“Well. I guess it was nice to have met you, Percy. It is important that we become helpmates to one another. That we care for each other. Or at least that we show an interest; a little humanity. Which you’ve done. So.”
“Bye, Miss Chatterton.”
I see another man, backup, coming up to collect me now. Miss Chatterton holds him off for a moment. I hear her say the words: “…and is completely harmless.” The staff member backs off a step, and Miss C. turns toward me again.
“Thank you again for cleaning up around the place. You are a kind man. If a bit confused at times.”
“I’ll come back then and visit, Charlotte?”
“That would be fine. That would be fine.”
The new orderly, given the nod, walks over now and takes my arm with intent.
“Good.”
“And Percy?”
“Yes, Miss Chatterton?”
“Next time, could you try to remember to wear some pants?”
* * *
—
The day finishes off with another meal in the refectory. Many of the fellows are here tonight, I suppose no one wants to contemplate the specter of being alone, given the conditions—alone atop or inside of a pile of paper, with the stifling heat, heat made so much worse by the almost contradictory darkness of the campus. There are no more Discourses™. They have been suspended for the time being. The broadcasting tech is broken, wires melted, fused, short-circuited. No one outside the Institute can watch them, and it seems ridiculous, the admins tell us, for the talks to take place just for the benefit of the fellows. And anyway, the Presence Center has been stuffed to the gills with paper. So no more Discourses™.
A shame, as I was due to give my own. (Picture it: me, on the top rung of the Ladder. The Ladder of Perfection. The Ladder of Completion. Spotlit. Jaw mic. The Fundaments up there on-screen, each given its own steel-blue, glowing slide. My bantering profundities, my ROADMAPS to THE FUTURE. Betterments FOR HUMANITY. My touchingly personal yet broadly applicable anecdotes. Me: ACTUALIZED. Applause, applause. Viral sensation.
But nope. No final stage, no valedictory moment. No Discourse™. No platform from which to give it, no tech with which to broadcast it. Not for now, anyway. Bad luck.)
* * *
—
The dining hall is a hot mess of sensation. It’s local food night, so we are back to the sudsas and tagines, and palm this and date that, all uniformly disgusting, but you can’t fault the Institute for attempting some regional flavor, now can you.
Now I am on the way home, knee-deep in beautiful blooms of crumpled paper. Ruined flowers. I’ve fashioned gators of tape, so no more paper cuts on my ankles, no sir, though the going is still tough, slow, and surpassingly loud (crinkle slap, slap, slap) and who should pop up once again like a demented cuckoo but the Enclave’s concierge.
Hello, madam.
There’s a new package, says the Enclave’s resident hobgoblin.
(My identity papers, my passport booklet: back!)
“Who dropped it off?” I ask.
A man.
“Someone from the Institute?”
No.
“What was he wearing?”
Just clothes.
“Just normal clothes?”
Normal-like.
“When?”
Several days ago.
“Several days? Well why didn’t you…N/m. Anything else?”
“Yes. Someone else has been up there,” she says.
Not a fellow, not an admin. So, some outsider has been in my rooms? There have been movements. A door was left open. Noise. Rustlings about. The other residents complaining. No-guest policy in place. Rules. If you can’t live by the codes of conduct…
“Who, who was up there? Who was the man with the package?”
“You don’t know? Hmph.” She winks at me as if we share a sinister secret, then begins to recede, slowly, backward, into the shadows.
I stride the stairs, click open the door. Whisper up the lights.
The place is empty.
He’s long gone. The Same Same man. Or one of his minions. Must be. What this all means is that the passport is back, surely. But where is it now?
Under the paper. Of course. Buried.
I tunnel once more through the piles, glancing, occasionally, at what is written on the sheets. An ungodly slumgullion of texts. Dig, read. Dig, read. Dig, read. It must be here! Walking room to room, reading/crumpling, reading/crumpling, kicking piles, until finally I see it (I see it!). The corner of the slender gray box.
Shove both of my hands into the bank of white, and papers erupt everywhere. One last tug, one last geyser, atop which rides the parcel.
I tug off the packaging, and inside of it there is mostly wadding. In this, an envelope. In the envelope: the passport. My identity papers.
The original pebbled blue booklet.
Under this, a pristine, new one.
Name. Passport number. Photo. Visa Status. D.O.B., S.S.N. Purpose of Visit. Length of Stay. Signature from Sanctioning Officials. Fingerprint. Security watermarks. Signature of Holder…
Looks good. This golden bough, my beautiful new set of identity papers—provided by our local neighborhood Same Same—that very same passport which I will, in due course, give over to the guardians who await me at the border, at the threshold between inside the Freehold and outside of it—those papers which I will slide, with only the slightest promise of their return, through the window of the bulletproof booth as requested. The papers which that official (whatever custodian of the border my number has called up for me) will scrutinize. I will watch as he reads the booklet, looking back and forth between its pages and me, then looking down again to flip through more, examining my stamps, my ideogrammatic footprints. This frail little book, which he will spatchcock and grill under his red-lit scanner in order to confirm my prints, my biometrics, to cross-reference my materials with those of known agents of discord; these papers which are all that stands between me and…not me.
Yes. It’s back. My passport. And everything is in place; everything in order.
(THE PAPER CONTINUED)
…while out behind the Residential Enclave, a set of twin doors have just sprung open automatically. Here comes a new sheet of paper on the wind, followed closely by two gentlemen, transporting a gurney between them.
On it rests an impassive Mr. Ousman Al’Hatif. Coming around now on either side of the stretcher, the men collapse and slide it, and him, into the back of a long, long car.
The paper slips easily into a clipboard, which one of the men now signs. The other man takes the clipboard, mechanically, comes around to the driver-side door, gets in, and drives away.
Several hours later, if you were listening closely enough, could you hear a barked order, and perhaps three sharp volleys, which splatter a flock of birds into the sky? Or maybe, instead, the sound of a large drawer, sliding into a wall, and clicking closed? A gas jet?
You wouldn’t hear. Not a single one of these sounds. Though the paper might.
48
(DANSE MACABRE)
The admins all wear masks now (occasionally gloves as well). The air smells of carbolic acid. And as the front advances—and with it our cabin fever—we gather in the buzzing gloom of the Arts Pavilion for testimonials. But before we spill our guts, we recite the Institute’s oath. We all do it, though no one wants to. Either way, nobody has to look at the sheet anymore. We are all pros, old hands, we all know it by heart. So we deliver the thing in a reluctant chorus, like kids muttering pledges of allegiance, or athletes a national anthem—mouthing the words mostly, sometimes just na-na-na-ing through it all, making just enough sound, collectively, to constitute a full(ish) rendition; meaning each of us only takes a word or two for each line. So, though our recitation may be mad
e up of indifference and incompetence, the oath is, despite us, a truly collective thing.
I need grace because
Things can’t be changed.
Courage; you super-duper need it.
Intelligence. Cunning. But also blind luck.
Because we admit here and now
that we are powerless.
Can’t do shit.
One day happens after another.
And another (identical-like).
The moments are lined up
In a kind of catalog of hardship.
Pathway to serenity? Nope.
It is what it is, and it is getting worse.
Meaning that “the world to come” will be pretty awful, probably.
So be prepared.
We will all most likely drown in something.
Could be fire, paper, blood.
Or radioactive sludge, or our own filth.
Or the whole thing might go down like in that book, the one which was made into a movie in which all the insects have become enormous and tornadoes spawn out of the low-slung sky like stalactites and the only sounds are booms of ordnance, the constant crackles of fire, along with grace notes of lightning and faint whimpers from the wounded and despondent—and our faces will be soot-blacked, our clothes rags, and we, the living dead, will shuffle our broken shopping carts around, will avoid the major arteries of course as the biggest threat to us will be—as it always has been—one another, and one more thing, this is because we will probably be eating human flesh for sustenance by then and Ps. no water left. Which is to say, yet again, that the world is what it is, and also what it will be, and not as you would have it.
So make right all those things you are able to.
Square ’em good.
Draw up wills and testaments.
Surrender.
What? Yes. Sure,
a kind of measured and reasonable happiness
has been known to occur (terms and conditions apply),
but most are living one day at a time
accepting hardship as a pathway to a distant, mythic peace,
blindly trusting that somehow things might be made right again,
And that eventually they, that is, we, may be happy, if not in this life,
then who knows, perhaps with Jesus almighty motherfucking Christ,
forever, in the next.
Alterburg, Oh Alterburg!
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,
So on. So forth.
We do not look at one another during the oath. It’s embarrassing. The recitation (blessedly) over, we observe a moment of silence.
Then we do the testimonials, then we file out, shuffling like a chain gang. The recitation, for whatever reason, has irked me—the sentiments, tonight, grating more than is normal. Maybe I’m sick of being subsumed in the collective. Of being just another fellow. I mean, just look at them there, loitering in the atrium. The Woman-Whose-Face-and-Hands-Are-Covered-in-Scars smiles at me grimly, and inserts a cigarette into the dense warp and woof of her mouth. Lights it. The ember glows, and the yarn does not ignite. She exhales a plume with an exhausted, but satisfied moan. 鼎福 the Architect and the Branding Expert scamper off like schoolkids, and here is the Cosmetic Dentist, speaking with the Plastic Surgeon, and here is the Camouflage Engineer, and the Man-Who-Collects-Commemorative-Snow-Globes. I’m left with the Minimalist, and Disputant 1. (Where is Disputant 2?) Evidently Disputant 2 isn’t here anymore, and I’m not sure why. Did things get too heated? Was there a duel? Some positions in a debate are only that—positions—but some positions are beliefs, ingrained, and harder to slough off. Which is to say that perhaps I have misread their argument and its purpose. Either way Disputant 1 seems heartbroken. When did Disputant 2 leave exactly? Disputant 1 doesn’t want to talk about it. Okay, but. He left. Begging the question, should I simply…leave?
And going back to the flat, I find instead that I’m walking to the car park.
I mean, what if—what if I were to go? Just up and depart this noise. What then? I now have the means again. I could leave the Institute. Head into the wilderness, Absent Without Official Leave. There might be a place in that desert for me, a shanty, a fleapit where I could live out an anchorite’s life—my own patch of earth, outside of the dome’s forum of conversation and commerce—I would be dead to the world, sure. And living at sea level; the flattest of the flatlands. So no more of my elevated perspectives. But I’d be content, perhaps. With no more scrutiny, no more pings, no more pressure. I’d live, albeit frugally. Simply. There’s a vehicle right there. Totally unattended. Why not?
I find I’m flushed with excitement, heading toward the car, hearing the urgency of my blood, and the road crunching under my feet. I just could hop in, now. Tell the car to set the GPS randomly, drive until we stop. Exit the vehicle wherever it happens to run out of juice. Who would miss me, eh? No more groups, no more oaths, no more Ladder of Completion and confluence units…ah, but then, Percy, then: How would the project be completed? There’s the rub. Without the infrastructure, guidance, admins, the program: How would I finish? I wouldn’t, and that’s the Mfing truth. I wouldn’t last a day on my own. And would I survive the storms? Sand and soot? The swirling paper and other debris. Good questions all. And the project is getting made. It would be so foolish to leave, a yard from the goal line. But think of the freedom, the anonymity. The death of ambition (the peace). To vanish…and perhaps there are more radical ways in which the Same Same can help. Who knows? And, my hand is on the car door, so I might as w—
Several bodies slam into me, and now it is lights out.
(…AND OF YOUNG HANS’S MORAL STATE)
Darkness. Total darkness.
I need to concentrate. A new room, now. I’ve been isolated. It’s so black. Can’t see a damn thing, though the situation could not be more apparent. Which is to say that, perhaps, a great honor has been bestowed upon me. Hasn’t it just? Retreats such as these are only granted to those most promising of fellows (I’ll have you know)—content providers whose work will be of enduring value. So the great, clandestine peer committee must have assembled on my behalf (I’d imagine), my project scrutinized, and then the go-ahead given—given (again: presumably), with the resounding whump of a great rubber stamp hitting the proper forms. Then a cheer goes around (I can practically hear it), handshakes, so on.
I must be equal to the honor.
Though endings are the most difficult, and so require the most solitude. But it is hard; a hard row to hoe—this loneliness.
Think, Percy. Think. So close to the end. You’ve got this.
Hard too, when my cloister is completely dark; darkly, dark. Though this darkness is in line with the mission, after all. No disruptions; not even in the form of sense-data. No empirical input. And obviously, I am not to interact with my peers. I am not told how long this specified period will last.
(FAQ: Has any fellow remained in such creative isolation forever? A: Idk.)
I am granted ocasional breaks for solitary meals, naturally, pushed under the door by silent Zimzim, my Tea Boy. But that’s it. The main takeaway is: no distractions.
This, the new austerity.
Btw I think I’ve passed some sort of anniversary here in my solitude. No one celebrates these things here, but I am pretty sure yesterday was the date of my arrival at the Institute. A year. One whole year. Amazing. Amazing that it has been two years already. Hard to believe. I landed under the metastructure only (I want to say: five?) years ago. Idk.
I will leave. Soon. But I will only leave with more pages under my belt. The final pages. More paper. This is what my confinement must signify.
That I will prevail.
But only with no input.
Only output. Only output.
&n
bsp; A second meditation on time, on my crippling awareness of it—the unending stretch, alone with myself, with nothing but whatever threadbare inner resources I may possess.
My own poor company; imagination; impoverished narrative skills; so forth—this meditation to be indicated by a solitary word:
“Etc.”
Days pass.
Moan. Roll my neck.
More time passes.
Scream a little. Cry a bit. Grunt.
Feel around in the darkness.
Cry more.
Purgation, illumination, unification. Am bored.
Being “all cried out” is the only novelty.
Though I’ve developed some techniques for staving off despair, e.g.: certain fantasies I’ll unspool, certain songs I croon to myself from time to time. Also, I perform occasional physical exercises (see under: Daily Physical Routines).
I add a new activity to the list, that is: the fine art of tapping my fingers.
Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
Repeat.
While tapping my fingers against my legs in the darkness, something new happens. I.e., a light flickers. Not inside my head that is (pretty sure). But an actual light. (Tbd.)
Tap ta—
Light.
I freeze, and look up to see from whence the light comes, and just like that: the world goes dark again.
Sit in the darkness.
Am frightened.
More crying/singing/self-pleasure/etc. Blah blah blah.
After waiting awhile (I want to say: days?) I try again, experimentally. Tapping my fingers once more, and boy howdie, the light twinkles back on. It’s just a glimmer, mind, but after the blackness it is disturbingly bright.
I stop, and the light winks out, as before.
Conclusions:
Drum fingers—light goes on.
Stop drumming fingers—light goes out.
Cause/effect. Qed.
Tapping my fingers again, tentatively of course, but slowly accelerating, and the light dilates, and I am becoming a bit acclimatized to it now, the deepening glow, and so continue tapping until the light gains enough strength to begin illuminating some of the space I now think of as my home (albeit a lockup). Square. Single room, small enough to be covered, wall-to-wall, in four strides. More finger-tapping and the light oozes out to the very perimeter, to the room’s corners, brightening. Spreading. There’s a bed, and a bedside table with bright objects on it. A sink, a steel mirror.
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