(Gap.)
Why is the car so slow?
(Gap.)
My eyes are itching like nobody’s business, there is a spot on each of them, in the soft tissue, where the corner of the eye meets the base of my nose, that is on fire. I wedge my fingers in there, and spin them back and forth, one eye after another, trying to alleviate the irritation.
“Let me look at it,” Dennis asks, tired of pouting. I hand the device to him in a conciliatory gesture, knowing there is nothing he can see there.
“Poor little lamb,” he says, stroking it.
“Give it back now.”
The vehicle decelerates and stops, door locks pop automatically.
He places the device back on the seat and I snatch it up.
“Go on, Dennis. I’ll find my own way back.”
I’m on the run, but I turn my head back one last time to make sure he’s leaving, and I see the car close its own doors before Dennis can utter the bon mot I’m sure he has all ready in the chamber, and now I barrel straight into someone. We tumble to the rough macadam, tangled up in one another.
A woman in a suit, a headscarf, and large sunglasses. She’s dropped one of her many bags. A thermos clangs along the ground.
“Look where you are going!” she bleats, rubbing an elbow.
Now the hum of the car, with Dennis in it, setting out. He’s probably laughing his ass off in there. W/e. The woman is still swearing, as she collects her effects from the hot cement. She refuses the hand I offer her. I can’t stand around here forever.
“Sorry!” I yell behind me, sprinting away.
*
Same buildings, same city, same street corner. Same heat, same walk, same avenues, streets and lanes and overpasses, same alley, same door, same…
*
“Hello…hello?”
There are no sounds at all from behind the wall. I stand in the fluorescence, and then I remember the black rubber mat, set my mismatched feet on it and hear that synthesized bell, and the door opens, and out he comes; the man again. I have a fleeting glimpse of his large and expressive eyes. He moves as slowly and smoothly as an astronaut. Finally reaches the counter, and looks askance.
“Hello again,” I say.
He nods once. Points at me.
“Yes, it is me,” I reassure him.
He continues poking his finger in the air toward me. Rather vehemently. (Obviously it is hard to see what is going on here as I am trying to look downward, as instructed.)
“Yes, yes. Hello, me. Yes, Again. Never mind. Never mind. But, excuse me, this is a matter of some urgency.” I hold up the device in my hands, as if it were a goldfish in a two-palmed well of water. He looks down at it and back up at me. And down at the device again.
“Can you?”
I place the device gently onto the counter, the device briefly lights up, as if in protest, a last plea for me to halt the surgery which will surely take place, before it slips, acquiescing, back into its vegetative brain-death. I look up, and the man seems so familiar to me now, I don’t mean from my last visit; rather, it is almost like I know him from before, from elsewhere. I’m suffering from my recurring strain of déjà vu.
But I quickly look down again. I pull some money out, my new money, his money. Put the money on the counter, point at the device.
“Same Same.”
His brow creases for a moment, but I can’t tell what/if he is thinking.
“Can you, just—”
He looks down, and then up at me again.
“Same Same?”
(THE PAPER CONTINUED)
One of the papers which has recently gained egress into the metastructure is currently sailing down a dark corridor. Heading deeper into the Institute’s Security Center.
Now (in this next scene) this piece of paper flies through another set of double doors weaving like a swallow, following another turn, and another. It banks right, to swing into a new space, where the Director watches a set of monitors. He doesn’t come here often, to the surveillance core. He has underlings, deputies who can perform these tasks for him. (Not to mention the recognition-and-analysis code which takes care of looking out for most signs of trouble—the algorithms are the real watchdogs here.) But occasionally, he will wander from his office, going ponderously down the back stairwell, and waddle into the Business Center’s lower levels to have a peek. Especially when he knows no one else is on duty and the screens are unmanned. The spectacle of Institute activity as displayed on the large monitor array is calming to him. All those closed-circuit videos: they provide him with a feeling which is, at its core, deeply ambiguous if nonetheless pleasurable. The ambiguity springs from this: watching the screens provides the Director with a sense of his own insignificance, his “thinness-on-the-ground,” his near invisibility. This feeling arises, while watching the monitors, as he realizes that the world goes on without him; that he isn’t needed. But simultaneously, and in almost direct opposition to this first feeling, he also feels powerful when watching the screens. Omnipresent! Somehow these two feelings combine to reinvigorate him whenever life at the Institute becomes overly dull.
The paper knows nothing of this of course, and it scrimmages with the ceiling fan above the head of the Director, the Director: who is actually, this time, here on business, not pleasure, and so is especially focused on the task at hand, and therefore does not notice the paper above him.
He is here, it turns out, to watch a particular feed.
Something bad is taking place. Though, frankly, it could be worse. He’s seen a lot worse. He sits down in his especially large, reinforced swivel chair, and then whispers up an enlargement of the feed.
“ENHANCE.”
The video goes full screen, across all the mirrored, tethered devices.
On it, there are two men, half-dressed, wilding around an unfinished room in an abandoned building they definitely should not be occupying, with a bottle of liquor, a couple of spoons, a credit card, a bunch of pills they definitely should not be in possession of.
The Director stops it, rewinds it, and watches it again.
Meanwhile, the paper flits around above his head like a moth.
(SHAMEFUL SUGGESTIONS)
I don’t make it back to the Institute until the thin light of evening. I feel utterly exhausted. And don’t even make it to the door without having to sit down by the pool, which is apparently no longer properly refrigerated; algae smudging the late, high-waterline like a green, pastel rubbing. I can’t make out the industrious robot vacuum because of the fading light and the growing murk, but I know it’s down there, still performing its exploration of the pool’s bottom. Despite how unappetizing the pool looks, I kick off my shoes, and sit on the slender diving board which is rough like a tongue, and dangle my legs so that just the tips of my toes skim the surface of the scummy water. As I make series after series of concentric ripples, I wonder once again about the contents of my device, begin again to run through the perverse outings it has accompanied me on, and shudder anew. I am grateful now that my reflection, on this occasion, is lost in the murk.
“Mr. Frobisher.”
Miss Fairfax’s arms are crossed so I can see the delicate vein-work in her compressed forearms. Dead frown. Grabs my elbow, tugs me, brusquely, in the door and closes it behind us. We are facing one another in the vestibule. In silence for a moment during which I realize that I’m standing in a small pile of paper, which I kick aside.
She looks down, and back again, pushing the glasses rather violently back up to the bridge of her nose.
“Care to explain yourself, Percy? How did you get a hold of those scrips?”
“Wait.”
“And trespassing? Destruction of property?”
“How do you—”
“There’s been a meeting, the subj
ect of which is your tenure here.”
“I’m making progress.”
“What you keep making is a mess of everything.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“Don’t you?”
“I lost my head.”
“Jesus, how could you idiots do such a thing?”
She pulls her glasses off altogether, and starts poking them at me, punctuating her statements now with little stabs, in what is a hitherto unseen escalation of glasses-based semaphore. I always am amazed at the transformation when glasses come off—how a person looks so innocent, and vulnerable, masks and armor and eyesight removed. She looks at the moment a bit like an infuriated baby owl.
“They’ve put you on probation, Percy. And you will be handing over your identity papers to the Director.”
“But you can’t do that.”
And I am shocked at her disappointment. At the investment of one human agent in the affairs of another. My affairs; that my affairs, which should have been sealed off, corked up, have been allowed to leak. Me, to leak, to leach. I didn’t want for/didn’t ask for: this. Never wanted it. We exchanged what we exchanged, Miss Fairfax and I, but there was never a compact of complete forfeiture. Idk. Never mind, it doesn’t matter. What does, what does matter quite a bit: is that I am being grounded. What a cock-up. What a fucking fiasco.
“It is private, Miss Fairfax,” I plead, “what I do with my time,” thinking: at least I get to stay though. At least I can stay.
“What the hell are you talking about: private?”
“It’s my life. Mine.”
She looks at me like I’m nuts.
“Mine,” and as the words leave my lips, I involuntarily wince.
27
(ANALYSIS)
“And where do you think you are going?”
Having just opened the glass doors of the Residential Enclave, I feel someone’s hand on my shoulder. I turn around to face the resident admin.
“For a walk,” I answer, as nonchalantly as possible. I can smell the park and nature trails.
The doors behind me whoosh, then click closed.
“Have you finished that assignment? You’re a week overdue. Perhaps you could take your walk another time, Percy.”
The hand (firm, authoritative) takes my arm now, and I’m led back down the corridor.
Back in my room, I collect a couple of sheets of paper and a pen from the desk (NB no pens in pockets anymore) and flop down on the bed, ready to begin.
I grab the top of the pen and pull. The cap gives way with a little click, and I flip the pen over in a deft motion, examine it closely to ensure there is no more leakage. It’s good to have my trusty pen working properly again. I stick the pen’s top on the back end. I now take the thickest of the Institute brochures from the bedside table and rest it on my knees. I then take the stack of paper and place this on top of the brochure. Now, I place the nib of the pen down, gently, on the topmost piece of paper—about a fifth or a sixth of the way from the top of the page vertically, and inside of the left side margin. Holding the pen in the intersection between my index finger, pointer, and thumb, I begin to curl my index finger, apply a slight downward pressure on the shaft of the pen, using the pad of my thumb as a fulcrum. As a result, the pen’s nib begins to drag toward me. I feel the resistance of the paper’s pulp fighting the tip and hear a small scratching. A downward stroke of the nib is slowly accomplished, leaving a short blue line in its wake. I have now written the number “1” in the left-hand margin.
(The work I have to do would be easier to write and format on my device, but sadly…and now I wonder when I will have it back again.)
I have so many of these stupid-ass assignments to complete; they are meted out constantly. I’m told that they are meant to facilitate my project, but I am beginning to suspect that a majority of them are inflicted on me as punishment. The tasks are small, but it’s death by a thousand cuts. If only they’d leave me alone I could crack my project wide open.
Last week, for instance, I was told that I needed to make a list of all my physical routines. Lord knows what for. But as the man said, I’m late on this one.
Gotta start.
Most of my recent assignments are like this. Simple—insultingly so—but mandatory. Generally, I am asked, in these assignments, to account for everything I think and do, and I do so in the form of lists.
The Institute loves a list.
Lists of appointments, lists of accomplishments, lists of failures, lists of social interactions, lists of the foods I eat, lists of the hours I sleep, lists of my variable heart rates and blood pressures. Lists of things I say, lists of my dreams and bowel movements, even lists of the lists I’ve made.
And now, of course, there is also someone with me almost all the time. Admins, staffers (various). They go with me everywhere—to my Groups, to my workshops. There’s one of them presiding over each and every meal I attend. The only place where I am alone is my rooms. Not that the admins threaten or molest me in any way. The admins are just always there. The whole affair is suffocating.
And as if I needed another reminder of what could be in store for me, what perils might be lurking within the Institute’s perimeter, last night there was yet another incident out on the lawns—an incident which I witnessed from my balcony—in which a person was confronted in some manner by some kind of dark mob. “That could have been me,” I remember thinking, as I squinted out into the night, visualizing the entire scenario, beginning to end, as if it had been me, before backing up into the room again, latching the sliding doors and drawing the curtain.
Perhaps I should bolt while I can.
I can, after all, leave. Why wouldn’t I?
Funny though, I can’t summon the will, moreover: the desire.
What would I do out there, even? Out of the flatlands and back, hidden among the hills. Anonymous again. Who would have me?
Yet the very idea that I wouldn’t be able to leave, that my passport will be taken from me, that I’ll be called to forfeit my freedom at the behest of some shadowy council…
What if the answer—the particular answer to this particular quandary—is one which has been presenting itself to me incessantly since the moment of my arrival here, everything inclining me toward it? Every sign, word, every person, object, and gesture pushing me? There is something I can do. I am slippery and cunning and…I will not be held! Which is to say that they can take my identity booklet, my papers. My passport. They can take it. Fine. Because what if I have two of them?
Tbd.
And the project?
The project?
I thought a lot about the Fundaments again today. Having them back has been nice. Periodically I’ll read all thirty-two of them over again and feel, for a moment, confident, as if my life had a program. A runnel through which to move. A channel to broadcast on. It is interesting that I gain a modicum of relief from these documents of mine, given that they are predicated upon knowledge which is, itself, derived from long-standing creative struggle. Pain, in a sense. Without such difficulties, it occurs, these Fundaments would not exist at all. I have sacrificed. There has been a cost, a price paid. But does the Institute take such factors into consideration? Do they commend me for these hard-won Fundaments? No, no they don’t. Yet the Fundaments must count for something. I continue to wonder if they are—the Fundaments themselves—the entire purpose of the project. Time will tell, I suppose.
Time will tell.
And I wait for “time to tell” by standing by the window again, as, now, the day marches on, and I am looking out Rn, out and over, and in a palm right above where another attack lately took place, I can see a white shape stuck to one of the fronds, and that white shape hovers between: whitehawk and grocery bag.
Bag and bird. Bird; bag.
Now trash, now not.<
br />
No amount of scrutiny will tip the scales.
Bag, bird. Bird, Bag.
(Paper?)
DAILY PHYSICAL ROUTINES
1. Sitting (erect/slumped)
peering…
…at the project itself
…at the middle distance
…at eternity
…at my palm, which is where my device would ordinarily be
…down double-barrels of surefire disaster
head in hands—common
penis in hand—less common (but only marginally)
knees in hands—rare
feet in hands—rarer
at desk
on desk
under desk
on floor
in public place (Garden, plinth, Presence Center, Library, so on etc.)
in private place (My roof. My regal thoughts, looking down from my regal perspective. My balcony, mostly. Seeing what there is to see)
on public toilet
up in bed, that influential novel I’ve been reading, heavy in my lap. I’m trying to add some more pages to my total-pages-read tally. I’ve promised I’d get a minimum of four pages read every day, and I am keeping up, but I’ll be damned if I’m retaining any of it
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