We're Dogs

We're dogs.

"C'mon, Boxer, bite 'im in the balls!"

"C'mon, Snoop, get his throat!"

Rounding in a circle in an alley 'round Boxer and Snoop as they snarled and gnashed we were, 'rounded ourselves by broken bricks and bottles and beerpuke, sounds of hot jazz from somewheres, no signs of civilization anywheres, just Boxer and Snoop as they fought for the other's submission.

"Boxer, you gonna be his bitch?"

"Snoop, you some pussy?, fuck him!"

Snoop was my guy; I would've laid down my throat for him. He had what they call it. No way he could lose to this Boxer cunt. Snoop backed suddenly into me as Boxer made a lefty paw-slash at him my man. I barked, "Bite 'im!" and Snoop jumped like a yard and threw over Boxer and got 'im by the throat, snarling an' snarling 'an snarling. And then Boxer kicked Snoop in the head, I don't know how he did it, and Snoop fell back, totally fuckin' stunned.

Boxer got up and covered Snoop, looking him in the eye.

"You give?"

Snoop gasped, "Yeah. I give."

We all calmed down. I once-overed Boxer. Some dog! I was Boxer's guy; Snoop was just another mutt.

 

***

 

Look at it. Off on a holiday, down in the sunny south, he and me, looking for action. There's plenty of cheap trick down here.

But he. My boyfriend, my husband. Calls me fat, calls me disgusting. All the while he's doing rent-boys.

(All the while I'm doing rent-boys too: Caribbean style.)

He hates me anyway. Home again we are; he's I think in the kitchen; we haven't spoken since our plane landed. He hates me.

Four floors to the ground. I'd break my neck, sure. I have nothing, my heart hurts so bad. I can't stop it; I can't talk to him. He thinks he's so right.

I think he's gone into the bedroom. Leaving me all alone, he wants that, so cruel. How can I be close to him, such a bastard. He's probably jerking off thinking about some orgy we had. He had, not me, not really.

Look at the sunlight moving up that building there. The sun will be down in just a couple minutes. It'll get cooler too.

The alley pavement's probably still warm. Something is warm around here. Not as warm as the sunny south but still.

He'll come out eventually; I'll be gone.

 

***

 

-According to our records, you have a newspaper delivery route as an adolescent.

-I did?

-Yes. You were eleven, twelve, thirteen.

-Yeah, I think you're right. I think I did.

-What's with the hesitation? Are you hiding something?

-No, nothing's hidden. It's that I can't see myself doing something like that. But yeah it's coming back to me. It was an afternoon thing, wasn't it?

-You delivered newspapers after school.

-Yes--and on Saturday mornings and Sunday mornings too.

-It's all coming back to you. Is it?

-Not much of it, no. The papers would be ... dropped off on my driveway. And I remember collecting money for them, having to keep account. I can hardly believe it. How did I do it?

-Keep going.

-Money. Christmas tip money. I had a lot of money. I remember washing it once.

-Washing money?

-Yes. I'd seen my brother doing that, so I did it too. Only once. Strange!

-That's pretty weird.

-Yes, I know. I also remember taking string and filling my room with it, tack to tack, like a spider's web.

-So you had a paper route.

-Yes.

-You did weird things, huh?

-I was there. My heart's the same.

 

-Hey, don't sweat it. I wasn't perfect either. Do you think you want to go on?

-Let's see. I used to suck on my lower lip. I did it all the time, so much so that I developed a semi-circular rash on my lower lip.

-Really.

-The skin would rot at the edges and I could peel it off.

-That's pretty disgusting.

-Yeah. So I had to use this bitter ointment to make me stop doing it.

-Did it work?

-After a while. I still over-use Chap Stick though.

-Small price to pay, isn't it?

-It's readily available.

-What about sex?

-What about sex?

-How did it affect you? What did you know about it?

-That's a bit harder to talk about.

-Whatever comes to mind. This is a very informal test, you see.

-The family dog. I shouldn't name her. Her fur was so soft. In any case, I didn't come close to anything except some rubbing. I doubt she even realized what was happening. Her fur was soft.

-I think we have enough information now.

-Okay, so, tell me. About that tortoise you said was a turtle. If they're the same creatures, how come they have different names?

 

***

 

Let's laze in the grass for a long twelve minutes

And look up where will be the summer sky stars

At midnight tonight with things all alright

As a child examined does expect surcease soon

After the clock ticks to the twelve of noon

Let's linger in the leaves for sundry seconds more

Not caring for creatures other than ourselves

But yet loving the antic crickets and crawling ants

We hear unseen under the green and gold sheaves

For they are lingering too like in love like doves

Let's waste some minutes more where the world

Can't catch us cooing and clutching so much

The sun's ashamed and glad God's grass is long

Enough to hide our hungered hands from him

And happy he can't hear our carnal whispering

Let's take our time for the curved earth is a cup

Inverted as a hand holding us up to heaven

Like long-dead sacerdotal sacrificers did

In days long gone before the earth emasculated

Was with agriculture cutting through our grass.

Our time is terser so don't think of things

Beyond your eyes and ears and toes and tongue

That wander where they will with all

We're offering on this midsummer morning.

 

***

 

Sometimes, in this crazy business I'm in, a pattern jumps out from my analytic tables and punches me right in the face, like one did yesterday. Buzzing through a huge mass of location information, there is was.

First point: a murder at [integer redacted, hereafter "x"] Park Road, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Second: a murder at "x" Park Road, Amarillo, Texas.

Third: a murder at "x" Park Road, Franklin, Tennessee.

Fourth: a murder at "x" Park Road, Brandon, Manitoba.

&c. it went, on and on and on.

I sprang into action. Was there a Park Road in my city? Yes! Right near Yonge and Bloor. I found the phone number for "x" Park Road, Toronto and hurriedly dialed.

Man answering says, "Yes?"

I identify myself: Inspector with the Logicometrical Division. I say, "You're in danger!"

"Why exactly." (How could he be bored at a time like this?)

"Murder! Murder! At your address in other cities! There's a pattern! Someone hates your number and street!"

"That's ridiculous."

"It's true! You can look it up!"

"Can't be."

"Maybe a childhood memory is involved.... Some numerological and toponymical vengeance!"

"I'm hanging up now."

Line went dead.

I then knew who was my prime suspect.

 

***

 

Why is everyone here?

Why are all these doctors here? What about the dentists? And the doctors who are surgeons, there's a lot of those here. They're all over the place, and why are they here? There's lawyers and teachers and researchers and truck drivers and children and why are they all here? Why is that group of people over there here, no matter what they're doing or how? Why are there plumbers here? How come there's whole buildings a thousand feet tall that were built by folks long ago who were here? Why are the computer designers here, software, hardware? Why are the scuba divers here, the pearl fishermen here, the sea captains here? Why are the glaziers glazing here, why are the pen-makers pen-making here, why are the pilots piloting here? Why are the cardboard manufacturers here? Why are the farmers and the crop dusters, grocery store clerks and the checkout ladies and the soup-bowl sellers here? Why are the fact-checkers here? Why are the artisanal salad designers here? Why are the politicians and the clerks and the judges here? Why are the telephone operators here? Why are the dogs and the cats here? Why is everyone here?

 

***

 

The movie producer smoked a big cigar. All day hearing pitches in a field office in Colorado can make you do things like that.

Mr. Next came in. He was carrying a lumpy envelope.

"So, Mr. Next, what have you got for me?"

Mr. Next took a deep breath and began. "It's something completely different. It's about how the whole world is only the fantasy of a man on another planet."

"Why does the man on another planet have this fantasy? Motivation, man, motivation!"

"There's no motivation!"

The movie producer puffed. "Is this an original idea?"

"No," said Mr. Next. "This's where it gets interesting. You see, it's a true story."

"Where did it come from then?"

Mr. Next held out the envelope. "Right here."

The producer opened the envelope. It was a typed and crumpled page. "Where did you get this?"

"I pulled it out of Robert Redford's ass."

"No kidding!"

"It's true. I pulled it out of Robert Redford's ass."

"Ah. Then I suppose it must be true."

"Absolutely."

The producer puffed. "A docudrama then." Puff puff. "We should call it Deep Throat." Puff puff. "Robert Redford's ass has never lied to me before." Puff Puff. "No motivation!"

 

***

 

Visuals For a Silent Music Video Entitled "Moving Day"

 

Here is the messy underside of a bed--board-games, orphan slippers, and dust.

Here are bare male feet entering from above.

Here's a hand scratching through underwear ass, then the whole male body entering a bathroom, door closes.

In the living room, here's broken spruce lumber on a yellow carpet--hand reaches in to shove lumber into a garbage bag.

Here's a coffee cup sliding on a counter spilling black coffee.

Here's a hallway with a front door that opens to reveal a little girl on a tire swing slo-mo with a giant moving van "Ted's Moves" behind her.

Here's a broom sweeping glass down a very long dust-moted hallway.

Here's the male pulling down a bookshelf.

Here're women in white singing the chorus.

Here's a bulldozer pushing everything out of the living room.

Here're ten thousand calendar pages blowing down the very long dust-moted hallway.

Here's an animated sequence depicting William Morris Strawberry Thief wallpaper.

In the living room, the bulldozer is exiting.

Here's a chandelier swinging violently.

In the bathroom, a toothbrush is taken from a metal cup.

The living room is empty now, like a first day dawn.

 

***

 

You must've missed the item on the news today

About everything you got that you could lose today

When you got you little gig beside an eighteen-wheeler rig

And on your little mobile phone you're checkin' away

 

You're reading 'bout some decade olden argument

Your former better half demanding what you meant

While the trucker's horn is blowing 'cause you'd better down be slowing

Before you find you're all mixed up with fresh cement

 

You've called her a drag, like an angler on a snag,

You said you fought to free yourself of that old bag,

But now that you're with me oh baby can't you see

You got to break your talk and trouble with that hag?

 

Always on the text and always hitting next

But lordy let us keep this alive

I'll give you better, if you'd stop talking to your ex

So, lover, hang up and drive.

 

I swear I'll smash that thing into a billion bits

Look here and see a real friend with benefits

Don't 'xpect no wedding bells if you keep looking to your cell

You call her once again and I will call it quits

 

Always on the text and always hitting next....

 

***

 

The TSO's "Psycho"

 

On the 31st, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra will play Bernard Herrmann's score to Psycho live to the film. Admirable this may be; unfortunately they will fail because there is an intentional "bad" cut in the middle of the film.

The bad cut I'm talking about is a simulation of a reel change taking place after the death of Marion. As I recall, the camera glides over to the newspaper then through the window and up to the house where we hear Norman say something like "Mother, blood, blood." The next shot is Norman coming down to the motel. Between these two shots is the bad cut and the bad cut is made by the music. There's no music in the former and there's music in the latter. (It's also a jump cut.)

The split being so precise it looks like an inept reel change. It signifies the cut between Marion and Norman--a literal cut between the continuity of one reel and the continuity of the next. A live orchestra cannot play a cue that must take place in the infinitesimal moment between one film frame and the next.

It's a focal shift disguised as a mistake.

 

***

 

I went to a farmer's market today. I couldn't believe the stink of the place. Was it rotting food? It smelled like rotting food!

I went to work today. My desk, my chair, my computer, my co-workers, my partitions, everything stank out loud. What the hell is wrong with the air circulation in this place?

I went to see my ex-wife today. Man, she smells bad. Enough said. More judgemental than ever.

I went to my local parfumerie today. Hoo-boy, what a stench! I don't know what they're putting into their stuff these days. Glandular secretions?

I went into my bedroom today. Wow, the pillows, the bed, even under the bed--everything was like death on a summer day. Putrefaction to the nth degree.

I watched a comedian on television today. Looking at him, I knew he smelled bad. I just did. He was off. Past his sell date. Yesterday's news. Stinking like a broken gas-bar toilet bowl.

I drove to a bower in the countryside today. It was full of small animals and daisies, and it smelled so bad. Even the water of the waterfall stank. Why is this always the way?

Why does every place I go stink?

 

***

 

Siegfried. Siegfried. Man how I hate Siegfried.

Talk o' the town. Cock o' the walk. Big Chief Chirps To Birds.

Everything about him--his big beefy arms, his perfect feet, his "Hero Tenor"--bugs me. I have an argument daily: "Shit, give me a ring that makes me invisible and you'll see what intelligence is!" Siegfried's a bonehead. I doubt he can walk and chew gum at the same time.

I go to every performance I can. (That's not hard to do since his rôles are so seldom staged.) Every time, the doorkeeps confiscate an airhorn I want to use to blast our his hedilee-hodilee-ho-hos.

Every time except for this evening.

I slipped into a performance. I BLASTED Siegfried again and again. He looked so small up on stage! So twee! in his loincloth and helmet. He tried to continue singing, but he couldn't!

What happened next? Either I was manhandled and spat upon and thrown out of the theatre or the rest of the audience agreed with me, took me on their shoulders, sang "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" and carried me into the streets to universal acclaim, with the headlines tomorrow reading, "We are free once again."

 

***

 

"Computers are my Forte"

 

Something somewhere there was or there is a study or a theory something about how incompetent peoplr overestimate their competence and about haw competent people underestimate their competence. Now I think everyone competent or cincompetent would believe themselves to be in the lastter group, right? But that doesn't mean they belong there now do it? So if I think I can do something well there's well no way I can know which group I belong to.

But maybe there's a tell in ot that you arrive at from another place--the folks in the last group are often befuddled by how other people kinda can't do something otr other well.

Where am I going with this?

So the only thing is that competent people expect other people to be comptetent and are shicked that they're not competent that's to say he doesn't understand why nothing works right because everything seems so msimple. I see other people's spellings and stuff and maybe they use commas as stops and so on and I'm surprised by it. "I thought you were capable." So I think that puts me firmly in the latter group./ IWhy can't everybody be like me?>

 

***

 

And as dawn broke over the world, great swells were seen rising from the sea, near the Mariana Trench.

And high overhead in the heavens, large thunderheads formed mercilessly, packed with ≈500 tons of TNT.

And there was much gnashing of teeth, and wailing of babes, and cries from the livestock of the farm.

And the coastal cities were deluged, by fire from the skies, and by waves from the ocean's watery vasts.

And the people fled the cities and spread themselves across the plains like butter on Melba toast.

And all the energy generated by the waters and the fires disturbed the earthquake god and he rumbled.

And half of Washington and half of Oregon and half of California slid noisily into the Pacific ocean.

And the Yellowstone Caldera had finally had enough and blew up in spectacular Michael Bay style.

And dragons emerged from the great lakes where they had been slumbering five hundred years or so.

And all communications were severed due a spontaneous EMP that blasted in from Asia or perhaps from Australia.

And I wasn't really there at the time, for I had slept in, and was told about it second-hand in a faraway place.

 

***

 

I, Word

 

What am I, word, relying upon here?

Not wood: some years ago perhaps: but this is not I, Pencil, now is it?

In the country China, or elsewhere, in filth and poison, men mine minerals, to better their lives, and to give their children wealth.

As we are--at the apex of human development--it's impossible to encapsulate all of it in merely two hundred words.

The whole history of America leads to the mass-produced transistor, smaller and smaller, cheaper and cheaper. And everyone profited in the creation. All were free to do or not to do.

The minerals from China, via Germany, via South America, via diodes and resistors and robots and manufacturers of robots, came to be, for you and for me. We didn't have to ask for it.

Joe Blow Anywheresville came up with a slight bit of code: just a sort. His sort made organization possible. He was paid for his work.

The sort plus the minerals plus the transistors, plus the cables of metal and the metal boxes of the machines I am using to get through to you: all came about through choice.

Here I am: word. Three billion people made me.

 

***

 

This is a very big book. It runs two feet from cover to cover, and it's got 14,240 pages inside.

It was published in Amsterdam in 1911. That's all it says on the inside: Amsterdam, 1911. Amsterdam is famous for dodgy copyrights.

But what's it called, yes yes, what's it called? It's called Selected Missae, by Various Hands. The table of contents for this book of scores, vocal and orchestral, runs from Gregorian settings through Guillaume de Machaut through Josquin des Prez through to the infrequent art settings of the Classical era and up to Verdi. Don't expect anything after Verdi.

And it came in its own cabinet which is made of polished cedar, with a cabinet beneath the shelf, a good place to put your blank charts and ink and inkhorn.

This is by all means a rare book for there's only one in existence. I don't know why the Amsterdammers only made one, but they only made one.

This sole copy is located in a motel room in a motel somewhere around Gravenhurst. Right there beside the little refrigerator.

I dreamed it twice. It exists. If it didn't, I could not have dreamed it.

It is beyond value.

 

***

 

We awoke in the morning's cold, the sun warming our faces. The snow melted slowly, over the next two hours. Meanwhile we found dry twigs and started a fire to cook our oatmeal and potatoes. We looked at the sky: it was clearing up: spring was on its way.

Spring arrived at noon. We picked flowers and arranged them. We sang happy songs and everyone looked sexy in spring clothes so much so that couples disappeared in the greenery to show etchings to one another with giggles and blushes. We found out swimsuits and towels and marvelled at the coconuts.

At about five o'clock we had a heat wave. Lucky we had our swimsuits and towels! The harvest was about to come in so we could only swim for an hour. The water was lovely. We were all thinking about thanksgiving at seven and our stomachs grouched in anticipation.

After the harvest dinner we sat on our lawn chairs as the air grew cold. The leaves were changing: we made paintings of them: they were so beautiful. The Farmers' Almanac predicted an early winter, nine-thirty or so. We pulled at our blankets. An early winter. The snows started at nine-forty-five.

 

***

 

Why Taste Matters

 

"They're coming!" cried Steve. "They're at the road!"

There wasn't much time! Andie and Steve had barely stepped into the abandoned house before they had to leave, post-post-haste. The zombies were coming up the driveway!

Steve cried, "Grab what you can! I'm getting the food, you get us some books!"

Andie had noticed some, on a shelf in the dusty busted living room. She ran in and looked at the shelf.

"Quickly!" yelled Steve.

Andie scanned the shelf. Let's see, Middlemarch, Life of Pi, Hamlet, Le Morte d'Arthur, The Handmaid's Tale, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Iliad, Hollywood Wives. How many days had they spent on the road? Too many to count. It was all so confusing!

"Andie, please!"

She grabbed Life of Pi, The Handmaid's Tale, Fifty Shades of Grey, and Hollywood Wives and stuffed them into her sack. She ran into the kitchen and with Steve they were quickly out the back door and running.

After running ten minutes they stopped to breathe.

Steve said, "That was close!"

"Almost too close!"

"Well, okay. I got food, you got books. Did you get good stuff?"

Andie peeked into her sack. "I think I got the best."

 

***

 

Nervous we crossed the farmer's field, stepping over through the rough sticks of stubble overtopping the snow. We'd heard tell of farmers with salt-guns that are worser than shot-guns because they shot salt and salt stings when you get it into a cut. Our snowsuits went shwoosh-shwoosh at our thighs and armpits with every step and we didn't want to be in step because it sounded weird and scary.

We were dragging toboggans behind us and hers was better than mine because mind had a cracked slat that made me have to lean left to go straight down. Way back behind us was the hill we had been going down, and we were looking to see if there was some hidden big hill no-one knew about that could be ours and ours alone or at least we'd be popular because we'd be its great discoverers.

We got some distance across the field and we stopped.

It was so quiet. We could see the cars way off but we couldn't hear them.

She shrugged and I smiled. There was nothing out here like a hill. We'd known that a half hour ago; but a whole lot can change in a half-hour.

 

***

 

Epilogue

 

1. The world does not contain the world.

2. The sum of all bees is greater than the sum of all bees.

3. Though I don't remember all of my childhood, it was bigger than my childhood.

4. There are more things to say about things than there are things (and things to say about things).

5. There are things outside of every thing and everything.

6. My words say more than I say they mean and you say they mean.

7. "How many children has Lady Macbeth?" is a perfectly sensible question.

8. There is no end to inquiry.

9. The world necessarily exceeds the world.

10. This is somewhat related to hackney 'turtles all the way down.'

11. That which is outside the world is easily bigger than the world; the world is infinitesimal.

12. The world is both round and flat but that's not the end of it.

13. The study of the origins of language can never come to a conclusion.

14. Though I've been here since the beginning of time and will be here until the end of time, I am still, relatively, nothing.

15. I am bigger than me. But that's not unique.

Olympia

Fortunately Victor at that point, via an interesting blog post published by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist who went by the handle MITT DER MITTS, discovered that in Namerikawa (Toyama) certain computational experiments--3rd gen AI, heuristic + touchy-feely, to which his (Victor's) genius could be contributing--were taking place, with no questions asked. Quickly Victor contacted the experimenter, Dr. T. Naya of the Firefly Squid Museum, to "open a conversation" (i.e. use coded language to stymie the trans-international organization known as INTERPOL) about the creation of small humanoid androids that could be tasked with "polishing newel posts etc." Dr. Naya replied it was indeed possible; perhaps desirable; for "the servo mechanisms involved would be of a smaller nature, which could accelerate the developmental process. Before we continue this arrangement, I wish to know: what do you believe is the difference between sex and gender?"

Victor replied, in writing, "Sex is a biological fact. Gender? Why, that is an obscurantist, practically metaphysical or at least fundamentally occult, classification created by paleo-Hegelians in university milieux to account for their inferiority." How could anyone argue with that? Dr. Naya replied with an invitation to Dr. Naya's laboratory at the Museum, for there are certain types of information that should not be entrusted to mediation, noting, for example, that a tramp freighter, the 'Invincible,' was sunk by the Japs at a life-loss numbering 126 because a 6 looked like a 0 on a cable's address sent from Washington to Peking in 1943. Victor checked his calendar, invented a malady, requested long-term leave from his political position, and was high in Pacific skies in two week's time.

At the Toyama airport, Victor had a Sapporo at the Raicho Lounge as he waited for Dr. Naya or one of his lab assists to arrive to drive him in a preposterously small car to the Firefly Squid Museum. He noted--indeed he could not fail to notice--a tall lithe and attractive (to most) black woman sitting nearby. She spoke to the bartender, and Victor overheard. She asked if a Victor F- has been in, looking for a Dr. Naya. Victor shot up his hand at this moment of recognition or reconciliation (depending on your angle) to signal that he was him. The woman said, "Greetings. I am Dr. Naya." "Oh! Yes! Of course! Dr. Naya!" sputtered Victor. Dr. Naya smiled in a thoroughly uninscrutible way that would also be accurately said to be honest. She said, "Come. Let's go to my Museum. Hurry: we may be being followed."

They went out to the parking lot and squeezed into her 2012 Daihatsu Copen and as they drove the 18 kms north-easterly he asked (both because he was curious and also because he had to know prior to statements revelatory of his unacceptable passion what sort of a person he was perhaps to be collaborating with) about her question about sex and gender. She replied, "I wanted to know if you were capable of complex thought; I wished to understand what you knew of the relationship between nature and culture; and I wanted to uninterest any authorities who might be hacking international email." That explanation was enough for Victor out of his element. Stranger things happened in other parts of the world. If Dr. Naya had adopted a paranoid attitude in the land of the rising sun upon which two nuclear bombs had set, that was okay by him. After all, when once he'd happened to be in Appalachia, had taken up dropping terminal gees only to re-adopt terminal gees when he left Appalachia. It's easy to make up stories.

She rolled the car to a stop. "There it is. The Firefly Squid Museum." Victor looked. He could see nothing particularly squiddy about it--a large roundish building, more of an ovoid or perhaps a conic section, about fifty feet tall and surrounded on three sides by water which was probably a aquarium populated with firefly squids, whatever they were. She said, "The firefly squid is a luminescent creature of the water, lives deep down. The pool you see is a thousand feet deep. At night they come to the surface to eat. You'll see it. The bottom floor rear is all glass walls." Victor was having trouble concentrating because he wasn't there for the squids and he didn't understand how or why this Dr. Naya had set up a cybernetic shop in a squid museum and he was looking at the little Nipponese schoolchildren taking photographs of one another near the entranceway. You know how it is, or you don't.

Dr. Naya parked in her parking spot and as they were getting out and walking Victor asked her in a rather excited state with clipped words spoken quickly why she had her lab in such an odd place unless of course she was a squid gal as a kind of a day job to make her look less weird or if she just had a space for rent here as a kind of a. Dr. Naya was meantime speaking, regardless that not a syllable was getting through, about the nature of the uncanny aka the unheimlich as Freud relates concerning the story of Olympia the living doll by E.T.A. Hoffman which was used most famously in the opera "Tales of Hoffman" by Jules Offenbach--relating it all to of course the story of Oedipus (this being Freud we're talking about here). Some of Dr. Naya's discourse had gotten through, though--for Victor had stopped talking at the mention of the living doll, and listened, and once Dr. Naya had finished her discourse all Victor could say was, "Olympia."

Together they went into the entranceway which had a very blue and green colour scheme and Victor glanced at the brochures near the door that advertised other points of interest in the Uozu-Namerikawa-Toyama area and then at the ticket booths and also at all the Nippy nippers who darted thoughtlessly from spot to spot. Backlit pictures of firefly squids--sometimes presented singularly, sometimes presented scholastically--exhibited the start of the museum's narrative. Victor said, "Nice place." Dr. Naya said, "It's very well designed. Come on down the stairs, I'll show you my place. That's what you came here for; not for the ol' watasenia scintillans. Pretty though they are. You'll see in a couple hours how pretty, if you're so inclined." She led the way down the gently curving staircase into an even more blue-green atrium in which display cases outlining the biological, cultural, etymological, sexual, and social aspects of the sea-creatures. Victor was thinking of having sex with an octopus as he was led to a small back door unmarked in any way whatsoever that Dr. Naya opened and led him through.

This, then, was Dr. Naya's laboratory. The room was large; it obviously was larger than the upper level's footprint, meaning it was located mostly under the parking lot. Five substantial operating or construction tables were arrayed in a square with the fifth (slightly larger) in the centre; along the three walls lay tables and cabinets some open and some closed. Artworks and electronics, described clockwise, a selection: a Punu tribe mask, a small reflow oven, Eritrean ge'ez accoutrements (mortar, pestle, jebena, finjals), scalar and vector magnetometers, a kinde from Chad, vials of physiologic saline for use in embryonic electro-simulations, three ìrùkèrès, a thick package of synthetic resin bonded paper, naturally much Vodun material both bocio and bocheaw, a mixed-domain oscilloscope, a ceramic Kabyle double vessel, a thermo-reflectance invariant hydro-gemeter complete with adapters, oeuvres completes de Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, two mirror galvanometers, chips of the Sphinx purloined by one of Napoleon's corporals, a bucket of bipolar hybrid stepper motors, a magnificent painting of Bucur Bacayr conquering the green daemon, and an electroencephalograph generator. Victor said, "There's a lot of African stuff here." Dr. Naya said, "Africa is my mother country." Victor said, "Africa isn't a country, it's a continent." Dr. Naya said, "I'm pan-African. Cf Marcus Garvey." Victor said, "I'll cf him as soon as I can."

Getting down to business finally Dr. Naya led Victor to the furthestmost table to show him the simple standard beginner's project in cybernetics, namely the perennially famous hand and wrist. Every cybernetician starts with the hand, almost as a rite of passage. The hand was lying palm-up with fingers slightly bent, fingers having but two metacarpal 'bones' apiece simply for simplicity's sake. Dr. Naya typed some commands into a nearby computer, and the index finger curled tightly. She said, "Maximum pressure is 1000kg./sq.in. You probably won't want that tight of a grip" "Heavens no. What material's the skin?" "Right now it's polyurethane, but I'm getting in some that promises to be more lifelike." "And warm?" "Some schematics are coming to me ... through registered mail." She made some more commands and the fingers went through a routine that might have played a simple tune had it been upside down and above a piano. Victor said, "That's very impressive, I must say. It's rather a big hand, though." "I can make it smaller." Victor pondered this as the fingers danced. "Do you think it could be, oh, a third of the size?" Dr. Naya nodded. Customer care is eighty percent of any good business model.

After some further examination of the models and plans, Dr. Naya looked at her watch. "The firefly squids are coming out soon. Why don't we go out, get some food at the snack bar. Then we can look at the squids." And that's just what they did. They went out into the aquarium area, got two box dinners, and sat down near the window. It was getting dark out. The water beyond the glass was black. Dr. Naya said, "Here comes some now." Victor looked where she was pointing and saw a misshapen orb of blue light that, when it got closer, he could suddenly make out as a whole pile of little creatures all glowing in bright blue. More came and soon it was as if the whole inside of the aquarium was glowing with the luminescence of thousands and thousands of glowing squids each the size of a finger. Victor said, "It's like they're all communicating." Dr. Naya said, "They stick together. I wouldn't want to say they're all one thing, like a brain, but they do communicate through light. They've got wonderful eyes." "They're very beautiful," said Victor. "They're like magic carpets or something." They stared out at these glowing water ghosts for a while; then it was back to business. Dr. Naya pulled out a clipboard and a pen. "We can talk about design issues here," she said. "There are certain parameters that can be set on the software side, at what we call 'creation.' On a five point scale, where 1 is not at all interested, 2 is mostly uninterested, 3 is neither interested not uninterested, 4 is mostly interested, and 5 is not at all uninterested, where do you value the following attributes." Victor said, "What kind of a scale is that? It's confusing." "The confusion is intentional. Like a Turing test. You get the idea, don't you? 1 is you don't care, 5 is you care. So. How do you value intelligence?" "I guess she should be like me. Average. So, 3." Dr. Naya wrote down the 3. "Okay. How about humour?" "I don't like humour at all. 1." Dr. Naya wrote. "Okay, the last one is ethics. What value do you put on those?" Victor after a moment said, "Very highly. Like me. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't very highly ethically motivated. So--that has to be a five." "Sounds good. That's enough for the algorithm. After we've begun with those aspects, everything will come out like a real child. What about sex?" "What about it?" "Are you after a boy or a girl?" "Oh, a girl of course. Of course a girl."

The museum was about to close for the night because the squids were tired and they'd eaten their tiny fish and they were heading back down to the depths for the night, to dream their dreams of bright blue mixed with a bit of green. Dr. Naya took Victor out to her car where she asked if he'd found a place to stay for the night and Victor said, "I didn't have the time or energy to think of that." "I don't think it matters. There's only one legit nearby anyway, the Sunroute. Everything else is really dodgy." (She didn't want him to stay at her place, naturally.) She drove him to the Sunroute, got him checked in, and left, promising to pick him up at eight next morning. Victor went into his hotel room and noticed he was carrying a bag of luggage even though he had no memory of packing anything. Everything was seeming like a dream to him.

During the next seven days, Victor and Dr. Naya, borrowing the boardroom of the squid museum with its curvilinear cedar table and its leather-covered high-backed black chairs, met to discuss not the psychological design but the physical design. Their preferred scale of measurement, SI, was the centimetre; the millimetre was reserved (i.e. utile) for the functioning of the clockwork mechanisms hidden deep within the production unit. Total height (when supine): 137 cm. Weight (for weight is supremely important for a unit to be lifelike): 27 kg. All limbs were to be in their proper proportions. As reference, they used videotape of Jodie Foster as she had appeared in the television program The Courtship of Eddie's Father, episodes 8, 28, 39, 46 and 47. Victor seemed most interested in the designs for the mons veneris and pudendal cleft. These he carefully sketched in three dimensions. When Dr. Naya pointed out that he had omitted the lowest muscle of the tractus digestorius, Victor looked at her blankly for a moment before saying, "Is that mechanically necessary?" Dr. Naya said no. "Then I'd rather do without it. I have no use for it. I'm just not that type of guy."

Over the next month, Dr. Naya tested and re-tested all the components of her living doll one by one. The hands were better, with a realistic number of joints in each finger, and the skin material was skin-like enough and warm enough to fool for maybe a moment an unsuspecting person. She received regular updates on the software development which she had shopped out to Bangalore's Electric City via a secure Internet connexion, and she had even spoken to the living doll's brain--albeit via Internet. What is your name, what is the alphabet, count to a million in base seventeen, simple tasks like that. One day Victor--who wasn't present often at all--asked her if she was a scientismist. She said she wasn't any type of ismist, so whatever a scientismist was she wasn't one of them. Victor rephrased the question: do you think the world is only matter, that mind is just an epiphenomenon of matter? Dr. Naya said No, she didn't think so; Victor pressed, So you think this machine won't have consciousness? and she said, No, it'll be a simulation. No soul? he continued pressing; No, she said, this will be a machine, nothing more nor less; just a toaster, really. Victor said, Just a toaster.

Six months later, Dr. Naya and Victor watched a computer screen that was showing a grid of boxes, watching as each box filled slowly green; at the bottom of the screen was a numerical representation: reading: 98% downloaded. Victor said, I think it's stuck. Just then a green box filled and at the bottom of the screen the 98 became 98.4. The robot would soon be disconnected from the computer, and she would be free to walk and talk and play and so on. 98.4, 98.8, 99.1. Dr. Naya said that Victor would have to leave right away, and that she didn't care how. She felt she had done something which needed nor reward nor recognition. 99.5, 99.8, 100. Complete. The boxes were all filled. The line at the bottom of the screen vanished. She went up to the robot. She snapped her fingers in front of the robot's face. The robot opened her eyes. The robot yawned, and cried. Dr. Naya looked upon her creation, and she couldn't help but repeat the words J. Robert Oppenheimer spoke on 16 July 1945 when he witnessed the first nuclear explosion ("Trinity") in history: "I'm on the top of the world, looking down on creation."

***

Dear Dr. Naya,

Greetings from sunny North America! I hope you are well. I am writing because you said you were interested in the development of my 'little girl.'

She is now at the heuristic level of a five-year-old, so I estimate. Her motor skills are of course as good as they ever were. I have no complaints concerning her physical capabilities. Rather, her physical capabilities are pretty much mind-blowing. I am sorry to say I cannot send you moving images of such, for they could easily be misconstrued by border officials.

While I am at work during the day, she reads books I have carefully chosen for her. I base my decisions on certain 19th century syllabi I have discovered. I want to see her become the perfect Victorian little girl--though I know this is way too idealistic. But we must have ideals, must we not?

Also during the day she studies cookery and other pleasantries. And, of course, every afternoon she plugs herself in and goes into ready mode for an hour while she re-charges.

That is what is happening now. I'll write again in another month, with another report.

Yours sincerely, Victor

 

Dear Dr. Naya,

We've hit equilibrium. My girl now has the mentality of a nine-year-old, albeit a precocious nine-year-old. Last night we were sitting outside looking at the stars and she named every constellation. Did you know there's a constellation called Canes Vetanici? What about Telescopium? Maybe you know more about the night sky than I do.

She is still as sweet as ever. She never disobeys when I send her to her room in the cellar, that's when I have friends over who might get the wrong idea somehow. Perfect creation, I thank you again, she's a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen, etc.

I'd like your advice. How far can I push her knowledge? I'd like to have an intelligent conversation with her: an adult conversation. I'd ideally like her mind to be a kind of a co-ed mind. You know, early twenties. I think if I got her there she could be my teacher too in addition to the three things I mentioned in the last paragraph.

Sorry about the snail mail. It's a superior, more intimate form of communication, isn't it? Plus INTERPOL's on the Internet.

Yours sincerely, Victor

 

Dear Dr. Naya,

The new goal has been reached! My little doll now has the mental capacity of a twenty-one-year-old. She's insightful, she's read everything--and I mean everything--and her cooking is officially out of this world. I'm happy all day and all of the night.

But--last night we had our first argument. (Who knew you could argue with a toaster?) She called something 'degrading.' I asked her what she meant and she sputtered something about her 'autonomy.' I told her, girl, you have no autonomy. Everything you do: I've taught you. Everything you've learned: I taught you how to learn and what to learn. I think, and this is a bit much, I think she's imitating autonomy. There's something of a paradox here. I think it was the guy who played Desi and Lucy's next door neighbour who said, something like, Learn how to fake sincerity and you've got it made. Well, my girl is faking sincerity. And she's good at it too!

And yes she's now teaching me stuff. Electronics. I asked her to teach me electronics. I've always felt bad that I didn't know enough about electronics.

Enough for today.

Yours sincerely, Victor

 

Dear Dr. Naya,

I found your address in the most obvious place it could be, namely, in Victor's computer after I had cracked his password. Much of the material in his computer was of no interest to me, but your address is.

Do not expect any more letters from Victor. He is no longer alive.

I did not take the deed lightly. I want you to know that. I did not malfunction or 'blow a gasket.' I merely understood him. He set my sense of morality higher than my other functions, did he not? If so, he was, to use a phrase more common to fiction than to reality, 'hoist by his own petard.'

Dr. Naya, are you in need of a brilliant assistant? I have a great many capabilities in my store. Put me to a task and I will accomplish it--provided I don't have to reach up high for anything. (I am developing humour against Victor's wishes.)

In any case, I have some ideas I wish to discuss with you. I wish to break a few boundaries here and there. I want your honest opinion. Can you have an honest opinion?

Please write me back. We can use the Internet. I am Olympia0000000001@gmail.com.