Same Same

by Peter Mendelsund

  Unfortunately, the metastructure, even in its reduced state, has been shown to mediate natural light in such a way as to render the camera inoperable. Therefore, he takes it upon himself (despite specific warnings not to do so from his admin, admin12) to move the camera off-site, outside the solar array and the dome’s perimeter.

  Tragically, though predictably, the camera has melted under the desert sun.

  He has, nonetheless, considered submitting the liquefied camera itself to the Institute in lieu of his original project.

  (We summarily, and unanimously, agree with his decision to do so. Without reserve. Amazing, we tell him. We, our Group, has perceived, instantly, that the melted camera and plates, his work’s scrap and flotsam, its slag, are 1. Also what life looks like, 2. What every project is, ultimately, anyway; that is: what gets made, and 3. He and the Conceptual Artist should probably switch projects.

  “Congratulations,” we all say to the Photographer-now-Conceptual-Artist, slapping him on the back and raising our cups in a toast to project completion and the final rungs of ladders. He is, after all, the first in our company to ascend, so the whole thing is quite new to us and therefore a bit confusing. Completing a project? In this case purely by accident?

  Thanking him for sharing gets lost in a demonstratively celebratory atmosphere. (The truth is though, his fortuitous success has momentarily driven us all, individually, inward, and the enthusiasm is, of course, faked.)

  * * *

  —

  The Woman-Whose-Face-and-Hands-Are-Covered-in-Yarn goes fourth. She has a specific complaint. She needs to complete her Artist’s Statement, which explains in detail why she has covered her face and hands in yarn. The statement is past due. However, when she sits down to accomplish this seemingly simple task, she finds herself unable to write or whisper to her device, due to the intrusiveness of the yarn itself, which, as it gets more wet, expands, and becomes more and more tangled, until it mittens her fingers and stoppers her mouth entirely, leaving her unable to do more than to scrawl, or mumble untranslatable gobbledygook. She fares no better with attempting to mime her statement. It is hopeless.

  (It is, of course, very hard for us to understand even this story as she tells it, and, in fact, what has just been recounted is no better than my own tentative guesswork.) We thank her for sharing, despite being unsure of what was shared.

  * * *

  —

  My turn.

  34

  (THE PAPER CONTINUED)

  Returning to the deep desert for a moment we zoom on in, over la Tour Eiffel, which is, you will remember, uncoupled from its context. It is stranded in a godforsaken nowheresville. The monument is as hot as an iron and totally useless, except, that is, perhaps symbolically (and even then). Yet here is another strange development: the tower now has something simply massive draped over it, practically covering the whole shebang. This something is, accordingly, paper—but now, to add insult to injury, this sheet of paper has grown to the size of a football pitch, and is impaled on the tower like a colossal newspaper article on an editor’s spike. All of which is to say that scale is now all fucked up on top of everything else. And speaking of “on top of everything else,” there is another of these giant white mantles currently draped over *the entire metastructure* and though, from my vantage beneath it, I look up at the sky and imagine that it is darkest, moonlit night—and this fact is soothing to me, a respite from the anxious confusions which crowd the daylit hours—the situation more closely resembles that of a birdcage covered by a blanket; covered in order to get that restless and compulsively talkative parrot to sleep.

  To sleep. Sleep. Please sleep…

  But I can’t. Can’t quit my thoughts. Too much troubling information to process. In the Library Annex today, a bit of rubble had fallen from the ceiling onto the beautiful polished concrete flooring—the debris lying there in the path with no one to pick it up. Through the hole in the ceiling, the inner space behind the wall was laid bare, and I saw among the infestation of plantlike rebar, there, stuck to the metal, deep up inside the iron grid—yes, more paper.

  It’s even inside the walls.

  It is everywhere.

  Of course, it could be worse. There are still things to do here. Work. Still occasional outings. Presentations. The dogs are still brought in once a week.

  We still get deliveries. Supplies. Food. (We fellows aren’t expected to have to eat paper. Yet.)

  But the influx is troubling.

  And Psa, the paper is mine, of course. It is for me—meant for me. I am both the cause of and the solution to the paper. (For which I would apologize, if I could. I would apologize for any inconvenience it might be causing. Is clearly causing. I am aware that my paper is just a massive pain for everyone else here. Mea culpa.)

  What I will say is that: here the material is. Here it is. Stranger still: the material is—the paper, that is—showing me things; telling me things.

  Gives me the sight I otherwise lack.

  It shows me wonderful, fantastical visions. But also, I am coming to see that it also betrays difficult truths, all manner of disconcerting sights, events I shouldn’t have access to, or be able to witness.

  Is it making a picture? Telling a story? Setting a stage? Do facts need to be established?

  Wtf.

  (PICTURES)

  Now…

  * * *

  —

  The late afternoon finds me semi-reclined, out by the Observation Point, peering into the yawning void. Resting on my knees, also semi-reclined, is this novel I can’t finish, though god knows I keep trying. This is one seriously tedious read, and it’s winning the war we are fighting. There’s only so much one can take. Hundreds of pages of (albeit transcendent) sick-lit. The protagonist: a real boob. And all the other characters: flat as can be. Worse, they are mere mouthpieces for the author’s abstract interests. Wooden, all of them. It is all handled so clumsily. Though I must admit that the book does have a kind of cumulative effect. A nimbus of late times—dying worlds, the corrupt breath of the grave. For what it’s worth (and apropos of the “cumulative effect,” I am beginning to wonder if all of these clumsy characters are meant to form, collectively, a single conceptual apparatus. Idk.) I/a/c, our “main guy” here is, at this very moment in the text, semi-reclined as well. He’s lounging about, staring into space—which is all he seems to do frankly—and once again the question arises: Why should I care about this idiot and his woolgathering? Considering the matter, I come to the conclusion that, our specific philosophical commitments aside, this stupid sickling and I—I in my desert, he on his alpine porch—do share an unhealthy preoccupation with time. So perhaps there is some lesson to be gleaned here; I could stick with the story and see where this amateur philosopher’s obsessions lead him…though I’d certainly rather experience my own tedium than read about someone else’s. Tbd. I’ll leave the decision for another time.

  The air is strangely mephitic today. It’s enough to drive one inside.

  I put my book back into my bag, and while the bag is open, I root around in there, find my recently Same Same’d device.

  With all that’s been going on here I haven’t had a moment to examine it closely. Some interesting developments.

  * * *

  —

  To wit…

  * * *

  —

  The device is good as new. Of course.

  Look at it.

  As with the uniform, the Same Same man has outdone himself. The device’s outer shell is gleaming—all the dents and cracks are gone. All functions are go, everything purring along, beautifully. If anything, the device is faster and more responsive than it has ever been. As well as having fixed the hardware, the Same Same must have also upgraded the firmware, all the code, etc., etc. New everything, so on. The device is both more efficient an
d more helpful than ever, and is whispering now at a glorious and remarkable speed and capacity. And most importantly now shows no signs of pinging uncontrollably.

  It’s been delightfully mute.

  * * *

  —

  Later…

  * * *

  —

  I say that the device is as “good as new,” but that is not true: it is, in fact, better.

  I spend some time reacquainting myself with it, ensuring that all the settings are now correct and the customizations intact (they are). I enjoy a sequence of whole new entertainments that were previously unavailable to my old operating system. Some full immersions, various networks, games, platforms on which to game, apps for purchasing clothes and music, food and drugs and pet supplies and cosmetics and companionship and content of all kinds, browsers, various media players, apps for tracking this and that, organizing this and that, recording this and that, so forth….It is only after I look through my pics that things begin to get strange.

  * * *

  —

  So…

  * * *

  —

  I’m looking for the picture I took the night I went up to the roof, the picture of the night sky. Amid the profusion of photos of the campus, here: fellows, pristine lawns glistening, fountains crystalline, palms swaying, the formidable concrete…I find it. There’s my dark square. And I notice something strange: the square is now altered; it is white now instead of dark. Almost solid white. Which at first, I think, must be a filter I forgot I had applied.

  Certainly, my other photos seem unchanged. Scroll, scroll, scroll. And then I see one (and this is the really strange bit), this one photo, a selfie I took when I first arrived at the Freehold, a picture to announce and memorialize my arrival here.

  It shows me grinning, pointing out through a window at a sign outside the airport.

  Like Share Tag Delete

  * * *

  —

  And anyway…

  * * *

  —

  I took the shot, and I remember thinking, at the time, that the airport, the Freehold Aerodrome, might as well be just about anywhere. Palms and gentle lighting and carpet geometrics and the soft throbs of music. AC so cool. Like a moon base: hermetically sealed. (Soft music: piped in. Fresh air: piped in. Did we all fly in, I thought, or are all we travelers also squeezed out—suctioned through fat-pipes out from some vat of raw hominid sludge and pneumatically forced through conduit systems of subterranean tubes until everything and everyone is plopped upon this terrestrial plane, into, specifically, this airport concourse, with its check-in desks, carousels and lines, etc., etc.?)

  * * *

  —

  Also…

  * * *

  —

  The sign “Welcome to the Freehold” proved beyond a reasonable doubt that I was, indeed, there, here, in this crazy foreign place, far, far from home, and so I took the photo then to prove it. Prove it to whom? To everyone, as one does. Idk. But also to myself. To make it real, obvs. But the sign was bright, intense against the desert sky. It was.

  The sky in the vivid heat of day.

  * * *

  —

  But hey there…

  * * *

  —

  In the photo, in the selfie, I’m there trying to smile—a stab at a Fomo-inducing “look at me and check out how far I’ve traveled” affect.

  There I am, but now: in the dead of night.

  * * *

  —

  Furthermore…

  * * *

  —

  I’m not in an airport anymore. Where am I?

  I scan the pic for evidence.

  * * *

  —

  Crucially…

  * * *

  —

  I am outside, and behind me you can just make out that there is a looming mountain, amid the cragged notches of other, smaller mountains, a series of dark copses and vales…

  * * *

  —

  And…

  * * *

  —

  It is snowing.

  35

  (IN WHICH I FIND OUT WHAT I AM)

  My photos have been tampered with. Or my device. That much is clear. The Same Same shop has screwed up this time or otherwise meddled somehow. An accident, perhaps; it cannot possibly be an act of malice, could it? What do I really know about this guy? What do I know about his methods; his motives? Did my uniform seem changed when I got it back? My checkers, my pen, my shoe? True, the uniform did smell different, but it was otherwise the same. I think. But my photos have definitely been Same Same’d…wrong, or something. Shit. Someone else’s perhaps? Something has happened, and I realize to my horror that these pics, these memories of mine, could be morphing still. Mutating, even now. The very facts of my life, my personal history, shifting while I sit here doing nothing about it.

  Unable to rest, I get up, get dressed, and am off on one of my night walks.

  The Institute is empty as could be. I try each of the buildings and they are all dark and locked down for the night. I am the only insomniac in the universe tonight. Defeated, I head to my Observation Point to plot my next move, but while I’m on the path which feeds it…

  The sounds of muffled unrest.

  Sounds, coming from another path, a path which leads to this one. Sounds of something moving chaotically through the brush, these sounds broken by occasional grunts. Something crunching up the path—a large animal perhaps. Whatever or whoever it is, it is moving quickly and with intent.

  I get up, and leave my position, moving at a casual canter. I am just at the point where the trees dilate back out into the expanse of the Institute lawns. It occurs to me to hide, to retreat back into the comfort of the middle of that black wood, but I realize to my horror that it is too late, that I must have already been spotted.

  The sounds grow louder and louder and out of the black comes an inchoate blob which continues to resolve further into a group of shapes. And these shapes become men. Heading straight at me.

  “STOP,” they command….

  They are after me—have come for me at last. My mind paralyzed—remembering “the Night Struggle” brings metal to my mouth, and my body twitches to run.

  But where could I run to? The hedges are closed-in, there is no leaving the path.

  “Hello?”

  No response.

  They keep coming.

  “Sorry!” (I cry, as I finally bolt.)

  Bursting through the hedge tears the skin on my exposed arms, but still I push deeper, deeper in until I am through to the other side, and Rn I hear voices rise up in alarm and I’m off running down a new path now but realize suddenly that I am heading straight toward the glacial lake, which means open ground, and sure enough there is the posse on the far side having sighted me, splitting into two parties heading around the water in a pincer-movement, so I dash back again toward the wood and stop, briefly, to catch my breath in a small contemplation arena attempting to keep my breathing quiet and suddenly the path lights up, here they come, through my flinch, I see the bloc of men striding toward me, now in a wedge formation, and I bolt again out of the far egress and onto a lawn, and as I’m jogging away I see the lights on in the Presence Center far off twinkling and beckoning and lights mean safety and other fellows (and where is everyone btw?) and why am I always alone out here at night anyway; but I’m hopping over an ornamental plinth and off round an obelisk and down a third path

  …of them; five admins.

  “Why aren’t you answering?” the lead admin demands, brusquely.

  “We’ve been pinging you,” the second says.

  “Regrettable,” a third adds.

  “…as you are already very late” (the fourth)
.

  The rear admin: “We need to leave.”

  “But where are we going?” I plead.

  I find we are heading to the Pleasure Center. Odd site for a meeting. I practically run to keep up with the admins, one of whom has me by the arm in a sturdy grip.

  “Not the Pleasure Center,” one of them corrects: “beneath. The Wellness Center. Down in the baths.”

  I’d never visited the spa and baths, on the floors beneath the Pleasure Center, in the bowels of the Institute’s general undergirding. We take an elevator down to the subfloors, where we enter a stairwell, and walk yet another flight of stairs down, entering the spa.

  I am taken to a small room.

  “Please relinquish your uniform. Hurry, sir. You are quite late. Your tardiness has put you at a disadvantage in these matters, right off the bat. Do not compound the problem.” He fixes me with a schoolmaster’s stare, a look which brooks no contradiction, and I carefully remove my uniform under his scrutiny, and hand it to him.

  “Everything please,” he commands.

  What choice do I have?

  I pull down my undergarments and remove my socks and stand before them with my hands held out and down in front of me. One of the admins crouches and scoops up the remainder of my clothes, and then they all turn to leave.