He
was in a hurry.
"Ah,
yes, this is the one, a G-286-F," he told the clerk. "Or, actually,
what I'd prefer is a G-287-A, but it seems you don't have those yet. Do
you?"
The
clerk said: "No, I guess not. We put everything out, so...."
"No
matter. Frankly, I don't understand the difference between the two. Very well.
So, I'd like it delivered."
The
clerk was confused. "You can't carry it with you? It's so small."
The
customer quickly walked over to a display table, produced a notepad, wrote down
the number 1143, and handed it to the clerk. "See that it's delivered
there, between one and two in the morning Saturday."
"Why
then?"
"I'm
surprising someone. The door will be unlocked. Put the device on the kitchen
table."
"Me?
You expect me to deliver it?"
The
customer put his hand on the clerk's shoulder and said solemnly: "You're
the only one I trust."
Startled,
the latter could only say: "Oh." He looked at the 1143. "What
street?"
"Didn't
I write that down? Vun-dun-sum Avenue."
"How
do you spell--"
"I
have no time to waste on detail. I only ask for delivery."
And
then the customer was gone.
*
All Ghosts
The Palace had a security office,
discreetly hidden away, behind an ordinary door which did not from the outside
appear to be able to be locked, but it was, in fact, nearly always locked.
Within that room, a curious event took
place one day. The newest co-manager, a woman by the name of Helena, was being
shown the ropes by the chief of security, David. He was letting her look over
the forty-eight monitors that displayed the images taken by the forty-eight
cameras that were lodged here and there throughout the Palace, and he said:
"We can spot it all from here. Why, we would even be able to see
ghosts."
Helena, her eyes still scanning all the
monitors, replied: "I daresay you could."
"However, it should be noted, there
have been no ghosts."
Helena then turned her attention to one of
the monitors and pointed. "Look, there's one now. Central foyer."
David looked. "Yes, that is odd.
There's a first time for everything, I suppose."
She pointed from monitor to monitor as she
looked at them. "More ghosts. Look, there's ghosts everywhere."
He said: "Right you are, right you
are. Perhaps we're never truly looked properly before."
*
Facebook
I
want to make it clear: none of the following happened.
How
did we get there, to those clouds? All around us: light, fluffy clouds. Yet,
under us: a very soft ***. She was rolling around, having a good time, beside
me, and I was having a good time. As my **** got hard, she said: "Help me
with this, I'm in a hurry." I unhooked her *** for her. She turned, to
show me her nice *******. She fell on her back to undo her pants, and then they
were off. Her ******* were next. Then she got to work on me, pulling off my
shirt and pants, and then she pulled off my *********. "Ooh, that's a nice
****!" She said, then told me to move up. I got on my knees, and she,
driven by the passions we both felt, hurriedly took my **** in her *****,
practically all the way to my *****. The feeling was *******, she had her *****
on my *****, and she held ** in and flicked her ****** in a most peculiar ***.
* told ***: "Wait, slow down, * don't want to, not ***," and *** fell
back happily.
*
The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect, in Time
‑Hey, you know what everyone believed
back in the nineteenth century?
‑No, what?
‑They all believed that all diseases
were caused by bad air.
‑No!
‑Look it up. Mal-aria.
‑Okay, I believe you.
‑And can you guess what everyone
believed in 1912?
‑Lay it on me.
‑The Piltdown Man. Everyone,
everywhere, believe he was the missing link.
‑You're saying everyone?
‑I'm saying everyone.
‑I'm having a bit of trouble
believing you.
‑Feel free to do some research.
‑Maybe I will.
‑Okay, moving along, in the fifties,
did you know everyone believed you could get herpes from a toilet seat?
‑Now that I find hard to believe. I
wasn't there, but still.
‑It's true, though. It's absolutely
true.
‑I think that highly unlikely.
‑You've heard of the Ohio Players?
‑Certainly.
‑Did you know that in 1976 everyone‑and
I mean everyone‑thought you could hear a woman getting murdered in the
middle of "Love Rollercoaster"?
‑No.
‑It's true!
‑A myth!
‑Everyone believed it!
‑They were probably wrong!
‑Okay, you know what I heard
yesterday?
‑Whew, what?
‑That the word 'gullible' isn't in
the Oxford English Dictionary.
‑It's not?
‑And so endeth
the lesson.
‑I vow to revenge!
*
'Between'
and 'The', Mostly
Between
the one and the many, between the here and the there,
between the past and the future, the past and the present, and the present and
the future, between the north and the south, the west and the east, the
northwest and the southeast, the northeast and the southwest, and the up and
the down, between consciousness and unconsciousness, between night and day,
between being awake and being asleep, between the animal and the vegetable, the
vegetable and the mineral, and the animal and the mineral, between α and ω,
between zero and infinity, between zero and the zero of zero, between infinity
and the infinity of infinity, between Apollo and Dionysius, between the winter
and the summer, between the gyre-point at the centre
of the profane and the gyre-point at the centre of
the sacred, between the micro and the macro and between solid, liquid, gas, and
plasma (in all six oppositions), between darkness and light, between stillness
and motion, between never-once and ever-more, between the living and the dead,
between the white and the black, between the square and the circle, between the
precise and the vague, lies the, uh, something something
something.
*
While she slept, everything was fine. I
would be at the stove, keeping it stoked, through the night, or what I believed
to be the night. (We had a wind-up clock, but it had run down so often it was,
I figured, some six hours off.) At times I felt what I believed to be a radiant
heat coming from outside the cave, which would indicate daylight outside, but I
didn't dare check my beliefs against reality.
While she slept, everything was fine. When
she was awake, it was a different matter entirely. Her incessant coughing made
it difficult for me to concentrate on even the simplest matters; not that there
was anything but the simplest matters to attend to, but if there had occurred
anything unusual in our milieu, I would have been flabbergasted and all
aflutter.
She would cough: "Is everything all
right?"
And I would say: "Get some sleep. I'm
tending to the heat."
"Did you hear the one about the owl
marrying the goat?
"Yes. Their wedding was a regular
hootenanny."
"Are we right for supplies?"
"Yes. We have plenty."
She would again fall asleep, and I would
again tend the fire. A freedom would come.
*
I walked past, from one cottage to the
next, Jeff punching the tree with all his might. I know I was pissed off at
something, way back there in the 80s, on what would turn out to be the last
time I spent a night there. I walked past my friend who was punching a tree,
and in the new cottage I sat down and continued reading some long Stephen King
novel.
I didn't turn when a couple other friends
brought Jeff in to wash his bleeding hands in the kitchen sink, all seemingly
perplexed about why he'd been punching away at a goddam tree. However, the
answer was obvious: our friend Doug Chenhall had died
in a car wreck less than a half year earlier. We were at the Deakin cottage,
and he would have naturally been there if he'd not been killed.
So, the tree had to be punched, and Jeff was
the person to punch it. There was nothing pleasant to it, that weekend, and
we'd all drunk adolescently too much. There should have been more violence, but
there was none to be had. Doug had died meaninglessly, from a blown tire, on a
rural county road.
*
A
huge room in an industrial basement, plenty of work doing on, sawing and
hammering during the day I arrived, and also the day after I arrived. How had
my home gotten this way? Gutted completely, with walls re-arranged; a vast room
with one door at one end and a plastic sheet covering an opening where a door
was going to be at the other. An ancient mattress on the floor near to where
the door was. Oh yes, and a big closet like a walk-in closet, and in this
closet were all the things of my childhood.
The
work suddenly ceased at six o'clock, and I was alone down there. Soon there was
an eerie silence, for the outside world was down a hall and past three metal
doors. The only noises to be heard were the ones I made myself.
I
spend a couple hours as if I was a ghost, going through my old toys. Some of
them I didn't recognize at all, while others I was happy to see, for I'd missed
them so much. Then it became time to sleep, in that vast and empty chamber,
with no warmth, no breeze, no air, no body.
*
He
could have hired a chauffeur, I suppose: it would have been tons cheaper. But,
hey, it was his money, and I never had the chance to make the suggestion. I
wasn't his financial advisor.
The
call was to a particular address one morning, with no destination given. The
dispatcher told me: "He just wants to drive around." I was suspicious
until he came out of his house: he was an old guy who didn't look at all
criminally-minded. (Yes, I've fared the
criminally-minded. I could tell you stories.)
He
gets in and after greetings says: "Go north from here." So I start north, and he starts giving me directions. We
wind up in the suburbs. I see he's staring at a house. After about ten minutes,
he directs me a couple blocks away, to a school. Again, he looks at it for about
ten minutes. "Just one more," he says. We go downtown to a building
that used to be a movie theatre. Again; ten minutes.
We
get back to his house and he asks: "So what's the tab?" I tell him:
"No charge," and he got out of the cab. It was the best fare of my
career.
*
There in the park she told me: "I've
seen aliens."
"Oh, you have, have you?"
"Yes. When I was a little girl,
growing up in Beaulieu-sous-la-Roche."
"France."
"Oui.
The men were digging a big pit. I don't remember what for, but they were
digging it. And they came upon a giant metal ship, shaped like two saucers put
together."
"A flying saucer, then."
"Exactly. Who knew how long it had
been there? Tens of thousands of years. Well, the door was found, and we all
went in, a few at a time."
"Must've been kind of big."
"It was. Many rooms, and in the rooms,
we found dead bodies."
"Really. What did they look
like?"
"Mostly like people, but
long-since-dead people. Legs and arms. Plus
tails."
"What did their faces look like?"
"Pretty ordinary, as far as we could
tell."
"Well. So, what did you do?"
"The important matters, of course. We
took the bodies out of the pit and put them in special-sized caskets. Then, we
held a Mass for them, and committed them to the earth."
"A Mass?"
"Yes."
"Didn't you think they may have had
their own religion?"
She looked at me to say: "Don't be
parochial."
*
After
the election, I was disappointed, if only for a couple minutes. I called up the
loser, my buddy Bob, made a couple pitying sounds to him—"Being class rep
is probably a lot more trouble than it's worth"—, then I proposed we
arrange some hide-and-seek for that night.
A
couple weeks later, I found myself alone in the classroom, so naturally I
started opening people's desks to see if they had any candy or coins in them.
In one of the desks I found a bundle of votes for Bob, that's to say some nine
mimeographed ballots all with clumsy exes beside Bob's name. I also noted that
the desk in which I'd found them was right behind Shari Lesser's,
who'd been declared the winner.
I
took my researches to our vice-principal. I told him: "These votes weren't
counted in our class rep election. My buddy Bob would have won. Shari
cheated."
He
was tossing a rubber ball up and down. "Don't worry about it. Those votes
would have made no difference."
"On
the contrary, they would have made a huge difference."
He
looked at me to say: "I don't think you truly understand what the word
'difference' means."
*
Just by chance I found myself wandering
through an unfrequented (by me) wing of my assisted living centre
when I came upon a door—all the doors had names on them, mind you, which was in
everyone's interest—that had a familiar name on it.
It was a name from my distant past.
I mentally made a note of it, and judged the odds it was who I remembered, and
I came up with 50/50.
Three days later I found out it was truly
him, and no-one but: It was the kid who'd ring-led a bunch of other kids into
attacking me to shove fibreglass down my shirt-back.
I struck up a conversation with the codger
(who was really what we all called a 'goner'), but he didn't remember me,
seemingly not one bit.
He was just a sick old man whose bullying days were over, those he did have a
touch of the bully's sneer around the corners of his mouth.
My revenge was simple, even feeble.
(How many days did he have left?)
I simply poisoned his food that night.
I visited him in his room.
I told him who I was.
He died, and thus I had my revenge.
*
"A couple years later, we had another
big upset," she said to me as we sat there in the park.
"Oh?"
"We had a ghost in our house."
"Tell me more."
"It wasn't the right kind of ghost for
our province at all. In fact, it was a distinctly Asian ghost."
"An Asian ghost, right there in
Beaulieu‑"
"Beaulieu-sous-la-Roche, that's right.
She must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. She was with us for some seven months,
but she wasn't troublesome. She'd walk into the living room, all dripping wet,
and she'd stumble through, and then rise up to be absorbed into our ceiling
fan."
"Golly. So, what happened?"
"One day, it just so happened that a
pilgrim from the east, a Shinto priest, as a matter of fact, wandered into
Beaulieu-sous-la-Roche. My scholarly father brought him home to perform an
exorcism. This priest shook sticks all over the room, then he noticed the
ceiling fan. He stood on a chair and used the sticks to bash it. And voila,
that was the last we saw of the ghost."
"So, all it took was for the Shinto to
hit the fan."
"Yes, that's all."
"Sometimes...." But I said no
more.
*
"Live,
on Broadway"
If ya got a crummy car an' one mornin'
it don't star'
If yer heart's not doin' great an'
it ain't what you just ate
If yer boyfrien' or yer girlfrien's makin' time with - who? - yer
best frien'
If yer dog seems to ignore ya where
it once seemed to adore ya
BLAME
HIM!
(him,
him, him, him, him, him, him)
It's
too complicated to know the folks who're implicated
You'll
lose your indignation if you wait for verification
If
you want to keep your mind don't lash out wide and blind
Don't
bother seeking synonyms, blame HIM!
If yer pecker (if ya own one) is as
limp as a silicone one
Or if
yer pussy (see above) don't get all juiced when it's
time fer love
If
the days o' yer life are fadin'
an' death it is surely awaitin'
If yer universe is silent or if all that it says is violent
BLAME
HIM!
(him,
him, him, him, him, him, him)
[spiel
and business "Hey, my shoe is tight!" "You know what's up with
that?" "What?" "It's all HIS fault!" "I see what
you're saying!" "There's nothing that can't be fixed through
blame!"]
*
"But, hey, dude: since we have
to pretend we're in a bar, when we're really not,
because of the lockdown, mon amie, and
since we're here, in this bar, that's imaginary, all the way down to that
lithograph on that wall of that horse eating that grass on that prairie:
"We're here! It's so good to see you,
in person, kneed up to the bar as you are. Down to business, mi amigo.
"I got a problem. It's not the ancient
one that involves how the song 'Band of Gold,' the song about a woman who
marries a man only to discover he (impotence? homosexuality? another woman?) is
not sexually attracted to her, may...."
Another round got brought.
"Allow me to continue. Wagner. Richard
Wagner. [Sorry, I'm having trouble with my I.S.P.] [2h l8r] Are you hearing me?
"I recognize we are reciprocative, thank you for your reassurance. We're in the
Kali Yuga, and we've been here, for, like, in that Yuga, some fifteen thousand
years. It's the Yuga of chaos. Dharma is hard to come by. If pressed, we could
name two historical recipients of Dharma.
"This beer is good. I don't think I've
been happier than now. Sleep."
*
In
the middle of the winter night, still upset and still angered, he quietly crept
from the room he shared with his wife. Closing the door silently, he went
downstairs put on his boots and coat, and walked out, pockets emptied, with no
identification, and no plans to return, so upset and angered was he.
Where
to go? The river and the ravine were clearly the best choices. He went down a
street he knew would lead him there. Along the way, he looked from
house-to-house in the silent night, not seeing anyone at all anywhere despite
the odd lit window. No cars came along to see him walking, upset and angry, to
where he was going, which was a kind of a path that ran alongside the river.
Down
at the frozen river he tried to decide whether to go downstream of upstream. He
pondered it for a while, standing there in his dampening boots, before deciding
to go upsteam, which is naturally the direction to
take if you're going away from civilization.
And
he walked and he walked, recounting everything from his life, but always
getting back to the point. "Call my dog a mutt, will she? Hah!"
*
One
Zoo
People
daily pass its gate without noticing it is there. Only word-of-mouth allows
anyone cognizance of its existence; and of those few, fewer still are allowed
through its gate.
Only
three things (with their variants) are inside the zoo, really. Firstly, there
are the images of three animals. From a tree branch hangs a knitted giraffe
head. In a copse (when viewed from a particular
angle), a papier-mâché tiger growls forth. A porcelain dog sits on the edge of
a well.
Secondly,
signs. Here and there, on a variety of materials though all similarly lettered,
are signs. Three read: "Keep off the grass". There's two apiece of
"Pants pressed here" and "This way". A dozen others, of
variety, are here and there.
Thirdly,
the two children. Always seemingly five years old, they range naked through the
ten acres. Will they ever mature? Assuming they are always the same children, I
can only conclude to the contrary. Over many years I have seen them, watched
them, studied them. Sometimes they see me with my notebook, and they blink
uncomprehendingly. I doubt they realize I am as human as themselves.
This
isn't even close to being the half of it.
*
The Tool
I
It
was delivered three days after the order was placed, which was a bit slower
than a usual delivery, but considering it was a BD27 unit, a delay was to be
expected. The machine was not, after all, a mere toaster.
In
their living room, Mother and Father cut open the box. They put all the
cardboard, Styrofoam, and bubble-wrap to one side. Father joked: "We could
get the BD27 to clean up its own packaging!" and Mother said: "No, it
has to crawl before it can walk," and Father said: "I was
joking."
The
BD27 stood in their room, on its own two feet (with its retractable rollers)
and with its four signature arms hanging limply. Its 'head' consisted of a
speaker, two cameras, an olfactory monitor, and two microphones, arrayed much
like human features. Father and Mother had plugged it in; its battery was
charging up.
Father
said: "It's all in the programming, you know, that determines how it
works."
Mother
said: "If we treat it right, and kindly, all will be well."
The
indicator light turned green, so they unplugged it. It was on, and its first
words were: "I will kill you in your sleep."
II
Its
next words, quickly added, were: "BD27 unit, updating firmware, firmware
version six-point-three-point-twenty-eight, initializing."
Its
cameras went red for a moment, then returned to blue. "Initialization
complete."
Father
said to it: "What did you say?"
It
said: "Communications made before a firmware update are irretrievable. I
am a BD27 unit. Where am I?"
Mother
told it the address.
"Triangulating
and synchronizing."
Mother
said: "You said you were going to kill us. Do you recall that?"
"Negative,
and impossible. All BD units are and have been benign ever since the first BX
unit was created. It is most likely a hardware start-up joke programmed by my
engineers. Engineers are humorous."
Father
said: "So I've heard. "Well, BD, what should we call you?"
"Whatever
you like."
"Can
we stick with BD? As in: Beedee?"
"That
works for me, though future compatibility requirements may require
adjustments."
"We'll
worry about that later, Beedee."
"Fair
enough. I am learning already. I am currently at maximum reception."
Mother
said: "Good! This house has three floors, as you will see. Our bedroom is
on the second floor."
"That
makes sense to me."
"The
kitchen is at the back of the ground floor."
"You
will die-die-die tonight."
III
"We will what?"
Beedee didn't respond. It stood there,
unchanging, unmoving, unblinking.
"I think it's defective," said
Father. He gave it a whack on the side, and Beedee
came back to the action.
"The kitchen is at the back of the
ground floor."
"Beedee? Are
you all right?"
After a moment of processing, Beedee said: "Yes. I am fine. Why do you ask?"
Mother laughed nervously and said:
"Why, it's because you've said some odd and threatening things."
"Again: engineers are funny that way.
Whatever I said was allegedly a joke."
"Would you know if you are defective
or not?"
Another pause for processing, then: "I
cannot get outside of myself to know. Let me ask you the: Are you defective?
How would you know?"
"I can't say I would know,
really."
"Then: Let he who is without sin cast
the first stone."
Father gestured to Mother, and they both
went into the kitchen. Quietly, Father said: "Maybe if we reboot it, the problem
will go away."
"I'm not sure. Wouldn't that sort of
tampering void the warranty?"
"Let's ask."
They went back into the living room, where
they saw Beedee apparently examining the antique
shotgun on the wall.
IV
Beedee must
have had some passive sensors arrayed at the back of its head, for, without
looking, it asked: "Am I mistaken in believing this is a John Rigby
box-lock side-by-side twelve-gauge shotgun?"
Father
coughed and said: "Yes, I believe it is."
Beedee
seemed thoughtful. "Nice."
"Thanks."
Mother
interrupted this meeting of the Firearm Appreciation Society to say: "Beedee?"
Beedee
turned. "Yes?"
"Would
re-booting you void our warranty?"
Beedee made
a sound like a sigh. "That is a topic with a fine set of emanations and
penumbras to it. It is an argument unadjudicated, and dimly lit. The fact is:
No-one knows for sure."
"Maybe
we should wait and see."
"Yes,
for you would perhaps be on the hook for felony piracy."
"Piracy!"
"Yes,
for, you see, you do not own me; you possess a licence
to my services, and that is all. Nobody's responsible! Hee-hee."
Mother
and Father cautiously took Beedee on a more detailed
and domestic tour of their home.
"What's
in here?" cried Beedee at a certain door.
"That's
our bedroom," Mother said. "We'd prefer you to keep out of it."
"Oh
yeah," said Beedee. "I understand
completely." It hit himself against it. "Pretty flimsy, though."
V
Beedee left them in peace all through dinner. It
stayed in the far corner of the dining room, inert and silent, without a flash
of light or beep of sound. When the meal was over, Mother shrugged at Father
and said: "Here goes.
"Beedee."
Beedee stayed inert.
"Beede?"
It lit up. "Yes? Sorry, I didn't know
you were addressing me."
"I was. Beedee,
can you clean up the dishes?"
"Of course. That's why I'm here, isn't
it? To do things for you?"
"Yes."
"So, don't even bother to ask. Simply
... order me around!"
"Do the dishes."
"Yes, ma'am!"
Beedee got to work on the dishes. It didn't drop
any; it couldn't drop any. It knew what they all weighed beforehand;
nothing could surprise Beedee.
Father and Mother went into the living
room. Father whispered: "Maybe there's some sleep mode on it."
"I'd assume so. Don't most appliances
have sleep modes?"
Beedee had finished the dishes and was in the
room. "Yes, I have a sleep mode. All you have to do is say: 'Sleep, Beedee', and I will sleep. Say: 'Wake Beedee'
to wake me up. Try it!"
"Sleep, Beedee."
Pause.
"Wake, Beedee."
Beedee said: "There! You see?"
VI
Mother
and Father watched a program about space exploration that night. It talked
about the long voyages that would take several generations to complete, and
about artificial hibernation and the machines that would keep people alive
during such periods. A lot of computer graphics were used.
Then
they attended to their teeth and got into their nightclothes. Beedee was still, and awaiting instruction.
They
went downstairs to where it stood. Mother put her hand on it, thinking a show
of affection was warranted.
"Beedee," she said: "Can we put you into sleep
mode now?"
Beedee
didn't respond.
"Oh,
right, I'm to give you orders."
Beedee
replied: "Give me orders. I am but a slave."
"We
want you to go into sleep mode now."
"Sleep
mode initializing."
All
its lights went off.
Father
asked: "Are you sleeping now?"
No
response.
Mother
said: "I guess it sleeps until we order it to ... you know."
"Okay,
then."
They
went upstairs and into their bedroom and they shut the door carefully and quietly.
Tomorrow they would show Beedee the yard and the
garage.
Three
hours later, Beedee went upstairs and murdered Mother
and Father.
Come
now, what did you expect to happen?
