Late Decadent Modernity Should be Preserved Somehow

The doors are locked, and the windows are barred. It's getting late. Soon, they will be able to be heard. Our heroine goes from room to room, turning off lights and turning them on as she proceeds. She goes down to the kitchen and by the light of the stove hood boils water for tea. She hears the first shout: distantly. A second sound, much like a howl, follows. She pulls the kettle off the element before it can make too much noise. She pours boiling water into her tea-filled teacup. She had another night to get through; the days were easier, but they weren't carefree. Who knows when you could run into one of the beasts in broad daylight? It happens often enough. The calls and screams and groans wander outside. At some points, they are very close, perhaps walking right in front of her house. The Mad own the night, and doors are all locked and windows are all barred. She wonders how it could be that she was the prisoner there in the city. Why weren't the Mad incarcerated rather than herself and those like her? Alas, that wasn't a question that could be asked aloud, ever. Taste Dear Abby. I can't escape this dilemma. I'm caught in a contradiction that is harming my life. I cannot get any pleasure from art. Why is that? It's because my husband is a hundred times smarter than me. If he says something is worthwhile, then, totally true, it's worthwhile. He has a genius for genius. He tends to the best, somehow, in music and books and film. All that said, I'm in a pickle. I want to hate him, for he has illustrated to me the worthlessness of my existence. So, to spite him, I have to watch or read or listen to the most useless rubbish that can be imagined. He, of course, can find anything usefully interesting, so he goes along with it all. Meanwhile, I can't myself find any satisfaction. This evening, I thought through Last Year at Marienbad, Mulholland Drive, and The Last Picture Show, but because he approved of them all, we wound up watching this trash movie called Second Coming. So, Abby: how can I make my husband mediocre? I want to be above him, so how do I do that? You must know how to respond. What's your response? Respond now please. Photo Cary found a photograph of her; it seemed to be the only known photograph of her. The photograph of her was from the cover of a women's monthly; it seemed unlikely there would be only one photograph of her if a photograph of her was on the cover of a magazine. He contacted the publisher of the magazine that had had the photograph of her on the cover of their magazine, and he got the response that there had been an industrial fire in the building where they had been keeping all their photographs, including an unknown number of photographs of her. "We have no other photographs of her." He had a photograph of her; it was evermore likely now it was the only photograph of her. In the photograph of her, she is smiling, full-face, clean-complexioned, in daylight, with a bush of red flowers behind her, out-of-focus. The flowers had been present, and entirely ignorant they were participating in the only photograph of her, and they never learned about it either. She has blue eyes in the photograph of her, and blonde hair in the photograph of her. She never learned it was the only photograph of her. Demonetization A curious email came to me yesterday. It was from AdSense. (When did I ever have any contact with Adsense?) The email told me (so I thought at first) they were suddenly refusing to put advertisements on my site because I had said something pro-Russian. Now, I have nothing to do with AdSense, so naturally I thought I had been hacked in some way. So, I tried to log into AdSense to see what was happening. However, I couldn't log into AdSense because I didn't have an account with them. (Though it appeared I had at one point tried to set up one, for whatever reason, in the distant past.) I went back to the email (text in appendix below), and I realized it was a warning not to post anything pro-Russia, because then I'd be demonetized. So, it had all been a glitch. However--what kind of censorship is this before me? Last time I checked, war had not yet been declared against Russia. Was AdSense in a war against Russia? Is that why they were taking a side? Let's see if AdSense comes to kill me: Yay Dostoevsky! Bravo Tchaikovsky! Hurrah Pushkin! Go Anna Akhmatova! Praise Stravinsky! APPENDIX Important Notice: Update regarding Ukraine Dear Publisher, Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetisation of content that exploits, dismisses or condones the war. Please note, we have already been enforcing on claims related to the war in Ukraine when they violated existing policies (for instance, the Dangerous or Derogatory content policy prohibits monetising content that incites violence or denies tragic events). This update is meant to clarify, and in some cases expand, our publisher guidance as it relates to this conflict. This pause includes, but is not limited to, claims that imply victims are responsible for their own tragedy or similar instances of victim blaming, such as claims that Ukraine is committing genocide or deliberately attacking its own citizens. Sincerely, The Google AdSense Team Cassock "I often get extremely tired of getting things right all the time," I said to the prostitute. She was still in bed, and smoking a cigarette. A neon light somewhere nearby made the room red every other second. "I'm always too good." "You are good," the prostitute replied. "I don't mean in that way. I mean that I want to fail, spectacularly so, to let everyone know I'm not the greatest priest ever." She pointed to my clothes, saying: "I thought that was just some kind of fetish outfit. It's not?" I looked around the floor in search of my undies. I picked them up and pulled them on. What was there not to see? I said: "No, it's my calling, and I love my calling." "I got a sister who's a novitiate." "Ah." I picked up my cassock and pulled it over my head. "Best of luck to her." "The light outside makes it look red." I went to the mirror to check it out. "Mind if I turn on the light?" "Nope." While her legs fall open when I turned on the light, I looked in the mirror. It had turned slightly red. The light was right. Fabulous This has been told in many ways, and here comes another one. The Rabbi was taking it easy one day, walking his New York City streets, when he was stopped by a young man from his neighbourhood. They walked together for a while. The Rabbi asked him about his family, his school, his baseball. All was very well, quite well, in fact. The young man said: I've been troubled, though. About what? It's about the Book. I know the Book, I'm familiar with it all. But still: It's so full of things that are, I don't know, allegorical, or of little interest to me. Burning bushes, and women turning to salt, and then there's the Red Sea business and the Noah's ark; how does any of it matter? Kings and more kings, and prophets major and minor, the whole thing with the Garden.... What are you getting at? the Rabbi asked. It's just that: I can't entirely believe in it. It doesn't make me feel anything. So: how can I make it relevant? A: The question is not how to make the Book relevant to you; rather, it's a question of how to make you relevant to the Book. Text We were driving over to her parents' house. It was a fine summer evening, just getting dark. I would be meeting her parents for the first time. That was all right with me, because I was a rather normal young man and her parents were, as far as I could tell, normal too. She said: "Be sure you mention your prospects in your line of woerk. I know you're not into blowing your own horn, but tell them something about the probotion you're expect ing to get, it'll show you're some kind of a go-gettierr because dad likes to see that kind of stuff, that initiative as he call s it. Don't worry so much about nom, you know how moms are, she'll like you right from the get-go. She'll tell me you're fine, and all the time she'll be in competition with me, fo r you. That';s they basic way it all works, you know, I've read about it in places, not just magazines but real books. And for God's sake dom't start messing with the dog, playing and stuff, just leave the dog alone, you know how?" I said: "You're very cute when you're nervous, you know." Aries YOU have received a worthwhile offer from an unknown and distant land. YOU look at a couple maps, and YOU discover the land on most of the maps, but not all of the maps. YOU pack up your car and start the long drive to the semi-known and distant land. YOU stop for lunch when YOU believe YOU're only some fifty miles from the land, and YOU ask the waitress for directions. She doesn't know what YOU're talking about. She's never heard of such a place. YOU show her YOUr finest map. She looks it over and says: "I thought there was a lake there; yes, I remember going to that lake and swimming there. This land doesn't have the same name as the land YOU're seeking, but whatever." She gives YOU directions to the lake (which is now a land). And so YOU pay the tab and set off to the lake that's now a land. ARIES. YOU cannot be stopped easily. YOU're not especially bright, but when YOU get an idea in YOUr head there's nothing to set you awry. YOU'll find that land in just a couple hours. YOU know it's going to be there, right? Laws Time slips away like a thief in the night, and that's why I find myself at nine in the evening writing. The task: "How does book-law impact upon the actions of the plot and of the characters of the 1963 novel Suzanne Leaves? (2000 words)" It was due this afternoon. I'd considered skipping the whole project, failing the course, and making it up in the summer: but then time would have continued slipping away in the night, and my life would forever be behind the clock. So now I am writing; writing to warm up; writing to get into the mood to invent material from a high-wire. I figure so long as I write something with some style, I can't get less than a D, even if it's clear I haven't read more than a synopsis of Suzanne Leaves. It will all be fresh and unplagiarized. I'm not trying to get a good mark; merely a passable one. The sense of panic I've carried all day has now left me, and I can consider things from an artistic point of view. This doesn't have to be accurate, or good: simply colourful is what I'll be after. Two thousand words.... Award Places decided it was about time to give me an award. "I have to hang up now, I've got my lieutenants here in my office, agreed, I hear you, but what? Okay, lads, we've got to come up with an appropriate award for him, it's about time." "Mum, I've gone through all the awards books on the surface of the place, and I've found nothing except to reward him for his body mass index result." "Not good enough, is it?, no, it's not good enough, invent, lads, invent!" "He hasn't done anything, mum, and that's the problem." "Protocol, protocol!, everyone has to get a prize some time or other, and we're running out of time, the hammer is going to come down." "I've gone through his files, again and again, and there's nothing there, he is an empty shell devoid of anything noteworthy." "No grand adventures?" "Nothing not done a thousand times before." "Diplomatic or artistic success?" "Nothing eight-year-olds can't do." "He must have invented something, anyone can invent something." "Nothing, not an invention not already invented." "That's it, it's settled, I've got it." "Wonderful!, a solution!" "We'll give it to him for nothing." "Nothing?" "Nothing!" "That will work!" Window Charlie was looking out the living room window of his home, into the living room of the people opposite. "Look at then, Ag," he said. "Can you believe it? How'd they get into our neighbourhood anyway? They're totally hopeless." "Who's hopeless?" asked his wife Ag. "The people over there, who else do you think I mean? You look at them, and you can understand them in an instant. Like you know their thoughts." It was true: over there, the man was doing nothing at all. Charlie continued: "They've got secrets, anyone can see that. Dark, unspeakable secrets not to be fathomed or sounded. All you can do is guess at them." Ag got up. "Um...." "Where's the joy in their lives? How do people like that not wind up killing themselves or each other? Absolutely pathetic. I don't see how they keep going." "I think I understand it, Charlie." "No, Ag, I'm saying it's unfathomable and utterly opaque. But they're one evil mystery." "But, Charlie, that's not a window you're staring at. It's a mirror." Charlie raised a hand, and the man opposite raised his. "Well, if that doesn't beat all. Why doesn't anyone ever tell me these things?" Time "I was young then, in how I dealt with time. Maybe I've grown somehow since, I don't know. Use to be--and I thought this was clever--if I had something terrible to experience, and exam or something, I would tell myself: 'It'll be over in two hours. Time will pass on its own. All you have to do is endure.' That worked in all sorts of ways. That was all when I was young, and I thought I was pretty clever. For the time, at least, I thought I was a genius for coming up with it. "That was all a long time ago, as I said; now I'm old or nearly old. I had no experience then, when days were weeks; now I have experience, and weeks are days. I can no longer put things off like that: I had so much time back then! but that's no longer the situation. I eat time and time eats me. Here's a way to put it: I used to deal with time in a particular way but all the time time was dealing with me in an ordinary way; and time will win in the end." TO BE CONTINUED??? Classiculification Singulationarily, one fore-noon-taste, I was perventualating on a superbilical solubindial autobus, when I occasionated to apperceptualize a comtemporalialistical passagenatorial individuatingly hominon, e.g. a suitationally attributated officialatist who had perhaps mistributed a singulational gravation-filling buttonment on his care-calibrated externalationary habilimental dressage. I condited or conpressed an ideationalistical extribulation to confronticate with the gentilhomme, perhapsationally to invicticate his miniscular errotation of the perfictional imagolicon concernating the problemistical naturalismism in re the absentuated unluckilation of his coat of great coat; in the happenation of my proposism, however, I declamitated that I was at my caesuralation imponticated, and it was chronoscopically my oppornation to leftimate the vehicularizational apparatism. Some continuatically contiguental horologics later, I espectabled the homination in a way that must be descriptedly entitulated 'later', on the outvirons of a simplicatical refreshmentary estabilication, a coff-shop. The hom was accompatated with an acquaintenation, cognometically unknowsticatal, and this tertiational existacor increated a lenticulary of a digitaliasm, directionalically at the absentuated pository, and vocalizated: "You're missing a button there." The recipiator of this inforzaliamation diverlimated his cranicality to obsate that, indeed, he was lackimating the superioralated ungigatulate roundational that should have been affictionated to his gravulantal outerwardrobing, and I persevicated upon the mystericalations of chancifulisation. Time "I was young then, in how I dealt with time. Maybe I've grown somehow since, I don't know. Use to be--and I thought this was clever--if I had something terrible to experience, and exam or something, I would tell myself: 'It'll be over in two hours. Time will pass on its own. All you have to do is endure.' That worked in all sorts of ways. That was all when I was young, and I thought I was pretty clever. For the time, at least, I thought I was a genius for coming up with it. "That was all a long time ago, as I said; now I'm old or nearly old. I had no experience then, when days were weeks; now I have experience, and weeks are days. I can no longer put things off like that: I had so much time back then! but that's no longer the situation. I eat time and time eats me. Here's a way to put it: I used to deal with time in a particular way but all the time time was dealing with me in an ordinary way; and time will win in the end." TO BE CONTINUED??? Sizes The world, as we all know and as we can in a sense prove, if extremely large, with plenty of places and thousands of acres of trees and a vast amount of ocean, and yet we shall never know even the smallest part of it, little more than the size of our own two feet. And, as we know, time stretches so deeply into the past, back to a hypothetical point, and it stretches forward into the unimaginable future, which again contains its own hypotheses, and yet what can we be said to know except for the powerful infinitesimal sliver of now in which we are communicating? A man's life, so it can be argued, has a certain beginning, and it has a certain end, and in that span he plays every part possible, as the poem goes; and yet all the parts are shared by all men who pass through them in a repetitious sequence. And you, you've travelled a great distance, haven't you? It can't be otherwise, can it? Everything moves even when you're still: and yet you haven't moved, really, from where you are; the scenery has changed, but only through replacement, of this, for that. Kriminalroman Book One 1. The Big Bang. Formation of galaxies, stars, planets, and moons. (75p) 2. Geological time on Earth. Single-celled organisms, amphibians, mammals. (75p) 3. Rise of Man. Agriculture, calendars. Formation of cities. (75p) 4. Babylon, Egypt, China, India, Greece, Polynesia, civilizational contacts. (150p) Book Two 1. Rise of Europe, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, various wars, focussed on Germany. (150p) 2. Rise of Germany, literacy, plays and poems, the troubadours, Goethe, Schiller, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. (150p) 3. The Romantic period in all cultures across the world, and Wagner. (100p) 4. The twentieth century, imperialism, Nazism, the Second World War. (150p) Book Three 1. Reconstruction, a fresh beginning, the fifties and the sixties, modern politics, the United Nations and the European Union. (100p) 2. Characters introduced, and traced back through time: the criminal, the detective, the victim, various police officers, many others. (200p) 3. June of 1978, a robbery, a conspiracy, old complicities, forgotten antagonisms. (250p) 4. 1989, fall of the Berlin Wall, character experiences, another crime. (200p) 5. 2010, the murder is committed, police get involved, detective called into the case. (250p) I looked up from my outline, thinking: "Man, this detective-story double-plotting is really involved!" Dogs Our neighbours were quite ordinary. They both had jobs downtown, somewhere or other, with something to do with finance. They kept to themselves, and hardly ever made any noise except sometimes on Saturday nights. They were quite ordinary until they decided they'd sometime become dogs. Both of them would bark to be let out into the yard, and one of them would temporarily re-assume a human form to open the door to outside. We would see them running around the yard, just a couple dogs playing and fearing shadows. They had to become humans again to work, but when they were at home, they were almost always a couple dogs. She became pregnant, I heard and I noticed. When she was human, she had the bump, and, when she was a dog, her belly hung low. Finally, she had puppies, four of them, and they were pure-breed dogs without a hint of human in them. As if dissatisfied, she became pregnant again. I think they felt she'd had enough puppies, so this time they made sure they had a little baby girl human instead. Her brothers and sisters loved her. Everything's fine now; and Saturday nights are much quieter. Living You can't get out of it, no matter what you do, no matter all the graves, no matter all the empty horses, and no matter the renewals of spring. You're in for the whole thrown-in-ness, you know how the story has to end, and you know how the sun got to be where it is appearing now. The cats you've got you looked at this morning as they cried to be fed, and you knew they are using the position of the sun to know when they are to be fed. They don't know the earth is tilted and season-causing. They don't ask why the nights are sometimes long and sometimes short. It's you--your curse--it's how you know about the matter. You know about these matters, and you have a profession, and you have interests, and a cultural warehouse, and you have an 'I'. The cats think you're simply an unusual cat, that's all, or they think everything is secretly alive; they can't comprehend why you stare out the window at the trees under the sun. All this will go away some day, and if something is unpleasant, you know it won't last forever. Tomorrow is tomorrow. Kids We were just a couple late-middle-age kids out on the town, enjoying a first date. After the stunningly-idiotic movie we both swore we'd liked, we went to a bar to get a little acquainted. She asked: "Did you really like that stunningly-idiotic movie?" I replied: "Oh yes! I like stunningly-idiotic movies." She asked: "So what do you do for a living?" "Essentially ... nothing! I'm a bureaucrat, paid by the government, and we really don't do anything." She looked intrigued. "How can you do nothing?" "Oh, we go through the motions of working, but actually we spend half our time in useless meetings and the rest of the time organizing more. We don't produce a thing, and we're well-paid for it." She smiled, waiting for the truth to come out. "What department?" "That doesn't matter. Well, actually, I buy office furniture in order to keep our budgets high, during fourth-quarters. That's all. My life has been wasted, utterly wasted, and I dream of someone putting an end to it. But enough about me! What do you do?" "I'm a cardiac surgeon." Our table grew quiet, for there was no way I could tolerate a cardiac surgeon for an acquaintance. Lions Angela Cartwright came home one afternoon with a couple lion cubs she'd purchased from a shop hidden away between two jewelers on Rodeo Drive. They were the cutest little things, with their big eyes and tiny teeth. After a couple days they'd settled right in. All her friends came over to see her lion cubs. She fed them food from cans, for that's what she'd been told to do by the lion store man. He told her: "They're just a couple little ones; they'll know when to stop growing." "How big will they get?" "They'll get full size." "Oh, golly!" They grew remarkably slowly, and after about a year they stopped growing. They were stunted, they were defective. Just twelve pounds apiece, and nothing more. She was stuck with a couple dwarf lions that didn't even roar. All they did was mew. Finally, she came to peace with the little lions. So what, they didn't get big? There was something extra-special about a couple lions that didn't grow more. Dwarf lions is how she'd describe them. However, it was hard, because they were perpetually like two-year-olds. They'd catch mice and insects, but never anything bigger. Never anything truly threatening.... Detectives I've started writing a detective story, or I have made it appear that I've started to write a detective story. I recall or pretend to recall an essay I discovered or invented some thirty years ago, an illuminating essay by Umberto Eco concerning the 'double plotting' of detective stories: that there's the plot of the crime, and the plot of the investigation; and, maybe, he wrote that the tension between the two plots gives a story an interest. (My neighbourhood, I know, must have come to the conclusion that I am working very hard on my detective story, for they see the incandescent light up in my attic burning all night and assembling the silhouette of a person slamming away at a Remington. (Maybe I wonder if they think I'm up to no good instead. Maybe they wonder if they're not witnessing some elaborate show, or maybe they're thinking about that Eco essay. [It's a popular essay.]) I want to know who is the killer, who is the victim, and who is the investigator. Unfortunately, I've barely begun pretending to be writing a detailed outline. All things told, it's not impossible for the victim to turn out to be Sleep Think about carefully reading a map. Think about the last dream you had. Imagine it's continuing. Pay attention to your monotonous breathing. Think about sex. Think about sleeping in another place, in another bed. Pay attention to the ticking of a clock. Think about your childhood. Think, uncritically at that, about a languageless puzzle. Pay attention to the sounds out the window. Think about a hayfield. Think about the United States, in alphabetical order. Pay attention to those innocent jumping sheep over there. Think about arcs on a globe. Think about a narcotizing modern women's picture. Pay heed to yourself squaring the circle, finally. Think about rhymes. Think about tomorrow, and all that it might bring. Pay attention to the warmth of the blankets. Think about good friends. Think all is well, all is well, all is well. Pay attention to the multidimensionality of you. Think of a novel. Think about all the puzzles you're not solving. Pay attention to 4'33". Think about multiples of 17. Think about almost no body part hurting chronically. Pay heed to the clouds on the other side of the world. Think of mommy. Think of tomorrow. Pay attention to the silence of time. Blank Try not to make a sound as you take it off your table and put it out flat on the floor. Have you ever before seen the like? There is nothing to see on it; you can't imagine anything being there, now or ever. The tidiness of it is something to behold, and it would be a terrible crime to do something soily to it. You know that if you quietly leave the room and come back into the room it will still be lying there on the floor, and you know that it hasn't changed in the least. You could leave and return a hundred times and there still wouldn't be a change. You can't match it, you can't meet it, you can't beat it on its term because it had the keys to all the rules it could be played by. You want to ignore it, but you can't ignore it. You can't go out on the street with the hopes of you forgetting it, because you're never going to forget it. It is definitely something that captures your attention. It has its own nature, and its nature is to control your nature, for ever and ever. "?" "I know that I have not yet assembled anything that might in a thousand years be considered 'proof', but I possess a world-historical theory." I opened another bottle. "I would be interested in this theory of yours anytime, even given the caveat you have given in such a plan and simple manner." He opened another one too. "I hope it's an interesting theory because, my darling, I must say this Riviera season is positively the dullest season within living memory." Then she opened one. "Sometimes I don't know what's going on in this little triangle of yours," said her friend. I said: "It is my belief that periods such as ours, periods of what we may call late decadence, are marked or become marked by an obsession with nomenclature." He said: "I think there's some basis in that in that in the fourth century manias for proper spellings and modes of address became simultaneously active." She said: "I foresee the day in which the meanings of words detach from the words. We'll all be la-la-la-ing to communicate, and emotions will be danced." Her friend said: "I doubt any of you have ever read a proper book past page fifty." Somewhere We're watching some British tv called Line of Duty. I spent three hours of it trying to figure out which Britain it was about. (The North, of course.) Jack Black and Olivia Jean got married last week. I wish them the best! A couple miles west of Olean, NY, some monks settled. Sisters Claire got interested, and the Claires set up Saint Elizabeth Motherhouse, while the monks set up Saint Bonaventure University. Mary's aunt, Sister Helen, is one of those Franciscans. We're going to go visit her very soon. I got locked out of my bank accounts because I couldn't answer a security question. Three hours and two phone calls later, I got back into my accounts. Two days later, and I'm locked out of my accounts again. Who can possibly remember who 'your best friend in high school' was, and who can remember what street said friend lived on? A couple months ago I figured I could listen to all my records again, in shelf order. I got through my homemade compilations and the five cds of the Conet Project, and I've reached S in my blues-country-folk compilations. I'm maybe a sixth way through one shelf of eight. Interests "You've got your interests, and I've got mine. Sometimes they agree, though mostly they do not. We're in a street, and something catches your eye. You want to know about my eyes, are they caught that way too. I follow your gaze carefully, and see and not see what you're seeing. Time is running short, however, and there's lots more to do. Our disagreement won't expand to an argument, however. We both adjust our interests, and consider options. I could bend to your will and chance being late for something. You could bend to my will and chance another distraction. The day is getting shorter while we stand right there! The agreement is due to come, any minute now! What are you looking at, what are you interested in? Why aren't you as interested in it as me? We should double ourselves and do both simultaneously. However, that never happens, and we're still stuck on the street. Every piece of time feels like every other piece of time. We're stuck, and nothing can unstick us from our interests. You become a rock, and I become a tree. I calcify and petrify, and you shatter and crumble. All for interests!" Breakfast It was time to go, they were on a streetcorner, they were waiting for the bus to take them to a smaller town, they were going to have a weekend away, they looked in the direction from which the bus would come, and she looked elsewhere and she saw a grocery store and she said they should buy some food breakfast food for the morning, and he said what if the bus comes early? don't you think there'll be stores in the small town? is the town that small that it won't have a store?, and she replied that it was better to be safe even though the eggs may go bad during the bus ride and maybe the bacon would leak everywhere and ruin her coat and the milk would be a bit of a problem, and he calmly said no we're going to take a chance, there's got to be something there, even one-horse towns have a horse, and she got all worried-like because what if there was no coffee anywhere? how could she live without morning coffee? don't you like coffee? and he stayed silent, waiting for the bus, hoping it would arrive the next minute. Work The had their work to do and all day they worked and worked they did. They had meetings every two hours on the hour from sunrise to sunset, eight meetings in all, and each lasted for an hour. They had to keep track of what they were working on and to do that they had to meet every other hour for an hour at a time, and they included the meetings under the category of work, and they were handsomely remunerated for the meetings. (Some considered the meetings to be leisure, which made them feel themselves paid at twice their rates.) All day they worked without breaks, and during the hours in which they were not meeting they were attending to their various and sundry routine tasks, such as going to doctors and dentists and herbologists, to eating food and having sex, to playing video games and messing around on the Internet. It wasn't easy to fit it all into a workday, but by golly they tried and succeeded. They asked themselves almost never if this life was the life they deserved to have, and they seldom considered how their lives would have been different if only they'd thought. Rome In last 1216, Telly Savalas, on the road to northern Gaul, received a letter from his mother in Rome. He halted his army to devote time to his reading of it, his skill at reading being sub-par at best. Although the letter itself is naturally lost, the effects of it were vast and widespread. According to the Chroniclers, the letter was a letter of complaint, for Savalas's mother had been scandalized by his behaviour in June, when Savalas, drunk, had come to believe he had locked himself out of his Roman apartment. The letter relayed reports of Savalas, much to the amusement of the Roman plebians, stumbling around the city, looking for his mistress Bernadine who, as he seemed to believe, had a key. In the presence of one of his roustabout pals, he'd suddenly exclaimed: "I didn't lock the door! Now I remember!" The laughter was general while Savalas returned to his apartment. Next morning, in darkness, he left Rome to travel north. His mother detailed all these events, and he felt some shame at his behaviour; however, the historical record shows the event had little effect upon his conquests, which involved the taking of Caen and Bayeux.

Spring Term

as the story goes, technological modernity had crept up into the world like ivy climbing an oak. From the deep recesses of the soil, it had climbed up and up around the tree, feeding upon the tree almost unto the tree's death, but it had not yet killed it. Much of the tree had been lost, yet there still existed the core of the tree, which could only be seen from certain angles, during certain parts of the day. In the midst of that said moment, that moment of exceptionally late technological modernity, in a company dorm cafeteria a woman in a company outfit was selecting one of the plates of apple pie from under a heat-lamp and placed it upon her yellow plastic tray when she realized and recalled a strange experience she had had overnight, at some point in the night, perhaps towards the rising of the sun. She recalled seeing a room with computers in it, and a large square table with bright things upon it, like a little land or a map of a land but all illuminated with an internal glow, little glowing round glass dishes or plates, and she wondered how she could have witnessed such a thing when she had been sound asleep. Still in her daze, she slid her scrip card under the scanner and took her tray over to where her work-friend was sitting.

Her friend, 001-283-933-401, 401 for short, said: "Hi, how's it going, I hope you and your family are well."

Our central character, 226-483-050-555, 555 for short, replied: "Hi, how's it going, I hope you and your family are well."

Formalities aside, 555 opened today's sandwich to see what was inside. Whatever it chemically was, it was the green of her dorm room wall. Perhaps it was something mixed with phosphates. Without looking up, she asked 401: "Is today phosphate day?"

"It's phosphate day, her friend replied: "All day." She look around quickly to see if anyone had heard her.

"Phosphate Day," said 555 sadly. She looked around in precisely the same way her work-friend had before saying, "I had something of an experience this morning."

"Hmmm. I don't think you should tell me about it."

"I thought I was some place else entirely. I thought I was in a room full of computers, with something like a model of a city made of little glowing glass discs on a table in the middle of it all."

"Weird. Sounds like you have to have your diet adjusted."

"It was like nothing I've ever experienced. 401, have you ever heard of 'dreams'?"

"Of course I have. Think I never studied history, folklore? I'm pretty good at understanding superstitions. Ever heard of the rabbit foot?"

"The way you're saying it, 401, is that you never even entertained the idea that such phenomena are real."

"Of course not. So, wait, are you saying you think you had one?"

"I think so, yes."

401 drank some of her day's liquid before putting her head in her hands to ask, seriously: "Are you off your diet? Did you miss a dose?"

555 replied: "No, I'm all dosed up right."

"Maybe you should go for an adjustment. I've heard tales about events like this; I wouldn't want to see you run off to be with the mountain-wild people."

555 interrupted: "I'm not going off there, no, but it's something that happened to me, and it was strange, and I'm trying to tell you about it."

"Fine! What about it?" She leaned back as if to distance herself from whatever garbage was about to be thrown.

"Like I said, it was like I was in a room, and in the room there was a model of a city, but the city was a living thing, though made of glass. It was like I could see lights in the windows going on and off, and I could hear the hum of it all, all the electricity and machines."

401 shrugged. "Sounds like you're sick, if you ask me. Oh, look over there, shh. It's the new one, 593, we haven't met though I've heard about her."

555 turned slightly to see a curvy blonde passing her scrip card under the scanner. She turned back around. "Yes, I've seen her."

"Dreamy," said 401, drinking liquid. "I wonder if she'll be assigned to someone. She's heading this way."

555 looked up; 593 was standing over her. The latter said to the former: "Aren't these scrip cards dumb? We all eat the same stuff anyway, so why bother?"

The former replied: "It's an extra layer of security, that's all. Also it gives the overwives a way of knowing where we are at all times, they care for us so much."

593 smiled crookedly. "Yes, we have to let them know about our every move." She went away to sit at a distant table.

401 whispered: "She was flirting with you!"

"You think so?"

"Oh, it was so obvious! Asking your opinion about something and everything! I wouldn't be surprised to see you've been assigned to her."

555 looked across the cafeteria to 593, and found herself thinking about that dream of hers again, as if the two phenomena were connected. She stopped herself at that moment, with the realization that she was thinking in an old way, in a roman way, or whatever the word was for it. She knew she shouldn't think of any of it in that way ... because that didn't make sense. Perhaps she would have to go off to the medical centre to see if her metabolism was working right.

"I'm off," she said, and hurried to the medical centre. She described her symptoms, and they adjusted her. "If you find yourself going through nights with such thoughts again," she was told, "come see us immediately."

With much relief, 555 went to her work station, downed a pill, and got right down to doing whatever work she had to do, for whatever reason, producing something for someone somewhere, with only little twitches here and there as the thought of 593 crossed her mind.

The ivy continued to grow, and covered over another part. There was little chance the tree could live much longer than a couple more days

 

Ann stopped the program; it wasn't working out at all; some variable was off, but which one? The project was due the following day, and in its current state she simply couldn't turn it in. She'd called it the Utopia Project, and that's what it was meant to be, but something was off somewhere, she would have to change something, and run it again, though her theoretically-arrived-at 1024 generations, to see what could be changed, after all, it's the variables that count the most.

She returned to the code, intending to change one value in it. She wanted more coffee, but that could wait a bit. It was eleven-thirty PM already! All the values lay before her. Which to change? The technology percentage? The cultural value? Or was it all because of the beliefs she'd given her little simulated people? She raised the empathy rating. Yes, she'd set it a little too low; she'd been bummed out the day she'd chosen that value, she recognized; some extra empathy should make a difference to the behaviors in the program. She said a little prayer before starting her computer running its iterations. She switched it on, went to her kitchen, and made herself some more coffee.

 

that night, 555 was watching a comedy on television about a group of foolish engineers when someone knocked at her dorm door. She opened it, and it was 593, of all people, the woman she'd met just that day, standing there with bright eyes and carrying nothing. 555 invited her in, and 593 did in fact come in, and she sat herself down upon a convenient chair near a convenient table. 555 sat down opposite her, wondering if the newcomer had been assigned to her. 593 noticed 555's new bottled prescription on the table and seemed to sneer at it briefly.

She said: "Those things dull the senses."

555 replied: "We have to dull our senses a little bit. There's too much going on all the time."

593 changed the subject. "You're probably wondering if I've been assigned to you."

"Actually, yes, I was wondering that."

593 flipped her head around. "Frankly, I don't know who I've been assigned to. No-one's told me, and I haven't inquired."

555 shifted around, nervously, a little. "So, why are you here?"

"Hmm it's just you looked and sounded interesting. There's got to be something interesting about you, and I want to uncover it."

The obvious came to 555's mind immediately--the vision of the computers and the model in the middle of them, and that the news had almost certainly gone around--but she played dumb, knowing as she did there was a pretty good chance this 593 girl was in reality working for the overwives. Instead, 555 said: "I do my part, and that's about it. I'm a terribly ordinary person. You got me confused with some fantasy of yours."

593 returned to looking at the prescription bottle. "Ordinary people don't have to get narcotized to idiocy."

"I'm not getting narcotized to idiocy, as you call it. My biological basis is simply off a little bit. It's well within the range of behaviours."

593 looked over at the video screen. "We could have a little more privacy if we disconnected that thing."

555 was alarmed. "We can't disconnect it; we're no qualified technicians."

"I betcha we can."

"I don't mean it that way. I mean it's a ... what do you call it ... a crime to do it if you're not a qualified technician."

593 went over to the video screen. "There's nothing complicated about it at all." She moved it to one side so she could see behind it. "It's just a little switch, that's all." Her hand moved downwards, unseen by 555. No noise was heard, and nothing appeared to be affected. "I think we have it now; I think we have some privacy."

555 was shocked. "The overwives probably know you've done that. They're probably got a squad car heading our way right now."

593 shrugged and laughed. "Honestly, they're not that competent. They're not. I worked with them one summer when I was a little girl. They don't know as much as they pretend to. They probably won't notice anything until it's morning, and by then it'll be a whole different world."

555 waited for 593 to continue, and soon she did. "A lot can happen in one night, you know. As a matter of fact, something going to happen fairly soon, in ten minutes or so."

"What's going to happen?"

"Well, I got some friends coming over."

"Am I holding a party for you?"

"No, it's not a party, don't worry. They won't be here that long; only long enough for you to get some clothes together and throw them all in a suitcase or something."

555 had heard of people being arrested in the middle of the night; not anyone she knew personally, but rumours went around about people who vanished and were simply never seen again. All very mysterious: but 593 didn't look like an authority: quite the opposite, in fact. "So you're going to be taking me somewhere? Is this an arrest, an abduction maybe?"

593 to the dorm door. "Nothing like that, not quite that, but yes you have to come with us. You can decide later if you want to come back here, after a week. It'll be all up to you. In any case, it's only a week. You can consider it a vacation."

"Shouldn't I tell someone? My office manager, say?"

"Don't worry about that. Everything will fall into place, no problem. Nothing you do at work is worthwhile, you know."

555 thought for a moment. Yes, 593 was right about that. She wouldn't be missed one bit. She said: "I'd still like to know where you're taking me."

"It's a trip to the countryside."

555 had never been to the countryside. "Isn't the countryside dangerous? Monsters and so on?"

"Don't worry about monsters. They'll be more afraid of you than the other way around. You hang your food from trees and they'll leave you alone."

"From trees? What kind of food can you hang from trees?"

593 didn't have the opportunity to respond that that moment; a loud knock at the door changed the atmosphere. As she was going to the door she said: "So get some stuff together; we've got some way to travel. About five hours all told."

555, always obedient, did as she'd been told. An old suitcase from who remembered where came in handy. When she turned towards the door, she saw two strangers there. They were waiting for her in silence. 555 snapped the case shut; 593 said: "We can get you introduced later on. Right now, it's best if we leave quietly."

555 replied: "Yes, that's leave quietly. Where we're going, and why, I suppose I'll find out in due time."

593 nodded. "You'll get used to it. However, if you want to back out now, simply say so. This isn't an abduction. It's just an offer to show you something you've never seen before."

555 looked at the three of them at the door. She said: "I don't see any reason to disobey you. Lead the way

 

Ann was shaking her head as she read what had been written. Surely something should have changed! It had only been one parameter altered, but still: maybe there was something wrong with the machine itself. Computers are so complicated these days that no-one can even tell if they're working right, or what the problem could be. Vastly, vastly complicated.

Ann stopped blaming the computer so outright. "Don't blame the tools," as her mother had once said to her: "Only bad carpenters do that."

Time was racing on, and the project wasn't getting anywhere. It wasn't at all close to being acceptable. Ann knew she had to test the machine itself to see if the variables were actually doing anything ... variable. (She didn't know what she was trying to express.) Maybe the variables are being skipped over altogether.

After making a safe copy, she went into the core lines of the program. All the variables were there. She changed a variable from seven to twenty-seven, another from 5,000 to zero, and on and on she went, distorting the world inside the machine to a state which would not be recognizable ... or otherwise. Would it work? Would it change? She started its iterating, and waited.

 

and 555 dozed off in the vehicle as it travelled through the great darkness. There was nothing to see, and conversation was at a semi-voluntary standstill. The wheels over the smooth road vibrated her into lethargy, and she had no idea how much time had passed before the vehicle started to slow, and stop, still in the great darkness. That was when 593 broke the silence. "We're here," she said quietly, almost reverently, to 555.

The driver got out, and so did the woman beside her. 593 got out, circled around, opened the door for 555, a door which had been locked from the outside. Only the half-moon, occluded by stray clouds, offered any illumination, above what 555 thought she recognized as a forest of trees. She heard one of the other women trudge off into the darkness; 555 stretched her arms, legs, and sternum. She could wait for a long time, she knew, for something to happen: in school she'd once won an award for patience.

A light came on ahead of the vehicle. It was a light attached to a post planted in the ground. 555 could then see there was a building just beyond the light. It was a brown building, and its sides could be seen to be rough in texture. Someone in drab clothing came out of the building and waved. 593 nudged 555 forward; the driver and her companion got back into the vehicle as 555 walked carefully over the outrageously uneven ground to the brown building.

The person standing near the building held out her hand and said: "Hello, my name is Jane."

555 managed to stay obedient and not object to the statement's impossibility. She merely said: "Hello."

'Jane' looked past 555, to 593, and said: "I hope you're right about this."

The voice behind 555 said: "I'm pretty sure I'm right."

"Good. Because the cemetery's getting a bit full." She looked at 555. "That was just a joke."

555 said: "Oh." (She didn't understand a bit.)

"We'll get you to your room now. You're probably quite sleepy."

"Yes, I am. Will I find out some time where I am and what I'm to do here?"

"If you decide you should stay, you'll do work."

"Oh, I can do work. I work every day, at work."

"And something special work, too, possibly."

Behind her, 593 snickered and said: "You don't know what work is, 555. What do you do at work?"

"I read emails from customers, and I reply to them, if I know the answer."

"What are these customers after?"

"They're after things. They have to get replacement parts for things, and they have to get new things."

"Would you believe me if I told you that none of it is real?"

"Of course it's real. Why would I be doing it otherwise?"

"What would you say if I told you your job is part of a simulation whose only intent is to get you to add data about your average personality to a gigantic database that's powering strange projects that just happen to be taking place on the planet Mars?"

'Jane' (hereafter Jane) interrupted: "None of this is of any importance right now. 555, you'll find out all sorts of other interesting things about your world soon enough, but now we have to get you into this world here. Bring your bag and follow me."

555 picked up her bag and followed Jane inside, into a vast open space with furniture like tables and chairs, all made from wood, and on the walls were pictures of things that were arranged like natural landscapes albeit seen from a great distance. Shelves with rectangular things on them separated the pictures. Four doors leading to other places or to outside were also distributed along the walls. of a piece it was all almost arranged like 555's dining hall, but only in its spatial characteristics.

Jane led the way through a door and into a hallway with more doors. 555 then noticed the place smelled old; she associated then the scent with parts of the cellar of her building, which she'd accidentally stumbled upon when she'd been a girl: the smell of decay, or living, or something like that. Jane opened a door and pointed 555 to go in. 555 went in. A bed was in there, and a little desk and a chair below a window, and a black rectangular thing was on top of the desk.

"You can get some rest now," said Jane. "That is, unless you have further questions?" she questioned.

555 asked: "How will I know when to wake up and be alert?"

Jane smiled. "Yes. Feel free to wake up when you want and come out of here. Otherwise, we'll come in to get you if we think you've slept too long. Take it easy; take it very easy."

The door was closed, and 555 was as alone as she had been some six or so hours before. She put her suitcase down at the foot of the bed and sighed wearily. The place was silent. No machines hummed; no electricity whirred. She pulled the chair out and sat down. The window above her showed nothing but blackness. She examined the black rectangle and was surprised to find that it opened on something like a hinge, and that pages were inside it, all stuck to the hinge, and the pages had writing on them. She didn't know what to make of it: was it a manual storage device? She found the beginning of the text and read some of the opening paragraphs. Someone named God created the universe, and the animals, and things she couldn't pronounce. Then it talked about two people, but when it started talking about the two people, it stopped making any sense. Two people? Why two people? Her eyes were growing heavy; she could ask someone about it in the morning, if it felt like the appropriate thing to do, ask questions that is. She got into the bed, still in her clothes, and fell asleep. The lights didn't dim, for some strange reason

 

Ann saw it all happening, but she didn't know why it was happening. She'd changed all the variables, but the world hadn't changed. She was frustrated. It was four-thirty in the morning, and she hadn't proven what she'd wanted to prove. The experiment was a failure....

Or was it? What if she reversed her thesis? "It's a matter of mathematical determinism. As sure as two plus two equals four, no matter the variables, the program itself is adding too much information on its own, and thereby nullifying all the variables; the variables are cancelling one another out such that only bare computation occurs. The program doesn't work, and there's no proof the result can ever be changed." It looked like that was all she could do; she would disprove her original thesis. And ... doesn't science work that way, eliminating theses hither and thither? She'd had a thesis, and she'd disproven it. That should count for something.

So Ann, knowing she could defend what she had done in her experiment, set all the variables to zero or null (depending on the variables' possible states). (She could disprove her inversion, after all!) She set the program to run, through the same number of generations, and went to bed. When she awoke at noon, she saw the results.

 

strangely, 555 woke. Her mist cleared. With the sun having risen, the room looked much cleaner. She could hear birds like she'd never heard birds before. They didn't sound absolutely miserable like they sounded in the city.

She got up and left the room.

A pleasing odor greeted her. Something somewhere smelled very nice, tasty-like, as far as she was able to understand it. She went out into the big room to see some dozen people sitting and eating. She waited briefly, then Jane came up to her. Jane said: "There's no need to be shy, come, have something to eat. Here, I'll introduce you to Anne."

Anne was older than 555; in fact, significantly older. 555 hadn't met many people as old as this Anne. 555 figured that staring would be out of line. She figured she would have to be simple and receptive and take comprehension slowly. What was this place, and why had she been brought here?

Anne said: "Hello, welcome to our little community. My name is Anne."

"I'm 555, thanks."

Anne grimaced. "Well, we'll have to see about that. You can change your name later today. We think you'll want to."

They gave her a plate of some hot food. She didn't know what it was, but she ate it obediently. She was hungry, after all, and whatever it was, it tasted good.

Jane came back when the meal appeared to be over. She looked at 555 and pondered aloud: "Should we show you the farm or the medical laboratory first?"

555 said: "I can't say. I've only heard about the former, and I don't know what the latter would be."

Thus, the farm was first. In a large open space, there was a collection of buildings of various sizes, mostly made of the brown material of the central house. 555 could barely understand what she was being shown. Animated things, almost like people but not people, small people in most cases, moved around. Animals of some sorts. Sometimes they ran, sometimes they walked, and they made the most unusual sounds. It had to have some kind of explanation which she trusted would be forthcoming. Somehow, she understood, all these buildings and creatures were involved in the production of food. She marvelled that such a thing was possible. However, they were living in a modern world, and many undreamed-of things were possible in it.

Jane told her: "We all share the burden of the work, and we're all paid by our corporation. It's a very fair system."

555 nodded, though she didn't understand a bit of it. Something in the whole system looked suspicious; it's not that she wasn't independent-minded; however, there seemed to be something very anti-social in what she was witnessing. Now she felt that what she was seeing was actually a throwback to an earlier era. Otherwise, why wasn't anything especially clean?

"Let's move on. There's something very important, of the utmost importance, that I have to show and explain to you. Follow me."

Jane led 555 past some buildings and together they arrived at a building that looked like it was made out of steel: good solid steel. Jane had to wave a plastic card around to get in, then they were in a spotless corridor. "We can't go all the way in," she explained, "but we don't have to, not yet."

She led 555 over to a window that separated the hallway from a brightly-lit room, a clean and tidy room of computers arranged around a table of some sort, and on seeing it, 555 thought it resembled that place she'd had that morning fantasy about. Jane saw 555's puzzlement and said: "Yes, it's very much like the room that was in your dream."

555 wasn't put off by this revelation. She said: "You know about it?"

"It's part of the reason you're here. The other part is that you were even capable of dreaming at all. Only dreamers can understand the project we're upon."

555 didn't question any of it. She was taking it all in one minute at a time. I'm here because they want me here, and that's enough for me. However, she did manage to ask: "So, what's going on in there?"

"It's our central project; it's what we're here for. We're trying to revive an old method of making people."

"There used to be another way?" 555 had been educated; she knew where people came from: namely, an underground complex somewhere around Hatchery.

"Another way, yes. It's a way that will increase our genetic diversity in roughly predictable though precisely unexpected ways."

"And that matters?"

"We think everything has become too limited. We should set in motion a method through which we, as a species, can discover now things rather than go through the motions endlessly. We can get off the wheel, and start moving forwards again into a new uncertain future."

555 didn't understand any of that, so she said: "Do I have a part in this whatever-you-call-it? Is that why I've been brought here?"

Jane put her hand on 555's shoulder. "Yes. We want you to be the first. You're our little dreamer. And your pelvis is wide."

"So, what do I have to do?"

"You'll have a little surgery, and you'll be artificially inseminated, as the language in the old books goes."

555 was astonished but submissive. "What will come of that?"

"You'll give birth to what's called a child."

"That's pretty extreme, don't you think? I've come across those ideas once or twice, birth and all that, and I don't really get them, but I fear them."

"You'll be with us, and we'll take special care of you."

555 shrugged. "I guess so. I'm willing to go through with it. Why not?"

Jane was smiling with happiness. "Everything will go well, 555."

555 said: "I think I want to change my name first, though."

"Whatever you'd like."

"Okay, then. I came across a name last night; it's a kind of an anagram for 555."

"Oh? What?"

"Eve