I now learn that the most efficient method for physical exertion is to spend an odd hour or two in the Institute’s gym. Here, I can strap myself into the stair climbers, treadmills, walkers, rowers, and various other simulators. This I follow, on odd days, with some vigorous tumbles back at the now-familiar wave pool. And as I bob in the oceanic tank, tangy and bright with chlorine, I keep hoping I’ll see that sand-raker again, if only to catalyze some energy in me. But he never returns. Others come in his place, but it isn’t the same.
In any case, none of these activities are sufficient to stifle the urge in me to strike out and truly challenge myself. So now, the goal here becomes to climb—to climb the Landau-Schmidt glacier. And so, on this late afternoon, unable to stomach another day at the recalcitrant project, I find myself back at the glacier.
I timed my approach to midmorning, so that all of the other fellows will be at work. I have waited for an all-hands-on-deck—I do not wish to be observed by admins or jumpsuits either—and as it happens, everyone is busy. The weather has turned extra-nasty this week. The Institute has brought in experts to examine the Institute’s fans and thermostats. Though it is still significantly cooler in here under the dome than it is on the outside, there have been moments when I have felt, albeit briefly, the atmosphere beneath the metastructure threatening to rise. Moments of a disconcerting, almost flat, body temperature. It never lasts long though, as the fans inevitably kick back on again and the cool breezes recommence. Nevertheless, a consulting company from the nearby peninsular super-city which specializes in climate control has been contracted, and one can see, now, many new men in bright azure coveralls, scouring the grounds, examining the substations and air-blowers, laying down pipe, threading fresh wiring, and driving their humming electro-carts down the service paths.
I am not too concerned about any of this, the ragged edge of chaos, and, if anything, I am mildly grateful for the world outside of my head to be properly twinning with the world inside of it. NB my uniform was supposed to be back this week; supposed to be back, and I’ve been laying low. But today, unobserved, wearing my best trainers, sweats, and reclaiming from the closet of my flat the only sweater I own, I walk, unabashedly, to the Mountain House. When I reach the hangar, I first check to see that the observation deck is empty (it is), and stride right up to the foot of the ice, where I am immediately hit by a wave of stale and frosty air. I am amazed by the force and bitter frigidity of the wind. Peering toward the summit—which is barely visible in the fog against a crystalline CGI blue—and with a throb of emotion, I dig my first foot in and begin my climb.
The first twenty minutes of work are invigorating, and my muscles thrum happily—my mind soars, full of promise and exhilaration. I revel in the physicality of the experience and congratulate myself on performing this secret ascent. One foot in front of the other, I am convinced that a struggle against the wounded massif is exactly what I need to propel me forward with my project. That is, rather than the Institutionally approved, metaphysical ascent of the Ladder, I will be ascending: Irl.
Though the smell is horrible. A vision comes to me now of the glacier as a vast beast, confined in its glass cage, eager to slough me, a parasite, off from its stinking pelt. And as the sense of awe I felt at the climb’s beginning soon begins to subside, as the morning wanes and my elevation rises, I become so overwhelmed by weariness that I have to sit down on the ice-encrusted snow to rest. Strangely strong, the wind. It is blowing right down upon me from the summit. The blowers, it must be. Cranked too high. Hard going. A gap here. I wonder now, how many other of the residents have attempted to climb the glacier? I’ve seen none of them even stop on their way to the assembly and recreation center in order to look at it. Everyone is inured to it. Background. Mise-en-scène. But not to me. I’m going to climb this Mf and later, if all goes well, brag about it.
Within a further ten minutes, I begin to believe that the general thermostatic issues might be affecting the low end of the temperature spectrum, or, that the Institute has perhaps overcompensated in an attempt to preserve its captive berg, i.e., it is freezing in here, and this in itself might make my climb problematic, if not dangerous.
My windbreaker is flapping like an enraged crow, my face and hands slowly becoming numb. Surely this is a malfunction of some kind? Yes, Imho.
Perhaps it is just me, and I’m not up to this task, I think, and I feel a strong wave of embarrassment at my fatigue. Having now attained the lower slope, I have to stop again, as I am completely winded. I am drawing breath as fast and as hard as I am able into my lungs, but the rich humidity of the air isn’t satisfying their demands, and I suffer an insistent ache in the middle of my chest. Should I lie down? How humiliating. I was so looking forward to speaking up my exploits this evening. But now I’ll have to keep this exploit to myself. Or lie about the result.
I’m just more than halfway, high enough so that the main concourse of the Pleasure Center is completely covered in mists and fog
. I cannot see the observation deck, or the outside escalator banks. I could be anywhere up here. The drifts are deeper than my knees now, my sneakers are thoroughly soaked, as are my sweats, as is my sweater (sweat).
And if I were to perish? Would anyone even know where to look for me? Would my body be incorporated into the mountain and only give up my bones upon the ice’s melting, millennia from now (if ever)? Someone might stumble upon my remains, gather me up in a bundle, and give my remains to the world, thinking them the last trace of some forgotten human ancestor. A counterfeit Neanderthal. Better keep moving.
The snow is perfectly regular in its consistency. Each flake recognizable as such, a mirror image of its brethren, at least to the naked eye. Irl, every snowflake is different, one from another. But I doubt this snow is made like that; it should be uniform, being manufactured. A perfect clone army of flakes, mobilized to freeze me to death. I am coughing now, and wonder, on top of the extreme cold, if I am perhaps allergic to the formula used to manufacture this laboratory blizzard. The wind scythes around me and as toes and fingers cease to feel, sentiment wells up—feelings of pity, self-pity, pity for me—me, who thought he could attempt something so asinine—and, as if a corollary to these feelings, I also feel a throb of sorrow and pathos on all our behalves. All of us, we pitiful exiles and isolatoes. Mr. Royal, Miss Fairfax, 鼎福 the Architect, Miss ☺ the Brand Analyst, Mr. Al’Hatif, even the nasty litterbug, but me, especially. Me, especially, as even this episode, once again, feels secondhand, familiar—if diminished.
I see myself clearly for an instant in all of my pathos, and as the veils fall, I have to remind myself to tread carefully, as the way is becoming steeper, the closer to the top I get, the summit itself receding and receding as I rise (though still, I rise).
Until I can’t, and I stop. There’s no going on. I’m done. Spent. I begin to prepare a hole into which to crawl, kicking the powder aside, pawing at it with my hands, until there is sufficient room for me to burrow. Then, shivering, I climb down into it and curl into a ball, reaching into my pocket to pull out a bottle and pop something to calm myself, I don’t even check its color or shape, just ingest the first one I get my numb fingers around. And as fatigue suffuses my limbs:
Same Same Page 10