“…looking for evidence of tomorrow’s manias and mass desires,” she explains, “…and I should underline: not just mass desire, also yours. Yours personally, Percy.”
“What would you know of my desires?”
“Please. And, I would know a lot, actually.”
“Would you now.”
It isn’t a second sight, though she is surely gifted. But she also works hard at prophecy, looks hard, as a gambler looks for tells.
“But mostly it’s pattern recognition,” she tells me.
She hears trends like phrases on the wind. Hardwired to speculate, possessing a natural gift for spotting emergent phenomena. She is successful. And it all worked for a while. But, but: Don’t prophets always get it wrong eventually? Or ignore some critical factor? Isn’t screwing up part of the job description? We should all be aware of the long history of oracular failings by now. We should all know the label warnings; the fine print. When the future volunteers some information, something crucial is always withheld. She fucked up quite badly, and was quietly let go. So she ran off to new and distant scenes, freedom, release, forgetfulness—her time in the desert, that old refrain. (None of this is said—I know it all because I looked her up, and found her there, online, in staged photos of her shaking various hands, receiving awards, at various podia, giving speeches, talks, her Discourse™…in and amid all of this was buried the news of her fall.)
She drags a hand into the water, one finger, two, letting them draw ripples which triangulate infinitely behind us. Twirls the ends of her hair, and kicks the tiny, pointed foot attached to the topmost of her crossed legs, up and down, up and down. She is so bright, but for all her smarts, she seems hopelessly lost. Shunted off to a place which was the last place she’d thought she’d end up in.
End of the territory. Off the map. A Venice which isn’t Venice, with the rest of us. “Federation of geniuses,” is what Dennis sarcastically called us. Federated around what though? Toward what? The projects, obvs. The Institute’s insistent heartbeat.
“So you do me now,” I say, feeling generous, and attempting to prod her from, what is for her, a very unusual funk.
“Well now, I could brand you in, like, three quick strokes,” she says, revitalized, batting her lashes at me like a couple of naval signal lamps, “it is almost too easy.”
“Go on then.”
But just now, as it so happens, we are docking. We bump up gently on the dock’s buoys and are helped ashore by the yellow jumpsuit whose job it is to help tourists off of gondolas.
And here comes Miss Fairfax, admin5, a real lack of amusement on her face. She gives a perfunctory hello to the Brand Analyst, which contains within it the full contents of a Doctrina Armorum, and then there is a long and equally subtextually pointed hand on my arm. I wonder if this is due to Miss ☺ and me having broken protocol, or is it out of Miss Fairfax’s sense of superiority, the cultural divide which stands, definitionally, between the fellows and the admins.
Either way, Miss Fairfax is simply puckered-up with undisguised spleen.
Miss ☺ is oblivious though, or merely acts that way, and so says “Heya, Miss Fairfax, join us for another spin around the canals?”
“No. It is time to go back to the bus,” she spits. “And in the future, don’t stray from the main group anymore on field trips or you will not be invited out again, understood? We’re leaving. This outing is over.”
So we queue our way back into the bus. We head deeper, and deeper into the desert’s darkening heart, back toward the Freehold’s most fascinating landmark—the destination lit up like a lodestar—our glinting dome. An hour of travel away still, but visible, if barely. We should be back before dusk.
The metastructure. At the desert’s precise, geographical center point.
We arrive home, driving through the gates and down the allée, and now I see my two buildings line up against the sky again, feeling once more that same sense of remembrance and alien understanding, and now we stop, and leave the bus, and the air inside the Institute strikes us with a new, warm force.
It’s becoming just the tiniest bit gross in here.
21
(THE PAPER CONTINUED)
Vultures: circling.
The paper follows in their wake, whirling, slowly with these grotesque birds for a while. A vast and ominous mobile high above the plains of dust. Then, as if having received a summons, the buzzards disengage en masse, and the paper is left on its own once more.
A few days later, surfing a downward gust, the paper comes in lower than ever, and it hits the sand hard. It is only a kilometer or so from its destination, so this crash landing is bad news. Now, immobile at last, some writing on the paper can be seen. Words. The words describe…But now, the wind begins to pick up again, and now sand blows over the paper. A coarse, grating sound. The writing is covered. Will the sand cover the paper completely? The sand ultimately covers everything.
Anyway, a potentially sad ending for the page.
Sand holds no dominion over
But then, a chain of small movements: the sand is blown about, grains vibrating, relocating, one at a time, then after a pause, in pairs, trios, and quartets, in flights and tiny, mottled clumps, and subsequently in a miniature avalanche, which redoubles into a slightly larger miniature avalanche. The foremost edges of the white piece of paper are revealed.
The wind kicks up, big-time. The paper is released—and it takes to the air again.
For the last time, the paper travels. Picked up by the wind and carried up from the sand; conscripted by the desert drafts and taken off on maneuvers: zagging, diving, spinning, ducking, occasionally army-crawling, over this, under that, in mad cycles and epicycles, from one breeze to another. The paper makes its unpredictable but steady progress out and over the plain, over dunes and rocks, ruins, scree and insects; until it finally penetrates the semi-visible metastructural barrier, and abetted by the turbines, the blades of which it nimbly avoids.
It has arrived.
It negotiates an elegant row of palm trees, skimming their top fronds, and, losing altitude, turns sideways on its pitch-axis as it zephyrs over a lake, several lawns, and now a swimming pool; approaching a building of some sort, before the paper sheet slips into an open window…
…to settle upon a desk, in the middle of a cool room.
There it lies.
This pioneer. Having paved the way.
Later, with any luck, it will be joined by its compatriots.
The rest of the ream.
22
I’ve received several prompts today (I think).
The Poet provides me with a prompt when he tells me about a dream he had: a dream of “eating a live alligator.” There are many details to this dream which the Poet fills me in on, his forcing the spiked and leathery hide into his stretched mouth, his gagging, how his saliva had turned an awful brown, and even about the acrid and intensely gamey flavor. It is so odd, until I realize that he is purposefully providing me with coded material. That was prompt Number One. Then, I wake up from a brief nap to the smell of burning. Toast? Hair? Rubber? A high palm has spontaneously combusted nearby. I go out to inspect, and the Medium ambles up next to me. We both look up at the crackling fire-bursts; she shakes her head and says:
“Can you imagine the coming world?”
Can you imagine the coming world.
I weigh the question for a moment, pondering a response, and then understand, and ;) at her, so as to say thank you for the prompt.
I will use these two prompts as catalysts for today’s work. I am hoping that by day’s end I will have successfully transmuted both prompts into something serviceable for my project.
I have zero doubts about my ability to do so.
And here’s Miss Fairfax, her surliness of the other day dissipating. I have been demonstrably docile, reall
y toeing the line when it comes to Institute procedures, participation, project management, so on. Overdoing it even. A-student, me.
If only she knew.
I’m getting bolder.
I’ve been Same Same–ing.
Bit of an addiction now, really.
Everyone at a Discourse™, me, taking a vehicle from the lot and going. No errands. Nothing really to fix or make, though I do toss a red checker into my pocket to bring. I wonder.
Wonder about the Same Same’s prowess. Its extent.
So when I get here, I put the checker down on the counter, put up three fingers, say the secret incantation, and my Same Same man disappears into the back. In no time flat, he returns, and places three new disks down on the lino, one at a time.
Click, click, click.
My jaw, on the floor. He is not fixing a damn thing. He’s making. Maybe. Unless he just has it all at the ready, but…He could have amassed a huge amount of junk back there, storage bins from which he plucks (I want to say: one of everything? Four of everything? Wtf). Or there’s a really high-end 3-D printer. A Xerox; a milling machine; laser lathe, sewing machine; a staff of…how many? I keep attempting to see back through the doorway; leaning, craning, peering, nothing doing. I have to be subtle about it, I don’t want to inadvertently trigger any cultural sensitivities (I’m clearly in with the S.S. man now and wish to keep it that way). But still: How does he do it? I will take this entire enigma as a challenge. Whatever his methods, I’ll trip him up yet. And by tripping him up, find out how it’s all done.
And, though the Same Same mystery has only deepened today, I am buoyed by my successful facsimil-izing. There will be more of it. More of it, Tk.
* * *
—
And so, spirits high, I return to my flat and celebrate by whispering up another double, Miss Fairfax’s photo, the one I took. Here, this one, captive on my device.
There is, of course, a much higher degree of resolution to the Irl Miss Fairfax than there is to this (still-vivid) photographic stand-in. Yet, speaking of mysteries, there is something truly mystical about her photo, as opposed to her actual personhood. Something mystical about the way I use it. When I’ve got the pic up, it is like we (she and I) enact a kind of spiritual congress. Not corporeal, not meatspace—metaphysical. Spooky action at a distance. Two souls; two proxies, smelted together. It’s an occult wonder.
A minute later and I’m up on the bed, belt undid, device in hand, ready to begin; device is charged and ready—it, like me, propped up on pillows among the rumpled sheets. I preside like a pale moon in the plumped clouds.
Now, let’s get the show on the road.
I’m off. Elsewhere. Easing, oozing my way through permeable barriers. Foreground receding, new foreground emerging. Entering a proxy world of pharaonic scope and wealth, a sensual kingdom, a theater of archetypes which waits upon my whims; one which makes the Institute look like a moron’s flimsy phantasm. This new world, which is, even now, opening its own, unmanned, buffering gates to admit me.
Ping!
Pink. Overlapping limbs. Small and sculpted whorls of crinkled hair. Closed eyes, smooth protrusions, red caverns, unguarded mouths. The excitement pushing upward, providing jolts of pleasure and adrenaline, the device, dear device, slick in my hand, rigid, pushing back against my touch even, meeting it with the latest in haptics, partnering in rich and limitless freedoms which are contained therein, deep within its compact…
Ping!
Jesus wept.
Sliding back over into Xanadu (close eyes; no, open), the sun edges, and edges, I hit enter: enter. Enter, and thrust. The light touches the rim of the device and creeps further, and Rn the transparent surface rises up, handled, imprinted. But who’s that there upon that very same glaucal plane, amid the material evidence of the device’s use, but me; equally smudged; my muddy ghost, there—and yet also within—the action, mixing into these analogous pleasures, and relishing it, as I am:
Yes, yes.
Ping!
Yes…
Ping!
Ignore.
Ping!
Uh…
Ping!Ping!Ping!Ping!Ping!Ping!
Rapid detumescence.
Fuck. “What has got into you?” I ask the malfunctioning device, though for this, the device remains silent. Anyway, I think (looking down), I’ve lost it. It’s just not happening. (You know when you know.) If only I hadn’t been interrupte—
Ping!
The device hits the far wall with a small thud—like the dense life of a bird, meeting a window at speed. It ricochets off, and falls to the floor behind the chair.
Piece of shit.
(A gap.)
I crouch there, tunic open to my belly button. Trousers pooled at my feet. The device has gone black.
Wakey wakey?
I’m such an idiot.
It is totally blank and still. Frozen. Not cold frozen, but dead and absent a temperature. I fuss over it, warm it in my palms like a bird’s egg, entreat, caress it. Trying all the reboot sequences. Shake it briefly before thinking better of this, then place it on the bedspread and watch for movement.
Time passes.
More time passes.
It slowly, reluctantly shudders back into life.
Ping? (It says.)
A text.
“PROGRESS??”
From the Director.
23
Master of the derivative and all-around financial wizard Dennis Royal sits on his kitchen counter, scrawny legs dangling down, his sockless feet in an unlaced pair of bespoke leather dress shoes. His hair is wet from the shower and he’s smoking. He must have disabled the flat’s alarms. I’m jealous of his tousled chic, his poise, his critical distance. His not giving one shit.
“Drink?” he asks me.
Dennis insists on calling his Tea Boy, in English, just “boy,” which he does now with a wry simper.
(If his Tea Boy minds, he does not let on—his Tea Boy, featureless as a snooker ball.)
Dennis’s rooms are like everyone else’s. Futuristic and chic. Globular lamps; smooth chairs like lozenges; orange carpets; some small statuary and other mass-produced objets d’art. There are few personalizing touches; but hardly any. It’s pretty much shiny and out of the box.
“Feel warm to you, Percy?” he asks. “I can try pushing the AC if you’d like,” adding, “It’s pathetic, you know. Back before a gazillion of our positions failed, before things came apart that is, I used to live like a king. How far I’ve fallen, to live in a…unit.”
I sit a couple of feet away on a couch. A football game is on the screen. Dennis slithers off the countertop, adjusts the thermostat, gives the match a weary look. Turns. Takes a long, squinty suck on the cigarette. It glows, but a deep, fluorescent pink. “Have to smoke these now. Admin’s orders.”
I’m clenching all my muscles pretty damned hard here, trying to keep the shakes off. My palms sweating into my pockets. Dennis seems oblivious.
“In the beginning,” he says, looking at his smoke philosophically, “they were too smooth. E-thingies. Didn’t burn the throat like the real ones. Turns out people missed that scraping feeling you get from the actual deal; the raspy kick. The pain that is, so they manufactured a chemical which adds the discomfort back in.” Takes a long draw. “There’s a lesson here. People grow attached. Even to crap. Even to their own suffering. They’ll take it, as long as it is theirs. Take this place, for instance.”
A drink is handed to Dennis by his Tea Boy, and Dennis duly hands it on to me.
I try not to noticeably guzzle.
“A home for masochists, wouldn’t you say? I mean, who else could suffer such an institution? I used to have what you might call a ‘real life,’ and now look at me. Can’t even remember what that old life felt like. I vaguely recal
l its being exciting, even if I can’t recall the excitement, soi-même. Now, this dreary old monotony.” He pauses for a few moments, looks up to the ceiling, musing. Continues: “You know what people used to say about me?”
“No.”
“They’d call me a ‘disruptor.’ ”
Picture his colleagues. In tableau vivant, around a conference table barnacled with speakerphones. All of them murmuring about Dennis Royal. The managers and number crunchers, quants, all the hierarchies of greater and lesser money boys—jockeying suits, assemblies of grays and navies; Windsors, Pratts, four-in-hands; who, when Dennis strode up to his designated seat, developed a sudden fascination with their notes, their spreadsheets, their devices, their mail, their bespoke footwear, the mean level of their gaze dropping precipitously; or they’d stare at the smart-board as if at a horizon line—hoping for a distant sail—something. They’d look away. They knew what he was. Disruptor. Until the troubles. As all of our tales are tales of the fallen. We fallen.
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