The God of Atheists

By the Same Author

Almost

Revolutions

On Truth

The Tyranny of Illusion

Universally Preferable Behavior

A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics

Real Time Relationships

The Logic of Love

Everyday Anarchy

The Freedom of Now

Practical Anarchy

The Freedom of the Future

How (Not) To Achieve Freedom

Against the Gods?

A Concise Guide to Atheism and Agnosticism

The Handbook of Human Ownership

A Manual for New Tax Farmers

The Art of the Argument

Western Civilization’s Last Stand

Essential Philosophy

How to Know What On Earth is Going On

The god of atheists

by

Stefan molyneux

ADVANCE COPY FOR E-READER

Chapter 1

Joanne’s Family

￼Dingbat Diamonds

When she was twenty-seven, and feeling deep body-hunger pangs for a baby, Joanne made a decision which won her two babies and lost her a husband.

Joanne worked in a bookshop. It was dark, close to the university, and filled with tilting shelves and a dank, rotten smell, as if the words in the books were flesh, and were decomposing with their authors.

Alder came into the bookstore one rainy afternoon, when the streets were quiet and wet and Joanne was sitting behind the narrow counter, marking down back issues of Today’s Parent. He was short, freckled, and so pale she could almost see his skull, which was unsettling but strangely intimate. He turned at the door, squinting out at the rain, and the cold light through the streaming glass poured rivulets down his thin body.

Joanne stared at him, then suddenly raised an eyebrow. For the past year or so, she had been glaring into the future, craving a family—and back into her past, at her lack of preparation. She had frittered and hooked up; the wool needed to knit an infant together had not been gathered. Day after day, her thoughts went round and round: meet a man, like a man, date a man, keep a man, deepen a relationship with a man: three years equals thirty. Marry a man, live with a man, not scare off man with instant baby-talk, determine viability of marriage: four years equals thirty-four—plus nine months pregnancy, almost thirty-five for the first one! Almost eight years from coffee-shop hair-twirling to the wet and groaning birth-table. I could have given birth at fourteen, she thought; twenty-one years later, if the right man comes along today, I might squeeze out bundle-of-joy numero uno… Strange math ballooned in her head: my mother had me when she was twenty-three; twenty-three years after my first period, I could have a child…

In her journal, the day before she met Alder, Joanne had written:

Problems with being ‘between boyfriends’ in one’s late twenties:

❖Availability of men seems inversely proportional to their fitness as fathers

❖Potential fathers already married, otherwise unavailable or, simply, elsewhere

❖The men who remain are:

❖Unable to commit

❖Too oddly constituted to imagine settling down with

❖Broke

❖Ugly

❖Unstable

❖Unskilled

❖Uneducated

❖Unkind

❖Unfaithful

❖Dishonest

❖Boring

❖Needy and dependent

❖Addicted to something unsavory

❖Otherwise unsuitable

Joanne had sighed, chewing at her bitter pencil. Some sort of underground movement had been going on—perhaps under her very nose, it was hard to tell. Somewhere, along the footloose path of her twenties, a series of neutron bombs had gone off; hot, hidden flashes had silently stolen marriageable men from circulation. None of her own friends had settled down—or were particularly close—yet somehow the Alpha Fathers had been carried off anyway. It was as if some sort of pre-feminist hole had opened up in the space-time continuum, through which jeweled female arms had reached to pluck modern men into ’50s marriages.

Joanne saw the evidence of this other world when she rode her bike from work through the Annex, past the white globes of Palmerston, under the frowning peaks of the enormous houses. She saw men in Polo shirts watering lawns, moving the neon detritus of children, or hand-washing sensible station wagons. But these mansions always seemed to be inhabited by people of another age, somewhere in their forties perhaps. People the drug companies aimed vague commercials at. People waaay outside her own cool demographic. Men with careers, not just jobs, backpack travel stories, or endless hamster-wheel degrees. Men who saved money instead of collecting CDs. Men who opposed excessive taxation instead of railing against corporate imperialism. Men who actually bought furniture instead of just inheriting it. Boring men, Joanne told herself to avoid feeling sad. When she was a little more honest, she thought: boring, perhaps, but they know how to provide, and don’t view commitment as a noose to be chewed through…

After she turned twenty-seven, Joanne could no longer imagine that this other world was populated by men and women infinitely older than herself. Her imaginary age-barriers were beginning to sag under the stretching claws of the crow’s-feet, widening from her eyes. The backs of her hands, too, seemed prematurely withered, and she stared at them in horror one day, under the dusty sunbeams of a lurching bus, and began to truly understand that they would someday be the veined claws of an old woman.

What else had changed? Well, she used to be a solid sleeper; now, sleep had to be wooed (or, sometimes, not-so-wooed, with sleeping pills). When she lowered her arms, her armpits radiated wrinkles, like stretching spiders. Her breasts seemed drawn to consummate a love affair with her belly button. She had first failed the ‘pencil test’—her breasts held up a pencil thrust under them—when she was twenty-five. Now, when she clenched her buttocks and craned her head, she could see lunar dimples on her butt-cheeks.

Finally (and perhaps most terrifyingly), Joanne began to wonder: what the hell was the difference between her and the women who got married anyway? She had always been proud of her sexual power—not knowing that power always corrupts—but then, one day, while biking past a hip-cocked line of loud and face-sparkled club girls, she suddenly had a terrible thought: pussies are as common as noses… Joanne shuddered and almost took a spill, her heart pounding. Did I sell myself too cheaply?—oh, that was a terrible thought, both for its implications—and the possibility that her brand of feminism had been…somehow off, which was… Well, a thought she could not entertain, to say the least.

The morning of the day she met Alder, Joanne looked straight into her spotted little round mirror and thought one word: decay. The passage of time was leaving brutal tire-marks on her flesh. Staring at her face, she suddenly realized that her life was no longer something that was going to be, but rather something that already was. It was deeply shocking. What she had always thought she was preparing for was already passing; there was no longer an infinite vein of choices to be mined but, to some degree, what she was going to be would be largely composed of who she already was.

The day she turned twenty-three, Joanne had made a list in her journal. Now, half-dressed, her hands shaking, she dug out the entry from her bookshelf of red-bound diaries. She found the day and, picking up her chewed pencil, crossed out the following entries, tears dropping from her eyes:

❖I will not marry a man who has been divorced

❖I will not marry a man with children

❖I will not marry a man who watches sports every Sunday

❖I will not marry a fat man

❖I will not marry a skinny man

❖I will not marry a short man

❖I will not marry a bald man

❖I will not marry a hairy man

❖I will not marry a man who isn’t sensual

❖I will not marry a man who makes less than me

❖I will not marry a man past his thirties

❖I will not marry a man who does not like the band ‘Enigma’

❖I will not marry a man who does not read

❖I will not marry a man who does not get along well with his mother

❖I will not marry a mama’s-boy

❖I will not marry a man who wants me to stay home

❖I will not marry a man who is aggressive

❖I will not marry a man who is passive

And so, on that gray day, Alder had scurried into Joanne’s bookstore, and his pale hair was fuzzy with rain and one lock stuck to his forehead like Superman’s question-mark, and after obviously working up his nerve, he asked for obscure books to impress her, and the fact that he wanted to impress her almost broke her heart. And, as they fell to talking, it did not seem to matter that his voice was quite nasal, or his nails were chewed down, or that he was so obviously inexperienced—because Joanne was mapping out the future through his body language. Alder’s soul, she could feel, was a species of soft clay, which she could spin and mould… Within moments, her feminism seemed to fade away, and she felt herself suddenly shape-shift into the kind of woman who could rule over a man, and of course there was subjugation in that for her as well but it no longer seemed to matter at all…

And so she played no games and asked him if he was single and available for coffee, and theirs was a brisk courtship of efficient sex and scant small talk. She made him dinner and listened to his theories and bought him a dish-rack and made his bed and did not organize his bookshelves but suggested they do it together. Wiles, Joanne thought in wonder—my God I have become wily with feminine wiles! And it was all quite simple, really; she just made herself necessary to him; she insinuated herself into his life and made his days and nights more pleasant and cooked his breakfast and there was an undertow, of course; she was quite aware of it but strangely unashamed: I make you eggs, you make me pregnant…

There was a kind of hypocrisy in her courtship, of course, because she had a hurried agenda but could not rush him. She could not linger over prams or stop and mist at tiny clothes in storefront windows or stare dewy-eyed at him while holding his sister-in-law’s baby, but that was okay too. She spoke of her desire to keep working no matter what but the simple truth was that she had been working for five years and they had been okay, but were scarcely the kind of foundation for old age that a ball of life in a blue blanket could be.

And, in her own way, Joanne was wise to choose an intellectual. Alder was dry, brittle, and uncurious about life beyond books. She sensed deep pain in him, a kind of abstract defensiveness that could never be penetrated. His intellectualism was a dry moat around a bottomless hole—she felt that dimly, but never examined it closely, for her heart knew the truth. Certain defenses can become so well-developed that they become the personality they were originally designed to protect. Nineteen times out of twenty, the life of the mind arises from the grave of the heart. Learning, in other words, is loss. But Joanne did not examine any of that: her sole goal was the blue bundle. She told herself that the simple fact of Alder’s life was that he had never been loved; the rest was easy.

Easy, but not simple. If I love him unconditionally, she thought, he will lose his ambition… (The depths of her wiliness began to truly amaze her at this point.) So she praised him, but with qualifications. She missed him, but did not call. She needed him to succeed; not because she didn’t want to, but because she wanted to succeed at something different. He had yet to prove himself, so she trained his ambition with grudging love. I am committed to the best in you, she murmured when he complained of academic obstacles; you can achieve anything you set your mind to… Endless testing; visible carrots and hidden sticks; this was the nature of her love.

Alder was smart—stinging smart, she thought, like a freshly spanked brain—and had a liquid ease of language, but he had been ‘compared and contrasted’ into a sort of academic jellyfish, able to take the shape of any fashionable container. He called it adaptability, and Joanne held her nose for the sake of the blue bundle. She believed in his scholarly potential, insofar as she utterly failed to imagine him doing anything else. Probing his past yielded little; he wanted to escape his uneducated parents, had been praised by the occasional teacher, was vaguely anti-capitalist, anti-materialistic—and a very fast typist (the latter perhaps his greatest academic gift). He did not tan, and looked ridiculous in shorts—and so seemed perfectly suited to spend his life probing ambivalence under artificial light. He was a teacher’s assistant when she met him, just starting his PhD. She watched him teach, but did not envy his students. He was a bit of a droner, the kind of teacher who forced extensive notes, because his monotone gave no real indication of important points. (Joanne’s heart would sometimes break when she thought of him sitting in his little shared office, waiting for students who never knocked.)

Joanne and Alder were married within a year. On their honeymoon, his wife’s sex drive amazed Alder, and he felt incredibly lucky as he attempted to hang on to her hips, writhing above him in the dim Mexican heat.

Afterwards, as Joanne lay with her legs raised against the headboard, Alder half-dozed, vaguely thinking that, from a genetic standpoint, his hand was only obsessed with making another hand, and that he was merely the means to that end—and then started awake, in vague shock, as he felt Joanne’s fingers groping for him again…

Joanne became pregnant on her honeymoon. Miraculously, she got everything she wanted, within the span of a single year—and then, inevitably, she began to pay for it.

Chapter 2

Sarah’s Family

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Sarah’s father Dave was a solid, overbearing, jocular man, with small eyes set in a tall, wide face, like a raccoon peering over a shovel. His wife Angela was small, angular, pointlessly athletic. Dave and Angela were perfection embodied—almost embalmed. They enjoyed sailing, country clubs, dining out and endless renovations. He established himself as a businessman, she as a homemaker, and they emitted such a plastic sheen around themselves that they actually captured that final prize of the upper middle classes: they had no inner lives whatsoever. They fed off the doubts of those around them; they lured the insecure with the silent promise that life could be lived without inner conflict; they roused jumpy jungle-dwellers to blind envy with the glassy mirage of a paved rainforest.

Dave was—well, it was hard to say… He worked in a suit, shook hands hard, and travelled first class. One thing was clear: he founded companies, and then he foundered companies. His preferred source of income was to find inexperienced young inventors, inflame their greed, and then merge them with inexperienced investors, the doctors and lawyers always in need of more money. It all seemed good and believable, but there was a subtle, unperceived—and therefore inescapable—undertow of self-sabotage which ruined each and every one of his enterprises within a few years.

Dave had been enormously lucky early in his career—he had bought a telephony prototype from an inventor for fifty thousand dollars, then sold it to a phone company for over a million dollars about eighteen months later. This turnaround was just quick enough to shortcut his talent for self-destruction—which thus ensured it would likely continue for the rest of his life.

This windfall was consumed quickly: five-star European trips with his family, a ski chalet, private schools, a cottage, unsteady investments… Vanity is the natural enemy of statistics; a belief in the Midas touch gives people scant sense of the randomness of their powers.

Like most vain businessmen, Dave hungered for the magic of multiples. The slow and steady path was not for him. So, naturally, he gravitated, like all ephemeral thieves, to software, the latest entry in the huckster’s lexicon.

Dave nimbly worked the gap between greed and knowledge. There are knowledge workers, and then there are men like Dave: ignorance workers. The young programmers knew nothing about business; the investors knew nothing about software. Dave knew little about either, but he had an instinctive feel for the negative alliances needed to keep the truth at bay: keep those who know the most about software far away from those who know the most about business. Get angry at any practical questions. Speak in untestable generalities. In the face of interrogation, quote unrelated experience. Treat income projections as spreadsheet games: how much profit would excite investors? All sales are ‘hockey stick’ projections, with the upward arc always just over the hill… This strategy had worked well for almost a decade, but now four of Dave’s companies had, as he put it, ‘augured in,’ and he was getting rather desperate.

If asked, Dave would say that he lived for his children. Dave had a teenage son, Justin. Justin was like a Ming vase; beautiful, priceless, empty. He was perfectly poised, and completely paralyzed. Justin had been born with perfect little curls. The nurse was amazed; his hair seemed to have body even at birth. She wiped it off with a towel and it sprang back into place. He had dimples, pleasing babbling-brook burbles, and waving, gripping fists; she would not have been surprised if his bowel movements had produced the smell of fresh-cut grass.

As a child, he fell in love with his maids until they disciplined him, worshipped a teacher until finding out he drove a Honda, loved a girl until he saw her collection of teddy bears. (He could not stand sentimentality; it enraged him as nothing else quite could.) He was beautiful, in a bored, flawless, blonde way. His sex drive was immense. He hated books.

Sarah, on the other hand, loved to read, but reading, being a poor spectator sport, did little for the gene-status of her parents. Her mother’s parents were poor, and Angela had inherited their low-caste distaste for recreational reading. Self-improvement was all right, geography and a smattering of science, or perhaps craft books, but to read for the sake of reading alone… Thus Sarah joined the enormous historical species of cave readers; she lived under a blanket with a flashlight, her thirst for plot at war with her need for air.

Angela would find Sarah lying on her pink bed on a sunny day, the curtains partly drawn, and would pause outside the door, in the timeless wrestle of a parent who wishes to believe that she is considering alternatives before enforcing her will.

“Such a lovely day, dear…” she would say, her aura fidgeting.

“’S nice out.” Sarah would stare at her book: the current must not be broken…

“Let’s go to the mall!”

“I’m…” Uh, what? Sarah would sigh. Parents are so easily offended; this is a dark secret of childhood. I’m reading? I’m busy? I don’t want to go to the mall and watch you shop? I have no money? I’m not hungry? Clothes don’t interest me? They’ve just found the children on the island and Peggy is flying off to make tea and don’t they know a storm is coming?

But these desires were so indefensible… Beyond the window were wind and sky and rainbow patio umbrellas and girls wobbling on hopscotch and boys spraying pedestrians with hose water and everything the bright and clear external world had to offer, but it did not interest her at all, not at all… But her mother was clearly bored and wanted company.

“What’s on at the mall?” Sarah asked finally.

“A sidewalk sale.”

But we already have a sidewalk! A stupid joke, but she always wanted to say it. “But what do you want to buy?”

“Not buy; just browse. Look. You know…”

If you don’t want to buy, why look? Shopping was a surgical strike for Sarah: need, identify, buy, flee.

“Daddy’s working again,” said Angela softly, leaning her head slightly towards the doorframe.

You’re bored, you go, thought Sarah, with a vague queasy premonition, common at times like these, of how little truth could actually be spoken in a young life. Will it always be so?

“You can read later,” said her mother, shaking her head suddenly, in the decisive gesture which said: this show of negotiation is now over. It was as if she held a police megaphone, there in the doorway: ‘You there! With the contented expression! Put that book down! Move away from the bed slowly! We have you surrounded! You will shop!’

And so they would go to the mall, or the movies (always too adult for Sarah, always too childish for her mother), or walks or to bake or clean or organize… And always, always there was this sense of connection without closeness, a maddening vacuous locked dance, proximity without perception, and the less her mother understood her, the more time she wanted to spend with Sarah.

Is this love? she would wonder, hugging teddy bears in her pink and bow-tied room. She was well tended, well groomed, well fed. Her parents seemed to get along. They were well respected. But love—love like songs, extravagant, like The Giving Tree, like Cinderella; the love her parents read about to her; the love they neither displayed nor lived for, the love that filled the heart with veins of white flame… Love that could be leaned on, not nanny-love that died in expulsions, or parental love that flickered with shifting grades and dipped with corrected pliés. Love like a harbor, unadulterated shelter… Well that was just for toddlers, it seemed, like Santa Claus and shopping mall elves; it was a myth that made adulthood a punishment of lost illusions, a snort in the face of imaginary passion. Even the occasional grappling hugs of her mother, after Sarah was bathed or when she feigned sleep, did not warm her heart, because her mother seemed greedy for love, it was a kind of mouthing, a toothless chew, a groping for contact through a shell of distraction. Children see themselves by being loved; love-as-metaphor always grows in the absence of love-as-experience, and Angela’s whirling words and empty hugs beat around Sarah like glorious birds afraid of the earth.

What should she do with such imagined abundance, such wild recipes in the absence of ingredients? Spirits beckon children in the absence of flesh, but Sarah felt too deeply to flee to mere ghosts…

Instead, she found Alice.

Chapter 3

Alice’s Family

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Alice was a child of the suburbs. Her mother and father were both consultants, in the fashion and music industries. They were eager participants in the great modern experiment of professionalism, wherein the division of labor reached from the factories and cubicles into the very nest—almost into the very womb—of life, and faux-parents worked for others, and real parents worked for the faux-parents—as nannies and day-care workers and babysitters—and it became true that it took a salaried village to raise the children, because the natural parents were so rarely to be found.

And so it was that, as a toddler, Alice experienced the death of more caregivers than most children do in war zones. Her first nanny was a young Iranian woman who, her faux-mother said, seemed born to raise children (thus: of limited potential). In the still, detailed hours of a daylight homestead, Alice sat and watched her nummy (her name for nanny-mummy) prepare cookies and clean and cuddle and drop her dank bottom on the change table and play peek-a-boo with her. Like most nannies, Alice’s nummy was far from her real family, religion, home, past—and men of any description—and so Alice was the sole receptacle for the full force of affections designed for an entire tribe. Then the nummy vanished amidst threatening booms from the television, and the Persian spices, babbled foreign phone calls and dark nummy-ness—the entire panorama of Alice’s senses—all left with her. Then there was a short span of the faux-mother standing in the kitchen, twisting the phone cord around her forearm, and interviewing potential replacements, between panicked calls from head office.

Gwen came next. She was a brisk and scrubby Scottish woman who was much, much older and seemed to view infancy as a period of little utility and who moved and cleaned Alice rapidly, without sentiment, like a maid with another woman’s knick-knacks. Gone were the readings, the palm-massages, the cooed Arabic songs and dark cave of lowered hair; in their place was an almost complete absence of smell and fingers so rough it seemed each one was capped with a thimble. Even Gwen’s breathing was different; infants have so little weather that breath is their wind; languid Persian desert breezes were replaced with tight-lipped Protestant nasal snorting.

Alice resisted, of course. She screamed when the blunt yellow tentacles of rubber gloves picked her up, and cried at the sound of bagpipes, and did that sort of red blowfish expansion howling when the acrid fumes of endless Scottish scrubbing filled the air.

“Ah,” said her mother, “she doesn’t seem to be taking to the new one.” And so the Scottish woman vanished, and the cleaning fumes left with her, and the kitchen floor regained its familiar, patchy textures. Alice’s parents were older, and honestly didn’t seem able to recall what infancy was like, and so were forever confusing cause and effect. Instead of understanding that her baby was resisting wrenching change, Alice’s mother decided to change the nanny again (this was the same woman who threw tantrums at work when something changed and she was not informed immediately).

So two nummies, two deaths, and then a third, a slow and repetitive Jamaican woman, who did not mind reading the same story fifteen times, and could stir stew for an hour, just staring into space. Alice calmed down immediately, much to the relief of her mother, but Alice was not happy. For infants, personalities are contagious, and Ethel’s pace was so sluggish that Alice began to lose touch with reality. At a time when her brain was a seething ecosystem of impact and exploration, time seemed to stand still during the day, and Alice came dangerously close to becoming a connoisseur of sunlight, in the manner of a cat, watching the slow, slow stroll of daylight’s dusty legs crossing the floor. Occasionally, Ethel would shuffle from room to room, or stare at the wall and radiate resentment in the timeless manner of inert people. This resentment was an important ingredient for Alice’s stultification; dissociation requires a sense of danger, which is why snake charmers do not perform their wizardry on slowly swaying squirrels.

Finally Ethel managed to rouse herself enough to have a child of her own, at which point Alice was three, and was put into pre-school Montessori, where one or the other parent would come tearing in from rush-hour driving (the implacable green glowing clock! the fumes, the panicky rage of haste and immobility!) and was babbled to in a sped-up parody of everything that might have been said during the day had they spent eight extra hours together. Being a young child, Alice was a terrible communicator; she was designed to share, not speak, so these conversations often turned to frenetic monologues where complex office politics and the trials of difficult clients were translated into Seuss-ish rhyming couplets: ‘Mommy’s upset because there’s this ogre in the office who keeps dumping work on her like a big bully. Are there any bullies at your school? Probably not, it’s Montessori, but maybe you’ve learned the word for “bully” in French, well it’s the same thing…’

By the time she was ten, Alice had grown into the most beautiful girl in her school, and founder and leader of a clique. Sarah was the new kid, and it was some weeks before Alice tested her. One day, at a birthday party, Alice said, over the humble glow of an Easy-Bake oven, handing over a lop-sided cup of muffin goo: “That’s the stupidest hairdo I ever saw!” This made the other girls giggle.

“What’s your name?” Alice asked.

“Sarah. Where are you from?”

Toss of the head (the days of horse-love were not long to come). “Rosedale.”

“Rosedale,” whispered the other girls. “So rich, an army of Barbies!”

“Your mother works there?” asked Sarah, determined to remain unimpressed.

“Yes,” smirked Alice. “She’s a desiiigner!” She rose and spun, trailing imaginary veils.

“And your father?”

“Manages rock bands.”

“Boy bands? Backstreet Boys?”

“Grungy old ’80s bands. You wouldn’t know them. They’re verrrrry retro. Just like your hair. Yours?”

“Business owner. Homemaker.”

“Where?”

“Yonge and Shepherd. Not far, just up the street.”

“I know! Sleepovers?”

“Umm—been, not had.”

“Have one.”

“When?”

“Tonight. Be all: spurred by the moment!” A turn of the head. “Who wants a sleepover?”

“We do! We do!” A wild chorus.

Sarah thought, then said, “Umm, need more warning. Though it would be fun…”

“Well, when do your parents get home then?”

Ooh, tricky. Parents who came home too early were unambitious, possibly alternative. Too late, and they were uncaring slaves of the nummy, always apologizing and leaning over your bed in their work-clothes trying madly to slow down… Sarah settled for: “Before dinner.”

“So we’ll all come now and you can ask them then,” cried Alice, and then demanded that Sarah write down her phone number, which allowed her to review Sarah’s skill with even numbers. Don’t look too labored, Sarah thought, circling carefully.

The sudden sleepover landed like a watermelon on the sidewalk of Angela’s evening. She raised a grinding resistance and countless reasons, leaned like spears against the cavalry of little invaders.

“The other mothers have not been notified…”

“We know them all—call.”

“The girls don’t have any bedclothes…”

“I only have about a jillion pajamas.”

“What am I going to make for breakfast—I have a jogging club—is it too much to ask for a little warning? Your father is very tired—it’s a school night, you’ll all be exhausted tomorrow, what about all the homework, toothbrushes, medication, bedwetters…?”

The reasons flew fast, dizzying; her mother was a rigid gate. Sarah turned to her father, who took his wife aside for a parental pow-wow. After a few minutes, there were grim smiles and stiff hair-pats and the girls were allowed to flow upstairs where time dissolved into dawdling and giggling and running, and after dinner, the parents attempted to herd them through the narrow gates of toothbrushes and facecloths, and handed out night-clothes to groping hands, and mattresses were pulled off beds and parents phoned and one or two wailing girls were swallowed up by scowling porch shadows…

And after the stern warnings and finger-wagging door-shadows, by flashlight, they did each others’ hair and bossed and booed and attacked the early dozers and imitated teachers and told sexy stories to prudish girls and theorized about nuns and ee-yewed the smelly boys and swooned in southern tones over the cute ones and acted out cartoons and struggled to whisper loudest that ‘that was the best part of the film,’ and then, slowly, only Sarah and Alice remained awake. They lay looking at the moon, and the white continent coin seemed to pull them out of themselves, and they crept into each others ears and hearts with soft words.

The words were unimportant; the ideas, primitive and powerful; the listening, as wide as the pendulum of an echo across a canyon. What did they talk about? Being fake—putting on airs so others would like them—being afraid of boys, not wanting to be like their parents, not having any idea how poor people lived, whether there was a God, and why did it have to be a man anyway? And that Frankenstein was actually the doctor, not the monster, and having only once seen a ghost but not really sure, and why English teachers always seemed sad and gym teachers scary, and who was supposed to pay the national debt, and would society end in the year two thousand, when the computers stopped, and would they ever go to war, and what would it feel like to die, and why girls were bossy and women were bossy but teenage girls seemed dreamy and afraid, and what it would be like to lie in a field of wheat and not have to do anything else ever again for the rest of your life…

That last whispered thought was so like the present night of starlit murmurs that they giggled and hugged, and both of them felt a sudden and unheralded warmth, like an egg breaking open inside, and swore that no boy would ever come between them and that their husbands would just have to understand because no one else would understand them, not the way they understood each other tonight…

And there was little sleep the whole night long, but who could sleep, the first night at a lush oasis, after such a long young desert life?

Chapter 4

Al

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Whenever possible, the family ate together, but Alice’s mother Greta rarely did more than pick at her food. This was partly because of her involvement in the fashion industry, but also because Greta had a mortal foe—her digestive system—and also had great trouble sleeping.

Stomachs are the bane of the modern world; stomachs and sleep. Everyone wants their body to be a car, fixable while they wait, but Greta was beginning to believe that the body is the great silent weeper of modern times. The imperious conscious mind, Roman almost, curls its lip and whips the flesh, hot in pursuit of what the body cannot offer—status, immortality, intimidation… The mind prefers the iron simplicity of statues; the body shits and fails and listens more deeply. And dies, of course, which makes the mind like Michelangelo with hooks for hands, frantic in a vision that can never be completed.

Greta went to her doctor. Talked at the walls, at his degrees.

“Doctor, it’s almost embarrassing, but I’m having great trouble passing stools.”

“I see. How often do you go?” (Here come the whispers, thought her doctor dismally, and they did.)

“Perhaps once, twice a week. Sometimes once. But I never feel that, well…that it’s…never all…out.”

“And your diet?”

An embarrassed laugh. “Well, limited to say the least. I’ve read up. Roughage and liquids. No sugars. Metamucil. Water of course.” Sudden tears. “Sorry doctor but I feel that I can’t do anything. Sports. Dinner parties. I feel so heavy. Afraid to eat.”

“Are you on any additional medication?”

“No. Well, Ex-Lax doesn’t count as medication, does it?”

“What dosage are we talking about?”

“Just a couple of times a month. When I can’t stand it any more.”

“Because you have to be careful about causing lazy bowels.” (This image, of a pink bowel dozing in a hammock while the shit piled up in the yard, almost made him smile.) “How long has this been going on?”

There was always a pause here, as Greta thought back to her salad days, when she was not obsessed with her bowels. “Quite a while. This patch, a couple of months.”

“What about exercise?”

“Tae Bo, four times a week. Every week. Before…” Before sentry duty…

“Are you under a lot of stress?”

“Not particularly. Except of course that I can’t…” Sigh.

“Ah.” Here there generally descended a meaty pause, as they both regarded this problem which could not be solved. Finally: “Well, we could do an ultrasound…” he would say with the clear implication that an ultrasound would be completely useless.

“Well…”

There was another pause, then: “Unfortunately there’s no way to diagnose this based on what you’ve said. I would suggest that you eat more roughage, exercise, and eliminate sugars and alcohol. Do you smoke?”

“No.”

“Ever?”

“No…”

“Sometimes when people quit, their bowels quit too. But anyway, I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

There was always a dismal after-moment then, when the hopeless petulance of an unmet demand for fixing it mingled with the true despair of an unnegotiable betrayal.

The conversation about insomnia was about the same, except that the pauses would be longer, because real insomniacs have about as much sense of time as cave-fish. Sometimes the doctor would prescribe sleeping pills, because he found the thought of sharing highways with these zombies was frankly too unnerving.

Greta was a woman defined by scarves; she had scores of them, as well as an affection for the peasant dresses of landlocked mountain countries. She was a designer who praised herself for providing alternatives to corporate clothing; she had a vicious intolerance for thick catalogues, and anyone who mentioned the word ‘Gap’ around her usually regretted not wearing the kind of thick arm-padding used for training police dogs. Greta also had a teenage son, Iain, whose suspicious height (her father was short and squat) sat like a fifth corner on the family cube. Iain loved watching ‘Fashion Television’ (nipple-vision he called it) and this invariably sent Greta into passionate fits, and she would stand in the living room, her scarves twitching with displeasure, awash in a foam of rabid denunciation—in Iain’s phrase, ‘channeling Stalin.’

Greta’s inevitable environmentalism was also mocked, since she had a habit of defending only popular animals. Iain enjoyed pointing out that we kill far more sharks than dolphins; their fins are cut off for soup, and they are thrown back into the water to die, and we are shocked about the poor dolphins caught in the tuna nets, while neglecting the fact that thousands of tuna are also killed, ‘which,’ he would say with heavy adolescent sarcasm, ‘gives the nets their name.’ Very few parental beliefs can withstand close scrutiny, of course, but Greta’s Rosedale socialism seemed a particularly vulnerable bruise, especially since her florid revolution against big business was largely funded by her husband’s involvement in the skankiest underbelly of modern capitalism: the music business.

Al’s ascent into the realm of retro-producer had been propelled by an honest impulse. As a teenager, a band he started had failed miserably, but the bassist had formed another band who attracted attention, and whose rising star he fastened onto as a manager. The band did well, scoring a top-ten hit and touring most of Canada, and Al was pegged as a ‘talent-spotter,’ the coincidence of his first find being completely overlooked. The music business is generally run as a huge primordial lottery, and tends to draw people who would like to be in the Mafia but instead choose an industry where lies and lawyers whack the marks.

Al had all the slippery cheer of an amoral optimist. He had seen enough of the music scene to know that most promises were lies—not about money, that much was obvious, even to the new bands, who grew up listening to Queen and learning the identity of the manager in “Death On Two Legs.” The implicit promise of drugs and promiscuity was also true, but so irrevocably disastrous to the participants that some of the newer groups adopted the squeaky lives of Brazilian boy-bands, their ‘drugs-bad God-good’ sap truly turning Al’s stomach. No, it was the promise of fame that quickly rang hollow to him, like a payphone in an empty stadium. He had seen the pattern so many times: the shy wonder of sudden adulation, the invasive, corrosive, fanatical crowds, the diamond-hard biosphere of deference, and the fatuous evacuation of a life lived without consequences. Everyone famous warns of it, the industrial soul-scouring of foaming eyes; the grave-markers are legion: drugs in the sixties, sex in the seventies, money in the eighties, and, by the nineties, just about anything carbon-based.

Al had little eye for new talent, he knew, but then that was true of all of his contemporaries. They sometimes joked that picking talent was like picking stocks, and one or two even became successful managers by throwing darts at long lists of bar bands. His true skill was his ability to keep aflame the hollow hunger of the somewhat-successful. His speeches were impassioned serpentine ramblings of confused self-actualization that sometimes caused musicians to compose lyrics right there in his office. One had been sent to him, which he kept pinned to the back of his door and glanced at whenever he lost his place while speechifying:

The Road of Thorns

It’s a road of thorns we ramble on

The dream of roses that lifts our feet

An icy cliff we scramble on
A bitter wind that whispers: defeat

The road of thorns pokes at our toes

Like a paper-cut of infinite woes

Sometimes it pulls us to our knees

And punches us with a fistful of keys

The road of thorns leads to the rose of life
Like the blind date that leads to a loving wife…

(rpt to fade)

The music, of course, had been awful: typical Jethro-Tull-meets-landslide-guitar, a tinkly fairy opening mashed into oblivion by a Godzilla-foot of feedback and rampant regression-howling—but the idea that great art was suffering was always melody to Al’s ears. Al himself had been scared away from a musician’s life, for a number of reasons, which he had entered into his diary—which, lost in the attic, had only one entry:

February 12, 1972 5:45 a.m. new life!!!:

Dangers of being a musician:

❖being pulled into the audience

❖being ignored by the audience

❖selling sex for a place to crash

❖not getting any offers for above (ha!)

❖doing covers for the rest of your life

❖there are a lot of idiots in rock-land; their not going away

❖dealing with the endless hissy-fits of lead singers

❖quitting in disgust at 35 with no savings, no family, no skills

❖ruining my health

❖can’t sleep in vans or busses! (have to make it to private-plane big time to be remotely conscious for gigs)

❖bassist always gets last pick of groupies, all they want is details of the lead singer’s devotion to Tibet, followed by surreal blowjob

❖what do you call a musician without a girlfriend? Homeless (not so ha!)

Benefits of being a musician:

❖ummm

❖don’t like drugs

❖lots of sex

❖performance high (mostly fear, but verrrry good!)

❖could make big time (not really a tangible, but could happen)

❖Art? (we’re not exactly ‘Yes’)

It wasn’t enough. Al knew it even before beginning the list, but it felt like less of a compromise to write it down. Being amoral, he had little fear of ‘selling out’—his definition: people who complain about ‘selling out’ never got offered a good price.

Also, the tangible evidence is that the world of professional music was, by and large, only open to those who had no other abilities. It was like Freddie Mercury, the singer for Queen, had once opined in an interview: “I can’t cook, don’t like books, can’t do anything else of value, so thank God I can do this!”

Unfortunately, this clearly contradicted the ‘follow your dreams’ speech he gave every week for the benefit of depressed musicians whose children sang their songs in bright mockery. Even while giving his motivational speeches, he heard its opposite corollary in his head:

‘You have no choice, loser; you’ve backed yourself into a corner, like someone with no RRSPs who has to play the lottery in order to have any hope of retirement. And, quite frankly, you are a useless human being in every other realm; all I can hope is to squeeze one more hit song out of your depleted nervous system before casting you to the rubbish-heap of jazz experimentation and acidic condemnations of mainstream popularity.’

Al was also skilled in knowing when to cast his acts off. The first sign was the use of the word ‘project.’

When a client came in and said he was working on a ‘project’—which usually involved a musical rendition of a classic horror text—this was usually very bad. Soon he descended to experimental collaborations, and when he finally proposed a solo album of his own drumming, usually justified in a Paul-Simonish way by references to African influences (one even attempted to recreate the ambience of a rain-forest using only cymbals), it was clearly time to part ways. Over the years, Al had developed what he called a ‘pop-patter,’ which gave the impression he had taken a lot of drugs in the past. This gave him a sort of credibility with his clients, who generally had given up drugs, but still spoke carefully, as if weighing the transcendent value of each syllable. Still, firing a client was usually a scene so fraught with pain that he could barely refrain from laughing, as the musician generally said (after proposing a jazz project with sampled penguin chatter):

“You don’t see my vision? This is about more than charting, man.”

“Absolutely I do,” Al would say. “And moreover, I applaud it. But that’s not what I’m about. I’m about the business of music. But tell me this: why not a great song with innovative drumming?”

“‘Great’ is not just what the radio wants.” (This was also bad; the musician would no longer refer to an audience, or even ‘airplay,’ but ‘the radio,’ as if it were an all-consuming entity, a bland and yawning god.) “Haven’t you ever wanted to do something truly different?”

“Sure, like different, like music without music, like that 45 of pure silence put out in the ’50s so folks could get three minutes peace and quiet from the jukebox. That was different, sure I see that, but that’s not what I’m about. We have a relationship because you wanted commercial success, that’s great, that worked, and I don’t want to interfere with your development, follow your muse, your dream, whatever, but I’m telling you a musician without an audience is just some wanker in a basement.” (All music managers use British-isms: Al just accepted that and went with it.) “Hell you’re going to turn into a mime the way you’re going, and children will cower in fear at your passing. Just be normal, make normal music, make people tap their toes and laugh or cry, and if you don’t think there’s Bach in Celine Dion you’re mad, that shit is not easy or everyone would do it. Pop is hard, man. Shit try writing a jingle—I’d kill to sign whoever wrote that Pizza Pizza thing—don’t make music for musicians; it’s like romancing your hand for God’s sake! Your dream was to make music that reached people, and we did that! You had the spark, I know it goes; it can go to shit—hell look at Peter Gabriel—but I think that’s a lack of will, a fear of risk and these fucking hard-rock Sirens of ‘difference’ and ‘experimentation.’ Music is as old as mammoths, everything that is possible has been tried and there’s nothing better than three minutes of tunage that has you leave the elevator humming. If you don’t want to do that anymore, fine, but then leave music! You can’t or won’t be Henry Moore anymore? Okay but don’t hang around sculpting your little poos! Melody is the ultimate sophistication—and if you mention the J word I’ll kill you on the spot, right here, bare hands, all that tuning, noodling, tinny-sax car-selling bullshit! Build a little coven of exclusive appreciation and you’ve killed music dead. There is nothing more complicated than a pop song, I don’t care how many damn notes you can play how fast or how you can create a mournful horn from the skull of an Amazon warrior—experiment sure, give me Bo Rhap, give me Mr. Cairo, give me Grooving Cave Picts or whatever the fuck it was called, but don’t turn your back on Mr-stuck-in-traffic-needs-a-singalong and tell me you want to be a musician!”

Occasionally, rarely, they would believe him and return to what he called the craft (days on the guitar dubs for “Killer Queen,” he would say—days!) of making songs. This made Al happy, because he truly believed that experimentation was the unnatural birth of the exhaustion and insecurity that occurs after the easy fertility of a young artist dries up. Don’t become an Einstein, wasting your life on some grand theory—when it dies, either resuscitate it or walk away!

So, Al ended up with a stable of dependable two-thousand-draw acts that acted as a low-rent fountain of youth to the baby boomers. The concerts were early, dependable, mosh-less, and tightly patrolled. It was a stable living, and he had invested well. Due to the close links between music and software, he had invested in a few start-ups formed by ex-band members, which had done quite well.

By the time Al was in his late forties, he had a young daughter and teenage son. But he had waned early; he had no real foundation for the second half of his life. His ambition was never overwhelming, but what he had, he had crippled with irony. His son Iain knew this easily, caustically, with the corrosive psychic ability of a teenager. Iain passed through the veils of his parents’ illusions as if they did not exist, inflaming their sad compromises with biting termite relentlessness.

Al sighed, deep within his creaky heart, and girded himself for the inevitable showdown. His son was cynical, he knew, but desperately cynical, because he hoped he was wrong.

He could kill Iain’s desperation, of course, only by proving him right. He could, of course, do nothing about the cynicism.

Chapter 5

Alder

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Alder’s father had been a tree surgeon, a man of famously ferocious will. Alder’s first memory was of an admonition. He was about five, and had stolen some cookies, and his father sat him down.

“Son,” he had said, “self-control is the whole point of life. Have you ever seen me smoke? No. But I used to. I smoked for fifteen years. The day I read that cigarettes are bad for you, I got up out of my chair, took a full pack out of my breast pocket, crumpled it up, and threw it in the garbage. It took me two years to stop reaching for a smoke. Cookies are nothing, you see? You’ve just got to be stern with yourself. You say: ‘I want it, so what?’ And walk away. There’s nothing easier!”

His mother had the same incomprehensibly practical streak. Once, when Alder had skipped school, the vice-principal had phoned his house. His mother had waited for him to come home, and asked him why he wasn’t at school that day. ‘I was sick,’ he said. ‘Where?’ she asked. He replied: ‘I threw up in the playground, then went to a friend’s…’

The school was about twenty minutes walk from their house. Alder’s mother took his hand, and half-dragged him to the school. She demanded to know where he had thrown up. I wish it’d rained! he thought in agony, marching back and forth in the playground, pretending to look, his mother’s hand closed over his own like a wet, fleshy vice.

There was ruthless exposure, but little punishment. It was very humiliating—and the humiliation wasn’t even assuaged by just censure. It was all cornered confession, without the sweet release of absolution.

Nothing seemed that difficult for his parents. They referred to each other as ‘Mother’ and ‘Father,’ went on public-park barbecues with their hard, stalwart friends. They lived in a staunch, sealed community of lower-class English immigrants. They had a pub where they ate little packets of crisps and watched rugby and cricket on a snowy screen. They derided the PBS pledge-breaks which interrupted their favorite Anglo sitcoms. They read the Daily Mail at the local library, three days late. They lived without passion, without temptation, without imagination. They never fought.

They also, to Alder’s view, lived on an utterly alien planet.

He was not popular, but not unpopular, either. He had a smattering of friends, some immigrant children like himself. As a teen, he went dirt biking in litter-strewn woods, hung out at railroad tracks, shoplifted briefly. He hid his mind and imagination from all social contact, picturing his creativity as a kind of deep, compressed, black-water fish that would blow its eyes out if dragged up to the sunny surface.

All rules are blind impositions, he thought, as he was disciplined by teachers, principals, his parents. Alder was reactive and skeptical, but had no inner discipline, and so dissolved a little, day by day, as rules and hostility wore him down. Thus, he was mostly lost to himself, long before he went to university.

Once he got there, however, he took his first philosophy class and stumbled across a strange, almost convulsive passion in himself. The professor—a man so ancient he was believed to have conversational knowledge of the Enlightenment—tottered up to the podium and spoke about Descartes:

“This man—Descartes—put forward the following argument. Suppose that everything you perceive is the work of a malevolent Demon who has the ability to completely manipulate your senses. For you, then—each of you—the fact that I am standing up here and lecturing to you is not real. Neither is the seat you sit on, the family you have, or the paper you write on. Everything is a deception. The Demon controls everything you see, everything you feel. So how could you ever know the truth? This drove Descartes almost mad—until he found a solution. Everything might be a lie, said Descartes, there is one truth, one thing that is indisputably real, and that is that you are being fooled. Something exists which is being manipulated. Nothing you believe might be true—except that you believe something. This is the root of: ‘I think, therefore I am…’”

Alder heard little after that. There was something deliciously deep about this possibility—not only of being fooled, but that he was worthy of fooling. Fantasy and specialness made a fateful union.

He knew that this was a symbolic argument, but he enjoyed playing the game of finding inconsistencies in his mass theatre of illusion. Years later, when the film The Matrix came out, he would use it in his lectures.

“What is the difference between a perfect illusion and what you call sensual reality?” he would ask his students, after playing them Laurence Fishburne’s speech about the matrix. “Or, more simply, if all you did was dream, how would you know it?”

Alder knew that there were good arguments against this, but they all seemed beyond the reach of his students. For the most part, they also didn’t believe him. Everything may be an illusion, they grumbled, but we still have to turn our papers in on time.

Alder praised creative arguments against objective truth, which he called ‘thinking outside the box,’ and would challenge his students to further undermine their belief in reality. He fantasized that he was opening their minds, but it was a very unfair contest. It took mankind half a million years to discover science and truly believe in reality—to escape the sightless absolutes of tribalism and religion—could he really expect blank-eyed undergraduates, fresh from the brain-mincing boredom of high school, to make the leap all at once?

Alder was blatantly biased, but believed that he was provoking thought. All ‘common sense’ arguments about the reality of existence were dismissed as rustic philistinism. He provoked laughter when the rare student—often a Randian Objectivist—argued for objective truth. He downgraded papers which made the same points, noting in the margin: this supposition is unproved—no matter that the limit for papers was often five pages (to make you use language more effectively!), which made any essential proofs impossible. The fact that other students were not marked down for agreeing that reality was the dream of a Demon—surely as unproven a supposition—did not trouble him: my job is to overturn stale assumptions, provoke thought, undo mental habits…

The entire world of academics excited Alder beyond measure. The student plays about estranged lovers hunting each other with nail guns through abandoned houses, or ‘inverted theatre’ where the audience sat on the stage and the actors performed in the seats—it was all very heady. The grubby unshaven scribes of the university newspaper, with Marx buttons on their worn lapels and their condescending knowledge of the third-world atrocities committed by multinational corporations… The wild riots when world leaders came to Toronto to discuss economics… The insurrections by radical feminists to get the word ‘seminal’ struck from academic language—the jaw-thrusting assertions of the need for a faculty of ‘Herstory’… The raging of students when fees approached ten percent of the costs of having them in university… Everything was radical, everything was reactionary, and Alder sank happily into the wild, foggy world of unconsidered opinions, leaving barely a trace.

It was the fall of Marxism that gave him the most pleasure. “Marxism is the opiate of intellectuals,” he repeated over and over, with a sardonic smile, to the twitchy phalanxes of frothing leftist undergraduates. Alder hated systems of any kind—any belief in the predictability of society and its structures undermined the ultimate authority of the Cartesian Demon. “Or,” he would say, “it’s a nice theory, but it doesn’t work in practice, because people are selfish…” This was a delicious moment—to destroy the link between theory and practice, at the same time as stating that people were too immoral to live under a dictatorship… Ahh, was there anything headier? (Alder remained far enough from the Faculty of Science to avoid the simple rebuttal, which is that a theory which does not work in practice is not in fact a good theory.)

And the language…! This was perhaps the greatest achievement of the previous generations of thinkers. Postmodern academic language was the true tongue of the Demon—of that much, Alder was utterly sure. All contrary arguments arise from power structures! Nothing brilliant can be expressed in simple language! The degree of obscurity is the degree of depth! Alder knew that it was all foolishness, all a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes—but that was the beauty of it! Everything was an illusion—why should language be any different?

Something in him eroded, crumbled, then finally fell. Within two years of attaining the podium, Alder began opposing everything—even the Demon itself! He no longer argued for the Demon and against objective reality—now he argued against both. (This, of course, is the final victory of the Demon, but he was too deep in its blank grip to know that.) As he led his students deeper into the hearty madness of absolute relativism, his classes began to grow febrile with unmanageable conflicts. Once, there was even a yelling match—which culminated in a book-throwing and a storming out—which excited him beyond words. Now they care! he thought, as he sarcastically addressed the silent class about the vanity and irrationality of passion.

And then—and then, unto Adler, was born a son…

Stephen was a fascinating baby. He learned words and language unseasonably quickly, and discovered object constancy at five months. Although Stephen developed early, to Alder, there were some stages which his curious son simply refused to outgrow. In particular, the phase of endless questions seemed, itself, endless.

When Stephen was six, Alder was made a full professor. Stephen saw his father as a super-teacher, who taught big people how to think. It seemed odd to him that you had to wait until you were almost twenty—to be very tall, with hairy toes—to learn how to think (I mean, what am I learning now?), so he would ask his father to explain.

“Daddy’s a teacher of big people,” Alder would say.

“How big? Like giants?”

Alder smiled. “Big like—twenty years old.”

“What do you teach them?” (The idea of having hairy toes and needing instruction on anything seemed too odd for words.)

“I teach them how to think. How to be good.”

Stephen would nod slowly, his blue eyes wide and serious. “Like don’t lie. Don’t take cookies. Share-be-nice.”

“Yeah, like that.”

“How long does that take?” asked Stephen.

“Years,” murmured his father. “Years and years and years.”

“Being good must be hard.”

“Yeah, I guess so…”

Stephen thought about this. “Am I good?”

“Yeah.”

“And Mommy?”

“Yeah?”

“And—and you?”

“Good?” Alder’s lips widened. “I try.”

Stephen frowned. “I’m good, Mommy’s good, you try.”

“I know a lot more about being bad,” said Alder. “I read all about it in very big books.”

Stephen leaned forward, overjoyed to be having an important conversation with his dad. “So who’s the worst person ever?”

“The worst… Hm. Well, there are two answers to that. Like someone who does something bad, and someone who tells other people to do something bad.”

“Like…” Stephen screwed up his eyes, trying to sort out his inner images. “Like the Pied Piper.”

“Huh?”

“Like, if he pushes a kid off a cliff, that’s… But if he makes, like a jillion kids jump off a cliff, that’s…”

“Sure—those are different. Not the same.”

“So who’s the worst who pushed someone off a cliff? I mean ever!” asked Stephen eagerly.

Alder frowned. Good thing Joanne’s in the garden, he thought. He doubted that discussing violence with his son—however essential to the male world—would meet with her approval.

“Don’t know. A mad, bad man, I guess. A killer.”

“What’s a killer?”

“A very bad man.”

“What’s his name?”

“It’s not one person. It’s like ‘kid’—it means a lot of kids.”

“Huh. So who’s the baddest talker ever?”

“That’s hard to say. Some say it was a German man. Some say a Greek man. Some say a Russian woman, but she’s not really respected where I work.”

“What did they say?”

Alder smiled and glanced down at his book. “That’s sort of what I teach twenty year olds.”

“Who do you think was the baddest?”

“Worst,” corrected Alder. “I guess none of them. The worst—and I wouldn’t put it that way—are people who don’t think at all. Who just—do whatever they do. Like sheep.”

“Huh.” Stephen thought of his wool blanket—wool comes from sheep—is my blanket made from people who don’t think? But he was afraid to ask his father. He hated that laugh, the one that came when he asked something that turned out to be silly.

“So who was the bestest?”

Alder sighed. “Just ‘the best,’ Stephen. The difficulty here is… that everyone says something different.”

“What do you say?” asked Stephen, trying to muster as much enthusiasm as he could.

“I say that being good is supposed to make you happy, so whoever is happiest is the best.” Alder put his glasses back on. “Now, I have to read this, Stephen…”

“Oh,” said Stephen, downcast—not because he desperately wanted to know, but because he could feel the connection with his father twisting away, like a fish in his hands suddenly squirming back into a shallow, chilly stream.

Stephen is like a punishment, thought Alder—never asking: for what? Because he had no belief in logic or consequences, he could only think about pain in narcissistic terms. The only way to fight his open-minded father is with absolutism, he thought, remembering Alex P. Keaton, the right-wing son of hippie parents on Family Ties.

But it was deeper than that. The phrase ‘the sins of the father’ rotated in his mind, like a screen saver of spinning text. But the concept of ‘sin’ was beyond him—or above him perhaps. He could only see his son as a child inhabited by some mutant, regressive, medieval gene. He’s gonna end up with big hair on late-night TV, striding and begging for money with righteous anger…

It was—it was the intransigence of his son’s beliefs that maddened him. I can live with him, let him be, let him believe what he wants, but he won’t do the same with me! That was perhaps, the deepest, least forgivable insult. As a relativist, he didn’t mind an absolutist—unless the absolutist left no room for relativism. Alder winced: Stephen is like my fucking father, come back to life in Star Wars pajamas…

He would wake up and make daily pledges to himself, in the manner of irritable parents since the dawn of time: I’m taking this too personally, he’s just a kid, it’s a phase, he’s trying to get under my skin. I’m a professor—it’s such an unfair contest. Everything’s simple when you’re five feet high… But then Stephen would ask some question at breakfast, as he read the newspaper (what eleven-year-old reads the business section?) about government corruption, or stock manipulations, or aid to third-world dictatorships, or privatization—and they would be off like a shot, Stephen asking maddeningly simple questions which jabbed endless pins in Alder’s ballooning explanations.

Alder remembered one such ‘discussion,’ when Stephen was a little older, about some loans the government had made to a business that had donated it money.

“Dad, what’s going to happen with this?”

“Well, son—it’s how politics works, but no one likes to have it so out in the open.”

Stephen’s eyes widened. “So the problem was that they got caught?”

“Well, governments get elected by promising favors—it costs a lot of money to get elected—and so when they get into power, they have to give favors to the people who gave them money.”

“But—here it says that the government gave one point six million dollars to this company, which gave, hang on, seventy thousand dollars to the Liberals. That’s a good deal.”

Alder nodded. “Yes, it is. Now the Prime Minister says that it was still good because the money went to business development in Quebec while Quebec was thinking of separating from the country.”

His son frowned. “So—corruption is okay if the end result is good?”

“No, it’s more complicated than that…”

“Do you think it’s wrong?”

“Well, it’s how the system works at the moment. In a perfect world, sure, you wouldn’t need that kind of stuff. But politics is a lot of gray, a lot of fudging and favors. The Liberals are usually pretty good at playing the game, but not this time.”

Stephen returned to his cereal, and Alder had exchanged a glance with Joanne, both of them sighing in mute relief.

But they were not to get off so easy. “So, if some student came and paid you for a good mark, and then became a great academic, that would be okay?”

They were off again. That morning, things got particularly ugly. Alder had been late for his lecture, hating to leave Stephen in tears.

As he drove, his stomach knotting at every traffic light, he felt guilt about making his son cry, because he did not know the innocent vengeance that his son, through mere curiosity, was hatching at that very moment.

Chapter 6

Sarah and Alice Meet

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Sarah and Alice were powerless in the face of their sudden union; there was such ecstasy, such exclusive inclusion, such a sudden quicksand of understanding, that they were as blameless as crack babies. Doomed love unfolded its dark wings over the neat suburban worlds of their families; Shakespeare strode through lawn-sprinklers with terrible eyes and poetic flames.

When they made contact, there was a distant rumble; an Aztec rain cloud seemed to gather over the neat houses and tight hedgerows, and plastic toys left on the lawns turned and wept in the sudden joy of harsh rains, and mothers ran with their children under newspapers, and there was the fear and exhilaration of rearing, uncaring, flexing nature, which evoked the mad flight and lolling pleasures of our animal natures. Taxes were forgotten, and old stories came to mind, and mothers for a moment saw the fruits of their loins and held them close, and men sat on sky-darkened couches, remembering the heft of a spear and wet beards of blue paint, and there were old smiles and spotted skins and wind-sniffing and swinging members and the sensuality of deep life returned—and there were no obligations, no duties, just the snuffing loyalties of deep scent and the loving intimacy of a slow hunt…

Alice and Sarah met and fused in an instant, over the slumbering bodies of their little acquaintances, and from that night, for the rest of their lives, they were to be twins, they were swept up in Plato’s tornado, and their union was the second thread in the unravelling of the society around them.

They took to walking together in the playground, in strange zigzags and rotations, like crop circles, or the swinging powder of a gyroscopic toy. They did not complete each other’s sentences, because there was a genuine curiosity and joy in discovery. They did not play with other children, did not notice boys, and were united against bullies. Their swinging lunar passions began tides of loyalties in those around them, and the coalescing, curious group of girls around them yearned for them and hated them in equal measure.

For some time, Alice and Sarah’s parents were well pleased. Their daughters became less volatile, because they were less hungry. There were fewer slumber parties (and in a matter of months they had disappeared entirely), and they were happy that each daughter had found a fast friend. Like many people with few adult friends, they had a sentimental notion of childhood attachments, thought them cute, imagined their daughters following each other through watershed marriages, births, deaths, and finally playing bridge on a Florida porch in the whitening sunset of life.

But any stab at chick-flick sentimentality went out the window at the girls’ first assault on certain feminine values.

As puberty approached, so did fashion. For these girls, the great question of attraction was, unfortunately, answered by teen movies and music videos. One afternoon, sitting in Sarah’s basement, their homework spread on their laps, Sarah and Alice watched a music video. One Ms. B. Spears was giving them fairly clear instructions on the nature of female sexuality.

“That’s so fake,” snorted Alice.

Sarah’s eyes were fixed on the television. “My brother says that they’re fake.”

“Her boobies,” said Alice seriously. “Yeah.” She laughed, pushed her homework off her lap, jumped up and started dancing, shaking her bottom outrageously. “I’m Britney Spears! I’m a virgin. I don’t know why people think I’m so sexy.” She lifted her top. “Look at my belly! Look!”

Sarah smiled. “I don’t want to be like that. Everyone’s supposed to be cute, you know—like, he’s so cute. But I don’t know what they mean, about that. Like, pretty? Like—you?”

“I’m not pretty!” cried Alice, still dancing around. “I’m sexy!” She paused, pressing her hand to her chest. “Whooo! Sexy is tiring.”

Sarah laughed. Another video came on: Kylie Minogue. “She’s sexy, but so skinny. I’m never going to diet.”

Alice flopped down and grabbed a Twizzler from a bowl. “You’re thin already.”

“No, I mean if I end up liking chocolate and weighing two hundred pounds. Or stay fat after I have a baby. I’m never going to diet.”

“Never? What if you have a life-threatening illness?”

“I…”

“What if you’re going to get diabetes? What if you can’t get on the bus anymore? Or sit in a movie seat? Or take a plane?”

Sarah laughed. “Okay, I’ll diet if I’m going to die! But not for boys. Not for boys and magazines and nasssty girls who whisper…”

They cried out together: “Oooh, she’s getting so faaat!”

“No, not for them,” said Sarah. “Not for anyone but me.”

Alice smiled. “But okay, there’s a boy—let’s say a cute boy—cute in the right way, not just soppy cute, maybe a bit-of-stubble cute, cute-with-a-little-danger—and he just doesn’t like fat girls? And—okay, no listen—he comes up to you and says: Saaarah, I looove you—I’d marry you if you were thinner. I mean, it’s bad to be fat. So—better health, cute boy, big social life, marriage, daaancing, children, grandkids, big house… You’d take chocolate over that?”

“Huh.” Sarah considered this. “But you never said ‘love.’”

“Well love—I mean love—that’s assumed!”

“But if I loved him, and he loved me—why would I need to be thin?”

Alice flopped back on the sofa. “Well, okay, he’s an Olympic athlete. A rower.” She sat up excitedly. “No, a gymnast! And a horse rider. With his own horses.” She hugged herself tightly. “And he’s all: ‘my love, my love—I just want us to be able to do things together, and here you’ve gone and squashed another one of my poor horsies!’”

They both giggled. Sarah cried out: “Oh, my love, it’s so important to stick the landing!” (This was about as sexual as they got; they wouldn’t have been able to explain what ‘sticking the landing’ meant exactly, but it seemed funny anyway.)

Alice wiped her eyes, then said, with great gravity: “Actually, it’s not the boys you’ve got to worry about.”

Sarah smiled tenderly. “You’re so cute when you get serious like that, all of a sudden. It’s like: knock, knock. Who’s there—a joke? No—it’s the most serious girl in the world.”

Alice shrugged. “Boys are just happy to have you near, I think. They’re not as fussy as… I mean like Rachel, yesterday, with her hair clip, that leather thing with the chopsticks through it. Big conference in the washroom. Did you see Rach—what’s that in her haaair? It’s so ’90s, so Sarah McLachlin, sooo granola! Fifteen minutes on a hair thing! I don’t think boys even notice…” She smiled. “I mean, they’d notice a hundred extra pounds on your hips, but girls know if you have pasta for lunch, you know, like the creases on your jeans are just different. ‘Ooh, did you have a high-carb lunch? That messes up your metabolism for days, you know!’”

Sarah imitated her mother: “Nothing tastes as good as thin feels, sweetie! Once on the lips, forever on the hips!”

“Would your dad love your mom if she was fat?”

Sarah paused, frowning. Her pursed mouth moved from side to side. “Don’t know. I’d like to see what he’d do if she stopped dying her hair. I’m never going to do that, either.”

“Then we’ll just have to marry each other, and have a motorcycle wedding.”

“No ring, no priest, no pretty dresses.”

“We’d be two fat girls, so big we couldn’t even get into a church!”

“And we’d only get married for the cake!”

They laughed again, and then it was Sarah’s turn to become serious. “But no, I mean, why would we…? We don’t even like these girls anymore.”

“Why would we what?”

“The make-up. The clothes. The right scrunchies, right singers, right—right friends. Right hobbies…”

“Hm,” murmured Alice. “’Cause it’s too much work not to. Because gossip is so mean.” She turned over, propping herself up on her elbow. “And dressing up can be fun.”

“Yeah, but every day? For a dance, maybe…”

Alice turned the idea over in her head. They both heard the rumble of parental movement upstairs. “You’re talking about a strike,” she said finally.

“I guess I am,” murmured Sarah, brushing back her hair. “I really, really am.”

“Okay, so like what?”

“No makeup. Sensible hair. Comfortable shoes. No bathroom conferences. No dieting. You can’t live off diet pop anyway. That’s why sexy is so tiring.”

“That will be our story: ‘But we were pretty, once upon a time… And we gave it all up, to come here and live as monks!’”

“But why would we do it? Any of it? To get boys? Is that all that ‘pretty’ is for? ’Cause your mom is prettier than my mom. But…”

“But your mom is thinner.”

“Yeah, but it’s like boiled-spaghetti thin. Your mom has muscles.”

Alice nodded. “That Tae Bo tape never leaves the VCR. She does calf raises while the kettle boils.”

“But pretty counts more than thin.”

“You think so?”

Sarah jumped up, sitting on her heels. “Okay—Kate Winslet.”

“Sarah Jessica Parker,” countered Alice.

Sarah thought for a moment. “J-Lo’s behind.”

Alice frowned, waving her hands excitedly. “Oooh, ooh, you know—sad-eyed. Freckles. You know…”

“Movies?”

“Shallow Hal. Great Expectations. Shakespeare in Love.”

Sarah frowned. “Oh, I can never remember her name either. But I know who you mean.”

“Your turn.”

“Umm… Big, pretty girls. I think if we were European… Well, Marilyn Monroe, of course.”

Alice waved her hand. “Well, sure, but that’s ancient. I mean pretty people now.”

Sarah paused. “My point is that your mom is prettier than my mom, and so she gets… Well, your dad makes more than my dad, but, I mean, are any of them really happy?”

“Happy…” echoed Alice. This was an uncomfortable point, parental happiness.

Sarah was a little braver, though. “So our moms are pretty and thin, and they got men, cute men, I guess, when they weren’t so old, but it wasn’t, you know, the happily ever after thing… My mom always phones my dad and says: ‘You said you were going to be home by six, are you still at work? Where are you?’ And she’s always listening for background noises. That doesn’t seem like a happy person.”

“Happy adults…” murmured Alice, relieved to go from family specifics to abstract humanity. “Okay, who do we know who’s over twenty, say, and really happy?”

And so they went on throughout the afternoon, making lists and comparisons, mapping the invisible world they lived in; a lonely, amoral, technological world, where a dime can be seen from outer space, but happiness is invisible from within a family.

Chapter 7

Stephen Grows Up

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Stephen grew close to his mother, but circled his father with watchful, waiting eyes, for Alder had turned out to be a decidedly skittish family man.

There are men who make families out of the joys of their hearts, from the overrunning of their copious souls—and, there are men who wander into the enclosure of family life on the wings of accidental greed, like a bird that flies into a house for food and warmth, and then hesitates, torn between comfort and freedom.

Alder had the soul of a distracted idealist—a soul at endless war with the complex and contradictory pleasures of a family. As a child, he loved daydreams and fantasies; his closest friends were imaginary. In university, he found certain streams of thought that were sustenance unto themselves; Plato, Wittgenstein, Hegel, Nietzsche, postmodernists of every hue… Here he could sit and dream, rummaging through his own imagery, floating free of proof, of argument, soaring through the solemn insubstantiality of academic language. He found he had a gift for seducing loose minds with passion, poetry, and procrastination. In graduate school, Alder began rankling against objectivity, logic, empiricism—any idea or standard that opposed his imagination.

Of course, this thinking is a kind of self-medication, a drugging, a dissociation—and, as family life closed around him, it was not entirely unexpected that Alder would grit his teeth against a desire to flee. All the practicality of flu shots and ball-tossing and hooking heavy bookshelves to the wall and developing the disaster-radar of parents with toddlers—all that leaned against his delicate mental house-of-cards like an insistent wind. A certain oppositional element arose in his personality, a habitual irritation, a withdrawal, a skittishness, which drove Joanne quite mad.

Wooing is elemental to the start of any romantic relationship, but a man who circles his family like a skittish foal surely draws out the come-hither timeframe to a ridiculous degree. Joanne found herself constantly selling family life to her husband, making it pleasant for him; quieting her son, foregoing her naps, tidying the toys, seducing him several times a week—when all she wanted was to be held and soothed… She hesitated to breast-feed in front of Alder; he seemed to dislike allowing Stephen to trespass on what was, to him, a largely adult playground. She jumped up when he came home unexpectedly, interrupting a coven of new mothers sitting in her living room, muttering the wild secrets of the newly matriarchal. They were just—what? Leaving? Talking? Joanne felt pulled between her new pleasures as a mother—so much greater than she had ever expected—and her husband’s fundamental, maddening hesitation. Open your heart, Alder, she prayed daily, as she and Stephen waited outside, tapping gently and listening hard for sounds from within.

Alder was so ridiculously bad at playing with his son that it truly broke Joanne’s heart. She would stand in the hallway sometimes, eavesdropping on the growing irritation in Alder’s voice as he gave persistent and useless instructions to the giggling, grabbing infant: No, don’t go there. Come to Daddy. That doesn’t go in your mouth. That is not a toy! Come here and settle down!

Stephen could not fail to notice his father’s eccentric orbit. One of his earliest memories was of sitting in a shopping cart, in a bright grocery store. His father was standing fifteen feet away. His mother asked for some tins, and Alder tossed them into the cart from where he was, and Joanne cried out: you might hit Stephen! Alder was offended, as if his athletic ability was being questioned, and he moved from fifteen feet away to twenty… When Stephen was older—five or so—he remembered being in the same store, coming across his parents after losing them, and they were fighting in fierce whispers, and when Stephen came around the aisle, Joanne threw back her head and laughed. Stephen had covered his face with price stickers. Even Alder smiled and knelt down awkwardly to peel the tags off his son’s giggling face, and Stephen was very happy then, for over half an hour.

Being in the car was strange, too. Stephen would be buckled in the back seat, giggling as the world swung past the windows, in wild shifting canvasses of ‘outside,’ and his mother would be in the front passenger seat, her head turned towards Stephen, tickling his belly and cooing and asking him questions (and what delight it was to be asked questions, though there was no way to answer—and as yet no answer to be given—his opinion was still being sought!). His father, on the other hand, almost never looked back, until Joanne asked him to at least four times. ‘I’m driving,’ he would say, as if driving required his full concentration, although he considered it perfectly okay to play with the radio. In fact, during car trips, Stephen got so accustomed to seeing the back of his father’s head and the front of his mother’s, that years later, when he came across the two-faced mask of Janus in a book of mythology, he felt a positive shudder…

And so it was that Joanne faced the greatest temptation of her adult life. Wooing Alder, playing his leash as he ran around the family, was exhausting, and she felt the saddest undercurrent of solitary motherhood—the belief that one’s husband is just another child. It seemed selfish—to ask her, a new mother with no job, to provide all the emotional maintenance of a family—and it was. Alder placed the rudder completely in Joanne’s hands, and then went up to the crow’s nest to enjoy the view. Not fair, she thought. Not fair! Joanne was fraying at the edges, losing herself; in her dreams, she was an Egyptian mummy; as anthropologists unwound her bandages, all her sacred dust poured away…

But—there was a temptation, a solution. There was a waiting, willing child, wide-eyed, so in love with her, so ready and happy and full of delight in her presence… Joanne knew it was wrong, but she began to grapple Stephen, just to the limits of his endurance. She would hold on to him until he squirmed, and then laugh and joke his discomfort away.

Joanne took Stephen on long walks and talked to him about her friends. She would ask him questions about his school, his friends, his thoughts—but she would also broach topics too adult for him, but in terms so guiltily generalized that he felt more confused than used. Problems with friends, her parents—once, problems with Alder, and (also once) fears about money, but some part of Joanne killed those topics quick, and she walked quickly on, with a jerk of the head and averted eyes.

And so it was that adult secrets, adult hesitations, adult contradictions—all these were a goodly part of Stephen’s daily diet. And they were to have great effect on his life—and so, also, on his parents’ lives. And this is as it should be. It is inevitable. All the evasions we sow return as absolutes we cannot escape…

Chapter 8

Cafeteria Showdown

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Alice withdrew from her clique. Her former friends, bewildered at first, found that even complaining about Alice’s betrayal was not enough to keep them together, and began to dissolve.

Alice’s friends—used to being on top—found themselves completely out of favor. They had snubbed other girls, and so were snubbed in return. They gathered and bitched and whined, pacing the lonely beach of exclusion. After a suitably punishing time in solitary, however, they were taken in by the other cliques which formed in the vacuum of Alice’s abdication.

Alice and Sarah blazed through all this intrigue, unaware of or indifferent to the resentful ripples in their wake. They held hands in public, and sat together at lunch, their food forgotten in their hunger for listening and speaking.

And then, one morning, something quite remarkable happened. They did not stop in the girl’s bathroom to fix their hair. No beads hung from their necks. They wore comfortable shoes. Their nails were unpainted. They had sensible, non-obscuring bangs. They were twelve.

This caused a staggering ripple through the school, but none so great as their even more radical decision.

Together, in full view of everyone, Alice and Sarah had pizza at lunch.

This was unprecedented.

Before she met Sarah, Alice had been the commander-in-chief of the skeletal army of the underfed. At lunch, she and her group would patrol the cafeteria, scanning the plates and trays for any evidence of creamy salad dressing, complex carbs, or two percent milk. (This patrol first started the cycle of hiding for the bulimics.) If a transgressor was spied—no matter how fat or ugly she was to begin with—Alice and company would stop and sneer:

“Enjoying your lunch?”

One of the girls behind Alice would make a pig-like snorting noise, and then pretend to cough to cover it up.

So when Sarah and Alice had pizza, it rocked the whole social body.

And so it was that a great mystery of their young lives was solved, and the mystery was this: were Alice’s friends loyal to Alice, or what she represented? If they were loyal to Alice, the mental stomach-stapling might loosen a little; the electric-sugar cream doughnuts might actually break out of their current orbit around the jocks… But if they were loyal to what Alice represented, they would attack her for breaking ranks, as surely as the jocks attacked the doughnuts.

Alas, though—their loyalties were clear. On the Day of Fateful Pizza, Rachel, formerly one of Alice’s best friends, came and sat down.

“Alice—you okay?” she asked in a hushed voice. “Hey Sar…” (It was amazing, Rachel’s power of put-down; she gave the impression of using the single-syllable version of Sarah’s name not from intimacy, but because she didn’t rate the effort of a second syllable.)

“Yeah, good…” said Alice, glancing at Sarah. They had discussed this for five hours the previous night. Show no fear!

Rachel stared at the pizza. “But—that’s carbs, an’ fat, an’ just calories. That’s like, half a marathon!”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you eating it? You’re not, you’re not…” Rachel’s voice dropped to a hush, and she pretended to insert a finger into her throat.

“Nah,” said Alice, taking a deep, deliberate bite and making Rachel flinch. “Just hungry.”

“Hungry!” cried Rachel, then softened her voice. “We’re all hungry—but that’s no reason to…”

“To what?” demanded Sarah—against the agreed-on rules—show no fear, but don’t get angry either! “To enjoy your food?”

Rachel turned and looked at her coolly. “Did I ask for your opinion? I think not.” She turned back to Alice, and murmured the word ‘loser’ under her breath. Sarah knew better than to call her on it. It would just be denied anyway: hey, but if that’s what you heard…

“’Member, Alice?” said Rachel. “We made a pact. Don’t let me get fat! I can’t—let you do this.”

“I take it back,” said Alice.

“You can’t—we…” she lowered her voice, “…spat on it. No take-backs.” She grabbed what remained of Alice’s pizza and stood up.

“Put that back!” said Alice, leaping to her feet.

“It’s for your own good,” said Rachel—and this broke another rule, which was never to use parent-isms to correct anyone in the clique. She began walking over to the garbage. Silence flashed over the cafeteria; the tribal joy of watching killed all conversation…

The die was cast. Alice stood up. “That’s mine. Put it back.”

“Once on the lips, forever on the hips!” smirked Rachel. Another girl made a snorking sound, turning it into a cough.

Sarah stood up too.

Rachel said, “You’ll thank me later,” and held the paper plate of pizza over the garbage can.

“You tip that, you’re in trouble,” warned Alice, her cheeks flushed. To the watching boys—weaned on Xena—she had never looked more beautiful. Do we dare hope for—for a cat-fight?

Rachel smiled and tipped the pizza into the garbage.

There was an awful pause. Alice and Sarah had not discussed this possibility. They expected the exquisite swordsmanship of feminine insults and put-downs; they dreamed of, perhaps, grudging approval. But a fight…? Alice stared at Rachel’s face, and made a decision. She reached into her purse and took something out.

“Bad thing to do,” Alice said.

Rachel glared back. “What are you going to do, hit me, like some trailer-park trash?”

Alice glanced at Sarah. They understood. It was magic, but it was their friendship.

They leapt forward quickly, dragging Rachel to the ground. The kids all burst into wild cheers and leapt on the tables, scattering food. The cook picked up the phone.

But everything was over by the time she finished dialing. Alice and Sarah stood up. Rachel jumped up, her red face contorted.

“You bitch!” she cried. “What do you think you’re doing?”

She stared around, suddenly feeling a complete loss of power, of control—even the fat kids are laughing! “Shut up!” she shouted, thinking: my hair is a mess… But something was wrong, very wrong—as a girl who spent thirty minutes every morning doing her hair, she felt it in her very bones…

And then she saw it. Lying on the floor, like the corpse of a loved pet.

What is that—is that—my—hair?

She reached up, touched her head, and screamed.

“You bitch! You fucking bitch!”

Alice smiled. “Now we’ve both lost some weight!”

The teachers came in, then, and whisked Alice and Rachel away to wait in separate classrooms, to consider their actions until the Principal returned from lunch. During this time, Rachel cried in front of her little compact mirror, caressing the stump of her missing ponytail, while Alice worked on her defense.

Eventually, Alice was called in to Principal Boettcher’s office.

Ms. Boettcher was built like a squat trucker with man-tits. She was very political, very anti-male, but respected her students enough to let them come to their own conclusions. She hated the media with a passion (and had spearheaded the movement to keep news and commercials out of the classroom). She disliked capitalism—but also environmentalism, which was an unusual combination. She was an old-school Marxist, believing in rugged industrialization and staunch collectivism.

Yet she ran a private school for the economic and intellectual elite… This garnered her much ribbing at her Wednesday-night International Socialist meetings. “So what?” she’d say. “You either start a revolution or work from the inside.” The motley group of bike couriers, arts students, Starbucks employees and wannabe Jazz musicians did not impress her much, but she needed something to do with her weekday evenings, and there was good cruising at socialist meetings. Somehow, lesbians—except of the lipstick kind—so rarely turned right-wing. Capitalism was a penis, the State a vagina. No reason why, just was.

When Alice came in, Ms. Boettcher was quite skeptical. Alice was the head of an evil capitalist clique, which promoted conspicuous consumption of the worst kind—and was thin, beautiful, and entirely unlikely to swell the lesbian ranks, which was a shame, since they could use some thin and beautiful members. (Bad word, ‘members’—too close to ‘penis.’) We’ve already got enough pear-shaped women in comfortable shoes…

However, news of Alice’s fight cheered Ms. Boettcher somewhat. Scrap of ‘tomboy,’ has potential…

“So, tell me what all this is about,” she said, gesturing for Alice to sit.

“Well, I’ve decided to stop dieting…”

“Really?” Ms. Boettcher leaned forward, a revolutionary gleam in her eye. “And why is that?”

“Well, it’s not really healthy…” murmured Alice.

“No—statistics say you’re all getting fatter, but you lot are really bucking the trend.”

“I mean, I was thinking the other day, watching a music video…” (Really, these buttons were almost too easy to push!) “…and I thought hey, I can spend my whole life worrying about being fat, but will that make me happy?”

Ms. Boettcher jabbed her finger skyward. “Yes! Yes! And just think of the companies making fat profits over everyone trying to be thin!”

“Yeah… So I had pizza at lunch today…”

Ms. Boettcher frowned. I didn’t realize it was that serious… A popular girl eating pizza was about as common as an unpopular girl taking ballet.

“…so then Rachel comes over and throws it out, because she says it’ll make me fat. I asked her not to, but she did anyway, so I got mad. So…”

“So there was a fight, yeah, I know…”

“No—not a fight, not quite.”

“No?”

“I just cut off her—ponytail.”

With heroic effort, Ms. Boettcher suppressed a smile. That works on so many levels, my little Red Guard! She caught herself, and frowned mightily. “That was very dangerous, though, using scissors.”

Alice stared at her feet. “Yeah, I know, but… But I don’t like how girls just talk, you know, and are always mean. I mean, why not fight? Boys do… I didn’t start it.”

“Look—I know how you feel. I really do. You’re starting to think about your life, and that’s great. But you can’t go around shearing your classmates if they act—in a reactionary manner.” Oh good word, mouthpiece of the revolution! Why not just give her your mantra: WWTD—What Would Trotsky Do?

“Yeah, I see that…”

“And I’m going to get calls from Rachel’s parents.” And, as fashionable capitalist running dogs, they will be outraged that a fresh-faced daughter of the bourgeoisie has been so cruelly violated! “She went for property, you for flesh. So here’s what we’ll do: detention, one week. And an essay on the—limitations of violence.”

Limitations! thought Alice with glee. Hah—she approves!

“And Rachel?” she asked.

“That’s between me and her,” said Ms. Boettcher. “But her ideology will not escape my notice. Okay, now run along.”

In Biology, Sarah gazed at Alice as she slid into the seat next to her. Alice glanced back, grinning. Sarah raised an eyebrow. Alice mimed cutting something, pushing it over on a plate, then taking a bite with a fork.

It was an old communiqué, easily understood: Piece of cake!

Chapter 9

Terry

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Terry was from a small town; he was tall, thin-skinned, doe-eyed, and had spiky black hair like a Chia Pet plugged into the mains. Terry was destined to be a computer programmer from day one. He was a solitary child, who fell in love with computers when his math teacher showed the class Star Raiders on an Atari 400. (Ah, the drifting stars, the sparkly photons…!) He worked in a hardware store in his mid-teens, and spent a lot of time using his calculator watch to figure out how many weeks’ work it would take to buy a real (i.e. programmable) computer.

Throughout his childhood, Terry was convinced that his parents—though outwardly a high school vice-principle and homemaker—were in fact experiments in the latest in other-worldly entertainment technology.

When he was very young, Terry believed that his parents had some sort of unbelievable inner life going on, perhaps projected on some IMAX screen just a little to the left or right of their field of vision. Or perhaps that they had invisible eyes in their foreheads that perceived heat, or music, or dancing fairies, because it seemed so hard to get their attention. They were kind, considerate—and not beyond petting, although Terry found it hard to be petted to sleep by his mother, because each pat came so far apart that it always startled him. It was not as relaxing as being held; she would rock him so slowly that her patterned breasts would swing by his sight with the speed and regularity of bright polyester constellations.

Perhaps due to this, Terry really got into astronomy when he was about eleven. He bought a telescope, kept records on sunspots, and mapped the mountains of the moon. He read about interstellar distances, which seemed to stretch his mind almost to the breaking point, like when a child first learns about infinity, and asks: ‘what’s after that?’ (Terry, from the age of five to seven, for some reason, thought that his mother’s ironing board was the edge of the universe.) Once, reading about the problems of communications, he read that the problem of delay was significant even at interplanetary distances; the moon was only two seconds away; Mars was several minutes…

Gosh, I wish that my parents were even that close, he would think wistfully.

Terry’s father would have been a perfect dad if he’d been sped up about twenty thousand times. Playing catch with him, for instance, was quite disconcerting. It set back Terry’s sense of physics—as well as his athletic abilities—several years, because his father would wind up and throw so slowly that when gravity and momentum finally got a hold of the ball, the effect was startlingly rapid, like a video going from slow-motion to fast-forward. He read stories so slowly that Terry became fascinated with morphemes, the bitty parts of speech. Pauses between characters speaking were so long that every line seemed like a new chapter. Terry used to sneak glances, sure that his father was reading ahead, but he wasn’t; his eyes slowly crept down to the next line, the cheeks were sucked in… (It always seemed that he produced his scant words by milking a vacuum.) Sometimes, Terry stared at his father, wondering how long it would take him to notice his son’s unblinking gaze, but he never did, and Terry always backed away from this game, as if from a precipice. Dr. Seuss was a Chinese water-torture of repetition; the cat did not like green eggs and ham over and over, and had to really think about it each time, each page, each line. Terry would be dizzy when it all ended, his fists in knots, and wouldn’t sleep for hours.

Terry’s mind worked very, very quickly, and he wondered sometimes whether there wasn’t a fixed amount of mental speed available to a family, because sure as Socrates, he seemed to have gained his prodigious speed at the expense of his parents. He sometimes pictured the progress of his gestation within his mother, imagining that when his parents first visited the doctor, they asked a lot of rapid-fire questions about the process, his father leaning against the paper-wrapped patient bed, his hat back at a rakish angle, like a ’40s reporter: ‘so, doc, you’re saying that ectopic is a pregnancy in which the fertilized ovum implants on any tissue other than the endometrial lining of the uterus’—and then his mother (she was always smoking in this fantasy, but through a cigarette holder, which seemed okay), would jokingly call Terry’s dad a ‘rube,’ tapping a medical diagram with a red fingernail, saying: ‘listen up, rube—it goes like this, see?’

As her pregnancy progressed (the fantasy went), more and more energy and speed flowed into Terry’s developing ecosystem of growing flesh and silent, blunt thought (did I feel like an expanding balloon, he wondered, with the umbilical like a string tied to me, bumping around in the slosh of my mother’s innards?). As the months passed, his parents began to space out and slow down, easing into friendly, vacant, over-the-fence chatterboxes. (Terry always imagined that their minds slowed before their voices; that just seemed the way of the world.) His mother stopped smoking, losing that stimulation; his father started playing horseshoes… And then finally, they shuffled to the hospital, all their former energy compressed into one restless digging fetus, and sat dumbly in the delivery room as the doctor lowered himself from the high crags of medical terms to the simple plains of monosyllabic comfort words: ‘you have baby; breathe good, much pain…’

It wasn’t so, of course, but it took him a while to believe it. He would sometimes joke with aunts and uncles, as young children do, searching for clues about his parents’ life before he was born, looking for the limits of responsibility, probing nature and nurture. One treasured interaction was with his Uncle Tommy. When he was about fifteen, Terry had said something about his parents having a very ‘animated discussion,’ and Tommy had laughed and said: ‘wow, which one blinked?’ Terry had acted surprised, upon which Tommy had said: ‘that pair make fossils look lively,’ and then Terry had laughed, quite relieved that his parents had changed so little over the years. Somehow, it let him off the hook.

He also was a kinship nomad, and was noted among his extended family for asking probing questions about long-lost relatives, and asking for long-lost stories, ancient history, combing for… Something? Well, it was something, but nothing his family could understand. Why d’you want to dig all that up for anyways? What’s past is past! Terry’s extended family all fit comfortably into their social niches; they referred to each other as ‘buddy here,’ as in ‘buddy here shot into the trees and almost killed Stan,’ and were completely uninterested in weeding the ‘yous’ from their sentences; ‘yous guys’ was quite as valid as ‘you guys.’ They also turned beer into sheep, in that they used the same word for both singular and plural: ‘get me a beer,’ and ‘I drank thirteen beer last night!’ They viewed all attempts at self-improvement as pretentious; they even used the phrase ‘putting on airs,’ and would sink any original idea in copious amounts of alcohol. (Like peeing on an ice-filled urinal, it caused a satisfying inside crumbling, and a petty but heady sense of power.)

Before he left for college, Terry got a porch-swing lecture on ‘big-city ladies’ from Uncle Tommy. (Uncle Tommy, oddly enough, was about to have his own heart broken by Mindy, an archaeology student from Thunder Bay—who he nicknamed ‘Mindiana Jones’—who would string him along for almost a year. One of the eternal constants of Terry’s family was the degree to which various members lectured others over vices which were—almost without fail—about to consume the lecturers. This was the extent to which self-knowledge was present.)

This was Tommy’s lecture on ‘big-city ladies’:

“Terry,” he said, “having spent a good deal of time traveling to Thunder Bay,” (pronounced ‘Tunder Bay’) “I wanted to tell you a bit about big-city ladies. Now I’d be the first to admit that Thunder Bay is no Toronto,” (pronounced ‘Trana’) “but it’ll do you no harm, so listen up.” Pause, spit. Spit again, then: “Out here, a woman loves a man for who he is, you know, the basics, what sort of man is he, honest, hard-working, loyal, what have you. But down there,” he said, whispering, as if ‘down there’ was the twenty-third layer of hell, “things are different. There, women are into you for what you can do for them. You can help them, give them a leg up—no not that way, smart-ass, listen up—they’re yours. They’re ambitious, hard, cold… Selfish, you know. But they don’t come out and say it, nope not a lot. They’ll fall on you and sigh over your shoulder while they go through your wallet. Cold. And they think they’re all lib-era-ted, but they play all the old games. They can make a mill a year, they still want the car door opened for them. It’s like they think they’re all that…” (here he snapped his fingers), “as if there’s no supply other than them. And you’re a good boy, Terry, you’re smart as a whip deep down, do us all proud, but you’re a hick on the outside, and that’s going to make you a mark. So keep your wits about you.”

Privately, Terry didn’t think that a boy fresh off the bus from St. Mary’s would draw cold and calculating stares from prowling Bay Street vixens, but it is the privilege of the aged to stir more than a smidgen of paranoia into their ethics, so he kept his opinion to himself.

The distinction between ‘head-smart’ and ‘heart-smart’ was very important to Uncle Tommy; he was the family diplomat, the peacemaker. ‘Head-smart,’ in his book, was very dangerous—somehow it had produced nuclear weapons (contrary to stereotype, Tommy did not pronounce it ‘nukuler’—but did put more emphasis on the first syllable than an urbanite would—noo-clear). ‘Heart-smart,’ on the other hand, never swayed lawyers or judges, but always won over the jury. (Tommy’s metaphors had the natural overcomplication of those who rarely submit their inner ramblings to the critical examination of others.)

In Tommy’s view, Terry had ‘head-smarts,’ but not ‘heart-smarts,’ which made him vulnerable. “It’s late to develop a hard hide, but it has to be done, and better you should do it for yourself than have others do it for you.”

After the talk, Terry was aware of his deficiencies, but had no idea how to fix them (in that, he had quite a lot in common with arts undergrads). Only being ‘head-smart’ seemed bad—and having a ‘hard hide’ was surely good, but the hell did that mean? Walking home, he suddenly felt quite hostile towards good old Uncle Tommy. So he dispenses advice, then whittles on the porch, and if I come back with my tail between the legs, it was because I didn’t take his advice, and if I come back in a Camry, it’s because I took his advice. Huh, he sneered to himself. Rube!

His parents had had Terry late—his mother was in her early forties. In Terry’s opinion, that was no indication that he was unwanted, or accidental. He firmly believed that his parents had been trying to have him since their mid-twenties—since they married, in fact—but that his father’s sperm—being his father’s—were in no hurry. The sperm which finally made it could have been released as long as a decade before, and just took its sweet time. You only have to have seen my dad on the highway to understand that.

Entering his teens, Terry had nothing in common with those around him, and so began drinking early and hard. People are overly influenced by TV-induced visions of life in small towns, imagining white picket fences, pies on the windowsills, concerned neighbors, and slow-moving horseshoe games—but they are entirely mistaken. Most small towns are, in fact, squalid pits of vice, corruption, and despair. The misery that seeps into one’s bones from knowing that one is far from the center of the galaxy is hard to overcome. (There is a reason why Luke Skywalker came from Tatooine.) The savagery of small-town drinking, especially among the young, cannot be overestimated. Some people drink to forget, others because they have so little to remember.

Terry was a border case. He was an unsophisticated but highly intelligent youth who attempted to solve the problem of being different by drinking his higher faculties away. His unconscious was his savior; it gave him shyness to protect his sensitivity, then gave him an allergy to alcohol to save his liver.

It was not a complete allergy (a strong indication of its psychosomatic nature), but rather a whole-Sunday nausea which left him unable to do anything; he could not watch TV or read or walk or clean—or program his computer. The long stretch of a small-town Sunday is unbearably lengthened by a vague physical malaise, and so, regretfully, Terry began to withdraw from the drinking binges. This was very difficult, because drinking parties are crushingly dull to a non-drinker (as they are to the drinker, of course; that is what the alcohol is designed to erase). Also, when one is trying to escape a bad crowd, there are no good excuses. During his breakout phase, Terry had a number of variations on the following phone conversation:

“Come out with us, dude, we’re cruising for coyotes!”

Terry would shrug, cradling the receiver against his shoulder. “Nahhh, not tonight.”

“Why not? What’s the matter?”

“Don’t feel like it.”

“Come on, stop fucking around. Sharon’ll be there, you’ve got a shot!”

“I’m not feeling well.”

“So what? Hair of the dog, dude!”

“Maybe I’ll meet you for dinner. Where are you eating?”

“Shit we’ll just grab you along the way. Come on, you pussy, get you at six.”

“I’ve gotta pass.”

“What, you got a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“A boyfriend? Fuck, bring him along! I won’t be jealous. Much.”

“You guys go ahead without me.”

“What the fuck, I can’t believe you’re such a pussy!”

The gang would come by anyway, in some horrible van with a stained mattress in the back and cigarette burns on the dashboard, and they would yell for him from the driveway, and he would sit in the dark like a stalking victim, and they would eventually throw a beer at his house and screech off.

Terry got a computer when his grandmother died and left him a little money. He went online, of course, but could not stay long because the only internet provider was a long-distance call away. A 56k modem made online games too laggy, but he did haunt chat rooms and ICQ’d, always the lost nomad looking for his tribe.

Before he left for college, Terry had half-expected a long, detailed and possibly useful Polonius-type speech from his own father, half-imagining that the old man’s unnatural quiet over the past nineteen years had been due to his constant rumination over what to say to his son when his time came to leave home.

But, as it turned out, he hadn’t been thinking on it—or, if he was, he wasn’t done yet, but might be ready for the far-off year when his grandson might depart.

His final morning, Terry sat at a table with his parents, drinking coffee. (They imbibed coffee by the pot; Terry could never get used to the idea that it was actually a stimulant, since it seemed to do nothing for them, then he thought with a chill: Good God, if this is what they’re like on caffeine…) His mother was crying, but it was a very slow cry; even the tear which zig-zagged down her lined cheek seemed to be getting lost, and not minding, no not a bit.

“Well,” said his father eventually.

“Mf,” said his mother. Terry stared at her, thinking: That tear has to be tickling her—will she raise her hand, or shake her head…? But she sat still—not rock-still—that would be like an effort, but still like she was encased in some invisible support which let her relax all her muscles yet still remain upright. A good-posture hammock.

“I’ll miss you guys,” said Terry, which was as close as he got to ‘I love you.’ His parents were a kind of still life; it was hard to imagine loving a portrait.

His father pursed his lips and sucked in his cheeks. Eventually, the vacuum produced sound:

“’S a big world.”

His dad’s habit of contracting contractions always irritated Terry, who wanted to grab him by the neck and shout: It’s is already the short form of it is—do you have to contract it even further, to ’Ss—what are you, calling a snake? Oh, and thanks for the tip, Magellan. It’s a big world. That will certainly help me navigate it. It’s a big world, and they tax it, so keep your nose clean. Right.

Irritation was, of course, a goodly part of Terry’s speed. Irritation at his parents’ unbearable turtle pace, irritation at his clan’s ability to have the same argument over and over again, or watch the same Married With Children ad infinitum, delighting over the approach of a favorite joke; irritation with their ability to root for the local Hockey Team (the ‘Cossaks!’—Terry could never figure out if the misspelling was deliberate) with the same enthusiasm every year—an enthusiasm undimmed by a two-decade losing streak. In general, people’s ability to find stimulation in repetition drove him mental.

“Buy tube socks,” sniffed Terry’s mother.

Another lengthy pause.

“Better get going,” said his father—who, as Terry knew, would not move for another ten minutes. He always wanted to be very early for things. Of course, ‘early’ for a glacier is a hundred years—an hour wait for him must seem about five minutes.

Finally, his dad drove him to the bus station; Terry had grown so used to the sound of horns and curses whenever they went on the two-lane highway that he almost didn’t hear them. He still noticed, though, that so many cars passed them in the slow lane that it felt as if they were going backwards through time.

As he glanced at his father’s impassive face, Terry imagined him under torture, in some far-off sweaty Asiatic camp. There would be a ferocious man in black, with perfect Oriental hair, brushing bugs off his face and twisting the thumbscrews: Speed up, capitalist Canuck running dog!—and his father’s face turning slowly to his tormentor, saying, with infinite slowness: I—do—not—like—green…

It was no use. Terry couldn’t stand to wait for the end of the sentence, even in his imagination. Dad would survive torture without breaking, he thought, because the pain wouldn’t hit him until the torturer had fretted himself into an early grave… (One last picture; his father, years after being tortured, sitting in an old-age home, lowering his eyes in slow surprise at the cigarette-burn scars on his legs, with one low murmur: oooowwwwwww…)

During his psychological phase (fourteen to sixteen), Terry read a lot of Bradshaw and Branden, and assumed his father was very angry. Certainly the man’s geological pace infuriated his son no end—was this the point? Did the old man drive others mental because he could not express his own anger? He watched his father more closely during this period, and tried two things to test his theory. First, he expressed no irritation at his father’s slowness, and second, he tried being even slower (and oh my Lord, wasn’t that teeth-gritting). If this was some kind of defense mechanism, it should change—intensify, alter, something—if it was no longer having its intended effect.

But no. Nothing happened. Nothing changed. Terry resumed his normal footprints-on-the-ceiling pace and listened with greater sympathy to his classmates, who talked with wide-eyed dread about being sent to Mr. Coleman’s office for detention. This was considered a grave punishment because the slowness of his lectures—applied to hyperactive MTV kids—gave rise to facial tics sometimes lasting a week or more.

At the bus station, Terry got up ten minutes before the bus had to leave and shepherded his father over to the bus bay. Ten minutes, he thought, yeah, that should be just enough for the handshake, which is like watching my father raise and lower a tiny bridge.

When he was twenty-one, Terry graduated from community college with a diploma in computer programming. A few weeks later, he got a call from the school’s career center, who set him up with an interview. A man named Dave Bugle was looking for a junior programmer.

Terry met Dave at a Starbucks, which was cool, as job interviews which take place outside an office always are. They both wore suits, but differently. Terry looked as if he was dressed for his own funeral; Dave as if he spent every day giving a daughter away. It was the kind of white, wet January day which feels like the city is frozen inside a chilly, leaky ping-pong ball.

Dave rose, grinning a grin that seemed to go twice around his head.

“Terry-boy! Good of you to come!”

Terry smiled. “Thanks for taking the time to meet me, Mr. Bugle.”

“Hell, boy, it’s nothing. What’ll you have?”

“Well, a coffee, perhaps.”

Dave leaned forward. “My treat. Cream?”

“No thanks.”

Dave brought the coffees, and Terry was vaguely impressed by Dave’s white rolled-up sleeves and the way the older man’s forearms encircled his cup, as if he were guarding his offspring from predators. We’re staying, but they’re paper cups, thought Terry. That seemed to mean something, but…

“So, how should we begin?” asked Dave. “You first.”

“I brought my résumé, sir.”

“Sir is for Lancelot! Call me Dave. Or Davey B!”

Terry handed over his résumé. Dave glanced at it.

“I never hire on résumés. Christ, it’s not as if investors would give me money based on my résumé! I made my first million before I was thirty, but man it’s been rough ever since! My partners, jackals! But like Van the Man says, we’re now ‘Back On Top.’ Let me tell you the story of this company, see if it trips your trigger.”

Dave took a deep draft of his steaming coffee. He was no sipper, and appeared to have an asbestos tongue.

“This thing started about a year ago. We work in the field of environmental software. Know what that is? Huh—why should you? It’s pretty specialized. Well, all big companies have to report on their environmental activity—more in the US than here—you okay with business travel?”

Terry nodded dumbly. He’d never been on a plane that didn’t have skis on the bottom and a propeller in front.

Dave nodded energetically. “So we only deal with the biggest companies—the biggest. We’re not some penny-ante joint going after mom-and-pop shops. We are in the process of selling to companies like Bell, Cyrux, Nortel, FedEx, to name but a few. I saw a piece of software developed by some basement guy; he built it for someone who never paid for it, and had no idea what the hell to do with it. I bought it from him—he wanted money, not stock, the more fool he—and began selling it. We’ve got some real interest, but companies are cautious of an old smoothie like me who can talk technical like he can talk rap.” Dave laughed. “Like my son Justin, who wishes he were ‘to the ghetto born.’ We have a number of deals lined up; we have financing for another six months, so you’ll really have to hit the ground running. All our ducks are in a row, but we need a technical genius, someone who can churn code like a combine harvester. Are you a vegetarian?”

“No.”

Dave shrugged. “So what do you think?”

“What language is the program written in?”

The older man frowned. “‘Excess?’”

“Hm. I’ve never heard of that.”

“Comes with Office.”

“Ah. ‘Access?’”

Dave snapped his fingers and pointed at him. “That’s it!”

“I’ve never worked in that, but it’s similar to Visual Basic. But aren’t these going to be large systems? I mean, Bell and all…”

“More deep than broad, I think. Wide user base, not so many actual users. There’s only a few managers with reporting responsibilities.”

“Access is like a toy database, good for maybe twenty, thirty users.”

“See, that’s the kind of perspective we need,” said Dave, jabbing his finger into the table. “Someone starts asking me that stuff, by the end of the question I’m just seeing what I can dig out of my nose. I don’t care what the damn thing is written in. What I do care about is having someone by my side who can reassure these clients we’re not total bullshit.”

“But—if the program is written, what do they want? Would I be working on another version?”

Dave shook his head and drained his still-steaming coffee. “No, everyone and their dog wants something different from what we have. Not much, just a little. That kind of tweaking is what we need. I don’t know what the hell it means, but I know that people want it. Of course,” he added hastily, seeing Terry’s face, “there will be more versions. We would like to develop a version specific to the US market, and I think that a multi-language system will allow us to expand into China, which has huge environmental problems as well. Of course we need a French version for Bombardier—but it would be optimum to have a version that switched between the two languages. Have you ever done anything like that?”

Terry frowned. “Well, I’ve studied it in theory. It’s easier on the internet.”

“The internet! Everything I read, everything I hear… What do you think of it?”

The young man frowned. “Well, I think that it has its place. It’s great for static documents and images. But it’s hell to program. I don’t think it will ever replace Windows.”

“Do you think it will ever provide movies on demand?”

Terry blinked. “I’m—er, well something better than modems will have to come along. Not enough bandwidth.”

“What about running programs through email?”

Isn’t that a Dilbert? thought Terry. “That—I can’t see how that would work.”

Dave winked. “Everything comes and goes. It might be a fad after all.”

“I’ve never heard of it, but…”

“Well, let me tell you what I’m looking for. You’re a smart guy, anyone can see that, but smarts is only a part of it. We are looking to build a company that can do ten, twenty million dollars US within five years. Very few start-ups make it that far—two percent, maybe. We are biting off a lot of cud, if you know what I mean. Here are the pluses. The marketplace for environmental software is highly fragmented; there is no market leader as yet, so the opportunity is there, but we have to act now. Are you married?”

“No.”

Dave laughed. “Now you can sue me for asking that during an interview! It is estimated that the world market for EMIS—environmental management information systems—is over two billion US per year. If we can capture ten percent of that, that is two hundred million US for us. Can you imagine the kind of software you could write with that much money? The kind of team you could put together? Imagine calling up twenty of your closest friends at school—or even a teacher—and offering them the opportunity to work for you at double whatever they’re making. I’ve seen it, Terry, and it’s beautiful. You can be the guy who walks around the office, helping your team build something extraordinary. You are the driving force, the center of the universe.” He leaned forward. “Now, imagine that we pull a Microsoft and capture ninety percent of the EMIS market. That is almost two billion dollars a year. Can you picture owning your own plane? Not going on holiday, but buying an island? And I’ll tell you, you get some truly quality women with that kind of money.” He flipped open his wallet. “Here’s a picture of my wife. Sits home doing five hundred crunches a day; you can crack a nut with her abs. And don’t believe what they say for a moment. You set a beautiful woman up in a great house, you take all her worries away, you’re having her for breakfast and dinner, any way you want. You just have to trust ’em, with everything you have. All the assets have to be in the wife’s name. For taxes, creditors… So you have to keep ’em happy. I just wish I could get home for lunch!”

Terry now had an erection. His breath was a little tight.

Dave smiled and stood. “Listen, Terry, I’ve gotta run and meet the wife. Here’s a card. I can offer you enough money to live on, all the coffee you can drink, and five percent of the company. Think about it. But think quick; I have to make a decision by tomorrow. See how many interviews you can squeeze in between now and then, and who offers you more than a little cubicle next to a smelly old photocopier.”

Terry stood to shake his hand, but Dave had left. Feeling weak at the knees—and a little nauseated—he sat down again, his heart hammering.

Shy people like Terry always think they are special in some way that the universe has missed. They are right, of course, but not in the way they think. After Dave left, all Terry could do was think: He sees me, and also: Man, I could get laid something fierce!

Next morning, he called Dave and accepted the offer. He did not discuss it with his family.

Chapter 10

Terry Starts with Dave

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Terry arrived at 8:30 the following Monday. Dave was there, with a petite, pretty, vaguely familiar woman, who was folding colored cardboard into boxes.

“Terry!” cried Dave. “Good to see you. Welcome aboard. We have about twenty minutes before Ted Howell from Cyrux shows up. He thinks he’s sniffed out that we sort of operate out of the back of a van, so he’s come to visit us, poke around. You’re the official tech expert, so it’s up to you to wow him. Angela, this is Terry. Terry, my wife Angela.”

Angela glanced up; she was a short, slender blonde woman, part of the toned, mummified phalanx of rich wives. Her body would have been the envy of a gymnast, but her face seemed like a moon-map of all the world’s troubles. (This was in stark contrast to Dave, whose face was youthful, but whose body was going to seed.)

“Pleased to meet you,” said Terry, shaking her hand.

“Remember, Dave, I have a class at ten, so make this quick,” said Angela.

“Won’t trouble you long, my love,” said Dave, grinning at Terry. “She’s going to be our secretary. You have to be in a back room—over there. I’ll call you when it’s time to come out.”

“Not in an office?”

“Nah—makes it look like there are more offices. G’wan now!”

Terry took his briefcase and went through the door Dave indicated. He stood in a small room with about a hundred boxes of—what? He looked in. ‘The Bugle ISO 9000 Gap Analysis Tool.’ Software. He opened one; there was a CD with a copyright a few years old and a user’s manual with a Canadian Standards Board logo. There was also a marketing insert: ‘Coming Soon! The Bugle Corporate Governance Suite!,’ with little pictures of racially-diverse workers gazing in rapt wonder at a monitor. There was also a small diagram of how ten programs interacted with each other, and underneath, bullets of features and cost savings.

Terry heard someone enter the outer office. He straightened his tie, looking around the little room. Leaning against the wall was something like a tent with scaffolding, and a banner half-unrolled. Education… A New Standard In… Offices Worldwide… Voices murmured outside. A knock at the door. Dave’s face appeared.

“Terry, can I borrow you for a moment?” he said loudly. Terry came out and saw Angela at the reception desk. A short man with a bulbous body stood beside her.

“Sorry, Ted, I’d offer you coffee but ours is on the fritz. Ted, I want you to meet Terry Coleman, who is perhaps one of the greatest programmers you are ever likely to encounter!”

Blushing, Terry shook Ted’s hand.

“So this is the great wonder-worker,” said Ted. “Dave has told me a lot about you.”

Dave smiled. “Terry has joined us recently, and is responsible for managing the customization of our software suite for corporate clients.”

Ted whistled. “Man, they come young these days. It’s like—in WW 2, the average age of the soldiers were twenty-six; in Vietnam, nineteen. Don’t tell me, I know.”

Dave laughed heartily. “Isn’t that the truth! Old farts like us, the best we can do—and you can quote me on this—is step aside and let the young geniuses do their thing. Hell, the last business I owned and really understood was my paper route, eh, Ted?”

Ted chuckled. “How many people work for you?”

“We have a number of desks; computers are there as you can see. I’ve charged Terry with bringing the team together to implement the software changes. We have a number of salespeople. You know me—I get the money together, then get the hell out of the way. My main virtue is knowing where I have nothing to add. Terry, Ted is considering our software for his company, and we are slavishly aware of how important early sales are to a start-up like ours—especially to a company as prestigious as Ted’s. I have told him, point blank, that we will do anything and everything to acquire his business, and that he will be as satisfied as a customer can be by going with us. Why don’t you tell him what you’re thinking of, Ted?”

Ted took a seat. “My problem: I spend over two months working on my annual report for environmental compliance. We have all these audits and assessments at our plants, and keeping track of them—and all the follow-up—is way too time-consuming. We also just got two new plants in North Carolina, and that gives me more headaches than my paycheck is worth. It’s hard managing all this from my desk, and it’s hell getting resources from head office. So when Dave called me telling me he had software that could help, I was very interested.”

Dave sat back as well, crossing one leg wide over another. “This software is the very latest thing, Ted. It allows you to manage and action all your environmental issues. Ticklers, emails, faxes, the internet—it is what I like to call ‘the operating system for the environmental manager.’”

“What about health and safety?”

“We’re looking at that; every time we talk to an environmental manager, we get the same question, since the fields are so closely related. Naturally, that’s all the marketing we need. I think that there could be great synergy between the two disciplines; there are great commonalties of event tickling and project management. As a software company, of course, we are all about reducing costs for our clients. Hell, if we can’t throw at least a few people out of work—or prevent the need to hire them, for departments as efficient as yours—well we just haven’t done our job!”

“Less people, more tech; it’s like the modern military,” said Ted. “Now, my budget is very tight…”

“That’s exactly the kind of situation we’re looking for,” said Dave easily. “So what I propose is this: a pilot project. Get our feet wet. See where we stand. It’s all about ratios. If we can show you clear value on a smaller scale, you will be more comfortable looking at the entire suite. So let’s talk about this. The actual cost of the software is fifty thousand per geographical location; you have plants in Canada and the US, correct?”

“Yes.”

“So that would be a hundred thousand, but frankly we are prepared to drop that considerably to acquire you as a reference. We view acquiring your business as tantamount to getting our foot in the door of the entire auto-parts industry, so I for one am very comfortable accepting a loss leader. I would be prepared to offer you a fifty percent reduction, that is fifty thousands for the entire program, with unlimited users and the ability to store information on Canadian and US plants.”

“See, Dave, the problem is that we have hundreds of plants in Canada, but only two in the US. It doesn’t make much sense to me to pay another—what, fifty K—for only two more plants.”

Dave turned to Terry and grinned. “Terry,” he said, “is it a big strain on a program, if it is storing hundreds of plants, to store just two more?”

“I—don’t imagine so,” blinked Terry.

Dave shrugged. “Ted, you are like the most beautiful woman at the ball. Hundreds of vendors would give their eye-teeth to land you. America it is, with the provision that we talk further if you acquire more plants.”

“So, that’s half off fifty thousand—twenty-five K?”

Dave paused, then tapped his teeth rather delicately. He nodded slowly, his eyes seeming to travel great distances and back. “Very well. You negotiate hard, but fair.”

“Thanks Dave—that is very forthright. Now from what you have told me, the program doesn’t handle audits the same way we do. I am concerned that I might be buying the machine-gun for twenty five thousand dollars, then have to spend another hundred thou for custom ammunition. I need to know how much the whole shebang is going to cost.”

“Well let me tell you, Ted—the key thing with software, is to get a ‘not-to-exceed.’ My confidence in Terry and his team is unsurpassed. I know the kind of stuff you’re looking for, and it’s not outside the ball park of what the program does already. I think we can accommodate you for about ten K.”

“Over and above the license?”

“Yes.”

“So we’re talking thirty-five K for the lot.”

“Yes.”

“Does that include training?”

“Hell, the program is so well-designed that you won’t need much. I can swing that. Terry will train you personally, and he is excellent.”

“Perfect,” said Ted, rising. “Now I’ve got to run; I’m going straight to my manager to talk figures. I’ll fax you tomorrow with what I can wrestle from him. But it’s unlikely that we could start before March. Fair enough?”

“More than fair enough,” said Dave, rising to shake his hand. “Ted, you are a scholar and a gentleman. It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”

“Just another hill to be captured,” said Ted, smiling pleasantly and cocking his head.

After Ted had left, Dave turned to Terry, his eyes wild with joy.

“Terry my boy, you are most eloquent in your silence, and most well-chosen in your words! Oh, we are going to be so big they’ll have to remake the globe! Come on—let’s get some brunch—I’m starving!”

As the three of them left the office, Terry saw what Angela had been folding together: cardboard replicas of computers; the kind you find on desks in furniture stores.

As they waited for the elevator, Dave turned to Terry. “Listen,” he said. “We can’t take long. I’ve got another potential client coming in this afternoon, and he’ll want a demo from you.”

Chapter 11

Sarah and Alice Meet Stephen

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Stephen had a habit of reading in class. It was not a particularly subtle pursuit; his desk had a wooden lid, and he would slide the open book back and forward underneath it. So he would sit, staring down, levering the book, looking for all the world like a boy learning the mechanics of his own genitals.

Teachers noticed this, but let it slide. They knew that their classes were designed more to cage the average than instruct the intelligent. If he wasn’t allowed to read, Stephen rarely caused trouble—for fear of being dosed with Ritalin—but sometimes dozed off, which distracted the other children.

Ms. Belanger, his English teacher, liked Stephen, and usually didn’t mind his reading, but one day, she saw him staring down at his crotch, and cried out sharply:

“Stephen Parsons, what are you doing?”

He glanced up, reddening slightly. “Reading, Miss Belanger.”

“I see. And what are you reading?”

“Crime and Punishment.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I see. And is that so much more fascinating than what I have to say?”

“No, miss, but it’s a great part…” Stephen frowned slightly. The class leaned forward, a Roman crowd.

“You are so much smarter than all of us, correct?”

“I don’t know…”

“I’ll tell you what. Since you consider yourself so intelligent, why don’t you just come up and teach the class yourself?”

“Excuse me?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what you should do. Come on! Come up and share with us everything you have learned about nineteenth century Russia!”

Stephen stared at her. He was not particularly afraid, but couldn’t quite figure out what was going on.

“Come on!” she barked, sitting in her chair with a thump.

He pulled out his book, placed it on his desk, got up and walked to the front of the room.

“So,” said Stephen, turning to the tittering class. “If I’m to be the teacher, we’ll first get rid of this stuff.” He turned and erased the blackboard. “And now, since we are starting fresh, we need the date.” Carefully, he wrote “February 30” on the board. There were some giggles.

“Now,” he said, turning around, “we need to look at the content of Crime and Punishment before we deal with the nakedness of its characters. For instance… Excuse me? Why is everyone giggling? Why? Yes, Alice?”

“Your date is wrong.”

“Wrong?” Stephen frowned, then turned around. “How so?”

“There’s no such date!” cried a boy.

“It doesn’t exist!” cried another.

Stephen frowned. “Hmm.” He turned back around. “The date does not exist—therefore school cannot be in session!” He raised his fist, and his voice. “Class dismissed!”

There were great cheers. Boys pulled out markers and drew on girls they liked. Paper was thrown. It took Ms. Belanger almost five minutes to restore order. Stephen was sent to Ms. Boettcher’s office. His punishment was light, though, because he had been reading a Russian novel.

Afterwards, Sarah and Alice went up to him in the cafeteria. He sat alone, reading his novel, lost in the general hubbub of sugar and scorn.

“What were you doing?” asked Alice, tossing her dark hair.

Stephen looked up, blinked, then smiled brilliantly. “She was being unfair.”

“Unfair?” asked Sarah. The two girls sat down, sort of twice. Once by putting their butts on the bench, then again by collapsing their spines forward and putting their hands on their chins. They stared at him. The cafeteria quietened somewhat, noticing the little trio. This was a new and unexpected social constellation. The social astronomers were much confused.

“It’s a deal,” said Stephen. “Everyone knows it. I read, and keep quiet.”

“You are very quiet,” said Sarah. “Do you have secrets?”

Alice smiled. “That was pretty funny. But why did you do it?”

Stephen shrugged. “She was trying to embarrass me. I don’t like that. So I embarrassed her.”

There was a pause. The girls glanced at each other.

“So you think it’s okay to embarrass a teacher?” asked Sarah, turning her blue eyes back to him.

“No,” said Stephen, tightening his lips. “It’s not ‘okay.’ It’s a ‘must.’ You have to fight against unfair things!”

Sarah shook her head. “No—after Rachel, we changed our minds about that. You should walk away.”

Stephen leaned forward. “Why?”

Alice frowned. “You know, we’ve done this thing, where we stopped being friends with everyone…”

“Well, you did,” interrupted Sarah, glancing at Stephen. “I didn’t have any friends anyway.”

Alice nodded. “Sure, me, okay. And then all my old friends were mean to me. Talked behind my back. Made up stuff. But I don’t fight back anymore.”

“Of course not,” shrugged Stephen, glancing at his book.

“What d’you mean ‘of course not?’” demanded Alice, sitting up for a moment. “Why is that different from you and Ms. Belanger?”

Stephen smiled. “Well, you had a sort of club with them, your friends, right? And then you changed the rules. You left—fair game. But Ms. Belanger, she changed the rules…”

“What do your parents do?” asked Alice suddenly. It wasn’t competitive, though. Just curious.

“My dad’s a professor; my mom stays home.”

“Huh,” said Alice. “What does he teach?”

“Moral philosophy,” grinned Stephen. “The art and science of right and wrong!”

“Ohhh,” nodded Sarah, scratching the back of her blonde curls. “So you think about that stuff a lot.”

“Yeah, probably. More than most, I guess. But it’s mostly because of my dad.”

“Because of what he teaches.”

Stephen paused, pursed his lips, then shook his head slowly. “No, because he’s not happy.”

There was another pause. Alice sucked in her cheeks, and her eyes gleamed. “Okay, not happy, but not happy how?”

“Well, he’s…” Stephen paused. His own eyes gleamed in turn, and he put his novel down. “Tell me this… Are your parents happy?”

There was a pause. Each young soul considered a billion or so impressions, emotions, and memories.

“I don’t know,” murmured Alice, scratching her ear. “My mom, no, maybe…”

Sarah was silent, her blue eyes unfocused.

Stephen smiled. “That’s tricky, sure. But let me ask you something else. You know the whole school is talking about you guys…”

Sarah frowned. “Because we’re friends?”

Stephen snorted. “Friends are a dime a dozen. You’re more like twins. What happened? I’ve never had that, not with anyone. You’ve walked away from everything. All your old friends. Look at you. No nail polish, those shoes. You’re just killing the Gap.”

Alice paused, considering. “Well, I’m not so hyper anymore…”

Sarah looked uncomfortable. “You mean everyone is talking about us?”

He nodded. “Oh, they all hate it. You are most envied.”

“Huh,” said Alice, glancing around the cafeteria. Were all the talking kids just pretending not to look?

“That seems strange,” said Sarah, staring at her unpolished nails.

“Do you guys ever fight?”

“Fight?” echoed Sarah. “Sure, we disagree.”

“Sometimes,” said Alice. “But that’s good. We never wanted to become those joined-at-the-hip friends.” She grinned at Sarah and put on a fake voice: “No, you’re so right, all the time!”

Sarah giggled, cocking her head. “No, I could never be as right as you!”

Alice smiled. “That’s sad, where everything’s great but you can’t ever disagree with each other.”

“No, that sucks,” said Sarah.

“Don’t want that.”

“No way.”

“But you don’t seem to have many friends,” said Alice. “How come?”

“Don’t know,” said Stephen, glancing at his book.

“Are you lonely?” asked Sarah, leaning forward. “Do you cry in your room?”

Stephen looked down. “Cry? I used to. Now I’m just—waiting, I think.”

“For friends?” asked Alice.

“For… for people like me. I want to go to university.”

Sarah whistled, sitting back. “Long way off.”

“You’ll never make it alone,” said Alice.

There was a long pause. A jock pounded a doughnut, squirting another. There was a commotion.

“I think my dad is unhappy,” murmured Sarah finally, averting her eyes.

Alice turned to her. “How come?”

Sarah blushed fiercely. “He’s always losing money.”

“What does he do?” asked Stephen.

“He makes… companies.”

“What kind?”

“Computers.”

“Software,” clarified Alice.

Stephen paused, then rubbed his nose violently. “Ah hah. And does he—was he trained in computers?”

Sarah bit her lip, picking at her fries. “No—I think he did something with telephones, back at the beginning…”

“When did he switch?”

There was another pause. Stephen and Alice exchanged glances. “Dunno,” whispered Sarah, her voice catching. Alice rubbed her friend’s leg under the table.

“So,” continued Stephen softly, “how do you know he’s unhappy?”

“He gets mad a lot… His cheeks shake. He’s always worried about…money.”

“He’s stressed,” said Alice with great feeling.

“Do you think he’s—honest?” asked Stephen.

Sarah flinched. “What?”

Alice frowned. “Honest? Ouch!”

He spread his hands. “Well, you know, a lot of guys go into computers, and they don’t know much about them, but it’s kind of a gold rush, you know, just now, a lot of money around…”

“I don’t really like that question,” said Sarah, her lips trembling.

“Oh no!” said Stephen, his eyes widening. “Don’t cry! I’m not trying to make you…I’ve just—I’ve been thinking about my own dad. I don’t know if he’s really—honest.”

“We’re not talking about your dad,” said Alice, putting a protective arm around Sarah.

“I’m sorry,” said Stephen. “I’m really sorry.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Alice. “That makes everything great.”

“Huh,” scowled Stephen. He picked up his book and stalked off.

“That was unfair,” said Alice, glaring after him.

“Yeah…” said Sarah, wiping her eyes. “But he didn’t really make me cry.” She looked at Alice, her eyes slightly red. “I mean, he just asked a question…”

Chapter 12

The Girls Talk About Stephen

￼Dingbat Diamonds

The girls conferred late into the night, under the covers, the phone cords snaking out from their mounds like the curly tails of a large blanketed pigs.

“That’s dumb,” whispered Alice. “I know you didn’t like what he said, Sar, but you said he had no friends, and asked if he cried about it!”

“But that’s different!”

“How?”

“That’s about him, not his family.”

“Sure, okay, family’s a little different. But still…”

“I mean, if we had to ask ourselves who was good and who was bad, you know, everyone, I mean…”

“Okay, what about the ‘she’s gotten so fat’ girls?”

Sarah giggled. “The ‘oh my God I have to tell you my New York story’ girls?”

They imitated the conversations of their ex-friends:

“‘Oh my God my parents are so anal—they say: I’ll call you in sixteen minutes!’”

“‘I tried to give you a look but you didn’t see it!’”

“‘And then she shot me down entirely!’”

“‘I mean, it was funny at the time, but later…’”

“‘Guys—it’s not even that bad!’”

“‘And Liz got so mad—she freaked out, she’s like…’”

“‘It’s like sorryyy’”

“‘Guys, I know all the secrets; I knew about the Vaseline thing for eye makeup before anyone else, and I’m like the most non-makeup person in the world…’”

“‘I don’t spend that much time on my face; I just wash it at night.’”

“‘Family dinners—my step-brother and I cannot sit still; we had something with chopsticks and we were making chopstick houses and my mom freaked out.’”

“‘No no—wait—let me finish—shut up!’”

“‘They’re the weirdest people in the whole world!’”

“‘If you came to my cottage, and you showered, you’d lose my respect forever!’”

They giggled, snorting breathlessly, afraid of waking the parental units.

“Wait!” cried Alice. “Air!” She stuck her head out of the blanket, sucked deep, then burrowed back in, curling into a fetal position.

“It’s not that they’re mean,” whispered Sarah more seriously. “But it’s like, just talk. Everyone wants to get a word in, no one wants to be left out. Everyone has an opinion.”

“I used to hate missing Starbucks after school. You’re not there, you’re so slagged…”

“But you always had someplace to go. I was just home.”

“You know, I’m not going to say that I didn’t like it, that’s like J-Lo going all: no, my butt is too big! It was fun, but tiring, you know? This is so much better!”

“Yeah,” said Sarah. “Me air.” There was a short pause, then the crinkly rumble of an adjusted phone. “So what do you think of him?”

“Stephen? Fierce little puppy. Nice though. You?”

“Cute, but you’ve got to like teeth.”

Alice paused. “I was thinking about what he said, you know, about happiness, at dinner…”

“Me too!” whispered Sarah nervously. “What did you get?”

“I was watching everyone,” said Alice slowly. “My dad is all wired about Iain and Mom, and running out of bands…”

“My mom’s always tapping her feet and saying we need more money. She always gets her way. Everything turns around; it’s like: Okay, here’s a cell phone, now call me every fifteen minutes!”

“Do you think she’s happy?”

Sarah paused. “I really, really don’t like talking about this stuff.”

“Yeah. Me neither.”

There was another pause. “But…”

“How do you think he does it?”

“Stephen? There’s gotta be something in him, or in his mom or dad, that…” She felt a sudden chill, even in her airless cave.

“Okay,” said Alice carefully. “It’s late. Let’s not freak each other out…”

“I don’t think she’s happy. I’m at Susan’s house, her mom’s tidying up, and her dad just goes up and puts his arms around her and kisses her, like all over the back of her neck.”

Alice laughed. “Ooh, sexy!”

“But it wasn’t. I know what you mean, but it was just—friendly. Happy. I’ve seen my parents kiss like that maybe five times my whole life.”

“Parents kiss?” asked Alice, only half-joking. “My dad slapped my mom’s behind once.” She turned on a sinister voice: “Once.”

“I liked seeing Susan’s dad kissing her mom. It wasn’t creepy, you know?”

“Huh.”

“I don’t like seeing my dad with my mom.”

“I wonder if she likes it?” murmured Alice.

“Okay, we’re not talking about that,” said Sarah.

“My dad’s like this Energizer Bunny, you know, just in your face and giddy and talking all the time. I don’t think that’s happy.”

“My dad isn’t happy,” said Sarah. “I’d never really thought of it, you know, until Stephen said…”

“You know who’s really unhappy? Brother Iain. He’s all moping and moody and always fighting with my mom. It’s like the only reason he opens his mouth is to bug her! Drives me completely mad!”

“Shh!” hissed Sarah.

“Yeah, not a good time for that talk…” They both came up for air, then: “I want to ask him what he does about his dad.”

“Stephen? Yeah?”

Alice paused. “Well, if Stephen’s dad’s unhappy—can’t he do something?”

Chapter 13

Gordon

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Gordon Marrow was not ugly, but he was very poorly groomed. It is a sad but true fact that boys brought up by single mothers are rarely dressed for sexual success. Perhaps their mothers feel that their own sexuality really messed up their lives, and want to keep said temptation far from their sons. Or it may be a hatred of absent fathers, avenged on the sons’ possibilities of attracting a mate. Either way, the profusion of bowl-cut hairdos, petroleum-based pants, thin T-shirts with little holes where the labels used to be (or dates on them more than six years old), jeans with no pockets on the asses (or, God forbid, stitched purple Saturns), does not bode well for the continuation of the blood line. It is like a depressing descent: two parents, one parent, no parent…

Shorn of the tribal markers of success, these boys often adopt a rather dispirited anti-materialism, scorning those who pay exorbitant prices for jeans or sneakers. The practical fact that Goodwill cast-offs keep the cold away is not lost on them; the fact that they also keep the girls away is. No matter how intelligent these boys are, the dual nature of clothing—warmth and adornment—seems completely beyond their grasp. ‘Clothes exist to keep us warm; all else is vanity’ is the natural attitude of unloved souls breaking free of conventional gravity and riding a helium updraft to the life of the mind. (Their anti-biological approach, sadly, blinds them to the fact that they would not exist at all if their fathers had dressed the way they do.)

Gordon’s future seemed completely preordained: no dating; vivid, random, too-intense sexual attractions that frightened him more than motivated him, a slow strangling of sexual desire, reading comics and playing Warhammer-type board-games well into his thirties, an inability to move away from his mother, an apartment filled with old newspapers, plastic chairs, ‘Hamburger Helper’ and dust-bunnies…

But it was not to be. Gordon broke from this quiet tribe of natural bachelors and dry librarians, in a way he did not expect at all.

When Gordon was fourteen, a cousin, Alistair, came to stay from England. Alistair was a bright, brown-haired, lanky youth of sixteen. The day of his arrival, Alistair stepped off the plane, and his eyes widened at the sight of Gordon. The poor boy was standing next to his mother, in the fenced-off waiting area where, it seems, entire ethnic clans come to meet their members. (Alistair particularly enjoyed the sight of the old, miniature Greek women, all dressed in black. He had a theory, in fact, that Black Holes were just a natural end-product of the feminine Greek habit of getting smaller and darker as they aged.)

When Alistair first saw him, at the airport, Gordon was wearing the following:

❖a pair of thick, wide tan corduroys

❖a tight blue polyester top, zipped up to the neck

❖a wild bowl-cut like an oily blonde fern

❖hair oil? (Alistair could never confirm this, nor quite bring himself to believe it)

In a glance, he also ascertained that Gordon was not wearing any of the following:

❖natural fibers

❖anything which combated acne

❖matching socks

❖deodorant

Alistair, raised by an efficient mother and four bossy, dressy sisters, was schooled in the importance of appearance early and well. (Being English, he was also allowed far more ‘fop-room’ than North Americans could stomach. What was dashing in the UK was, sadly, nothing but gay in the colonies.) His heart broke, seeing Gordon standing beside his mother, and an odd image came to him; that of a hamster storing her young in her cheeks in a time of danger.

In the taxi, Alistair made up his mind: He’ll never date as he is; helping him would be like contributing twice as many children to our gene pool!

He had gone through this once or twice before, so when they settled into their beds at night, Alistair called over.

“Gord, how old are you?”

A pause. “Fourteen.”

Alistair grinned in the dark. “Christ, you must be masturbating like a stressed zoo monkey!”

“Wh-what?”

“Ever try your non-dominant hand? It’s like a foreign woman.”

There was silence. Base biology occasionally needs a cattle prod to wake up.

Alistair smiled in the dark. “In my young career, I’ve tried the following masturbation devices: my hand, my mouth (the only limber enough men, though, are dancers, who can get blown waiting for the bus), a glove—well, several gloves really, I prefer felt, as in ‘I felt myself up.’ An empty pill container of my grandmother’s. A watermelon. In the oven, 350, fifteen minutes—then you really need either an apple corer or a lot of patience. A pillow, that goes without saying. The gap between my mattress and the boxspring—Christ I don’t think they could ever separate them now. A rolled-up girlie magazine; paper cuts my God. What else?”

“How old are you now?”

“Sixteen.”

“What—still as much?”

“Of course. Why are we even put in school from thirteen to seventeen? I don’t even remember my dick when I was a boy. Who cares? Just a pee-weapon. Then you have this—this thing to manage—not just drain like a freaking pregnant cow, but constantly shift and move and extract and undo. I swear to God, you hit thirteen, they should substitute Testicular Management for Social Studies. Do you sit on them often?”

“Often?” Gordon giggled. “They’re like two more ass-cheeks!”

“There are times I would give my left arm—all my foreign conquests—for ten seconds of ‘unbuckle and liberate.’ Girls can fold their arms to adjust their tits—we can’t do a damn thing without looking like Uncle Spanky-Fingers. You ever get any ‘dimples?’”

“Huh?”

“Dick pimples.”

“You mean—on my—private parts?”

Alistair smiled. “Yeah. Tough to whack off sometimes, placing your fingers just so to avoid them.”

“I’ve had a few. And in my—pubic hair.”

“It happens. So, are there any girls you’re into?”

Gordon smiled in relief. “Yeah, sure. Tons.”

“Only those with a pulse, right?”

“Unless it’s a warm day.”

Alistair laughed. “Oooh! ‘The boy is fast,’ she cried. So tell me.”

“There’s one, but she’s such a queen. I’ll never… I’m completely doomed. But she brought me some shark jaws.”

Slight pause. “Excuse me?”

“I’m really into sharks. She offered to get me some shark jaws when she went to Florida.”

Alistair chortled. “She brought you the teeth of a predator? Christ, you colonists are primitive!”

“I can reach almost all my arm through it.”

“Yeah, that’s the hole you should be going for… So who initiated?”

“She did.”

“Did money change hands?”

“I gave her five dollars. It was windy.”

“Any conversation?”

“Not really.”

“Hm. Then what?”

Gordon sighed. “Then—I asked her out.”

“I see. Tell me.”

“Well, she has the same initials; our lockers are two apart, she brought me these shark jaws. Mom thought I had a shot.”

“Sure, that’s objective.”

“So she’s next to me one day, and I’ve been practicing my Deep Voice all morning…”

Alistair nodded on his pillow. “Sure, the Deep Voice. God with a throat cold. Very sexy.”

“But I lost it asking her out. I wobbled.” Gordon imitated the pre-teen gargle of base and falsetto: “Shelly, I said, would you like to go swimming Friday?”

There was a pause. In the dark, Alistair covered his face with his hands. “Swimming?” he groaned.

“No—there’s a good reason for it. I’m a great diver.”

“Uh huh.”

“I wanted to bring her somewhere where she could see I was good at something!”

“Sure, I understand that. So…”

“So after I say: do you want to come swimming Friday, she says…”

“I can’t bear it!”

“She says: ‘with who?’”

Alistair writhed on his bed. “Argh! Mayday! Mayday! We’ve lost engines two and four!”

“Well, I’m a little cheesed at this point.”

“Sure—you know you’re going down. I hate that time between losing power and hitting the ground.” Alistair shuddered. “All that screaming.”

“So I say: ‘with me.’”

“You should have said: ‘with me and Sting.’”

“Yeah, I’d love to be seen in a Speedo next to him.”

“At least you’d get to see her in her Speedo before he whisked her away on his Tantric carpet. So then what?”

“So she says: she’s busy.”

“Engines one and three down, but who cares at this point? Because now you get slow-motion sickness.”

“What?”

“Slow-motion sickness. You know, you have to get away, but your legs are stuck in quicksand. I would rather a quick death, like a cobra. This is more like a very lazy boa constrictor. It’s like the walk back from the Great Weighing.”

“Let me guess…”

“You know, at a dance, you go over no-man’s land to the female line-up, and you try to find that perfect balance: a girl attractive enough that your friends won’t make fun of you for dancing with her, but not so attractive that she’d never dance with you.”

“Because if you get the shun…” shuddered Gordon.

“…you have to walk back—you can’t ask a backup. And if you walk back…”

“…then you have to walk over again…” groaned Gordon. “Let’s not talk about that!”

Alistair smiled. “So you got away from this girl…”

“Yeah, and I have been feeling terrible ever since,” said Gordon, his voice catching.

“Terrible—why?”

“This isn’t so funny. I really wanted to go out with her.”

“Of course you did. I understand that. But you’re all wrong, right now.”

“What?”

“Look, you’re an okay-looking kid, but it’s like you’ve been dressed by all the devils of celibacy! Who does your hair? NASA?”

“Mum.”

“Well, that’s no good. Do you choose your own clothes?”

“Sometimes. But we’re not rich.”

“You don’t have to be rich. Listen. Sleep now. Tomorrow we do the Makeover.”

The following afternoon, Alistair took Gordon over to an Italian hairstylist’s, a place with caustic receptionists in tight pants and genial stylists like alpha males in a harem. There was no small degree of consternation over Gordon’s bowl-cut, and three men came over, clucking like a pride of lions over a wounded cub. The cut finally decided on was called the ‘Stinglet,’ in that it attempted to reproduce Sting’s hair on a smaller scale. Dyes, trims, and stylings were applied, and at the end of it, the three men stood around Gordon’s chair, going into great detail about the best way to buy and apply gel. They even shaved him for free. Alistair paid them, but they would not charge full price, claiming that they had never had more fun with a customer. They seemed quite moved by the metamorphosis.

The fact that the pretty receptionist did not recognize Gordon on his way out should have prepared him for what was to come, but it didn’t. After the hairdresser’s, Alistair took Gordon to Rockwell.

Rockwell was right downtown, Yonge and Dundas, at the hub of all things happening. Gordon had passed by it many times, but it had as much relevance to him as a synagogue to an atheist. It was a jeans store three stories high, with bright fluorescent lights, sexy salesgirls, and gaggles of smooth-cheeked girls holding halter tops up to their chests. Gordon began sweating going in there; it felt wrong, but oh so right! Not one soul in there was an intellectual; none of them wanted to work their way through the classics, or line up for hours to get a book signed, or to learn an ancient language. But they were hot, in the way that only girls who don’t analyze can be—when they’re young, anyway.

The fashion world for young men was at this time a Police state, in that the Synchronicity album had come out, and wearing bright rags and hanging from scaffolds over garbage was about the best a young man could do. Alistair had a great eye for the kinds of shirts and jeans with eye-poking zig-zag patterns and enough zippers to qualify as lightweight medieval armor. Again, Alistair paid for a lot of the clothing, but refused to let Gordon wear any of it home until he had been ‘hosed off.’

The next stop was a pharmacy. Gordon had been there before, of course, picking up cigarettes for his mother and buying enormous colored pillars of cheap shampoo. But there were several aisles down which he did not venture; the standard ones, of course, the feminine products, the weird little grocery section, the old person section, condom rack, the makeup and perfume counters—but Alistair took him down the aisles of men’s-care products, and there he beheld great wonders.

They left the pharmacy with deodorant, shaving cream, after-shave balm, hair and skin lotions, gel, acne cream, round styling brushes, and much more. ‘Take back the bathroom cabinet!’ was Alistair’s rallying-cry.

Gordon slept poorly that night. He was entranced, afraid, unbearably excited, like a gladiator about to step into the light and part the waves of the crowd’s roar. He rose in the morning, showered, and then he and Alistair endured his mother’s discontent as they took an hour to prepare him. (She was not wildly pleased at his transformation, fussing at the cost and shooting resentful glances at Alistair.)

Gordon walked to school, finally free of his deadly itching. For about a year, he had writhed under an anthill of little itchings, able only to wear corduroys, and spending a good third of his time in school trying not to scratch himself. Alistair had pinpointed the problem—dry skin—and solved it by suggesting fistfuls of moisturizer. So Gordon was not only made over in appearance, he had a different relationship to his own flesh. Random erections were still a problem, of course—and would be for years—but at least he was no longer encased in termites.

No one paid any attention to him as he came into the school, and this was quite odd. He sat through his classes in great comfort, but curious and surprised that he was not greeted. In gym class, just before lunch, he came out of the shower, and another boy glanced up at him, then did a classic double take.

“Gordon?”

“Yeah?”

“Jesus Christ man—we all thought you were the new kid! What the hell happened?”

He blushed. “I got a hair cut.”

“Yeah, no kidding! Where’d you get these clothes?”

Gordon panicked. I can’t say ‘Rockwell’; I’m supposed to be smart. “Umm… Downtown.”

“Well you are one happening son of a bitch! You’re like one of those, you know, before and after photos.”

There were two girls Gordon liked, Andrea and Marjorie, and they were both in his German class. They were beautiful—Andrea in particular had a fashion-magazine perfection which soared far above the fleshy lust of teenage attraction. It was only with great effort that sweaty sex could be imagined; to Gordon’s mind at least, his fantasies involved feeling unbearably proud to be with her at a gallery opening, and the limits of his erotic imagination faltered at the edge of perhaps feeding her an exquisite caviar appetizer when no one was looking.

Now, being an intellectual-in-the-making, Gordon had no idea that a good part of the soul is moulded by the flesh, and that the heart can be changed from the outside in. Alistair was right; Gordon was a handsome boy, and the Great Makeover brought it out. Girls smiled at him, giggling as he passed, and he took to sucking in his cheeks and stomach slightly and forever flexing his biceps slightly as he walked.

So Gordon was elevated from skulker to hunk in the space of a single day, and in the fashion of obscure jungle drumming, the news travelled far and wide through the feminine tribe. Andrea and Marjorie were heard to be fighting over him, and Gordon became—verbally at least—very confident with girls. He had been flailing in a void for so long that his extremities hurt striking at his sudden purchase. He was still jittery in romantic situations, but he found that he had a knack for flirting—and, after a few truly abortive starts, that he had rhythm, and he could dance.

Gordon’s Cinderella moment was to have a great effect in his life. Gordon was destined to have a truly Great Idea, and while the source of Great Ideas remains a mystery, it is probably true that Gordon’s Idea had something to do with how he found his way to the center of things simply by changing his exterior.

Chapter 14

Justin and Anti-tainment

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Anti-tainment is a staple of the cynical set, who love to go ten-pin bowling and make home recordings of country and western songs and have parties with themes like ’70s One Hit Wonder Bands or Famous TV Sitcom Sidekicks, or dinner parties called Tastes Like Chicken, where all the dishes—chicken being banned—must follow that rule. They love nothing more than to hear that an obscure ’60s game show host has been arrested in some compromising situation. They wish they could rent videos of The Gong Show or get the Bay City Rollers to reunite for an Irony Tour—and laugh that one of ‘the lads’ was caught molesting children. They loved scorning rich boys with eyebrow rings: Yeah man, I’m rebelling against the system which pays my parents a quarter mill a year!

To truly qualify as Anti-tainment, an activity must have three or more of the following characteristics:

Uneducated people must take it seriously

It must involve funny clothing (or that those who take it seriously wear funny clothing)

It must be impossible to meet anyone your own age there

No fashionable drinks

It must be cheap

And dated

Or dying out

And it must be anti-intellectual

Al was a music producer, and his son Iain was very much into Anti-tainment—to the point where Al found him raiding the back of his closet for flared pants and suit jackets with lapels wide enough that, with a good updraft, they could serve as an adequate hang glider.

Iain’s group of friends were pretty, bitchy, and pursued affairs with each other with a grim lack of purpose, avoiding attachments, considering them pure sentimentality. They never spoke of morals, or love or truth or beauty; if they didn’t like an argument, they would say: ‘I just can’t buy it,’ as if belief were a mindless surrender to effective advertising. They decorated their rooms with B-movie posters and lava lamps and record sleeves from disco albums. They went out of their way to procure eight-track players. They dared each other with indifference. They loved The Catcher in the Rye, then disparaged their own attachment, saying: We all wanted to be Holden Caulfield, until we realized we all wanted to be Holden Caulfield…

Iain was not the founder of the group, but joined it quite early. The leader, the most caustic acid test, was Dave’s son—and Sarah’s brother—Justin Bugle.

Justin had first opened their eyes to the empty, bottomless pleasures of Anti-tainment. Anti-tainment was a staple of their social life, and they had pursued it for many a moon, but still felt that they had further to go. The evening of Southern Trucking Songs From The 1950s was close, but still…

One evening, Iain asked several of his friends to come by. He termed it Japanese Elvis Impersonator night, and they all came in sequins and black wigs and spoke in outrageous accents. Todd, Gerald, Chris, and the token female, Jeanine. Jeanine was a former tomboy, on the verge of outpacing her fading testosterone. She liked being the center of attention.

They sat in the basement apartment, lounging on lozenge felt couches which looked as if they had been culled from the space station in 2001. None of them knew why they were there. They were all sixteen.

Iain got the festivities started, standing before a large object, which was draped in cloth.

“My friends,” he began, “we have searched many moons for the Original Cheese, and I believe I have discovered it.”

Todd smiled. “Christ, Iain, the Original Cheese is a myth.”

“Do you really think so?” asked Iain, his eyes gleaming. “I disagree. I think there is such as thing as pure cheese!”

“An idealist of cheese!” cried Gerald.

“The ideal cheese is aerosol cheese,” said Jeanine.

“Who was it,” said Chris, “who first looked at cheese and said: ‘You know what’s really missing from this food group? Propellants!’”

“Come on,” sighed Justin. “What’s under the cloth?”

“My friends!” cried Iain, pulling the cloth aside. “Behold!”

Justin leaned forward. “Karaoke,” he murmured, clearly disappointed.

“Home karaoke!” cried Jeanine. “Bonus points, we must agree!”

Chris smiled. “Not bad, but it’s not the same without drunken Japanese businessmen singing ‘Wuv mee tenderrr, wuv me twuuu!’”

“Oh my dears,” said Iain, shaking his head sadly. “Do you think I call a mere karaoke machine the heart and soul of all things cheesy? Would bowling be so without the shoes, the IPA beers, the fat guys with their names stitched on their backs, the rummy wheezing behind the counter, the late Jurassic fries? No. My friends: the essence of cheese is defined by an intersection of all that is cringe-worthy. These, my friends, are the instructions for this interstellar device!” He held up a pamphlet and read: “‘For Asians who want to learn the music of the home world, Karachi is proud to represent the Merry Sounds! Home Karaoke Machine. Learn the song as its airs to your friends families!’ No wait—wait! ‘How Japanese is sung from a bouncing ball of correct speech! Amaze your friends! Make family!’”

Todd clapped his hands together. “Make family!”

“‘Make family!’” panted Jeanine, in a parody of sexual desire. “I want to—borrow that microphone!” She squeezed her hands between her thighs, moaning. “Maybe all four.”

“Can I be the first bouncing ball of correct speech?” asked Gerald eagerly.

“This,” said Iain, holding up a thick, coil-bound book, “has phonetic Japanese lyrics, designed for non-Japanese speakers.” He grinned. “Now no true Japanese act is complete without backup singers.” He held up his microphones. “Who wants?”

Todd, Chris and Gerald all leaped up and took them.

Iain held the last one up. “Justin, this one is for you.”

“Why me?”

“Because you do the best Elvis, Suspicious Mind.”

“All right,” said Justin, taking the microphone without getting up. “But if I am going to do this, I want a real challenge.” He paused for a moment, licking his lips, then nodded. “I will sing Japanese in the manner of a rural Kansas schoolgirl who has been possessed by Ed McMahon.”

“And is drunk!” cried Gerald.

“She’s from rural Kansas,” said Justin. “What’s the stretch?”

“She’s trying to sober up!” cried Jeanine.

“No—the DT’s!” shouted Todd.

“Yeah, that’s okay,” said Justin. He straightened and turned to Iain. “Hit it!”

The tinkly music filled the air, and the gruesome strains of a possessed Kansas schoolgirl—with the others on backup—filled the air.

Upstairs, Al was trying to read the paper. At times he might have found the demented din funny, but not tonight. Hysterical broken laughter rose, and he scowled.

After a few songs, Jeanine poked her finger at the book.

“Oooh! The Japanese version of ‘My Heart Does Go On!’”

“Is that really worth ridiculing?” asked Justin.

“In Japanese it is!”

Todd wiped his forehead. “Have you ever noticed how much it sounds like ‘my hot dogs go on?’”

“Or,” said Chris, adopting a French-Canadian accent, “I weesh my grandfa-der/husban’ would let me eat some-ting!”

“You really should thump your chest when you sing that,” said Iain.

“I swear to God she’s got a boob coming out her back by now,” said Jeanine.

“All right,” said Justin. “I will do ‘My Heart Does Go On’ in the style of Celine Dion.”

“How about the ‘Celine Dion Quintuplets?’” asked Gerald.

“Nah—you don’t get it,” said Justin. “You can only parody a parody by doing it straight. Come on—we were all in choir. Let’s do this mother right. Hit it.”

The strains of the song came up, and Justin opened his mouth, and then something quite remarkable happened.

Upstairs, Al sat bolt upright. His heart hammered painfully; the personal ads fell from his hands. In his whole life, he had heard that sound only once before, when he came across Youth in Asia at an underage club. It was the sweetest sound that could inhabit his ears. It was not the sound of music, or art, or harmony. It was the sweet sound of money…

Downstairs, Jeanine found herself staring at Justin. Are my panties wet? He’s not even a man yet!

Iain stepped back from the machine, the hair on the back of his neck rising. That’s odd; I believe I have an erection.

Al started rushing down the stairs, then slowed, afraid to break the spell.

Justin’s head was thrown back, the song inhabiting his whole body. Every vibrato, every tone, every deep spell of yearning was pouring out of him, like a heart casting magic that could never be refilled.

“Jesus Christ!” whispered Al. This will be my next year at least…

When the song ended, there was a hush in the room. Justin shook himself like a wet dog and flopped on a sofa. “Oh hey, Mr. Music,” he said, glancing up at Al.

“What the fuck did you do?” whispered Jeanine, touching her thighs. “I’m going to have to buy them a new sofa!”

“What are you talking about?”

Al sat down. His hands were trembling. “You can really sing, Justin.”

“Yeah well.”

“No, really man,” said Iain. “I’m sporting a rocket.”

“Shut up.”

Al swallowed, glancing around. “That’s you with bad sound. In my basement.”

“What are you saying, melody maker?”

“You’d never go for it. You’re too…”

“Probably.”

“What, is no one going to say it?” demanded Jeanine.

“Say what?” asked Justin.

“Cut a fucking demo, Menudo! You’re shit-white!”

Justin snorted. “What?”

“No, she’s right,” said Al. “You have an incredible sound.”

“You should hear him after lentils,” said Todd.

“And you guys too—the harmonies are incredible!”

“What are you talking about?” asked Chris. “Just the product of Our Lady of Perpetual Rehearsals.”

Al blinked. “This is so fucking ridiculous! I have acts come through my office, the fathers will sleep with me to get their kids noticed. And then you lot show up in my freaking basement, and I have no idea how to entice you!”

“Entice me?” asked Justin. “To do what?”

“To lead a boy band,” said Al.

There was a long pause.

“A boy band…” repeated Justin slowly.

“Holy shit!” said Iain.

“Better hurry, peach fuzz,” said Jeanine.

“My God,” whispered Chris.

The others leaned forward.

Justin blinked, then a slow smile spread across his face. “Now that, my friends, is Original Cheese!”

Chapter 15

Stephen Speaks of Spy Games

￼Dingbat Diamonds

It was a drizzly, slightly gusty spring morning, and most of the kids went to the cafeteria for hot chocolate and doughnuts. Stephen—and a few other hardy souls—went outside. When Alice and Sarah finished waterproofing themselves, they went out and watched him. He was hanging by his knees under a curved red ladder in the shape of a rainbow, reaching back for his heels.

“He’s mad,” said Sarah. “We shouldn’t trust ourselves to him.”

“Stephen!” called Alice. He leaned forward, catching the bar, and sat on top.

“Yo!” he cried. “How’s it going, homegirls? I’m sorry about yesterday,” he added to Sarah. “I really am.”

“What do you do about your dad?” asked Alice.

“Come on up, if we’re going to have a powwow,” he said, gesturing at the curved red bars.

They came up after a few moments, then the three of them sat on cold, wet bars under the white sky.

Stephen smiled. His forehead glistened. “I didn’t…I’m not sure I got the question there.”

Sarah squinted and wiped her eyes. “I always forget it can be bright without the sun…”

“We wondered,” said Alice, “what you do about your dad.”

“Oh, that he’s unhappy?” asked Stephen, leaning forward and tightening a lace. “Nothing.”

“Nothing yet?” asked Sarah. “Or like: nothing ever?”

“Don’t know. I’m…gathering facts.”

Alice frowned. “Not clear.”

“Well, I’m not trying to show off, but I’ve read enough to know that if you’re a good person, you’re supposed to be happy. That’s not the same as famous or rich or pretty. Not, you know, ‘successful.’ So if that’s true—and tons of people say it is—then my dad is unhappy because he’s not a good person.”

“Right,” said Sarah, taking a deep breath and shuddering. “Okay—co-old.”

“So I don’t know if he’s not good, or if what people say is wrong, or if it’s something else…”

Alice rocked slightly. “But how—what do you do?”

Stephen grinned, and it was quite a beautiful smile; it was so elementally free. “I spy!”

Sarah’s eyes widened. “You—what?”

He nodded. “I spy. Sure. I have to. No one tells me…”

“Okay, that’s a little creep-o-rama,” interrupted Alice, getting up unsteadily. “Come on, Sarah.”

“Wait a moment!” cried Stephen. “What if they’re wrong?”

The girls paused.

He spread his hands, his throat thick with innocent passion. “They’re all telling us, you know, what’s good and bad, right and wrong…”

Alice turned, her eyes fierce. “What if you’re wrong?”

Stephen spread his hands. “Then no harm. No foul. I’m just taking notes… It’s not creepy. I’m just—curious.”

Sarah sat down again. “Notes?”

Stephen groped around his neck, pulling out a little notebook on a string. “Yeah, just, you know, like…” He flipped open a page. “Okay, like yesterday, my dad says to my mom: ‘no one comes to see me at my office,’ and my mom says: ‘who would, you drone on and on when you lecture,’ and I thought that was kind of mean, you know… I think that good people are sort of—you’ll laugh, but I think they’re sort of tender.” He gazed at his pages, turning a few. “But I don’t… Maybe I’m missing something.”

Alice glanced at him. “Why don’t you just ask them?”

“I did, I did!” said Stephen, his cheeks reddening suddenly. “I do. But I never got anywhere. They’re always in a rush, or something’s on TV, or people are coming over… And what they say—I have a million questions, they give me maybe four, five, max. They say things will make sense when I grow up, but I can’t wait until then, so I said okay, I can’t grow up yet, but I can do the next best thing: I can watch grown-ups, you know, see what they do…”

“So you spy,” said Alice.

“I take notes. I’m looking for… I mean, maybe my dad is unhappy because he’s so wise, you know, like a sad old lion…” He took a deep, sudden breath. “But I don’t think so.”

“No?” asked Sarah. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know yet.” Stephen gazed down at his little notebook. “It’s very confusing!”

There was a pause. Thunder rumbled in the distance. A bell rang in the school.

“Better get back,” said Sarah.

“’K,” said Stephen. He tucked his notebook back into his shirt, then turned and leapt at the shimmy pole, turning once, then sliding down.

“Nice,” grinned Alice, clambering down awkwardly.

As they trudged back to the school, Stephen suddenly turned around and beamed his magnificent grin again.

“You know,” he cried. “You could help!”

Alice laughed. “I don’t think your parents are that interesting!”

“No, Alice,” said Sarah softly, her eyes cast down. “No. He means ours.”

Chapter 16

Gordon Goes to University

￼Dingbat Diamonds

When Gordon went to university, he was greatly shocked. To some degree, he believed that he might find his Hidden Tribe there, but it did not take him long to find out that most people there had almost no interest in knowledge itself. This was quite confusing, but should have been quite predictable. University was composed of, say, the top twenty percent of high school students, and it wasn’t as if Gordon had felt at one with twenty percent of his high school classmates.

About two weeks into his first semester, he met Rudy Fischer, a.k.a. the BabbleFish.

Gordon was at the student pub, a low room with scarred wooden tables, psychedelic beer signs, retro music, and hypnotically-slow ceiling fans. He was sitting alone, reading the same page over and over while checking out the women, when the BabbleFish made his entrance.

There are certain kinds of charisma which are natural forces unto themselves. Even as an infant, Rudy used to draw nurses to his crib; he had a way of sucking his own feet that melted even the staunchest, most Scottish heart. He was an intently watchful baby, and a glimpse of his later talent could be seen in the manner of his feeding. Within three months of being born, he was attempting to feed half-mulched food back to his mother.

Rudy was beloved in school, in a manner hard to describe. He was short, red-haired, thick-waisted, heavily freckled, and narrow of nose. He was not handsome, or distinguished physically, or talented athletically, or musical in any way. However, he possessed a gift for listening which was like mother’s milk to the lost tribes of ignored youths around him. He had a way of looking at people which seemed to draw deep secrets from them, like a Zen angler reeling in prehistoric fish. He listened with such an ease of concentration that sometimes, talking to him, people actually heard themselves, often for the first time in years. People could not be habitual around Rudy; there was no point trying to impress him, or lie to him. He did not object, but did not react either.

Like most excellent listeners, he had no strong beliefs of his own. This was one of the reasons he listened so well. Tell me everything, his eyes said, we shall merely be curious about the human…

Last but not least, he was a language savant. He was able to synthesize thoughts in a startling manner. He had no really creative thoughts of his own, but he was able to turn the unfocussed searchlights of others into tight lasers. People became more themselves when interacting with him—for better and worse.

Rudy was also a bit of a blurter. He did not have any real sense of the need for secrecy—or could not be bothered keeping track of alliances—and so caused great problems in tenuous relationships. (He was also blunt, and would respond to the previous sentence by saying that he did not cause problems, but rather exposed them, in the same way that a doctor does not create an illness by diagnosing it.) Bluntness is often associated with a kind of social retardation, but that only occurs when a person feels guilty for blurting. Rudy felt no such guilt, and was perfectly composed in the face of sudden revealing storms. Lying and keeping secrets was just too complicated for him.

He was also a maniac for simplification, which made people want his advice and often hate receiving it. In his view, relationships become complicated simply because everyone makes excuses for everyone else’s behavior. It’s hard enough to get to know someone else as they are, he would say. Add your fantasies, and all hope is lost.

Even without his special gift, Rudy was charismatic and popular. What made him into a campus legend, though, was that he was a BabbleFish.

A BabbleFish is a person with the ability to translate normal English to Postmodernism and back on the fly. This is a great party trick, of course, and Rudy could be most entertaining in the center of a circle of undergraduates, tossing him challenges from the textbooks in their hands. However, his true genius was his ability to uncover perfect thesis topics.

Rudy was, without a doubt, the greatest thesis advisor the university had ever known. It is guessed that about eighty percent of his food intake—and almost all of his CD collection—came from students grateful for his uncanny expertise in guiding them towards the right topics.

Abstract ideas—especially from the young—are almost always generated by unresolved emotional issues. Thus, finding a really juicy thesis topic—especially for undergraduate students—is usually more psychology than philosophy. Rudy’s ability to listen was unparalleled and this, combined with his ability to wield the pomo boomerang—to translate to and fro—gave him the special gift of thesis advising.

In the world of academia, thesis topics are no small problem. A thesis is an idea or argument you have to live with for years, and also represents the culmination of many years of preparation. You can’t undo it, you can’t go back, you can’t change your mind halfway through. It can be either the best or worst time you can ever have. The problem is: which topic to choose?

Of course, faculty are supposed to help with that, but they have too many competing self-interests to be objective. A professor working on a book might want a student to research something which serves his larger interests, or he may have a fetish for a particular topic or idea. Or he may know very little about the student’s real interests or potential. And of course, there are many other barriers to encouraging a student’s idea:

❖it may contradict the professor’s own work, or a friend’s, or a colleague’s, or someone in the field (well anyone, really)

❖it may be unsupported by anything else in the literature, and so have to be judged on its own merits

❖it may be outside his area of expertise, and require a lot of additional research to mark accurately

❖it may be politically incorrect (or be against the prevailing winds in any way)

❖it may not oppose colonialism (or rail against the endless subjugation of women)

❖it may be ‘right-wing’

❖or positive about the free market in any way

❖or about men

❖especially white men

For those in Women’s Studies, thesis topics were generally one or more of the following categories:

❖This Woman Was Greater Than Her Male Contemporaries, But Was Ignored Anyway

❖History Thinks Men Did All The Work, But Really It Was Women

❖This Brave Saint-ess Sacrificed Everything To Advance The Noble Female Cause

❖Everything Conspired To Remove Choice From This Group Of Women

❖These Women Are Oppressed Because They Care About Their Children Much More Than Their Husbands Do

❖These Women Banded Together To Fight Injustice

❖When There Were No Loans, These Women Started A Bank In Their Back Yard

❖These Women Started Their Own Welfare Program On Returned Pop Bottles

❖Men Are Greedy Capitalist Dogs; Women Really Care About Preserving The Environment

❖These Men Don’t Want Women To Learn Anything

❖Women Are Impregnated To Keep Them Down

For men—especially white men—the choices were much more limited; they could not write about women or minorities or the poor or other religions. Similarly, they could not claim that anything they wrote was actually true, or deal with ideas—other than various kinds of watered-down socialism—which claimed to explain the world. Faced with this stark lack of choice, most of the men tended to hunker down in some obscure corner of academic knowledge, hoping to become experts as a consequence of others’ indifference to their own specialization.

But how to find a truly personal nook? That was a significant problem. It had to be something that tied into some personal obsession, which allowed the student to ignore the fact that she was toiling for years, say, tracking sheep movements in some demesne in southern France in the exciting decade of the 1240’s.

Rudy called his guidance obsession therapy, in that he did not seek to liberate a student from his obsessions, but rather use them to blind him to the futility of what he was doing. His practice had started as a simple dorm-room exercise, just listening and talking, but word had spread quickly that there was a great wisdom in the land, and the needy came.

Soon it became a public event; Rudy would sit in the student pub, in a booth reserved for him alone, and supplicants would come to speak with him. Those who made the BabbleFish Pilgrimage were often asked to reveal strikingly personal information, and would twist awkwardly on the seat of his wooden pew, privacy warring with the desire for his insight. Rudy would sit across from them, eating endless pretzels and asking odd but penetrating questions:

“You are an only child?”

The student (in this case a young woman with greenish hair and a pierced eyebrow) would blink. “No—I have two brothers.”

“Sisters?”

“No.”

“Mother’s occupation?”

“Bookstore—she worked there.”

“Father?”

“No father.”

“Died?”

“Left.”

“Contact?”

“Very little.”

“Mother remarried?”

“No.”

“Dated?”

“Yes.”

“Longest relationship?”

“Hers or mine?”

“Hers.”

“Not more than a few months.”

“Favorite movie? Not the one you have to impress people.”

“Sid and Nancy.”

“Favorite novel?”

“Glamorama.”

“If you could not be in university, what would you be doing?”

“Traveling.”

“Not counting traveling.”

“I—don’t know.”

“Last paying job?”

“Waitress.”

“Recurring dreams of being chased?”

“Yes.”

“How many times a night do you wake up?”

“Probably—twice.”

“For how long?”

“Ten, twenty minutes.”

“Drug use?”

“Just—recreational. A little.”

“Did you have access to a cottage growing up?”

“No.”

“Did you have a car in high school?”

“No.”

“Allowance?”

“Ten dollars a week.”

“Do you believe that your parents are moral?”

“Both of them?”

“Both.”

“My mother—gosh I don’t know. I suppose so. I don’t think—I don’t know enough about my father.”

“Did you ever shoplift?”

“Just sunglasses. Snacks. Kid stuff.”

“Caught?”

“No, just got bored by it.”

“South America.”

Gasps around the booth; the Moment had arrived!

“Sorry?”

“South America. The banana trade I think. Indigenous exploitation. Eighteenth century. A title, then a colon with more details.”

“I don’t know Spanish.”

Rudy leaned forward. “Learn it.”

Rudy never disclosed his methods; he probably could not have, since he followed instinct alone. Of course, the exploitation of helpless dependents by a phallocentric banana company in the distant past would trigger primal infant memories in the woman, and her obsessions about male exploitation and identification with the peasants—combined with her amoral anger—could produce a thesis possessing all the strange coherence of emotional trauma masquerading as intellectual activity. An A for sure, and no sense of time passing as she worked. He had done it again.

Rudy’s other great power—and this was the core of being a BabbleFish—was to translate postmodernism (‘pomo’) into pidgin (‘plain English’). This was of great value to graduate students who had wandered so far into the gassy realms of self-referential language that they no longer had any idea what they were actually saying. These students would come to Rudy—again, bringing gifts—and Rudy would downshift their language from pomo to pidgin, and the ideas would be scrutinized for any trace of originality. Assuming none were found, he would upshift their language back into pomo, and they would depart content.

Gifted with this power, Rudy also held court for the wording of thesis proposals. The purpose was to bring a selection of the professor’s papers; these would then be downshifted into pidgin, scrutinized, then a pidgin statement would be written which agreed with the professor’s opinions, which Rudy would then upshift into pomo.

And what was his own work like? Well, he was a good teacher’s assistant, and quite an entertaining lecturer (he taught Modern American History, and gave a good Nixon). He also enlivened his courses by sprinkling enough oblique references to the falsity and humor of pomo language that students found themselves electrified, excited, as if opening their eyes to their first glimpse of willing flesh.

Rudy was working on a dissertation about the spread of new kinds of waterwheels throughout medieval England. (He was quite aware that his interest in technology for gaining power out of a formless liquid was not unrelated to his own status as a BabbleFish, but what was the point of pursuing that? The point was to get it done and get tenure!) He did not pretend—either to himself or his thesis advisor—that his work would have any use other than to bore people away from reading it, and so ensure his unquestioned mastery of a tiny domain.

When Gordon first met the BabbleFish, a sort of electric current passed between them, and they knew they would be friends for life, because they were both committed to exploration; the BabbleFish to language, Gordon to ideas. The capacity and desire to go behind the Oz-curtain of habitual thoughts is so rare that those who possess it can almost sense each other through thick lead.

Gordon heard the word ‘BabbleFish’ racing around the room, and his curiosity was immediately piqued. He could not get very close, but leaned against a chair and listened as the BabbleFish dispensed his strange and penetrating advice to a succession of rapt listeners.

There is something about this advice… Most of it was academically related, but occasionally not. At about the fourth student—a young man, prematurely balding—Gordon heard the following:

“BF, I am obsessed with Freddie Mercury,” whispered the young man, ducking his head and swallowing repeatedly.

Rudy frowned. “Speak up. The singer for Queen?”

The boy’s eyes gleamed. “You would not believe the voice this man had! He could sing anything, so beautifully. ‘Cool Cat,’ off Hot Space; pure, perfect falsetto. ‘See What a Fool I’ve Been,’ off Live Hammersmith ’75, he growls ‘my dog ain’t too hungryyyy’ like the best blues singer you ever heard! Ragtime, country, scat, gospel… You’ve got to help me! I can’t stop listening to him, or thinking about his music.”

“Even his solo stuff?”

“Yes—‘Barcelona.’ ‘The Great Pretender.’ ‘Mr Bad Guy’…”

Rudy paused. “You have the box set?”

“Of course. Even the outtakes from ‘Barcelona’ are great! It has the version of ‘Who Wants To Live Forever’ off Highlander where he sings the first verse, not Brian.” The boy paused. “Only ‘Yellow Breezes’ sort of sucks.”

“When did this start?”

He shook his head. “I was tree-planting, had only a few tapes…”

“When exactly?”

“Four years ago. One was A Day at the Races. I mean, don’t get me wrong—I liked Queen when I was young, sure; I had the Greatest Hits, The Game. But I’m out in the middle of nowhere, A Day At The Races is playing, and ‘Teo Torriatte’ comes on. A good vocal performance; the silvery tone at the beginning especially, but nothing extraordinary. And then there’s this bit where Freddie goes: ‘Don’t turn your heart / We’re on, we’re on, we’re on our wayyy baaack home,’ and the second ‘we’re on,’ that goes so high, so clear, so powerful, and I suddenly thought, you know, all at once: I thought: My God, this is a great singer! And then I listened to everything again, everything I had, on headphones, and it was like a whole new voice. And ever since then, in any music, all I can hear is the tone and clarity and passion of the singer.”

Rudy nodded. More pretzels met their fate. “Do you sing yourself?”

“Sure, a little—I keep bugging them for karaoke here—but not real well, just enough to know a really great singer when I hear him.”

“Have you ever had this with a female singer?”

“No, not really.”

“Did you go through the Sting thing?”

The young man frowned. “The—oh sure, all young singers did, we all broke ourselves over his counter-tenor. I like Sting’s voice, but he’s got no falsetto to speak of, and his tone is a little drone-y. And he doesn’t do as many styles—well not as well as Freddie. And he’s oddly passionless.”

“Did you know Freddie was gay?”

The boy shook his head. “No—just when I learned what he died of. Odd really. It wasn’t like he didn’t leave a trail…”

“Like the name of the band, say.”

“Yeah…”

“So do you want to do some academic work on Freddie?”

“No—I can’t think of a thesis. It’s not that. Do you know, I dream of him at least once a week…”

“Hm. Would you have liked to have had his life?”

“Sure—singing in front of three hundred thousand South Americans… That must have been a serious trip. I always wanted to sing with him.”

“And what did you feel? When he died?”

“Sad. Shocked.”

“Hm. It’s a little outside my area of expertise. You sure you can’t come up with something to write about him?”

“He was pretty unintellectual.”

Rudy paused. “I don’t really know how to help you in that then.”

Gordon snorted. “Oh come on! The solution is simple!”

Rudy glanced up. “Really?”

Pushing past the protesting bodies, Gordon sat in the booth, next to the student. “What’s your name?”

“Thomas.”

“Thomas, it’s like this: you have a secret talent, and you’re terrified of fame.”

The student blinked. “What?”

“What do you do on your own time that no one really knows about?”

“Play—play guitar.”

“Electric? Headphones only?”

“Yes.”

“You write songs.”

“Yes.”

“Since you were a kid.”

Thomas laughed. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

“And you want to become famous, but you are terrified of your own shallowness. You are fascinated by Freddie Mercury because he lived out your fantasies, and so you envied him—and also because he died for those fantasies, and so betrayed you.”

“Betrayed?”

“If he were truly happy, would he have been that promiscuous?”

The boy scowled. “He got tested for AIDS in the eighties, was negative, and went out and screwed around even more!”

“That makes you angry.”

“Of course! Christ, if rock gods can’t be happy…”

“…what chance do we have?”

The boy paused. “Yeah… Yeah, I guess.”

“So, although you want to be Freddie Mercury, you are troubled by the fact that even Freddie Mercury didn’t want to be Freddie Mercury. His life is a riddle you need to solve, and until you solve it, you cannot be a musician.”

“I don’t understand that.”

“You want to follow in his footsteps, but his path led off a cliff. You either need to give up your goal or find a new path. Our unconscious often paralyses us with obsessions, to stave off even more self-destructive behavior. You can’t give up your goal, because you believe you have something to offer, but you are also terrified of fame, because it would destroy you, just like our Freddie-boy. He enticed you, then betrayed you. That is always the way of envy. ‘Run to this palace,’ it says, ‘it’s right at the bottom of this cliff!’”

Thomas stared at Gordon. His eyelid twitched. “What the fuck?”

“Or—you’re just gay,” smiled Gordon.

“Fuck you!” cried Thomas, squirming up and storming out of the booth, which is a quite tricky combination.

There was a pause. “Oh well,” said Gordon, sticking out his hand. “I’m Gordon.”

Rudy shook it. “Actually, you are the Angel of Death.”

“Sorry?”

“What the hell were you doing?”

“Helping him.”

“Sure, but if you push the old ladies across the highway, you don’t really get the merit badge.”

“I don’t…”

“No, wait. I’ve got a better one: ‘Fuck the anesthetic, it’ll make him groggy. Let’s just saw!’”

“You think I was too harsh?”

“No—Don Rickles passing a kidney stone is harsh.”

“What would you have done?”

“Well, got him to a therapist perhaps. Burned some Sinatra MP3s for him, you know, butch him up a little. Maybe his fantasy is not that fame is so great, but that he’s good enough to become famous. You don’t know.”

“He got something new, at any rate.”

“He’s gonna be in trouble.”

“He already was.”

Rudy laughed, then stuck out his hand. “What the hell. I’m Rudy.”

“The BabbleFish.”

“Sure. You haven’t come for academic advice.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No—you already know what you’re going to do, and you’d never take my advice about it.”

“Which would be?”

“You’re dreaming. You have ‘Big Idea’ written all over you. Like those ‘idea’ lightbulbs, but when this one goes off, the whole city dims.”

Gordon smiled. “I didn’t know it was that obvious.”

“Philosophy… I can smell wet gunpowder and a coming war.”

Gordon laughed delightedly. “You are a strange oracle!”

“Delphi to me, a direct lineage.” Rudy leaned forward, brushing back his red hair. “And me?”

Gordon frowned. “Relativist. But…there’s something not corrupt about it.”

Rudy cupped the back of his head and smiled. “You flatter me.”

“You see hidden patterns, but only subjectively… You wouldn’t know a principle if it passed you on the street.”

“Well, unless it owed me money.”

“Which would be a principle, but never mind.”

“So what is your great idea?”

Gordon paused. “I am still working on it.”

Rudy snorted. “Bullshit. You don’t ‘work on’ a great idea. You just try to pick yourself up after it runs you over.”

Gordon smiled. “I really like you.”

“Yeah, good.” Rudy glanced up at the restless, waiting throng of students. “You lot clear off. Nothing more tonight. No wait—I’ll take that pint. You want one?” he asked Gordon, who shook his head. “And that—is that blueberry? Okay, that muffin.” He took the offerings and set them down before him.

“I wouldn’t call you a BabbleFish, but rather L. Ron.”

“Why?”

“Like the Scientologist, you have started your own religion.”

“You think so?”

“You provide cryptic, unverifiable snippets of possible truth in exchange for goods and services.”

Rudy shook his head. “No—I’ve never done it for ‘services.’”

“So you’re not a cult. Still.”

“Do you believe in ESP?”

“Only by leprechauns.”

A young man poked his head around the edge of the booth. “Timeframe, BabbleFish?” he asked.

Rudy smiled and waved him back. “This will be a little while.” He turned back to Gordon. “Some people think they can predict the future when they’re just reading body language. A man betrays an affair by the movement of his thumb on his wife’s clit. A wife holds a child who is not her husband’s in a different way. We all know everything, all the time. True knowledge is not learning, but admitting. It is not sculpture, but archaeology.”

“For internal knowledge, sure, perhaps. But not physics.”

“Really? Did you know that the solution to the problem of the carbon atom came in a dream? Einstein felt his way to the theory of relativity, and only proved it later. The part of his brain that dealt with spatial reasoning was many times larger than normal. His physics was within him; it was only proved in the world later. Science owes as much to the unconscious as psychology or art.”

“But it has more objective measures.”

Rudy shrugged. “Who knows what is going on with quantum physics? As for psychology, there are wide batteries of psychological tests which measure every aspect of the personality with remarkable accuracy.”

“All right, what about art?”

“Art is the easiest of all. Popularity.”

Gordon blinked. “Popularity?”

“Yes, esteemed member of the elite.”

“So Stephen King is a better writer than Dostoevsky?”

“Define ‘better.’”

“Richer, more complex. Deeper.”

“So you’re saying that a rich dessert is always better than a light dessert.”

“Sorry?”

“Dostoevsky is deeper; we agree on that. Is all deeper art greater than lighter art?”

“Yes.”

“So to substitute ‘chef’ for ‘writer,’ a rich dessert is ‘better’ than a lighter one. Cheesecake always beats meringue.”

“You can’t compare writing to food!”

Rudy raised his eyebrows. “Actually, we’re just comparing the concept of ‘better.’ A ‘better’ meal is different for someone trying to lose weight rather than gain it. What ‘better’ means in this case is: more appropriate to the purpose at hand. If you want to relax and be entertained, then certainly Stephen King is a better writer than Dostoevsky. If you want to explore the dangers of grandiosity, Crime and Punishment is your ticket.”

“So, you’re saying that because more people want to relax and be entertained, Stephen King is the better writer.”

“Sure—the root of novels is the art of storytelling, and that is a rare and powerful gift. Stephen King is an unbelievably gifted storyteller. Most people are not philosophers; they read at the cottage, or on a plane, and they want to explore the human condition about as much as you want to do your taxes. Now, you may not like that they prefer literature that you consider shallow, but you have no right to say that your literature is better just because it suits your preferences.”

“But you are saying that Stephen King’s is better because it serves their purposes more!”

“I am saying that art which serves the most people’s purposes the most appropriately is better.”

“So McDonald’s beats North 44 every time.”

“For families pulling over for a meal, yes, absolutely. Homeless people with three dollars, of course. For rich men with heart conditions, no, of course not. But who outnumbers whom? You prefer sit-down, that doesn’t make sit-down better.”

“So it’s purely democratic. If more people believe smoking is good for you, it is good for you?”

“No, because smoking has objective medical consequences. I am saying that to assume that art must be deep because you like depth is myopic—and, oddly enough for you, completely subjective.”

“So Mein Kampf was better than, say, Oliver Twist, because it outsold it one year. But only for that year.”

“Even given the aesthetic cheat of your argument—Hitler versus an orphan—and the fact that an argument could be made that Mein Kampf is a deeper work—then yes, that year Mein Kampf was more relevant and spoke more to people than Oliver Twist.”

“So it was a better piece of art.”

“You are trying to attach ‘quality’ to a piece of art, like a dust-jacket or ‘on sale’ sticker. But for art, quality is in the relevance it has to the purposes of those who consume it. Spencer was a famous philosopher in the nineteenth century; he is hardly read now. Has the quality of his books faded, like color in an old movie? No, because they are just words on a page. The relevance to the audience has decreased. He was a good writer, now he is not a good writer. Times changed, and left him behind.”

“This is a most interesting argument,” said Gordon. “I am not often accused of subjectivism. I am very logical.”

Rudy leaned forward. “How do you know?”

Gordon stared at him, a deep shock running through him at the utterly unexpected question. He frowned suddenly. His right eyelid twitched.

Chapter 17

Ladies Who Lunch

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Angela Bugle ‘lunched with the ladies’ every week. They met at the Burma Club, a fortress of old money in North Toronto, where a nostalgia for the heady days of old colonialism was evident in the fact that none of the serving staff were even remotely white. In the winter, they sat overlooking the ice-skating rink, where blond girls with spider legs spun and floundered under the snarls of beefy, heavily accented coaches. In the summer, they sat under patio umbrellas and grew lethargic under the combination of intense sunlight and the druggy sight of slow-motion lawn-bowlers.

Lunch at the Burma Club had followed many phases over the years, among which were:

❖He just isn’t the man I married.

❖I had no idea men farted that much. My father certainly didn’t.

❖He works too much.

❖Does his sexual drive ever diminish?

❖I’ve given up asking him to help around the house.

❖Do I want a child? I already have my husband!

❖I had no idea babies were that much work.

❖Will I ever get my figure back?

❖My nipples are killing me! (And, for a top-heavy woman whose baby would not breast-feed: ‘I can’t believe I’ve been carting these goddamn things around since I was eleven, and they don’t even work!’)

❖It’s all right for him; he sleeps on business trips!

❖Getting into Montessori is hopeless unless you know someone—do you?

❖I don’t remember having to be taught to stop picking my nose—if I ever did. Isn’t it something that’s just supposed to happen?

❖He’s so much like his father it’s chilling. They both stare at me, fists on hips, and I just want to scream!

❖He comes home, and he’s just: ‘now take care of me!’ So I’m fixing him dinner, and the boy comes screaming in with a bloody knee, and then my husband tells me about his trip, and the girl needs help with her homework, and then my husband comes rubbing up against me while I’m brushing my teeth, and I just sometimes wish I had pepper spray coming out of every pore!

❖Sorry, he says, I just missed your vagina, but I know he just wants to go there, but I’m afraid that if I let him go there, he’ll never want to come back! And what if it loosens everything, and I have to wear Depends like June Lockhart?

❖He wants a maid because he doesn’t want to do anything— hell I’d pay her to go upstairs so I don’t have to do anything.

❖What is the line between kinky and perverse?

❖Lord, I passed that line years ago. Now, I’m on all fours in a Girl Guide uniform, baaaing like a sheep while he recites Martin Luther’s ‘I Have A Dream!’

These—and many more—topics had been discussed over the previous decades. Most recently, in the sudden, insistent way of biology, the talk turned to the following topics:

❖affairs

❖money

❖the shamelessness of younger women (a.k.a. ‘we never acted like that!’)

❖time until the kids leave home

Five of the nine LWL (Ladies Who Lunch) had already suffered through affairs. (Well, ‘suffered’ is perhaps too strong a word; they felt great pain, but also found themselves in the possession of great leverage.) The number of affairs had been rising over the past few years, and this was quite alarming. So when a Pyramid Scheme came their way, with its instant promise of easy money, they found themselves moistly receptive.

This Pyramid Scheme was clever. It was for women only, and was presented to middle-aged upper-class women as a kind of ‘fun feminism.’ Ladies, grab yourself a slice of the pie! Do something for yourselves! Your husband won’t notice! And—perhaps most importantly—wouldn’t it be handy to have a tax-free nest egg? (For most women, this translated into: ‘here are some lawyer’s fees, just in case…’)

All of the LWL went in. They had each put in five thousand, and ended up with almost seventeen thousand apiece. Not bad. (Of course, they did not examine too closely the fact that a third of them won what should have statistically ended up in the hands of a tenth.)

Now, it came time to consider what to do with the money. A tax-free seventeen thousand wasn’t bad, of course, but it wouldn’t go far in a real legal battle—and what if he stopped paying for the children’s private schools, or you had to move out?

So the following topic was discussed. Angela started, saying:

❖So we have this money, which is a good thing, but the question now is, what to do with it?

❖Roll around in it with a Spanish seaman named Raoul!

❖Mm, yes!

❖I’d like to undo my tit-job. I look like two tennis balls in a condom.

❖Come on, be serious. I think we should invest it.

❖Invest it?

❖It’s a good start, but not exactly enough to retire on.

❖But invest it in what?

❖Well, I’ve done some reading. GICs are out; interest rates these days are terrible. Any eight to ten percent mutual fund has some risk, and even at nine percent will take more than eight years to double our money.

❖So, what are you thinking?

❖Well, I have done some calculations. By my estimation, I have spent over twenty minutes a day, five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, doing something I find quite boring and predictable.

❖It wasn’t so boring at the beginning, before he decided what I liked.

❖Over twenty years, that’s over a hundred thousand minutes. One thousand, seven hundred and thirty-three hours. Almost a year of full-time work.

❖And sometimes it’s real work, not just lunch and meetings and conference calls.

❖Are you suggesting that we charge our husbands back?

❖Yes, but not for what you think, you shameless sluts!

❖What then?

❖Business talk.

❖[groans]

❖Yeah, I’d prefer sex with a headache to hearing him complain about his partners.

❖Or the programmers who never get it right.

❖Or how the board just ‘doesn’t understand his vision.’

❖Oh wait—the government funding that is always promised, but never comes!

❖The accountant who can’t add!

❖The auditor who has it in for him!

❖The guy who might be embezzling.

❖The woman who doesn’t want to come back from maternity leave!

❖Oh Lord it’s enough to make me pull my hair out, right here, right now!

❖I need another scone. Vasquez—Vasquez dear, another scone? No butter.

❖Sure, they don’t use any making them.

❖Shut up.

❖So we’ve had all this whining about work, but of course we also know how the businesses are doing. I mean, we really know how the businesses are doing.

❖[pause]

❖You’re talking about an inside job.

❖Lord we’re not robbing a bank. We’re just looking after our own interests.

❖Insider trading is illegal.

❖So was the pyramid scheme. We’re not talking about millions. I’d be happy with doubling my money. Billions change hands every day—would the market really collapse over our seventeen thousand apiece?

❖And Lord knows we deserve something, all that listening, all those years…

❖It’s easier to fake an orgasm than an interest in boardroom politics.

❖But it is so easily traceable.

❖Not really. All we need to do is create a corporation—only about a grand—put someone’s name on the board, someone whose husband doesn’t work in a start-up—and trade through that. Even if there were some kind of investigation, the numbers would be too small to get anyone’s attention. And even if someone looked into that company, they would have to know we were all friends, and then would have to prove that our husbands passed confidential information to us, and that we then shared it with each other, and that influenced stock purchases.

❖It still sounds a little risky.

❖Insider trading is quite easy to detect; any stock movement before an announcement is suspect, but it is almost impossible to prove, unless the company executives do it themselves. Now if we cross-invest—I invest for Sally, Sally for me—then we are fine. And ladies, let’s look at this from another angle. How are you all fixed for retirement?

But such steps are not made all at once; amoral people do not consummate their relationship with illegality without some ritual self-seduction:

❖Here’s what I think: it’s risky, it could backfire, and seventeen thousand in the hand is worth something.

❖Got to be less than a month, as we spend

❖And our husbands have a lot of stock options.

❖But they’re mostly in ‘escrow.’

❖What’s that?

❖It means that you can only sell a third of your stocks a year, say, over three years. It’s so executives who are hired don’t sell everything after the first year and vanish.

❖But to buy and sell the stock without any legal restrictions would be great.

❖How the hell do we declare the money?

❖We don’t have to—it’s a legitimate investment by a corporation. In fact, we’re better off than we are with the pyramid money, because that is pure cash.

❖I hate having it in the house!

❖But this is all academic; we don’t even know if there are any opportunities out there. How many of your husbands are in start-ups? So—seven of us. You?

❖He’s between jobs.

❖Working in a bank. Some vice-president thing.

❖Well that might be okay. So let’s do this—ladies, feel out your husbands. Take a little interest, but not enough to startle them. Get the lay of the land. I wish we could talk to some employees, but that would be too dangerous. Wait—I’m not saying we do anything yet; all I’m saying is that we see if anything is possible. If not, no harm done; if so, we can revisit and walk away if we don’t like it. Come on ladies, wouldn’t you all like a little bit of a mission? Doesn’t it make being a wife just a little more exciting?

Of course it did, and there were sudden secret smiles, and the raising of tall glasses over the white tablecloth, while far above these idle climbers, the snows began to tremble.

Chapter 18

Pomo in Slow-Mo: Complicating Language

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Rudy, a.k.a. the BabbleFish, was a bit of a computer nut. His fascination with language drew him to the hard clean text of coding, and his delight in talking gave him the inspiration for an internet show. He wrote obsessively—ten, twenty pages a day at times—but it was not as satisfying as it once was. He felt he was sort of boxing himself in with paper. As a diversion, he decided to record himself. He got a cheap webcam, some cardboard stock, and chose one of his journal entries to read. He wrote headings on the cardboard, and held them up to introduce his segments.

His first segment was an explanation of his nickname. He held up a placard and began speaking:

The BabbleFish
A.K.A. If The Tower Of Babel Had Reached Hell, We Would All Speak Thusly

“I have been nicknamed the BabbleFish, in homage to the great Douglas Adams. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the BabbleFish was a little creature you dropped into your ear which would then translate all languages for you.

“Now, I am flattered by the comparison, but even I am stymied by postmodernist language. In order for something to be translatable, it must have content. You can only translate gibberish into different gibberish, and that should give us some pause.

“Like all things of great power, language can be used for good or ill. It can clarify, or it can obscure. Those who are living a lie, or have something to hide, favor language which obscures. Those in search of the truth, or who have clear consciences, favor clarity.

“The invention of words is the special playground of specialists. Generally, specialists invent words for two reasons: to ensure exclusivity, and to promote insecurity.

“There are places where this is fairly harmless; no one is expecting that legality without Latin would be perfectly clear, or that removing scientific names would clarify all biology. However, there are disciplines that should be understood by the educated public, but which are blurred by stranger syllables than the Welsh nickname of an Aztec God. In particular, modern philosophy is prone to this kind of distortion, where simple thought balloons are twisted into helium replicas of London subway maps. This same problem occurs in the realms of literary criticism, sociology, minority history, women’s studies (particularly difficult), and social anthropology (which will only be clarified if and when anyone figures out what the hell it actually is).

“Complicating language provides the following advantages to the specialist:

❖It confuses the layperson into believing that the discipline is very, very difficult

❖It obscures unoriginal thought

❖It keeps clear thinkers away

❖Get enough weird sentences together, you’re off to a nifty conference someplace warm!

❖It removes the need for action, since no one understands what is being said

❖For the same reason, it also eliminates the possibility of criticism

❖It allows you to restate the same position many times, under many guises

❖It allows for complete subjectivity in marking students, since words can mean anything.

“Only unoriginal, third-rate thinkers benefit from this situation. These people have taken over our universities, and their defenses are very good. Their airborne venom keeps all clarifying contenders away. To go through the ten to twelve years of education at their hands, to have to contend with them at every step, to be denied satisfaction or praise, to never get a job, to have to fight for marks, to spend a decade or more like an air-starved diver keeping a greased octopus at bay—who has the stomach and integrity for that? One might as well expect the civil service to reform itself from within, or state-sucking companies to argue against corporate welfare.

“There are several nifty tools available to these postmodernists—for whom, for those who might be accessing this broadcast from beyond the walls of higher learning: everything is relative.”

Rudy held up another card:

Tool #1: Agenda

“The term ‘agenda’ is of great value, because it attempts the ‘deconstruction’ of the language of ‘vested authority groups’ to reveal the hidden ‘power structures’ and assumptions behind their words. It is generally used thus: ‘Corporations have an agenda which includes the economic overthrow of third-world governments.’ As far as can be ascertained, ‘agenda’ means this: ‘People sometimes lie to protect their interests.’”

Rudy smiled. “This might not be called the greatest of insights, but in the hands of postmodernism it becomes more than an insight, but a species of physics, as unquestionable as gravity. A corporate spokesperson, for instance, is always lying, because he has an agenda. His or her falsehood does not have to be proved.

“This is mendacious because of the following: if all communication from power groups is false because of their hidden agendas, then we should discount the arguments of all postmodern intellectuals. Academics, in particular, have a stranglehold on the creation and dissemination of educated thought. Surely these academics represent a power group even more entrenched than multinational corporations, which do not have tenure, compete globally, and who, as a rule, do not derive most of their income from the government.

“One may well ask: if all power groups have a hidden agenda, then what is the hidden agenda of postmodernists? Radical feminists? Unions? Government workers? Teachers? But the ‘hidden agendas’ of these power groups—all paid for and protected by the government—are never questioned. What is common is that all these groups—which take money from taxpayers who often oppose them—object to private companies, which cannot forcibly take money from consumers. It is forced association versus freedom of association. Psychologically, ascribing your own nefarious motives to your enemies is called projection. Thus, we should simply use the arguments of the postmodernists to defeat their own positions. All power groups lie? You are a power group. Begone!”

Tool #2: Appropriation

“This term has a dual use; first, it refers to the inability of white people to accurately speak for those who are oppressed, or to ‘appropriate the voice of the disenfranchised.’ (I don’t think it bars Indian writers, though, from writing about the racism of the WASP Raj.) Postmodernists object to this kind of literary colonialism, I assume, because they do not believe that different cultures can ever understand each other. This belief is not considered at all at odds with the pomo value of multiculturalism.

“The word ‘appropriation’ is related to the word ‘appropriate,’ which is the aesthetic approach to ethics, and is about as moral as a postmodernist is allowed to get.

“In the pomo universe, there is no such thing as right and wrong, or universal values, but there is infinite respect for local tribal customs. Intolerance of the values of others is never sanctioned (except for oppressed cultures, which are allowed to hate white capitalism). The concept of ‘appropriate’ is the sort of morality which would be invented by a radical spinster aunt on steroids. It is designed to turn ethics into a kind of aesthetic bullying, without reference to root causes or reasoned arguments. Modern theorists reject underlying moral principles because they contradict the rampant relativism of the pomo world. For fun, it’s worth asking pomos just why a certain action would be considered appropriate, then turning the tables around. Try this: ask why multiculturalism is a value, then, on hearing the reply that you must respect the values of another culture, ask whether that means that the Muslim world is more evil than the North American world, since Muslim governments jail and murder atheists. Ahh, the spluttering, the rage, the insults, the back-pedaling…

“In the time of Socrates, these people were called ‘sophists,’ because they claimed knowledge that they could not prove, and taught that ideas were a means to power, not truth.

“In the medieval period, these people were called ‘scholastics.’ They killed Western thought by arguing whether Adam had a belly button, or where the next generation came from after Cane and Abel. They argued about words, not reality. Nothing could be proven, because the best they could aim for was consistency with the irrational premise of Biblical absolutism.

“Now, we are in a new Dark Age. Our philosophers argue in a vacuum, detached from reality, society, honesty, and rationality.”

As if surprised at his own words, Rudy glanced down, and up again, straight into the little camera. For the first time in his life, his eyes burned with a clarity of purpose.

“And, do you know?” he said slowly, almost shyly. “I am honestly considering drawing my sword.”

After finishing the above—rant? Talk? Random harangue? Whatever it was, he posted it to his website, and sent out mass emails inviting people to come and have a look at his little digital soapbox.

Chapter 19

Terry’s First Demo

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Terry managed to create the first version of the software in just over four weeks, finishing in early April. Dave allowed him to hire a friend of his from school, Pierre Laurin. Pierre was an irreverent and swarthy Quebecois, with hair like a low, black Cro-Magnon awning, chubby cheeks, an eyebrow piercing, a fondness for music which sounded like banshees being electrocuted, and a considerable talent for writing code. Together, they pieced the interface together, and finished the navigation buttons. As yet, the software didn’t really do anything; it just stored data, but they could type in stuff and click around.

Ted Howell from Cyrux came in to review the program, and sat through a fairly short presentation in the cold, bright boardroom, where everyone had to lean forward and squint to see the overhead projection. When it was over, Dave said: “So, Ted, what do you think of the fruits of our young geniuses?”

“Not bad,” said Ted, nodding slowly. “Good for our first briefing. But it would be better if, for a US site, only the US states showed up as choices in the ‘Province’ box.”

Terry hesitated. “But you have only two sites in the US.”

Dave snorted. “Is that very hard to do?”

“No, not really, but is it worth it for only two sites?”

Ted frowned. “What if we get more?”

“It wouldn’t be hard to choose the right states, if you add only one every six months.”

Ted shook his head. “I think it would be easier if they were filtered. You are supposed to be the best.”

“Consider it done,” grinned Dave. He jotted something down on Terry’s notepad. Terry glanced down, and read:

Let ME talk!

Later that afternoon, Ted phoned Dave and said that it was crucial that the label for ‘Province’ be changed to ‘State’ when a US site is selected.

“All right,” said Terry when Dave told him, “but what about Zip Codes versus Postal Codes?”

“Yeah,” nodded Dave, “they should switch too.”

“This is going to take more time.”

“I understand.”

Terry paused. “Aren’t we going to charge them more?”

“Terry, this is our first account. The success of this project will entirely determine the success of our company as a whole. News of what you’re doing is out in the marketplace; every single one of our competitors—as well as our strategic partners and at least two start-ups thinking of entering this field—are watching us like hawks to see if we screw this up. And they’re sure we will. That we can’t deliver what we promised. That we’re amateurs. I brought all this capital together, made personal pledges to our investors, mortgaged my house and ran up more credit than a third world fucking country, on the assumption that you could do what you told me you could do.” Dave’s cheeks were beet red. “So just. Do. It!”

There was a long pause. Terry’s eyes were wide; his heart hammered in his chest. It was like a mountain falling on a little fern. He nodded, went back to his desk, and started typing, trying to breathe deeply into his helium chest.

After about an hour, he was done, had tested his changes, and all was well. He felt pleased. Then he looked forward, and saw that there was a little box for recording chemical throughput, which had a little ‘units’ box, which, on this screen, read: ‘Litre.’

Then, suddenly, the floor spun and fell beneath him. The following thoughts occurred, in quick succession:

❖We’ll have to be able to switch between Metric and Imperial!

❖Those calculations aren’t too bad—I have to get a list of the units they use…

❖Oh God! What happens if a manager in the US wants to see the Canadian totals in Imperial?

❖Or a Canadian manager wants the US totals in Metric?

❖Or if they want to know if there is too much benzene in the water; the legal limits and storage units must be interchangeable?

❖What if they try to import US data processed at a Canadian lab?

❖Or vice versa?

❖(No, that can’t be allowed, but I’ll have to check for it and block users if they try it)

❖What if they try to run a Canadian chemical standard against a US water result?

❖(Why would they try that?—well, they can create their own internal standards, and they might want to do that—I could block it…)

Now in every terror-struck examination of a sudden change in software architecture, there comes a point where hope fails, weekends dissolve, inspiration dies, and the Death March begins. For Terry, it was when the following thought struck him:

❖The reports will have to display both Metric and Imperial results—or a choice of each, depending on what the user wants…

When Terry realized that the Metric/Imperial problem was going to take, probably, 6-8 weeks of extra work, he sat at his desk for over an hour. His screen saver came on, and he moved his mouse. He continued staring, then his screen saver came on again…

Dave came in and interrupted him.

“Terry, I want you to do me a favor. Ted just called, and he talked my ear off about how long it takes him to produce his quarterly reports; the same thing he told you about when he was here. So he’s faxed me a sample of one of these reports. We’re going to have to look at how we can produce these, buddy. They don’t look too bad to me, but I’m no genius. Let me know in the morning, but don’t work all night!”

Dave winked and left the office. Terry glanced at the time on his computer’s taskbar. 4:32.

Feeling even more surreal, Terry flipped open the thick file. The bane of the database programmer stared at him:

Word Processing Documents.

His heart failed him. Databases cannot produce word processing documents; database reporting systems are designed for repetitive processing; lists of sales with intermittent totals. Word processing documents are free form by nature, and can wander anywhere.

Terry took a deep breath and shook his head quickly, driving the sick feeling from his chest. It was replaced by a rather giddy and unstable sense of confidence, and he began to type.

Chapter 20

Gordon Talks About the
Possibility of a Great Idea

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Gordon experienced all the terror and joy of a man waiting for a Great Idea. He hovered over his creative faculties like a parachutist over a volcano; floating over grinding, elemental heat, afraid to look down, unable to move away. Something was coming… He knew it. It was impossible to avoid, impossible to guess at, impossible to communicate to others…

One depressing but volatile conversation occurred in the cafeteria, where a group of students had returned from their first Career Day. They sat at one of the long, tan, plastic tables. There was a short silence. Somewhere down the hall, screaming could be heard. Obviously, an experimental play was undergoing a workshop, and the thin-but-ugly theatre girls were clearly giving it all they had.

Various groups sat scattered around the cafeteria, a huge room with floor-to-ceiling windows, which always seemed far too bright, except at night, when it was depressing. In one corner sat the ‘guerrilla-istas’; the South American students, who wore combat fatigues, red t-shirts with monochrome outlines of Che Guevara, bandannas, and perpetual scowls. They seemed to live on bananas and milk, and their hands were never still. From a distance, it looked as if they were trying to mime multinationals out of existence.

Not far from them were the slightly desperate Marxists who were given to arguing that everyone had gotten it wrong, and communism deserved another chance, that it had been subverted from within by some as-yet-unidentified corporate element. They argued loudly, but their plans were always being interrupted by rotating phalanxes of pimply revolutionaries going outside to smoke. They always had a goodly space around them, since they seemed selflessly dedicated to the proposition that deodorant and showers were a capitalist conspiracy.

In another corner was the mangy pack of the student newspaper staff. They wore thin, threadbare sweaters, baggy black jeans with proletariat keychains and faded wallet imprints, and sported generic sneakers and little Lennon sunglasses, which they pushed back on their greasy hair with ink-stained hands. They were currently discussing—in the most derisive terms—an article submitted by Gordon, which started off thus:

Marksism

Since the fall of the Soviet Empire, Marxism has fallen into sad disrepute. This is a great shame, because there is great power in this idea. As a means of rescuing Marxism, I humbly submit that it should be renamed ‘Marksism,’ and applied to our fair and noble university.

Under Marksism, the marks of every student will be entered into a common pot. This pool of marks will then be redistributed from high-performing students to those who, through no fault of their own, are getting lower marks.

In this manner, no student will ever fail. The more fortunate will help the less fortunate. Student sibling-hood will result! Those students who would have excelled under the old, exploitative system should be more than happy to donate their excess marks to their less-fortunate brethren and sistren. And really, how many marks does one student need? A pass is a pass is a pass. Those who complain are selfish tools of the multinational running dogs, and will be dealt with accordingly.

Now it is entirely possible that reactionary elements will stage a passive resistance to this plan, and refuse to produce the excess marks required to save their brothers and sisters, but we Marksists have anticipated such obstructionism. We shall measure every student’s IQ, and then determine how many marks we can expect her or him to produce. Any who produce less are clearly malingering, and will be dealt with accordingly.

But what if they fake their IQ tests? Then we shall measure the sizes of their brains! Or we can look at the marks their fathers attained—at the expense of the less-fortunate students, of course!—and require that they provide no less!

In the short-run, this will require a large expansion in the powers of the current administration, but have no fear! In the long run, when everyone becomes equal, we will need no administration at all!

The left-wingers on the student newspaper did not like the article, but they were short of text for that week’s edition, so they were fiercely debating whether or not to run it.

Gordon’s group, fresh from a grim recitation of the challenges of securing employment after graduation, were most glum.

“Well, that was depressing!” said one.

“Yeah,” said another. “Six hundred PhDs graduating this year—all competing for twenty-three positions!”

“Not all full time even,” said another.

“And only a few with a good tenure track… It’s hopeless.”

“I don’t agree,” smiled Gordon. “I am full of hope!”

“What do you hope to gain from university, Gordon?” asked another.

Gordon pursed his lips. “I am here for my Great Idea.”

That brought the table’s chatter to a halt. They could all hear both capital letters: the G and the I.

“What?” asked one man, his eyes wide.

“I believe that I have a Great Idea in me,” said Gordon.

A young woman frowned. “Like Derrida?”

“No—not a great idea that no one understands,” said Gordon, “or quotes with only partial understanding. A great idea that can be expressed in a sentence. Like Aristotle’s ‘The pursuit of excellence is the good life.’ I don’t care if it needs a thousand pages of reasoning before it; I will come up with something that cannot be distorted, or misunderstood, or twisted into something it’s not. Something that is simple, clear, beautiful—and true!

There was a shocked silence.

A man laughed. “Where the hell does that come from?”

Another waved his hands skyward. “Lord, smash the vanity of this reckless sinner!”

Another snorted. “From the bottom of the great mudslide of knowledge, where twenty years of training is required to make it to the edge of quantum physics, you want to come up with something simple?”

“At a university?”

A woman giggled. “This is going to be like a year-long car crash. I can’t not look.”

“Have you talked to an advisor about this?”

Gordon shook his head. “I am terrified to talk to an advisor.”

A woman smiled. “Why? They’ll take your terror away. Of course, they’ll also take your sight, soul, and will to live.”

“Academia is the sanctuary for small souls,” said a man.

“Little minds,” said another.

“Tiny penises,” added another.

“Wide—vaginas? How do you disparage a woman’s reproductive organs?”

“Dustiness.”

“The number of bats.”

“The intense guarding of food long rotted.”

“Euuuww!” scowled the woman.

Gordon raised his hand. “Hello—can we come back?”

One man shook his head. “Gordon, man, do you know what the odds are of having a great idea? It’s like planning for your retirement by playing the lottery.”

“No—more people win the lottery.”

“It’s like wanting to be a better novelist than Dickens.”

“Better dramatist than Shakespeare!”

“Sexier than Russell Crowe!”

“You are quite mad,” declared a woman. “There hasn’t been a Great Idea since…when?”

A man frowned. “Do we count ideas which say that there can be no Great Ideas?”

“I don’t know…”

“Good question.”

“I would say that—well can we say that—okay, what was the last Great Idea which is still believed?”

“Marxism?”

“What about the welfare state?”

“The Great Society?”

“Let’s not count politics.”

“Or economics; that rules out Marxism.”

“The last Great Idea…”

“Not just bon mots, like Bertrand Russell.”

“Nietzsche,” said Gordon.

“Nietzsche?”

“Master and slave morality. Not a system of thought, but an incredibly powerful idea.”

“But doesn’t Nietzsche just say that there is no real morality?”

“And therefore not a Great Idea, but more the destruction of Great Ideas.”

“Well, what the hell do we mean by a Great Idea then?”

“Something that is still believed to be true.”

“Like relativity in physics.”

“Atoms.”

“Wow—an idea still in practice? Not Marxism, not socialism. No economics…”

“Something contributed by philosophy which is still useful, still in use…”

There was a long, long pause. A girl with green hair wandered past, handing out leaflets about a play called My Father Is A Banana.

“Well,” said Gordon finally, “I have something, but we have to go back a way…”

“How far?”

“Over four hundred years…”

“Okay.”

“Francis Bacon. The scientific method. That was a Great Idea. Undebatable. Still in use. Still valuable.”

“Oh, come on! In the last four hundred years?”

“Nothing else?”

“How about Kant’s idea that an action isn’t ethical if you benefit from it?”

“That’s still debated, I think. Virtue is it’s own reward, all that…”

Another pause descended. This was a most interesting exercise, in that it was tough, and dangerous to their sense of purpose.

“What about human rights? Somewhat political, but still they have a basis in Enlightenment thought.”

“The concept of human rights,” said Gordon, “is not used that way any more. Now human rights include the right to shelter, food, medical care, something which would not have occurred to the thinkers of the Enlightenment. The concept has been—modernized, let’s say.”

There was another pause.

A woman sighed. “Wow.”

A man looked up. “Think of the biggies: Is there a God? Are the senses valid? What is true? What is good? No definite answer exists for any of them.”

“Good God, I am depressed!” said a young man.

“If you want to be depressed,” said Gordon, leaning against the table with a smile, “let’s talk about the last Great Idea before the scientific method.”

“Before Bacon?”

“Well, medievalism is out, all that scholasticism…”

“The Dark Ages, who cares?”

“The Romans, rank copycats.”

“Except for the phalanx.”

“The Greeks?”

“Right,” nodded Gordon. “What is still in use from the Greeks?”

“Prison sex?”

“Public smoking?”

“Aristotelian logic!” cried one man, snapping his fingers.

“I think so,” said Gordon. “The three laws of logic, syllogistic reasoning, those are all still in use. Not universally, but when brought up they are not automatically dismissed.”

“‘White-guy logic.’”

“What are you saying?” demanded one woman. “Are you saying that there have been only two Great Ideas in all recorded history?”

“No,” replied Gordon, “just that I can only think of two philosophical ideas almost completely accepted and in wide use.”

“What about feminism?” she asked.

“Thank you for asking in a non-belligerent tone. What about feminism? Is it almost completely accepted?”

“Very few people would still say that women should not be equal.”

“Actually,” said Gordon, “many feminists say just that, in arguing for preferential hiring policies and wealth redistribution.”

“That is to redress an imbalance.”

“That is their argument, of course. But my point is that the concept of ‘equality’ is not agreed on by all feminists, let alone society as a whole. And of course there are many women who do not want feminists to speak either to or for them.”

“All right—let’s leave that off the table for a moment.”

“Anything else?”

“Democracy?”

Gordon paused. “Political, but let’s look at that. The concept of voting covers both the murder of Socrates and the election of a leader in a free country. Voting without human rights which cannot be overridden is just mob rule; the majority can vote Hitler in, or to take away the rights of a minority. Democracy has changed many times since the days of ancient Greece. Now it is a war between rich and poor, with the middle class as hostage. I wouldn’t say that the concept of democracy is universally shared or accepted.”

“The separation of Church and State?”

“Again, political—and religious as well. This is still being debated, especially in the US. And most churches operate tax-free, even in Western countries. What I am talking about is ideas which are no longer debated. You can’t go to a scientific conference and advocate overturning the scientific method; you would be laughed out of the place.”

“But if you show someone that their argument contradicts itself—especially in religion—they will say that logic has no validity, but faith rules.”

Gordon nodded. “True, but they will not say that their argument is true despite being illogical. They will say that it is true outside the realm of logic. To maintain their belief, they have to escape logic, which is very different from saying that logic is wrong.”

There was another pause.

“So what you’re saying, Gordon my lad, is that there have been only two Great Ideas in the history of thought, and that you hope to add your own to this illustrious pile.”

“I do.”

“You are quite mad!”

Gordon smiled. “I know.”

“I can’t wait to hear it!”

“Me either,” said Gordon, with great feeling.

Chapter 21

The Boy Band Is Discussed

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Al called Justin and the others into his office, and they sat in the little room all together.

Al’s office was a shrine to the memory of dead bands. A goodly number of the black-and-white pictures of band members covering his walls were of young men with big, ’80s blonde hair, narrow leather ties, little pointy ankle-high boots, and parachute pants. The key seemed to be: no natural fibers, and no natural hair colors.

“All right,” said Al. “I’ve made some inquiries, and there are some key ingredients in a successful boy band.” He stood up, opened a foul-smelling marker, and wrote the following on a small whiteboard:

❖sentimental sexuality

❖good, clean fun, with a hint of danger

❖sensitive, respectful, polite, smoldering

❖a focus on dating, not screwing

❖archetypes

❖brooding

❖sexy

❖sensitive

❖pretty

❖mature

❖good knees

“…and that’s about it,” he finished. “Any thoughts?”

“Well,” said Justin slowly, “just off the top of my head, boy bands represent a teenage girl’s terror of her own sexuality.”

“Huh?”

“Is this a subject worthy of much thought?” asked Todd.

“Well, if we’re going to do this, let’s do it right,” said Justin, sucking breath through his teeth and sitting forward. “We’re looking at putting together a pre-teen propaganda machine…”

“Ooh—good name for the band: ‘Pre-Teen Propaganda Machine,’” said Gerald.

“Gerry,” sighed Justin, “you can’t ‘have’ irony and ‘say’ irony too. Plus, it sounds like a bad translation of the name of a Chinese youth marching band.”

“But can you do the smoldering thing?” asked Al.

“I can do anything with a good enough reason,” said Justin. “‘Give a man a why, he can bear almost any how,’” he quoted.

“‘Nietzsche’s Disciples!’” said Gerald. He obviously considered himself the idea hamster for the band name.

“Yeah, that would go over well,” muttered Todd.

“Look,” said Justin. “Girls are terrified of their own power over boys—and they are terrified of the disembodied penis—and no, Gerald, that would not be a good name for the band. They desperately want to be loved for their own precious selves, at the same time that nature has cloaked them in their hottest finery. But all illusions lead to exploitation. This woman will grow up bitter, and marry the wrong man.”

“Umm,” said Al slowly, “you’re not planning on taking this tack in interviews, are you?”

Justin laughed. “Of course not. But we’ll get a lot further if we know what we are doing.”

Chris grinned, crossing his legs. “This is a leg up from the dance steps I was thinking about.”

Justin stood up and stared at Al’s little whiteboard. “Now the boy band is a wonderful invention because it represents the four—or in our case five—elements of a complete personality.” He turned around to face them. The light from Al’s little window reflected from his eyes in two little beads, off to one side, as if he were looking slightly away. “I am the extrovert,” he continued, “in which case we need an introvert as well.” He tapped his lips. “Gerald, I think. And we’ll also need a dangerous, sexy one. Todd? Can you grow that jazz thing on your chin?”

“Think so.”

“And get that Stanley Kowalski thing going. You know: look at every woman as if you want to fuck your mother through her.”

“Good Lord!” cried Al.

“I can do that,” smiled Todd. “Have you seen my step-mom?”

“Actually,” said Justin, “I was thinking of her for our CD cover.”

“I’m fairly sure we can find good shots of her on the internet.”

“Or good shots on her.”

“On ‘displaced-oedipal.com.’”

“Hey!” cried Al, leaning forward. “Enough!”

“Now, we also need the ‘chaperone,’ who represents the sexual restraint; someone who looks slightly older. Chris?”

“Sure. Should I get a paunch?”

“No; just smile without guile. Just look—you know, happy to be there. Slightly amused, perhaps. In interviews, you always get the last say, and we nod and defer. Now we also need a party boy, also known as the pretty thing, and that’s quite easy. Iain has the best hair.”

He touched it. “While it’s true that I exude a strange sexuality, I’m not exactly gorgeous.”

“You’re pretty enough. And don’t worry—the videocam keeps moving. You’ll need to dye it blonde.”

“Umm, Justin?” said Iain.

“Yo.”

“I can’t sing.”

“Right.” Justin turned to Al. “Please note that Iain will never do a solo album. But you can really dance.”

Iain smiled, and his smile was almost shy. “Well, thanks, but I didn’t think you wanted me in the band.”

Justin ruffled Iain’s hair. “Sure—come along, my unicorn! There’s room on the ark for all!”

“So. I’m in a boy band,” said Iain, shaking his head slowly.

“Now, our relationship to homosexuality.”

“What?” said Iain, looking up quickly.

“Actually, to homosexuals. Gay culture, like teenage culture, is youth and look-obsessed; a gay man faces the same problem as the teenage girl; he wants to be loved for who he is…”

“Whom he is,” corrected Iain.

“Oh, you anal little grammar Nazis! All right—he wants to be loved for whom he is, but cannot attract men without looking great. Gay men are sensitive, because they are feminine, but are brutalized by sexuality, because they are men without restraint. They also believe that homosexuality is far more common than it really is, and love to read gay subtexts into everything, you know, like cop buddy movies, the armed forces, bachelors who lift weights—and boy bands, of course. ‘Put five pretty boys alone on a bus for long enough, you just know it’s going to be a bumpy ride!’ They love dancing to remixes of straight songs done by outfits like the ‘Backdoor Boys.’ What better fun than pretending you have discovered a joke even the perpetrators didn’t know existed?”

“Listen, closet-boy,” said Iain, “this is a bit more detail than is useful, unless you have something else to say.”

“Never underestimate the purchasing power of gay men,” said Justin. “What do they have to save for?”

“Buying Brazilian boys in their dotage?” asked Todd.

“No, let’s not get into the sad land of elderly gay men,” said Justin. “But we have to be very subtle about our homosexual references. Who’ll be writing our songs?”

Al blinked and shrugged, returning from some reverie. “Don’t know. We could get a team together. We’ll shoot some covers, send the videos around, see who bites.”

“What if any of us want to contribute?” asked Justin.

Al laughed. “Good God no! Where would you have to go then?”

“Go?”

“You do the boy-toy thing first, and then the serious artist thing. The album where you start writing your own shit is an event; you can’t blow your wad too soon.”

“Well, we are teenagers,” muttered Todd.

“Shut up, Thumbelina,” said Justin.

“Fuck you!”

Justin shrugged. “Hey, I call ’em like I see ’em.”

“All right,” said Al. “Now—any of you dickwads do drugs? Anyone? Drinking?”

“Not really,” said Todd.

“That’s so ‘last millennium,’” added Chris.

“Well, who’s going to start?” pressured Al.

“Huh?”

Al leaned back in his chair, hitching up his pants, ‘wedgie’ all over his face. “About eighteen months after your first big success, one of you has to go kinda squirrelly. Keeps you in the media, gives the girls a good reason for candlelit vigils. Remember, Justin, to really get women, you have to hit not only the slut in them, but the mother.”

“Nicely put.”

“I’ll do drinking, but not drugs,” said Todd. “But I’ll only drink those little airline bottles. Gives me a chance to flirt desperately with stewardesses.”

Justin shook his head quickly. “No, it has to be either the sensitive or pretty one. Definitely not the chaperone.”

“All right,” sighed Iain. “I’ll take the bullet for the band.”

“Nothing that screws up the hair though,” said Justin.

“And if it’s hard drugs, we’ll lose parents,” Chris warned.

“I really don’t like to drink though,” said Iain.

“Marijuana?” said Al.

Todd smirked. “Suggesting, or offering?”

Iain shook his head. “I got nothing but bad trips the last few times I tried it. Not good.”

“‘Bad trips’—where are we, 1967?”

“That kind of talk makes my pants flare.”

“So: no drugs, no drinking,” said Al. “Shit, you kids are hard to corrupt.”

There was a pause.

Iain suddenly stiffened, and then whispered, in that hushed tone he used when he stumbled on something truly good: “Anorexia…”

“Wow,” murmured Justin, licking his lips. “Wow.”

“What the fuck?” asked Al.

“No, no,” said Justin, “that is right on the edge of genius. A pretty boy with anorexia; they’ll cream their size-two jeans!”

“But it’ll make him a dancing stick-figure!” protested Al. “Who’ll want to see that?”

“No, no—he wears baggy pants…”

“Don’t you all?”

“Really baggy pants.” Justin’s eyes shone, his hands waved. “The rumors grow. Is he ill? Too much stress? He’s seen eating a lot, but still he loses weight. What could be going on? And then it is revealed…”

“Worms!” cried Todd.

“He has an eating disorder! And bam!—he’s on the cover of every weepy ‘men-destroy-our-lives-so-let’s-learn-how-to-give-them-better-orgasms’ magazine! Oprah! Commended for his bravery, his honesty. Choking, weeping, accepting a Power Bar… Oh my God!” cried Justin, almost swooning back into the couch.

“What?”

“This fucking seals up the gay community!”

“Anorexia,” said Gerald, “the illness for insecure chicks and those who like dicks!”

“Gay men are ridiculously body-conscious. Anyone who dates white men has eating disorders. They’ll go ape over this.”

“Sure,” shrugged Al, “what the fuck. Now, there are two other issues we have to deal with. First, I have to fuck you with the contract.”

Justin nodded slowly. “Honestly put.”

“Well, I’m too old to bullshit you. This contract will fuck you, yes, but not as badly as some other contracts.”

Iain smiled, holding up his hands. “So less ‘prison cell’ and more ‘boarding school.’”

“Sure,” said Al, holding up the contract. “This is ten percent of your earnings, but I’m not a label, so I’ll help you get a little less fucked by them. But you’re all smart lads, going off to school; this is more of a lark, what do you care?”

“How does this obligate you?” asked Justin.

“Well, I have to send you flowers tomorrow,” grinned Al. “And then I have to front the costs for the initial CD press and video, to drum up interest. I also have to pay for travel expenses for your interviews.”

“What about gigs?” asked Chris.

“Gigs?” Al threw his head back and laughed richly. “Oh Lord you won’t be seen out of a studio for the first six months! Don’t worry about live performances. We need a kick-ass video, some good covers—and you guys have to get your roles down pat! You can rap all this sociology shit all you want with me, but zip it in front of the big suits.”

“Big suits—can we call them BS for short?” asked Gerald.

“And you’ll learn to unlip that face, right quick!” said Al, brandishing a pointed finger.

“Ooh, Britishisms—I was waiting!” cried Todd.

“The Beatles you ain’t!” shouted Al, his face turning suddenly red. “If you want me to spend tens of thousands of my own dollars on you lot, you’d better commit to doing a professional, straight-up job when other people are around. You sign this, we’re a family, which means fucked up on the inside and shiny on the outside. Is that clear?”

“Yes, of course,” grinned Justin, taking up a pen. “You know, this is the kind of undertaking I could really commit to!”

Chapter 22

Pomo in Slow-Mo: The Blank Holes

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Rudy held up the placard for his next show:

The Blank Holes

A.K.A. A Main Course of Mocking Echo; A Dessert of Condescending Smile

“The Blank Holes are relatively recent additions to the night sky of academic thought. Their name comes from their similarities to Black Holes, which are visible only by their consumption of the energy around them, and because Black Holes look like holes, but are actually the darkest, densest matter in the universe. Not only are they dark, but also light itself cannot escape their endless hunger.

“Blank Holes are people who have given up on thought completely, and thus console themselves with memorizing information and undermining others. In the place of integrating rationality, they have an uncanny ability to absorb and repeat the thoughts of others; they have both the storage capacity and reasoning powers of a computer. They are drawn to passionate thinkers of every hue, and love to make the following points:

❖What you think of as a creative idea has been around since Herodotus

❖Kant gave up on that problem, but I’m sure you’ll be able to lick it

❖Heidegger said that metaphysics is not a problem to be solved, but a disease to be cured

❖Three thousand years of philosophy, and the basic questions remain unsolved. What does that tell you?

❖Most people are drawn to ideas because they cannot handle people

❖You can’t take religion away from people, because they would have no idea how to live

❖The elimination of belief is the greatest test of the modern thinker

❖What makes you so sure that you know what you know?

❖These discussions are completely pointless, since all the ideas in the world won’t move one stone

❖I didn’t want to get into all this; I just wanted to come out for a beer and have fun!

❖Your addiction to ideas is making other people shy away from you!

❖The root of your discontent may be psychological, not philosophical.

❖Freud said that all he could hope for from therapy was to return the neurotic to a state of ‘ordinary unhappiness’

❖You are just obsessed with _________ (insert your intellectual preference here)

❖Human knowledge doubles every eighteen months; we have lost our ability to synthesize because the bandwidth is so wide

❖The idea is well-argued, but I just don’t buy it

❖In the long run, all problems end in death

Blank Holes are also marked by a number of other characteristics:

❖extremely shallow aestheticism; they do not date plain people, and are repulsed by warts or descriptions of ailments (especially of the bowel variety)

❖often-extraordinary bursts of humor

❖great imaginative powers

❖extreme career paralysis; they initiate projects in the lower rungs of a discipline, then become enraged when no mentor appears to help them up

❖extremely poor parenting

❖violent outbursts in close relationships

❖talents in a wide variety of areas

❖an inability to express vulnerability

❖passive-aggression; when they are angry, they provoke others

❖poor financial management

❖constant over-stretching of personal resources; they are always getting involved in non-profitable endeavors, even when broke

❖an inability to decorate their homes, except with ironic items like mirrors framed with beer caps, cheesy movie posters, ‘brick-and-board’ bookshelves

❖if something in their home breaks, it almost never gets fixed

❖they rarely read fiction, but prefer the biographies of obscure people

❖as they age, their irritation becomes almost constant; the few intimates they retain walk on tiptoes

❖they do not notice their own aging, and often look youthful well into their fifties

❖they yell at babies

❖and have odd hygienic fetishes, like hating to get dirt under their fingernails

❖and fight a growing sense of futility with increases of irritation

“Socially, Blank Holes are a lot of fun, because, frankly, they are pretty damn funny. Humor is all about making unexpected connections, and because the Blank Holes’s brains are so disorganized (or rather follow hidden patterns of organization), they can really make people laugh. But it’s important to learn early on never to discuss ideas with the Blank Holes. It’s like trying to walk upstream in a suit of armor. The exploration of ideas requires a strongly supportive environment; skepticism kills it quicker than a bad joke in a job interview.

“There is another category, which I have not mentioned because they are so rare. I call them the Small-Town Socratics. This is their story.”

Rudy held up another card:

Small-Town Socratics
A.K.A. Them’s Sure A Lot Of Books!

“Small-Town Socratics were perhaps the most noble of the arts scholars (except for those with Great Ideas, but they are so rare as to be statistically irrelevant). These people are often from small towns, or grew up in very religious families, or overseas in remote areas, and have had very little contact with the media or contemporary thought. They have fair to good native intelligence, and also possess a certain brand of healthy pragmatism, often acquired from menial labor at an early age. They are grateful to be in university, are very aware of the limitations of their own knowledge, and, through their pragmatism, are rendered immune to radical skepticism. They also have a brand of skepticism reserved for ‘big city’ ideas, and are often quite good at puncturing the posturing of the Blank Holes. The key to their integrity is that their physical labor has inured them to criticism of the senses, which seems endemic to people who spent most of their childhoods reading. A belief in the validity of the senses is key to developing a rational criterion for truth and falsehood, but it is not in itself enough.

“When the Small-Town Socratics meet the Blank Holes, it is generally a battle to the death. The enthusiasm of the Small-Town Socratics will always take arms against the nihilism of the Blank Holes—and in such deadly, inevitable combat, only one can ever survive.”

Chapter 23

Gordon Gets His Great Idea

￼Dingbat Diamonds

For many years afterwards, Gordon tried to remember what provoked his Great Idea. There was no physical event; it could not be traced like conception. There was no epiphany, no running through the streets wearing a rain barrel, no fevered writing to hang around his neck for the rest of his life.

He was not even writing when it happened; it could not be seen spreading across the page, like Nietzsche unfolding his snares for the careless. He was not reading, not thinking, not talking to anyone outside himself…

The Great Idea did not arrive in pieces; it was not a jigsaw puzzle dropping shard by shard down a dumbwaiter; it required no assembly, no planning, no reasoning. It just was what it was, pure and simple.

Gordon puzzled over this problem of inspiration for many years afterwards, for he was a rational man, and it seemed to make no sense. How is it possible that an entire Idea should come to me, and I would spend the next year finding the reasons behind that Idea, and that they should prove true? This was not drawing a conclusion from syllogisms; it was finding the reasoning that led back from a conclusion. He spent a year unearthing chisels strong enough to justify the sculpture that rose whole and complete from his unexpected earth.

There were many moments that led up to the Great Idea; he learned them slowly, painfully, over time:

❖his parents were silent liars

❖he had been taught poorly all his life

❖except for the BabbleFish, he was utterly bored with his fellow students

❖he believed that authority, unfortunately, was about power, not virtue

❖he really, really hated mysticism

❖he had a very sensual intellect; his intellect had been trained by his ugly solitude; his senses awakened by his Great Makeover

❖he had never taken drugs

❖he was reading both Plato and Aristotle at the same time

Gordon felt ideas, as some people feel lust, art, or friendship. Reading Plato gave him a headache; it was like trying to build a castle, brick by brick, using his mind alone. Aristotle was joyous; hard, clear, funny, warm, loving.

Oh, and there was the occasional Voice.

In the few weeks before the Idea, he had slept fitfully; his dreams were vivid, electric—and contained characters that climbed out of the cage of dreams slowly, rung by rung. First, they returned when he took a rare nap, then, when he was daydreaming—then, when he was just distracted, and, finally, they just plain interrupted him no matter what he was doing. They were his inner jesters; they heckled him, mocked his vanity, undermined his assumptions.

The morning before the Evening Of The Idea, Gordon was sitting in the over-bright cafeteria, arguing with a boy named Gus. Gus was thin, with a thatch of wiry brown hair, a forehead of freckles, and very low ears. The conversation was old, familiar, achy, like a war wound from a distant youth.

“But—how can you believe in objective ethics?” asked Gus.

“I believe that man has a nature,” said Gordon, “and that his nature is absolute and universal.”

“Really? And what is this ‘nature of man?’” asked Gus skeptically.

“His need for reason. To interact with rational, objective reality, in order to survive.”

“But many people are irrational.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t need reason. In the past, many sailors died of scurvy; that didn’t mean that they didn’t need oranges.”

“So you believe that anyone who is irrational is unhappy.”

“Yes.”

“So the Dalai Lama is unhappy.”

“I don’t know enough about his philosophy.”

“All right—every religious person is unhappy.”

“Would you say that every racist is unhappy?”

“I don’t know. I would say that racists are probably not the happiest people in the world, but for some of them at least, they are more happy being racists than they would be if racism were taken away from them.”

“So religious people…”

“Why are you comparing religious people to racists? That seems quite inflammatory.”

“Well, both religious people and racists believe what they believe despite reason and experience. Christians believe God exists without evidence; racists believe blacks are inferior without evidence. Faith is just another word for prejudice.”

Gus laughed harshly. “Even if that is granted, you would have to prove that people would be less unhappy without religion. What amazes me is that you think that the truth is so important to everyone! Most people just want to live their lives, secure in their beliefs, knowing their place in the world—and the last thing they want is for someone to come along and poke around! I mean, that may be your particular fetish, but I’ve got to tell you, it smacks of great arrogance to say that what you like to do is what everyone should like to do. I’m a pretty good skier, but I don’t think that everyone has to ski to be happy.”

“So you’re saying that skiing is the same as philosophy.”

“As a personal hobby or preference, yes. Look at it this way. I’ve known people like this.” Gus held up his left hand. “On this hand there’s this guy, just a guy, a simple guy, he wants a decent job, a nice family life; he loves and lives for his little tribe, his community. He wants his barbecue on Saturday, his grandchildren on his knees, to die at home surrounded by his loved ones. Now this guy lived in ancient Egypt, five thousand years ago.” Next, Gus held up his right hand. “Now, on the other hand, we have all our modern Western lives; we are free to ‘self-actualize,’ to move wherever we want, to become as educated as we can stand, to live by and for ourselves alone. I tell you, given these two options, I would not at all feel comfortable saying that this guy is necessarily happier than that guy.”

“So you’re saying that free will has nothing to do with human happiness.”

“No, no—you’re not listening at all! I’m not talking about free will or the individual versus the community or any of that. I’m just talking about ordinary human lives, and how everything that we take for granted as necessary to happiness might not actually be what happiness requires, but just what we’re used to. I tell you, there are times when I’d love to be that Egyptian guy! He knew where he was, who he was, who loved him, exactly what he was supposed to do with his life. Don’t you ever envy that, or want it just a little bit?”

“No, I don’t. I don’t think that you would be happy being that constricted either.”

“I’m not saying I would!” cried Gus, his cheeks flaring white and red. “What I’m saying is that I know a lot of people—I’ve met a lot of people like this—who would love to live that Egyptian guy’s life, and don’t really like all the uncertainty and possibilities of the modern world. It’s fine for neurotic urban types like us, but it doesn’t work at all, not really, for these kind of guys.”

“But in the modern world, you are free to live just that kind of life, if you want, or to live a life of questioning and uncertainty. It sounds as if you want to eliminate the life of questioning, even as a possibility. Why?”

“Again, you’re going off on a tangent from what the hell I am saying! I don’t know, it’s like you’re obsessed with individualism…!”

The conversation had grown murky and oddly offensive, and Gordon had begged off, and left for his room. He threw himself onto his couch, his soul weary to its whitest core, his head pounding, tears of desperation gathering behind his eyes, like sand-clogged desert warriors.

His soul, his brain, his entire being seemed clogged by the confusion and self-hatred of those around him. He felt lost, terrified, isolated beyond physical measure, enraged, hopeless. Lying there, he could not imagine ever having the strength to rise again, of going to his classes and raising his arm (it felt like trying to lift a damp log, even as he pictured it), answering questions and pretending that anyone was ever getting anywhere.

What is the point of trying to go through it all? There is no clean air for a thousand miles; alone on a raft, far out at sea, I might draw a deep breath without choking on the fetid waste of others…

His unfinished coursework spun through the air like distant planets round a dead sun: essays, exams, readings… How drab and pointless they seemed! Random highlighting, no system of knowledge, no way to organize all that could be pieced together. It’s like trying to categorize leopards by memorizing the spots of each one you find. His brain felt bloated to bursting with a gassy vacuum, with facts and dates and opinions and this, that, the other, and nothing, nothing at all, really, just whatever had stuck to his flypaper as he wandered the blown streets of an empty city.

Everything I believe is nothing but prejudice, habit, emotional predilections, genetic predisposition, and whatever I thought might get me through the day…

That was too far; it was unfair. He believed in reason, but reason was a foggy club; it passed straight through those who refused to see it. He was arguing for property rights in prison, free will to chained rowers, independence to serfs. Everything I say irritates everyone I say it to…

That last thought had a strange pregnancy to it. How is it possible that everything I say is irritating? This is supposed to be a culture of tolerance! How can I be pissing everyone off?

He felt a dark flash of ugly excitement. He had tripped over the trail of a living beast!

Socrates had at least some followers. I get nothing but scorn, contempt, condescension, and random marks, buoyed up only by my writing ability. Hell, if it weren’t for my aesthetic talent, I would have been bounced out of here like a bad check!

Gordon could feel the bile coursing around his system like stiff inner gas in a fartless silence. The paranoia and rage of those with the potential to think originally hovered close. I could just hate everyone, and save time!

Everyone who wants to go beyond appearances, to ask essential questions, faces the black chasm and corrosive temptation of paranoia. The world is not what it seems to be; only I can see it as it actually is… This seductive thought, with its promise of great glory and endless trumpets, leads one away from the common fold of the human herd, to a place where nothing common can be heard. It takes a hardy soul to go to the desert and come back; just going is not enough, because men die among the dunes, and their truth dries with your bones. No, men must hate society enough to flee its falseness, but love their fellow men enough to return with the truth.

They all hate me, thought Gordon, and this thought carried a kind of strangling despair, or I only make them snort and laugh. Even if I wanted to make them love me, I would have no idea how to stop thinking how I think, believing what I believe. I can be hated by them for being myself, or hate myself by trying to be them. Oh what a heaping lovely mess of choices! How I wish they would all fade and blow away, so I could find others like myself, through the smoke and dust of their passing!

Now that was a strange thought; it almost seemed to growl in a different timbre. He started on the couch; his head whipped around, as if some horror rose beside him. What the hell was that?

You hate them more than they hate you (came one of his Voices).

I am always trying to change them, help them!

You hate that they are certain, and you are not.

I know more than they ever will!

You hate them because they do not love you.

I don’t need their love…

You want to destroy them because their certainty drives you mad.

They are so blind!

You are who you are because you oppose them.

What?

If they all agreed with you, who would you be?

Gordon’s body shook again; he swung over a precipice, a chasm of falling, where you fell for so long that you forgot you were falling, and smiled happily in the dark, content in a slow spin of invisibility.

You are invisible because you define yourself by the hatred of others.

That was bad; Gordon drew sharp breath, afraid of crying out.

But worse was to come.

You do not love truth.

Not true! Not true!

You use truth to hate others.

It…cannot not be!

You do not think for yourself. You use the ideas of others to hate people.

Whose ideas? Ayn Rand’s?

It is worse to see and be unoriginal than to not see at all.

Ouch! Argh! Stop!

It is time to stop fighting and start learning.

What? What is it? What am I to learn?

But no answer came. Gordon was used to courting sleep; this sleep fell like a wall, and smashed him through the couch, into an underworld of unremembering.

And when he woke, he awoke all at once. He stood rapidly, and then the Great Idea was, not his, but him.

Chapter 24

Alice and Family at Dinner

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Alice was at the dinner table with Greta, Al, and Iain. Greta, in her constant crusade to improve the family’s eating habits, kept offering more of her Guatemalan stew to everyone. (The family did not resist her, but usually wandered into the kitchen after dinner for a ‘snack,’ which generally consisted of three or four microwaved Pizza Pops. Another strategy was to get up for more stew, and then spoon what was on their plates into the garbage disposal. It was considered a point of honor to distract Greta during these covert operations.)

Talk was flying about the boy band.

“I tell you, Gret, this kid is amazing!” said Al, hiding some stew under a potato. “It’s not just the voice, it’s everything. He’s like sex on a stick—sorry, Alice. He’s just really, really cute!”

“But so very, very cynical,” said Iain.

“You’re one to talk, darkling,” said Greta, picking at her salad. The replacement of the phrase ‘darling’ with ‘darkling’ was about six months old. “Aren’t Goths unfashionable now?”

“It’s not Goth, Mother. I just look good in black. I’m not bad enough at sports to be a real Goth. Or bisexual. Sorry, Alice—it’s a kind of adult bicycle.”

“Well, as long as you care about something…” She turned to her husband, and wrinkled her nose. Al always ate as if he were trying to gulp food falling off a rapid conveyer belt. “So, you think these boys will hit the top?”

“Well, as far up as I can see. They’ll be a hit if we can find the right song.”

“Mom,” said Alice, “why do you wear makeup?”

“To look pretty dear. They’re going to need a ‘look,’ right?”

“We’ve got one,” grinned Iain, waving his fork. “Scrubbed dancing apple farmers!”

Greta pursed her lips. “You know, there hasn’t been a band with scarves in a long time…”

“Steven Tyler,” said Al, his mouth full.

“That’s just the mike stand, isn’t it? And how many of the girls into this band would know him?”

“‘Armageddon,’” said Alice instantly.

Greta turned, frowning. “Where did you see that?”

“Susan’s.”

“I swear, those hippie mothers…”

“Her mother explained advertising,” said Alice. “Mom, would you wear makeup if you were the only one?”

“Or believe in God?” asked Iain, his eyes wide.

“Because,” continued Alice, “I’d eat food, even if I were the only one. Or if no one else ever went to the bathroom…”

“I think scarves are a little… left of center, don’t you think?” asked Al, waving his hand loosely.

“I was thinking more Byron than Shelley. I have a design that I think would kill. I need a boost, and hey, if it doesn’t work, what the hell?”

“I think we should just do covers for our first album,” said Iain.

Al blinked. “What?”

Iain sighed. “Okay, you’ve got to get the layers of the modern mind, Dad. It’s the irony fulcrum. Straight: boring. Pure camp: boring. Too easy. But somewhere in between is gold, baby. You see, the most fascinating thing for us, what really tickles our ‘soul patches,’ is something campy that we are not sure knows it’s campy. We should do it straight. Good solid songs. Cheesy videos. But we need to find something that just might give it away, to someone looking closely. Something to start debate. Get us talked about, fought over. Half the class loathe us because we’re so commercial; the other half pretend to ‘get it’ and feel superior.”

Al stared at him. “Yours is a truly strange lot.”

“Sorry, but we never could take Loverboy too seriously.”

“What about simple pleasures?” asked Greta.

“There’s nothing simpler than irony,” said Iain.

“Is that ironic?”

“That’s the point. It’s about as challenging as being enigmatic.”

“What?” asked Alice. “That doesn’t make any…”

Iain patted her head absently. “Dad, I’m telling you. Give us some generic hit if you want to, but what we really need to do is do covers like…”

“‘Sometimes When We Touch!’” cried Al.

Iain laughed. “No—I remember ‘Down’ Hill saying that he hit rock bottom when he turned on the radio and heard the San Francisco Gay Choir doing that song.”

“‘Pina Colada.’”

“Self-parodies can’t be parodied.”

“‘Wasting Away In Margaritaville.’”

“Possibly, but almost anything Caribbean is too cheesy already.”

“Is that true for anything from the Seventies?”

“Probably. Cat Stevens excepted. Though I’d rather do a cover of his Muslim call to prayer.”

Al leaned back in his chair. “Well, I’m lost.”

“Yeah, you’ve been a Music Archaeologist for about—what—four years?”

“Five I think.”

“What is a Music Archaeologist?” asked Alice.

Al smiled. “Well, sweetie, after a certain point, your brain sort of—fills up with good music…”

“…meaning ‘old music,’” interjected Iain. “Always look for the subtext, sistah.”

“What’s subtext?”

“Books about U-boats.”

“What’s ‘U-boats?’”

“Later,” said Al. “About five years ago, I gave up on trying to like new music, and became a Music Archaeologist.”

“You started looking for Nazi music?”

“No sweetie,” sighed Al, “not like Indiana Jones.”

“He means,” said Iain. “that he started going to record fairs and used record shops not to find new music, but rather live versions of songs he already knows. Tell me, esteemed pater—how many versions of ‘Somebody to Love’ do you have now?”

“Counting MP3s?”

“Yes.”

“Probably…twenty.”

Iain tousled Alice’s hair. “You can also look for unreleased material, alternate versions, outtakes, ‘making of’ DVDs, boxed sets for every fetish—no, I won’t explain that word, talk to your mother, just kidding, Mom.”

“So Iain’s point…”

“…is that you won’t be any help finding covers,” snapped Greta. “But I really want to do the costumes!”

“This isn’t going to be a Spinal Tap moment, is it?” asked Iain.

“No,” said Greta. “Do I look like an Australian’s nightmare?”

“I never understood that joke,” frowned Al. “And really, Iain, you really should get to know jokes your own age.”

“I don’t understand any of this!” cried Alice, standing up.

“Shh, sweetums. Did you finish eating?”

“I was waiting for you to bring me some food!” she shouted, turning and running up the stairs.

“Oops,” said Greta, getting up. “Scarves, Al. Scarves,” she called out, before going after her daughter.

There was a pause. Al brightened.

“‘Bohemian Rhapsody!’”

“Dad, we are not doing a Queen cover!” Iain frowned for a moment. “Though that would be a good one.”

Later that evening, Al called Iain into his study. There was an air of grim foreboding.

“Yes, Dad?” asked Iain, throwing himself into an armchair.

“Earlier this evening, after dinner, your mother came across this in your room.” He threw a CD jewel case onto the lap of his son.

“Lord on a stick,” groaned Iain, rolling his eyes. “Not again!”

“Do you know that, this year, for the first time in history, more blank CDs have been sold than recorded ones. Do you know what that means?”

“It means that a lot of people are being very responsible, and making data backups on CD of their important information.”

“This is a CD from Bad Religion,” said Al. “And I want you to know that you are stealing from these men. And from your own father.”

“Do you know what that costs in a store?” asked Iain, his eyes flashing.

“It is unimportant what it costs, Iain. That is the price, and you do not have the right to steal, even if you think something is too expensive. This little teenage-rebel anarchist pose is wearing pretty goddamned thin.”

Iain pursed his lips for a moment. “Everyone steals…”

“That’s no reason for…”

“No, Dad,” said Iain slowly, holding up a hand, and managing to stop his father in mid-sentence, which was a first. “It doesn’t make it okay, but look—have you industry types ever wondered why everyone is stealing?”

“You think it’s our fault? Blaming the victim?”

“When LPs were out, they cost what, seven, eight bucks?”

Al blinked. “Yeah.”

“Then CDs came out, and they were twenty bucks, or more.”

“It was new technology.”

“Sure, but you know as well as I do that CDs cost less to produce that LPs, right?”

“Yes, at a certain level of production…”

Iain pursed his lips. “Let me ask you this. You have a record collection of—seven hundred?”

“Seven hundred and eighty-one,” said Al proudly. “Not counting 45s.”

“How many of those did you re-buy in CD format?”

Al paused. “Most. Most.”

“So, record companies introduce a product which costs less, but charge more for it. Not only are they making more money, but also everyone buys most of the same albums all over again, which is pure gold for them. No cost for finding and developing new acts. Tons of money for Mr. Music, right?”

“Mr. Music being…”

“The big record companies. Now, why did CDs never come down in price? Cheaper to produce, twice the revenue for the same album… Why?”

Al scowled. “Fuck, I’m no economist.”

“Doesn’t take an economist. Record companies screwed the consumer.”

Al took a deep breath. “No one forced you to buy the CDs.”

“No, of course not. But they had a monopoly on music. Look, I’m not justifying stealing. I’m just trying to get you to understand how my generation feels about the economics of music. We feel that we’ve been ripped off. One source, outlandish prices. And now a new technology has come along, and the consumer suddenly has the power. What goes around comes around. The record companies did not cultivate our loyalty. They didn’t give cash-poor teenagers a break; they looked out for their own profits and gouged us to the goddamned bone. Now we have a choice. Can you blame us for not having a lot of loyalty to the record companies?”

There was a pause. Al glanced at the six silver records—he had never gotten a gold—hanging on the wall over his little metal desk. “All right, you don’t have to convince me that record companies are greedy. That’s not the point. The point is that the artist is suffering even more than the record companies. Bad Religion makes probably about a hundred K a year, between four guys. They’re eating Kraft Dinner, unable to reproduce, because you don’t want to drop four fins on their album. Is that fair?”

“Okay, so let’s look at how the record companies treat their artists. George Michael spends years not making music ’cause Sony has his balls in a sling. Sure, I think that’s a humanitarian act, but I’ll bet old Georgy feels differently. Prince thinks of himself as a slave. The artists get money up front, and a commitment for like seven albums over seven years, but if an album does well, the record company can hold back new albums, and the artist is screwed. If they do badly, the artist has to pay back his advance. Not pretty.”

“But…”

“And, look at how they’re dealing with online music—MP3s, blank CDs. Not with surveying consumers, finding out what the problem is, and cutting CD prices. No, they shut down Napster, and bully the government for heavy taxes on blank CDs and MP3 players. And they launch their own websites, where you can pay per song for a download, but guess what? The artist gets less than a penny per song. Some of the artists are so outraged that they’re releasing their own material on the internet—or they say to the record companies, ‘Hey, give it out for free, because we’ll get so little from this deal that we’d rather the fans have the music for free.’ And you collect all those damn Queen bootlegs. Not legal, right, Dad? Not legal. It’s inevitable, Dad. Corruption breeds corruption.”

There was a pause. Al’s eyes were wide. “Do you realize,” he said slowly, “that you’ve just said more to me in five minutes than all the time combined since you were thirteen? It’s beautiful!” He sniffed. “And you are one smart son-of-a-bitch. That’s good, that’s okay. I respect that.”

“And,” said Iain, leaning forward and passing the CD case back to his father. “Turn it over. You see that, on the back? Signatures. All the band’s. They were selling these at their last concert. They get more money. I get signatures. Everyone’s happy.” He leaned back in the armchair. “Middlemen have to add more value than just delivering shit. Wave of the future, Dad.”

Chapter 25

Pomo in Slow-Mo: Arts Students

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Rudy’s next segment was about university life, and arts students in particular. He sat in his little dorm, adjusting the webcam until he was centered on his monitor, and began speaking:

“Arts Students.”

“I do not know a single man who got a lot of dates in his early-to-mid teens who is truly succeeding as an arts student. This could mean any of several things:

❖The pursuit of knowledge is second prize to the failed pursuit of girls

❖Unsuccessful boys feel they need to ‘upgrade’ to attract women

❖Intelligent boys cannot attract girls

❖Romantic abstinence somehow deepens the personality

❖Boys too lazy or insecure to woo girls are just right for academics, where laziness and insecurity are definite assets

❖Irony, the great enemy of romance, is perfect for academics

❖Boys used to disappointment in love can survive their inevitable disappointment in higher education.”

Rudy held up his first placard:

Disappointment In Higher Education

“This is natural to anyone with any real brains who goes to university expecting it to be something greater than high school with more professional cliques. For my next few shows, I will be discussing the various types who go to university; then we can more easily discern the nature of their disappointments.”

The next card was:

The Arts Student

“Resolutely unathletic, the arts student dislikes even the discipline of organizing his opinions. He is obscenely unalarmed by the staggering lack of focus in the arts curriculum. He is an unformed creature, dying to pour his liquid soul into the general puddle of untestable arguments. Naturally hostile to clarity, he champions the cause of ‘alternative viewpoints’—not because they are valid additions, but because they muddy any claim that language or truth can be objective. It is this sort of vermin that flock to the linguistic muck of pomo, where sentences are like a fading dream of weighty objects; they fall hard, but leave undefined impressions; they exhaust clear thinkers, and aggressive monomania always wins the field. Arts students do not really exist as individuals, so they seek to spew their polysyllabic acid on all solid forms; they giggle at disagreements, as a game of tag joined. They have high, indiscriminate sex drives; they are attracted to visible minorities, but always marry their own kind. They are generous and funny in the face of disagreement, but quickly turn when asked to define their terms. They are fascinated by ‘power structures’ and odd, foggy, fantasy planets like ‘ethnography.’ They are past masters of ‘compare and contrast’ essays, and always conclude by counseling balance. Politically, they always, always tend to the left. They have an unthinking hatred of colonialism—but only white colonialism, of course. They are very tribal; they would rather surrender democracy to a domestic dictator than vote in a foreigner. Hollywood is their Gomorrah. If they touch a top-forty CD, they explode.

“Arts students hate themselves, but cannot accept that, because it would be a value judgement, so instead they displace their hatred onto white males. During apartheid, they hated white South Africans because they oppressed a majority; yet they had no such hatred for the leaders of Communist Russia. Being forever and ever vaguely lefty, they hate Nazism but not Communism, though Communism has killed more people. They grow pale at the mention of the Holocaust, with six million dead, but their tribalism causes them to shrug at the mention of Stalin’s forced collectivization—ten million dead—or Mao’s, also ten million. This is because it is safe to hate Nazism (wrongly considered right wing), but not communism (rightly considered left).

“They are very hostile to ‘McCarthyism,’ or the desire to suppress the writings of the communists, but are very warm to the idea of ‘hate laws,’ which suppresses the writings of the fascists and Nazis. Being impotent themselves, they are drawn to the left, which posits that helpless members of society must be defended by the sword of the State. Most men in the arts grew up with either distant or absent fathers. (Their mothers had generally been critical of the husbands and slavishly devoted to the sons.)

“Arts students never consider giving back to society. They are possessed by a strange sort of entitlement, an unthinking belief that society has some obligation to take care of them. They view themselves as rare and fragile plants, which taxpayers must forever water. They hate the business world because a businessperson has to prove value to get money—in the arts, the desire to create is value enough. They drift through their degrees like idle pebbles in an indifferent current. After they have milked school for everything it’s worth, they take grants to study Brechtian drama in Germany or research traditional Asian dance and theatre, or travel far from the pestering of student-loans officers, or join collectives or non-profit performance groups or go one-fifth into buying farms up north. In short, having consumed enormous amounts of society’s resources, they live lives that require them to pay nothing back.

“They hate accountability in any form. Their beliefs range far and wide over the dark desert of determinism. In their view, all behavior is driven by:

Class

Race

Gender

Income

Early childhood experiences

Physical appearance

Accent

Occupation

“Naturally enough, they apply determinism to the helpless, but not to the powerful. A murderer is excused based on childhood trauma, but the head of a large corporation gains no sympathy for being born into a certain class. It is a classic slave morality; the high are blamed for the existence of the low. The pain caused by being low is alleviated by blaming the high; the result is that the low never change.

“Now, arts students are all for government largesse, but it is more than the pre-tax fantasy of where State money comes from. They have taken the concept of ‘specialness’ and elevated it to a fabulous form of social parasitism. In this, they are unabashedly undemocratic. Their reasoning follows thus:

I want to follow my own dreams

My own dreams cost money

I do not have money

No one will voluntarily pay for my dreams

People should pay for my dreams

Therefore the taxpayer must pay for my dreams

“This works well for everyone except the taxpayer. The government gets to champion ‘culture’ (which produces the strangest abomination of the modern world: the bureaucratic champion of the radical arts); the artists get free money, and an entire ecosystem of shit art and warm cash is set up, far from the critical eyes of those who actually pay the bills.

“And this infection passes far beyond this lost little world; artists who exist independent of community preferences cast the grim shadow of incomprehensibility over competent artists as well. In popular perception, the art world becomes divided into ‘high art’ (incomprehensible, offensive at an almost cellular level), and ‘low art’ (accessible, but deadeningly unimaginative).

“It is absolutely essential that every artist face the test of community desire. The social component of an artist’s work is actually a crucial test of its validity. Van Gogh, the great poster-boy of the ‘free art from commerce’ movement (because his art was not accepted in his own time) always wanted to sell his art to the general public. His failure to do so might have intensified his efforts.

“The great problem of ‘equality of opportunity’ in a democratic society is that ninety-nine percent of everything is crap—art (especially art) included. In the world of commerce, most business plans are rejected. Publishers receive tens of thousands of manuscripts every year—LA is a forest of dead trees posing as live screenplays—and almost all of it is crap. Vanity, self-indulgence, laziness—the very attractiveness of the artistic life—short hours, residuals, fame, money, a very active sex life—should make us suspicious of anyone who tries to become an artist. Also, given the prurience and relativism of the modern age, we often reward those who shock us with poor taste more than those who stimulate us gracefully.

“Thus the arts students generally fall into the category of State Parasite; and like any parasite, they work to shore up the health of their host. The great enemy of the arts student is business—and there are many good reasons for this. In general, or in principle, business prospers on voluntary association, and requires a strict subjugation to the desires and choices of others. You can make the best packaging, slather it with bikini models, but at some point someone has to pick up your snack, buy it, and come back for more. And you have no control over that at all. Sometimes you get some residual marketing, like the adoption of your sneakers by street gangs—but even then the consumer voluntarily chooses to buy the cool factor.

“The difficulty of predicting the free choices of a majority is well known by competent investors. Not only is guessing what people want almost impossible, but you have to woo them away from what they already like. The risks are great and, given the cost of launching a new product or business, very, very tangible.

“Now art, which appeals to the mind rather than the body, is even more intangible and unpredictable. The idea—so loved by the arts student—that non-artists should be forced to support artists can only fly if the voluntarism of business is devalued. Now, in any open conflict between choice (buy your art) and compulsion (state-funded art), compulsion will lose because it is obviously forced and unfair. So the great question for the arts student is: how can I advocate compulsion without exposing its violent nature?

“Many, many great minds have pondered this question. (Since the rise of capitalism, this problem has grown more difficult, since there exists a clear and successful model which does not compel consumers.) There are a number of solutions; the most common are listed below.”

Rudy held up his next card:

Consumers Are Not Really Free

“If artists can convince the majority that consumers do not choose what to buy, they have eliminated capitalism as a competitor to their coercive system. Thus artists are great haters of advertising, marketing, sales, and corporations, and endow them with powers of compulsion and control, granting them the ability to destroy free will, control minds through pretty pictures, and destroy language, culture, and all independent thought. Like any group seeking to expand their control of coercion, they have to invent a terrible enemy. Of course, there are several very undemocratic flaws in this argument. First of all, even if people are very affected by advertising, they still have to choose between products, all of which may be advertised. Also, if the average citizen is so susceptible to suggestion, and cannot tell that the people in the advertisement are actors, and will buy bad food because a famous actor smiles at them, or believe that the girl comes with the car—if people are that stupid, they certainly should never be allowed to vote. If people cannot choose their cream cheese of their own free will, how could they choose among politicians, who advertise themselves?”

Artists Serve A Cause Which Cannot Be Measured By Money

“Citizens may reasonably ask the artist: ‘If what you produce is so valuable, why won’t people buy it?’ The arts student studies the following answer: ‘My art defines this culture in a way that cannot be measured by money.’ The old Platonic trick of substituting undefinable abstracts for rational arguments is in full swing here. Publicly funded art serves to ‘unite the culture’—and this is an awful insult to the taxpayer. If ‘culture’ may be defined as the aggregate aesthetic choices of citizens, saying that art the public would not consume somehow defines their culture is ridiculous. The idea that ‘culture’ somehow exists independently of the choices of a country’s population is pure Platonic nonsense, akin to the idea that somewhere there is a perfect ‘chair’ which transcends all physical chairs. A culture which has to be enforced at the taxpayer’s expense is dead already—but the worst part is not that this system kills culture, but that it prevents new and vital art from replacing what has ossified.

A Great Enemy Threatens To Destroy Our Fragile Self-Expression

“This argument pits the US entertainment behemoths against heroic and struggling local artists. The question to ask, of course, is: ‘why do people want to consume American art?’ The possibility that great art catches the human at its core does not show up strongly here; that ‘humanity’ may be more important than ‘Canadian.’ Theaters want to make money—they will show whatever draws people. It is not expense; some great films have been made really cheaply. It’s just that Canadian artists who stay in Canada are arts students, and so hate business, populism, comprehensibility, the ‘mainstream’ in any form, and love to make excruciatingly dull films about people who can neither talk to each other nor use the door. (The fact that it is impossible for a film to show inner conflict has not struck them.) Arts students love to pretend that they are being wildly creative when instead they are just inverting values. The idea of: ‘wouldn’t it be great to have a story with no story?’ is about as creative as: ‘wouldn’t it be great to paint a black picture using nothing but white?’ or ‘it would be great to start a business which aimed to lose money’ (the last is especially accurate, since we all foot the bill for the endless narcissism of the arts students). The idea that local art needs funding because it cannot compete against the US behemoth is an obscuring of two more accurate statements:

You, dear art consumer, do not know what you want, so I will force it on you. While doing so, I will complain bitterly about the US doing the same.

All the good directors have gone to the US. Give us money because we failed!

“There is nothing wrong with specialists in a particular field congregating in a specific geographical area—especially in moviemaking, which requires such disparate and skilled professionals. That it is in the US is no real problem either. But again, the arts students need to pretend that somehow compulsion is involved in the dissemination of American movies, so that they can blur their own desire for gaining control over State funds. The problem is that giving more money does not make a business plan better—or a movie.

“So arts students in general set themselves against the free will of their societies, and content themselves with residing in a sad little back-eddy of the cultural mainstream. Like barking dogs in an abandoned factory, they are mad to guard what has no value. But this serves them well, since their purpose is not the production of art, but the coercive consumption of other people’s money.”

Rudy looked up, straight into the camera.

“And in so doing, to cover their tracks, they have no choice but to corrupt us all.”

Chapter 26

Gordon and Professor Dint

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Gordon sat down with his thesis advisor, Professor Dint. Professor Dint was a genial man in his mid-fifties, who had escaped system-building and pomo by lightly scorning all attempts at even negative proof. Gordon had chosen him for his sense of humor; he knew that it would be almost impossible for a professor to let him pursue a Great Idea; the best he could hope for would be that someone would indulge him, let him run on a leash long enough in the hope that he would wear himself out.

Professor Dint was quite merry in his nihilism—and nihilism can be quite funny, because it punctures pomposity. (This is why comedians are excellent social critics, but terrible leaders.) He shook Gordon’s hand, then sat down and grinned.

“So, my dear boy, what mad plan have you brought me today?”

“Well, thanks for meeting me in June. I know it’s an odd time…”

“Nonsense. Now give me your manic goodies!”

Gordon swallowed. Bringing his Great Idea to the attention of a nihilist was like lending his horse to a glue merchant; he feared sacrificing mobility for stickiness.

“Well, sir …”

“No, no, not ‘sir.’ Mr. Chips, if you like.”

“All right. I have this idea, and it’s about Plato.”

“Plato; good, yes.”

“And Aristotle.”

Professor Dint laughed and clapped his hands together. “Only two! Well, at least you’re learning some restraint!”

“Well, I also want to use Kant, Locke, and Hegel.”

The Professor nodded energetically. “Good, yes, I think that we can fit them all into my little office! Go on—what have you got?”

“Well,” said Gordon, taking a deep breath, “do you mind if I take a few minutes?”

“Not at all. Visiting hours are far from over.”

“All right. This is my idea. There are two basic approaches to truth in philosophy…”

“Just Western philosophy, or all?”

“All, I think, but I don’t know enough about Eastern philosophy, but I think it’s mostly Platonic…”

“Perhaps you can throw that into a footnote!” chuckled Professor Dint, leaning back in his cracked leather chair and gesturing. “All right—go on.”

“These two ideas can be called the ‘sensual’ and the ‘supra-sensual,’ and I make this distinction around the question of concept formation. Take your desk; sensual philosophy would say that we learn to call this a desk because we see a lot of desks, how they are used, and how people describe them. So we learn about the idea of ‘desk’ through sensual and social experience.”

Gordon’s heart pounded, his freckled forehead prickled with sweat.

“Now ‘supra-sensual’ philosophy says that before we are born, we float in a realm of perfect Ideas, and among these is a Perfect Desk. So after we’re born, when we see a desk, we have a vague memory of the Perfect Desk we saw before birth, and know how to categorize each individual desk based on its affinity to the one Perfect Desk.”

Professor Dint frowned. “Is that your idea? It’s more of a restatement.”

“No—that’s just the preamble,” said Gordon, taking another deep breath. I can’t seem to get enough air…

“But why ‘sensual’ thinkers?”

“Well, the idea is whether we form concepts through the senses—whether we learn what a desk is through experience—or whether our concepts exist independent of or prior to our experiences in the world.”

“All right. ‘Supra-sensual’ seems a bit obscure.”

“There’s no good way to put it that I can think of. It’s just defined as truth derived from something above the senses.”

“Above?”

“Well, in that it is not derived from the senses, but is considered superior to the senses. I thought of over-sensual, but that sounds like a nymphomaniac.”

“I always wondered about Plato… All right, we’ll accept your terms for now. But it’s not enough for a thesis.”

“I know. This is my thesis, my Great Idea: all sensual thinkers are compelled by the logic of their basic beliefs to advocate limited democracy as the ideal political model, while all supra-sensual thinkers must advocate totalitarian dictatorship as the ideal political model.”

There was a long silence in the room. Dust hovered, uncertain of gravity.

“That can’t possibly be proved,” said Professor Dint. “That kind of philosophy is a language game; you can define things however you want.”

“I—I really think that it can be proved.”

“Good Lord—you can’t even ‘prove’ where the concept of ‘Desk’ comes from—how are you going to prove that Stalin saw it before he was born? I mean there’s ambition, which is fine in its own way, for the young, but I don’t have any idea how this could even be approached. And even if you found a way to do it, do you really think you can explain Plato to Plato? It’s like trying to improve on Moonlight Sonata.”

“I just think there’s a pattern…”

“And there may be, depending on how you define things, but it’s just a rhyming pattern. No real content.”

“There is more than just opinion in…”

“Perhaps, of course. But picture this—even if I accepted that you could prove this, and you went off and tried to, and it turned out that you couldn’t—or thought you could but found that Kant loved democracy—then any advisor would have to fail you!”

“Why?”

“Because, my boy, if your thesis is to find a flying cow, and you go around the world and can’t find one, no one will give you a Masters for proving that flying cows do not exist. If you define the terms, negative proof won’t fly. So even if it could be proved, you would have to prove it with enough credibility to… No, it’s not possible! As your advisor, I can’t permit you to go on this mad chase. The power of my real desk will have to replace the seduction of your conceptual ones! What else do you have?”

Gordon’s vision was swimming. “Well, I was thinking of proving that the Industrial Revolution was not the grim horror everyone thinks it was. I mean, life expectancy…”

“These are achievements to cap one’s whole career—if they are even possible,” interrupted Professor Dint. “This is a Master’s thesis, Gordon, not a manifesto! You want to tackle the causes and consequences of a mistranslation, or how the beliefs of a small Protestant sect changed over twenty years, or how the idea of crop rotation spread through a province of Poland; something like that. You can’t start so big; you don’t have the experience to pull something like this off!”

Einstein did—younger than me! said Gordon to himself, feeling red welts of humiliation spreading from his neck. He took another deep, shuddering breath. “So, you’re saying—you can’t approve this thesis.”

“Maybe for a PhD, or more likely something post-doctoral. You have a hundred pages, maximum, to prove… And you can’t even read any of these philosophers—except Locke—in the original, so you’d be prey to all sorts of translation errors and interpretations. No, you have to start with something more manageable. But I will say that you are unique!” he finished with a laugh.

“Would you be averse to me talking to another professor about this?”

The older man shrugged. “No, of course not. Perhaps I am old and fussy and hidebound. Talk to some of the younger professors,” he said, with an odd twinkle in his eyes. “See what they say. I won’t have any objection to approving your thesis if you have a supervisor who shares your vision.”

“Thanks—I appreciate that.”

“Do you want a career in academics?” asked the professor suddenly.

“I—I’ve thought about it. I’d like to teach, but…”

“Yes?”

“I don’t think I’d have the patience.”

“You can develop that. But you’d have to work some of this grandiosity out of your system. I don’t mean to be harsh, or critical, but you want to take on more than can be achieved. It will only serve to alienate people.”

Achieved, or accepted? thought Gordon, but he said nothing. He felt that he was on a trembling precipice, and that all his hopes could be dashed by a shrug, a spread of hands, a wry smile without teeth.

“Who—who should I talk to?”

“Well, perhaps Professor Edmund, or Islington… You could also try the history department, see if anyone would let it slip through as intellectual history, something like that. What about theology?”

“I’m an atheist.”

“Yes, but as a thinker you should be unbiased…”

“I don’t think that would work out. Given the conclusions of my thesis, I’d feel bad about biting the hands that fed me.”

“The conclusions? You mean—please—tell me—no don’t tell me—that you are proposing to tell us which one is right!”

“My—my plan was to introduce the split, then showcase the views of the philosophers, then show which view was the valid one.”

Professor Dint’s jaw dropped. “Oh sweet Lord—you want to expose a hidden seam in philosophy, trace its logic through the thinking of four great philosophers, and then show us who is right?” There was a long pause. Gordon’s eyeballs began to pulse; he did not breathe.

Professor Dint leaned forward. Amusement and pity mingled in his gaze.

“Good luck,” he said, as if luck had anything to do with it.

Walking down to the cafeteria—weird confrontations always sparked his sweet tooth—Gordon fought the discomfort of madness.

He did not come up with any arguments against my idea, thought Gordon in the lineup (two Rice Krispy squares and a half liter of milk sat on his tray), and this enraged him. He said it was too ambitious, that I lacked training and skills, but he didn’t ask me anything about the idea itself, the fucking coward! I bet he has Aristotle on the shelf in his office, but he can’t recognize one in his chair…

That was too much, he knew; comparing himself to Aristotle; grandiosity is a poor answer for insecurity, but… But of course I am saying that I can interpret these thinkers better than they did themselves, and that I know which among them is the more accurate… Of course there was pride and arrogance in that viewpoint, but Gordon did not see himself as testing his wits against Plato, but rather as testing Plato against reason. It was impersonal, like rechecking someone’s scientific theory…

Reason! the guttural voice growled in his ear. Gordon jumped, almost dropping his tray.

The voice continued. Was it reason that produced the Great Idea?

No—no, I have no idea where…

Do not jump to conclusions about what is rational. And give me a bite of Rice Krispy Square.

Umm, we use the same mouth…

Yeah, but it’s better if you talk; I am not so polite and servile.

Well as long as I’m good for something…

Gordon’s conversation with PD (due to the guttural nature of the voice, he had named it Phlegm Dude) was cut short by Gus, sitting down at the table.

“How’s it going, Gordy?” asked Gus.

“Not great. Just had my thesis idea shot down.”

“Was it yours, or off the professor’s ‘to do’ list?”

“Mine.”

“Ouch. Sorry to hear that. All dressed up, no place to go.”

“He said I could shop it around. To other profs.”

Gus sucked in his cheeks. “Ooh, that’s not good.”

“Why?”

“It means you’re the traveling freak-show.”

“What?”

“It’s such a wacky idea, he doesn’t want to keep you all to himself. You’re a road show; he’s probably emailing his friends now. ‘He ought to be good for a giggle…’ Sorry man.”

“So you don’t think I have a chance?”

“How would I know? You keep this Great Idea closer to your chest than your nipples. By the way, I’d suggest an undershirt for this level of air conditioning. You look like a swimsuit calendar—‘Girls of Alaska.’”

Gordon glanced down. “Sure.”

“Why won’t you tell me your idea?” asked Gus, chewing violently.

“You don’t believe in Great Ideas…”

“Not true. Spray-on hair is a great idea!”

Gordon smiled. “See, I don’t have anything that good.”

Gus looked over Gordon’s head. “Hey—it’s the BabbleFish! Dude!” He waved.

“Doesn’t ‘dude’ sort of end when you stop riding the half-pipe and grooving to Treble Charger?”

“Don’t talk to me, dude-who-uses-the-word-‘grooving.’”

Rudy came and sat down. “How are you, my lads?”

“Currently holding a wake,” said Gus. “Gordy-boy just came back from his first Thesis Massacre.”

“Ah,” said Rudy. “Also known as: ‘your thesis is feces.’ TA or full prof?”

“Professor Dint,” said Gordon.

“So only slightly less likely to reject your thesis and steal your idea,” said Rudy. “How did you present it?”

Gordon shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t really want to talk about the idea.”

“Sure, but you only really speak pidgin, right?”

“Perhaps—what is it?”

“Plainspeak.”

“Oldspeak,” said Gus, “a la Orwell.”

“What?”

“All right—tell me what sociology is.”

“I’m not in sociology.”

Rudy shrugged. “So what? Haven’t you ever heard the story of Professor Soket?”

“No.”

“So, 1996, there’s this physics professor called Soket…”

“Sokal,” said Gus.

“Sure—he gets sick and tired of hearing sociology referred to as a discipline. So he cobbles together some article he knows is pure nonsense, but throws in vague leftist rhetoric and all the pomo nonsense, and then sends it off to Social Text, a leading sociology journal, and they print it, as the centerpiece of the edition. Why? Because he said that reality was a social and linguistic construct, that quantum physics is compatible with pomo theories of knowledge, and that pomo science has abolished objective reality, and that all science is political. After it is published, Prof Sokal comes forward, and says: hey, you guys just published an article written by someone with no training in sociology and no idea what he was talking about!” Rudy smiled. “What does this tell us? Well, there is no difference between pomo and babble. There is no difference between someone with fifteen years training in sociology and someone with no training at all. In other words sociology, as a discipline, does not exist.”

“What happened to Sokal?”

“Everything, of course, and nothing. He was vilified for showing a lack of respect for his comrades, much as someone who exposes a counterfeiting ring would be condemned for embarrassing the thieves. But I thought he had the best line of the whole story.”

“What was that?”

“He said: ‘If what I did was wrong, I respectfully suggest that any sociologist who so chooses should submit a physics article to any refereed physics journal, and get published there.’ Beautiful.”

“What does that have to do with Newspeak and Oldspeak?”

“Newspeak is sociology—pomo. Oldspeak is physics.”

“Meaning?”

“Newspeak is anything which cannot be reduced to essentials. It is an infinity of those Russian dolls-within-dolls things. Newspeak contains no primary definitions, no immutable laws, no components that can be clearly defined and agreed on. Everything is opinion. You are trying to prove something with your thesis.”

“Of course!”

“So you speak pidgin,” said Gus.

“Oldspeak.”

“Truetalk.”

Rudy shrugged. “So, Gordy, I specialize in the translation of pidgin to pomo. For instance, give me your definition of sociology.”

“All right,” said Gordon, frowning for a moment. “I guess—sociology is the study of the ideas which are taken for granted in large groups.”

“Beautiful,” applauded Rudy.

“If pidgin could be poetry,” said Gus, “you would be the one to write it.”

“But that will never fly in academics. Too defined. Too in the open. Too open to challenge. Questioning academics must be like playing ‘Whack-A-Mole’ on Ecstasy.”

“The moles and the whacker,” said Gus.

“Isn’t that a bestiality movie?” asked Rudy.

“No, that’s…”

“Please—Ritalin-spawn,” said Gordon, cupping his hands over his mouth and imitating an X-wing pilot. “‘Stay on…target; stay on…target!’”

“Just tell us the damn thesis!” said Rudy. “We can operate on something which does not exist, but not in the dark.”

“All right,” said Gordon. Steeling himself, he told them what he had told Professor Dint.

It was amazing the degree to which the Great Idea had the ability to shut down the wild grids of people’s frontal lobes. Gus and Rudy stared at him, unblinking.

“‘Mistuh Kurtz, he dead,’” whispered Gus finally.

“That is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard,” cried Rudy, clapping his hands and turning to Gus. “How much acid do we have on hand?”

Gus looked down his shirt. “A vat and a half.”

“Not bad. Enough?”

“Hard to say. Something this big…”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Gordon, feeling giddy.

Rudy smiled. “Professors have no teeth; we have to dissolve this idea into a liquid and feed it to them slowly, so they don’t know when they’ve bitten off more than they can chew.”

Gus raised a freckled forearm, snapping his fingers. “Waiter, a blender for my friend’s metaphors. Set it to frappé!”

“Oh, so it’s okay to add a new metaphor to a mixed bag!”

“Okay, okay,” said Gordon, holding up his hands. “I’m on two Rice Krispy squares, and a belly-full of bitter disappointment.”

“We’ll need to upshift this idea into the stratosphere!” said Rudy.

“It’s too bald a statement; we need to ‘Rogaine’ it.”

Rudy said, “I always wanted to shave my head and get a tattoo on the top, saying: ‘This Side Up!’”

Gus bent over the plastic table, laughing hard: “No, no—it should be: ‘If You Can Read This, You’re Orbiting Too Low!’”

The table dissolved into hysterical laughter, and half-gasped jokes followed. Gordon could not resist. Some madness is better than others.

Chapter 27

Terry and the ‘Database Builder’

￼Dingbat Diamonds

There were five thick documents on Terry’s desk. He had long since given up trying to fight his tears. No time, no time, no time, no time…

Dave had sat him down that morning.

“How is Cyrux coming along? They want to see the software on Friday, just to see how things look.”

“It’s really hard—we have to switch between Metric and Imperial measurements.”

“So—what—you put a button on the screen to switch?”

“Yes, but it’s—the user has to be able to switch between the two at will, and the reports are hell, because…”

“Listen, I have absolute confidence in you. You are a genius. Let me know if there’s anything I can do. On another topic, I have set up a demonstration on Wednesday with General Mills, and their head of IT is going to be there, and my contact has told me that this guy is wild about—querying mechanisms?”

“I don’t know what…”

“Well, you know how everyone says: ‘How do I know how many leaking underground storage tanks there are?’ We have a pretty pathetic response.”

That was true. Terry’s database included sorting, so he would go to the box that said: ‘Tank Ever Leaked?’ and sort the answers in ascending order. Terry then clicked through the records. When the ‘yeses’ changed to ‘nos,’ he looked at the record number: 15 of 120. “So there are fifteen, see?” Terry would finish, horribly aware of the lameness of the solution.

“This guy,” said Dave, “will approve the system if we have a way of querying for data which is flexible, and lets the user set up their own filters.”

“But—I can’t do anything by Wednesday!” cried Terry.

Dave scowled. “Terry, I’ve already bought the plane tickets.”

“But that means travel, and I have to have Cyrux ready by Friday!”

“You’ve been working too hard.”

“It’s not that. I just—can’t do everything you want me to do.”

“That’s a problem. But hey, we’re in business to solve problems. Hire someone.”

“I know—you keep saying that… But I never have time to interview, or train anyone. This isn’t the most common field on the planet.”

“Okay look, I apologize if we’ve been running too hard. Let’s do this. After your Cyrux presentation Friday, I’ll find a way to buy us some breathing room. But listen, that presentation on Wednesday is crucial; it’s the only shot we’ve got. I don’t care if this querying thing actually works; mock it up, make some vaporware, whatever. But we have to have some sort of answer for the guy. This is a far higher priority than the demo to Cyrux; we’ve already got their PO. If you don’t think you can get anything ready for General Mills, I’ll call right now and cancel the meeting, but I don’t want us just holding our dicks in that boardroom.”

Dave stared at Terry, his nostrils flaring slightly. The invasive weight of disappointment hung so thick that Terry felt his vision blur. I have no choice. I can’t blow the sale to General Mills, can’t disappoint Cyrux, can’t let Dave down.

“I’ll do my best,” he said, his heart hissing into the slow acid of another lost weekend.

Chapter 28

Pomo in Slow-Mo: Business Students

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Rudy’s next show was about business students. He smiled gamely into the little camera, holding up his first placard:

Business Students

“One striking aspect of the modern university is the degree to which trust in the future ethics of its students is extended through time. In general, there are three types of ‘time-trust’: the immediate, which are the engineering and science students; the intermediate, which are the business students, and the near-infinite, which are the arts students. If society is a house, we trust the engineers that it will not fall down, the business students that we can afford it, and the arts students that we will be happy there.

“Everyone solves the problem of depth in their own way. Life is complicated; evil difficult to detect, love hard to sustain; trust must weather without breaking, truth should be helpful, honesty well-timed… One’s own desires, the desires of others, the right thing to do, and when to do it; the balance of present and future pleasures—these are all very difficult, especially in a world which changes so rapidly that the aged have little to offer us but bewildered clichés. Most people grope their way through life, settling their fortunes to a large degree on a combination of what they are good at and what is offered, what is popular and often, sadly, what they can get away with.

“Arts students solve the problem of depth by muddying the waters; assuming that the sea bed is forever beyond the reach of man, they try to ascertain the health of the ecosystem by combing the beaches for poisoned fishes. Business students, on the other hand, solve the problem through envy.

“Envy is the great weathervane, compass, and illusory bedrock of the modern age. In the prior ages of inherited power, envy was pointless. It has become all-powerful now that a man can make his own fortune. Envy is the business student’s solution to the great problem of how to live one’s life.

“In business, something has worth if it is desired. To a business student, a person’s life has worth if it is desired. If a man’s wealth can be tastefully displayed, his air gracious and only mildly condescending, if he can respond to all newcomers as if they want something from him—and especially if he can be seen to combine wealth with generosity (a habit common to all kings)—if he can get people to believe that he has reached the phase in life where he wants to ‘give back to the community’—why then the businessman has achieved the greatest goal of the business student. He has no idea who he is, but people envy him, so he must be something.

“There are more characteristics which should be noted about business students. First of all—except for their hair, they are completely unremarkable physically. In the modern world, beauty is destiny. Ugly people go into manual labor, pretty people into the service and helping professions, and average-looking people into bureaucracies. The person who rises to the top in any bureaucracy usually has the following characteristics:

The ability to inspire fear and overtime, usually at great cost to the employee

Lots of rage, usually sublimated into scalding perfectionism

Really good hair

“Having never really connected with their parents, and possessing great sexual insecurity, the business students seek attention through domination. They have great holes where their hearts should be, which they fill with the envy of others. They can never relate to other people as equals, and have no real idea of win-win negotiations. They sacrifice themselves to their employers when young—then, when they gain power, drain those they rule. Their personal lives are complete messes; they bounce from relationship to relationship, and the only friends they retain in middle age are those they made in their teenage or university years. These are the professional women who smile grimly through dates, telling the men not to get any ideas, because they know all about advertising. When confronted with any difficult truth, they end the conversation, saying they will have to think about it, and never return to the arena. In their late thirties, their sublimated maternalism erupts to the feline, and they harden their barren wombs into over-sentimental litter boxes, giving up on men and never blaming themselves.

“In short, like anyone who lives to be envied, they go through a twenty-year period of pillaging the desires of others (usually twenty-five to forty-five) then, with a sudden, almost audible pop, they become objects of pity. These people are obvious in the media; they are harder to see in business. However, all you have to do is look for bosses whose employees whisper that they wish she would start dating again, so they could all go home already…

“What else is common to these people? Well, they have a lifetime sense of being given marks for right and wrong behavior. All extracurricular activities are chosen for their effect; they will become frat-alcoholics if that will help them with future contacts. Even their charitable activities are well chosen; nothing political, nothing feminist, nothing philosophical. They are strongly drawn to the plight of the homeless—naturally, since the homeless have pretty much lost the sense of being marked.

“One of the strong markers for being in the presence of these white-collar sociopaths is that everything they say is predictable—and unanswerable. If they tell you about their weekend, they were always doing something cool—the closest they can get to individuality is to combine two popular activities, like rock climbing and drinking games. They ski, of course, and have access to cottages (that is a given). When young, they drink to excess before golfing (that is the closest they can come to irony). They dance badly. They love showing people around their homes. They have flags on their walls in university. They drive the market for school jackets and bizarre, bulky rings. They have a reverence for business leaders, ascribing them every virtue under the sun. They really, really want to live in a world where money equals morality (unlike the arts students, who hope that talent equals morality). Because they are over-specialized and under-humanized, they like to believe that if you are good at one thing, you are good at many things. They are resolutely concrete. They have no patience for psychology, except of the manipulative kind, like ‘The Psychology of Negotiation’ or ‘101 Ways to Close a Sale by Reading Body Language.’ They will take sex wherever they get it. They hate arts students, and love violent movies. They resist modern philosophy like the plague it is. They are fascinated by ‘young millionaire’ stories. For them, success is personal income, not corporate longevity, like a doctor who values money more than his patients’ health. They are, generally, not very funny. (For good, accurate and hopeless humor, go to the Arts coffee shop.)

“Like many people who love invoking envy, they are manic, and fascinated by endurance. They run marathons, drink steadily to excess, go on hunger fasts, love ferocious sports, put off studying until they have to go for days without sleep, and play cards all weekend. They also have the most exhausting camping trips (unlike Artsies, who rarely camp), and will talk endlessly about their sexual stamina.

“These manics are both fascinating and dangerous because of their lack of reality-testing. They will talk about anything, and are often oddly perceptive. Their blind honesty and random accuracy do give them a certain air of depth or self-knowledge. Repressed souls are especially drawn to them, because they appear bold and jaunty and unrestrained; they seem to have all the freedom that the shy long for.

“So when a new acquaintance leans forward at lunch and asks you if you have ever had anal sex, or takes you on a pub crawl that lasts all weekend, or gives you the impression that you can overleap all restraints in a single bound, and makes you feel that all your prior personality was nothing but inhibition, and fills you with giddy helium courage, and nods as you talk as if all your worries are inconsequential, and is both exhausting and irresistible, then you are in the presence of a true manic, and the worst part is that you will focus on him or her, rather than the mania in yourself, which makes you so susceptible to such a magnetic vacuum.”

Chapter 29

Rudy Downshifts Gordon’s Great Idea

￼Dingbat Diamonds

All right,” said Rudy, “now sit, listen, and learn to unlearn.”

He and Gordon sat in his dorm room, a shoebox walled with huge painted bricks. Outside, it was sunny and cold. Gus had begged off, claiming a date. Being a true intellectual, Gordon couldn’t understand choosing a woman over philosophy.

“I can translate,” continued Rudy, sitting cross-legged on his bed. “but I’m no savant; I know what I’m doing. Pomo is the natural result of radical skepticism.”

“Yet pomo is activist, isn’t it?” asked Gordon. “It has a plan of action.”

Rudy shrugged, then laughed. “Don’t really know that one. Too deep for me; that’s spinal surgery. The point is that we have to find some way to translate your mad scheme into pomo. So let’s get into Pomo Mode.”

“‘Pomode?’” suggested Gordon.

Rudy grabbed a Coke from a tiny fridge. “Perhaps. Want one?”

“No thanks.”

He flopped back on his bed. “So pomo is Marxism; did you know that?”

“No!”

“Come on—it’s all class conflict and oppressed workers and grassroots resistance. They actually advocate revolution against the West, did you know that?”

“No.”

“It’s quite foolish, actually—well, ‘distasteful’ is more like it. They take money from Western taxpayers to preach terrorism to Third World malcontents.”

“No—come on!”

“It’s true! It’s an admirable scam, don’t you think? They take money from domestic capitalists to preach insurrection to their foreign workers. I’m sure they’d delight in it, if they were able to see anything that clearly.”

“Don’t you have a problem with it?”

“We’ll get to my beliefs another time,” said Rudy, taking a deep draft of Coke. He burped. “The point is that you have to understand how the language works. First of all, there is no such thing as ‘proof’; there is only one route to credibility in pomo circles, and that is to quote someone every pomo worships—Marshall McLuhan, Michel Foucault, Pierre Derrida, or anyone with a recognizably ethnic name will do—and then speak as if their theories are fact. For instance, you can say ‘as Foucault notes,’ or ‘in McLuhan’s analysis’—and no more questions will be asked. And use ‘hermeneutics,’ ‘transgressive,’ ‘hegemony’…”

“Can I write this down?”

“Sure.”

Gordon took out his notebook. “So—no proof.”

“Okay. The next thing you have to realize is that there is no such thing as objectivity.”

Gordon blinked. “None? Not even the senses?”

“They never go that deep, of course. There are ‘power structures’ which ‘control discourse’ and ‘set agendas.’ Every belief—well, Western belief anyway—exists to maintain Western power over the minds of the poor in other countries. Through advertising and mainstream art, corporations have to create the belief, say, that the ‘American way of life’ is the best way of life; only then can they profit from jeans and hamburgers and pop. Or, on a more subtle level, the West repeats over and over that material progress is the only valid way for a society to move forward, and this creates artificial demand for Western products like Walkmans, barbecues, and vacuum cleaners. You export ideas, so you can export goods.”

“Okay…”

“But it is important that values like progress and wealth are not presented as options, or within the context of competing beliefs. The point, like Newspeak, is to eliminate dissension by eliminating the language that could express it. If progress always equals material progress, then people will be unable to conceive of moving forward in a different direction; they will have no more idea of ‘direction’ than a rock falling from a cliff. ‘Down’ just is.”

“You are quite convincing.”

“Why?”

“Well, it sort of makes sense…”

“I see. Why?”

“Well, it’s like advertising; everyone wants a Coke.”

“How so?”

“Umm… Those are the only billboards I saw in my travels.”

Rudy blinked. “So people like Coke. Does that somehow limit their thinking?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I do find it strange that intellectuals say that the West is somehow uniform in its belief when we not only allow, but pay intellectuals to attack the very basis of our society. These same intellectuals also have great presence in the Third World, through development programs and the UN. If we are all so uniform in our belief in the absolute value of material progress, why do almost all our intellectuals think otherwise? I don’t believe that the uniformity is in our society, but in our intellectuals.”

“What? You lost me.”

“Well, can our professors even think in terms of truth, reason, and objectivity anymore?”

There was a silence then…

Gordon shuddered. “That’s a rather creepy thought.”

Rudy smiled gently. “Come on—you’re psychologically aware. When most people claim to describe the world, they are in fact describing themselves. Unless they are one of the philosophical gods of the ages, when they are talking about conditions in the Third World, they are talking about their own lives.”

“What?”

“Well, they talk about power structures stifling debate? Try seeing what happens when you suggest proving something in philosophy. Or writing about the virtues of the free market. Or the value of reason and objectivity. You die on the vine. Uniformity of belief? They’re not talking about capitalism, corporations, and peasants; they’re talking about academia, themselves, and their students.”

Gordon shuddered. “I am really starting to freak here.”

Rudy grinned. “And what is the nature of this kind of debate? They are obsessed with the exploitation of the proletariat, while they themselves live on the dollars of the working classes!”

“How so? Everyone pays taxes.”

“Yes, but, how many children of truck drivers go to university?”

“Not many, I suppose…”

“It’s an institution for upper- and middle-class children, disproportionately paid for by the lower classes, since they rarely go. Exploitation of the foreign poor by corporations! Who pays the bills for domestic academics? The poor!”

Gordon paused. “I think that had better be your last Coke.”

Rudy ignored him. “Look at this as well. Pomos believe that corporations create artificial markets by pretending that the Western way of life is the best, the only way of life! Well, how many non-academics benefit from this belief, which debases almost everything the average person believes in? Who even knows what the hell these people are talking about? No one except the academics themselves. They create an artificial, self-contained market by pretending that pomo is the best, the only way to think! And they dare to talk about the artificial markets created by corporations?”

“Apparently,” said Gordon, staring at Rudy’s red face. The BabbleFish was starting to look a bit like the PufferFish.

“And pomos also hate corporations for having no respect for the culture and history of the countries they do business in. So let me ask you this: do pomos have any respect for the culture and history of the country they live in? Everything they say is about hating the West or blaming the West. What respect do they have for our culture?”

“But they shouldn’t just parrot the status quo, should they?”

“Hell, that’s all they’re doing now. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t criticize the West, just that they are being paid by taxpayers for undermining the society that the taxpayers like. It’s not too much to ask for someone you pay to provide some sort of benefit for you, is it?”

Gordon shook his head slowly. “No. No, of course not.”

Rudy nodded, exhaling, then shrugged. “Sorry, dude, but that has been building up for some time. I have noticed, this year, that just about every thesis I suggest to students is more or less the same thing, and that means that every grad student is more or less the same person—a lack of diversity which rather troubles me. These people are so full of shit their eyes are brown. I don’t know if there is such a thing as objective truth, but true relativism should allow for the possibility, and it’s not even being debated anymore!”

“Except by me,” murmured Gordon.

Rudy nodded excitedly. “Yes—except by you. And that’s why I want to help. I’m on the fence, I know, but I want to at least keep the debate alive. So. Tell me your thesis again.”

“You have another Coke?”

“Help yourself.”

Gordon grabbed one and opened it. After taking a drink, he said: “My thesis is that all sensual thinkers are compelled by the logic of their basic beliefs to advocate limited democracy as the ideal political model, while all supra-sensual thinkers must advocate totalitarian dictatorship as the ideal political model.”

There was a pause. Rudy whistled. “Gets me every time. Where did you come up with that?”

Gordon paused, then shook his head. “Don’t really know.”

“Shit. Inspiration. Tough one, Blaise. All right. Now you have a plus and a minus. First, you are talking about self-referential logic, which is a plus. Pomos are quite happy talking about logic, as long as it’s circular, as in ‘the logic of capital accumulation.’ The minus is that you are damning pomos, and that is going to be a rather stiff hurdle.”

“Pomos? I was thinking more about Plato.”

“Sure, but pomos don’t believe in empirical reason or objectivity either. And, as Marxists or socialists, they prefer totalitarian dictatorships, or central planning, which you, I assume, will say are bad.”

“Well, they are!”

“Maybe, but you’re going to have to forget all that for now.” Rudy frowned. “Okay—the only way this thing has even a chance of flying is if you can remove the value judgements, or turn them around. Instead of ‘limited democracy,’ can you say ‘capitalism’?”

“I had that down first, but didn’t think it would fly.”

“Oh, it will. You were just looking at it the wrong way. Now, instead of ‘totalitarian dictatorship,’ can you say ‘centrally-planned economy’?”

Gordon paused. “Well—that’s kind of the same thing.”

“So is faith and prejudice, but the language is all!”

“That’s going to suck me into economics.”

“All the better. No one will want to follow you there. They’ll just graze the text, looking for the words ‘structure’ or ‘encapsulation.’” Rudy’s eyes scanned Gordon’s text rapidly. “By the way, what the hell is ‘supra-sensual’? A Tantric action figure?”

“It means knowledge not derived from the senses.”

“Huh. That’s going to be a little grim.”

“Because pomos don’t believe in the senses?”

“No, because they don’t believe in knowledge.”

“Ah.”

Rudy chewed on his straw. “Unfounded paradigms which result in untestable actions…” he murmured, frowning mightily. “All right—you can’t use ‘knowledge’—use—well, use your pen to get these—use ‘tendencies,’ ‘direction,’ ‘construction,’ ‘bias,’ and the phrase ‘follows from.’ And never use ‘proof’—use ‘points out,’ ‘argues,’ ‘notes,’ ‘advocates,’ ‘prefers,’ ‘refers to,’ ‘imagines.’ And if you’re writing about two men, use ‘Messrs.’—don’t know why, but it seems snarky…”

“Ugh. You want me to write with swamp water!”

“You have to imagine this thesis as an exercise in pure mathematics; no physics, no engineering. Just numbers rapping with numbers.”

“How would I deal with the senses?”

“You have to eliminate them completely. Nothing you write about can touch the planet in any direct way. You want to seem clever, like you’re performing acrobatics in zero gravity, but not committed to anything you say. Create the impression of random curiosity, not focussed intent. And use the pre-pubescence test.”

“Do I get that from the police?”

“Imagine reading this to someone twelve or under. Would they have any clue what it was about? If so, start stretching those syllables!”

“Child abuse!”

“Yeah, but, you want the piece of paper, right? Okay—another problem. DWG’s.”

“Sorry?”

“Dead White Guys. Your choice of sources is death on a stick. You can’t be talking about Plato and Aristotle. Somehow, they don’t fall under the now-correct umbrella of Gay Writers, probably because they weren’t self-destructive enough… You have to find some Inuit or Tibetan thinkers who follow the same continuum.”

“Tibetan empiricists—are you nuts?”

“You can only use DWG’s as whipping boys. Aristotle is only okay if you’re willing to slag empirical rationalism.”

“I can’t do that!”

“Then you have to go beyond the obvious. Find this senses-versus-faith bit somewhere other than Ancient Greece. It will be very hard to obscure your intent if you use well-known writers. Do you read any obscure languages?”

“No. But I feel like I’m learning one now!”

“Shame. All right, we’re almost there. I would suggest something like this: ‘My thesis, By Gordon B. Vapourware, is that the basic tenets of capitalist economics are derived from a belief structure which posits as one of its axioms a prejudice that an object can be separate from its interpretation. This fiction is used to justify…exploitation on a myriad of psycho-social and bio-sexual levels…’” Rudy passed a hand over his eyes. “Fuck me, it’s like translating a Kevin Smith script into Latin…”

“Go on. I’m writing.”

“Okay, okay. Umm… ‘Opposed to this paradigm is a continuum of belief which posits a flexible approach to the traditional subject/object dichotomy. Instead of imagining that a thing can be separate from its meaning, it advocates a relational approach to…to competing meanings, balancing existing myths by giving a voice to those groups whose meaning has been eclipsed by the—the overwhelming uniformity of the dominant…messaging…’ Argh!”

“Take a breath!” cried Gordon.

Rudy was sweating; his eyes bulged, rolling back. “I’m all—right,” he panted, a facial tic lifting his cheek like an invisible hook. “Almost—done.”

“You sound like Superman shitting a stick of kryptonite!”

“…‘and’—get this, it’s almost killing me—‘and…allows the social group to balance unheard narratives by providing a forum for the community to work at finding a…balance between culture and…and…and change!’”

Rudy fell back on the narrow bed, his face bright with sweat, his hands shaking. “My God—I’m never doing that again without an epidural! Did you get it?”

“Yes—most of it—no, all of it, I think.” Gordon looked at his pad, shaking his head. “It’s pretty mutant.”

Rudy took a deep, shuddering breath. “It’s hard to upsize things with content; I’m more used to cloaking absence than hiding presence.”

“Thanks a million,” said Gordon.

“Oh Christ above, that was nothing!”

“Nothing? You’re sweating!”

“I mean it’s nothing compared to your job.”

“Oh, you mean…”

“Oh yeah baby! Writing a hundred pages of it!”

Gordon stared at him, his eyes widening slowly.

Chapter 30

Sarah Listens at the Cottage

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Sarah didn’t like doing this, but she needed more material. The family was up at the cottage; it was late at night, late in May. She could hear everything going on in her parents’ room, without even straining.

Her mother said, “So how’s the business going?”

Her father laughed richly. “Oh baby, I think this could be the one. This is like telephony on steroids!”

“So it’s working out?”

“Not well enough for a shopping spree, material girl, but so far, so good.”

“And the kid? What’s his name?”

“Terry. Terry-boy. The ‘Terry-inator.’”

“How is he?”

“He’s a productive little toadstool. I have to ride him hard, but he bends.”

“What kind of growth are you looking at?”

“I don’t know. Couple million. Why, are you looking to invest?”

Her mother laughed. “Sure, right—you take coupons, right?”

“We’ll be back on our feet soon, you know! And it wasn’t me that decided a yacht would be just great for the kids!”

“Hey! If I’d had any idea that you were about to augur in—why the hell did you okay the buy if you knew things were that bad?”

Sarah wrote: Dad did not tell mom his last business was going down.

“Shit, honey, you know I had to pretend everything was going well so we’d get the final investment. Conspicuous spending looks confident.”

Sarah wrote: He got money after he knew it was going bad.

“So you were confident?”

“Of course—the market for educational software just disappeared. Everyone in the field got burned.”

“Did you do enough marketing? How can a market just disappear?”

“Look, things are going well, I don’t want to rake over old business. Let’s just enjoy our latest find!”

Angela said, gently: “Dave, I just want to know how things are going—really.”

“Why?”

“Because successful entrepreneurs are just so—sexy!”

“Well, I can see that.”

There was a pause, some rustling. Sarah was about to put her pillow over her head. Then she heard her mother.

“I’d like to sit down and really talk with Terry.”

Pause. “Why? He’s not a successful entrepreneur.”

“I never know anyone you’re in business with.”

“Christ I’m not in business with him.”

“He has shares, doesn’t he?”

“Sure, a few, but he doesn’t make any decisions. I just keep his little hamster wheel spinning. Wzzz! Faster, baby, faster!”

Sarah wrote: Terry doesn’t make any decisions.

“Why not?”

“He’s just a kid. He has no idea about finances. I keep all that far away from him—and you.”

Sarah wrote: Terry doesn’t know anything about the finances.

“So what’s up for this week?”

“We’ve got a demo with General Mills on Wednesday, and a meeting with Cyrux Friday to show them what we’ve done.”

“Do you have any idea how Terry is doing?”

“I know squat about software, and I want to keep it that way! Typing to the Beastie Boys at 3:00 a.m. doesn’t exactly turn my crank.”

Sarah wrote: Dad knows nothing about software.

“Do you think it’ll work?”

“I don’t know. But that boy will kill himself trying. That’ll have to do.”

“So you sell to General Mills Wednesday…”

“Shit no—it’ll take months to make that sale. Wednesday we just know whether we’re eliminated in the first round.”

“Okay—but if things go well at Cyrux on Friday…”

“That’s a nothing contract—name only. Eighteen K. But it’s good publicity.”

“When are you going for your next round of financing?”

“We’re always looking. Market’s a bit tight right now.”

“What are you looking for?”

“What the hell are you talking about, Ang? Okay, you tell me how the kids did on their last tests, and I’ll talk finances with you!”

“Why get so shitty with me?”

“I’m stroking your breast and you’re talking finances! If I wanted to have sex with investors, I’d have buried it in the fucking contract!”

“All right! I hate your flips! You want me to show more interest in your work, here it is!”

“Yeah, that’s what I meant. What are you trying to prove? Sure, stop blowing me to ask about my day. That makes sense. You are truly sensitive.”

“What is your problem?”

“And tomorrow, I’ll do the dishes in bed!”

“You are an asshole.”

“Well, let’s say this: you are officially off the hook when it comes to asking me about my day. I’d rather keep it to my fucking self!”

“Fine—Jesus Christ, fine! God forbid Lord Dave should not get exactly what he wants, exactly when he wants it!”

“Why are you picking a fight? I just told you you were off the hook!”

“It’s late. Shut up.”

There was silence. Sarah gazed at what she’d written, then tore it up and threw it in a corner. She turned over, screwed her eyes shut, and pulled the pillow over her head.

Chapter 31

Pomo in Slow-Mo: Engineering Students

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Rudy held up his first card:

The Engineering Students

A.K.A. The Math Jocks

“Engineering students (ES) are like autistic Neanderthals who have not yet discovered fire but can somehow build bridges. They often come from the world of high school sports, which is only a half-lunge above the mating rituals of apes. (The success of this ritual, of course, leads the arts students to bide their time and develop poetry, which they use to seduce girls in university, though they remain susceptible to ‘aerobics envy,’ which is the bitterness which arises from knowing that jocks always get prettier girls.)

“Engineering students are marked by many things. Chief among them are relentless physicality and bottomless contempt. Now it would be churlish to expect those who use ideas as tools to build things to have a deep interest in philosophy, but philosophers built capitalism, and those of us with jobs should be grateful to the Enlightenment thinkers even if we don’t understand their theories. We certainly get better dental care than they did.

“The physicality of engineering students is truly staggering; it is a great natural force. Certain sensitive mystics, since they were probably tormented—or worse, ignored—by jocks in high school, may be forgiven for believing that bad engineers get reincarnated as the livers of engineers. Everything about them is primitive. They paint their faces, have the impulse-control of Venus flytraps, love learning by rote, and consider creativity a sign of rampant homosexuality. They share many things in common with business students, except that their status is not wealth, but the degree to which they are willing to inflict ritual abuse on their essential organs. They love telling the following stories:

I had to write this exam while hung over

I was so drunk I broke my arm

My buddy got into a fight, and we just whaled on the guy

I was passed out, clutching a beer, but came to when someone tried to take it away

The camping trip was a disaster because the canoe with the beer tipped over and we had to hike out for more

I jumped into the mosh pit just as everyone cleared

I sent one home to wait for me, then picked up another chick and brought her home too; hey, I thought it’s me, it’ll work out somehow!

They wouldn’t talk to me, so I asked them: how many of you have boyfriends, and none of them did, so I told them it was because they wouldn’t talk to guys like me

Every Friday, we’d go around the dorm and collect the beer cans (bottles weren’t allowed) people had left outside their rooms to take back, and from them we bought more beer

“Stanley Kowalski fascinated the angry tulip, Tennessee Williams; engineering students fascinate arts students in the same way. Engineering students are unafraid of women, act instantly, and have the capacity for great blunt cruelty (which is quite different from the slow-drip verbal poison of the arts students). They have the blind, tidal integrity of massive animals, are quick to anger but forgive grudges over drinks, and are loyal to a degree that arts students cannot even imagine. Arts students turn on each other like wounded jackals—intense friendships rarely last a year, because everyone is so meddling and insecure and viciously competitive. Engineering students, on the other hand, do not get involved in their friend’s relationships, except to comment that they are ‘whipped’ if they have to leave the bar before closing. They have a strong respect for the immutability of human nature, and are willing to let their friends’ mistakes run their course. They will be there for a friend when he crashes, but will do nothing to accelerate that. In short, they have all the virtues as well as the vices of primitive tribalism. They are unafraid of approaching women, but become over-compliant in relationships (again, unlike arts students, who are hesitant to approach women but are quite stingy in relationships with them). They act entirely on instinct, which means that the trajectories of their lives—for good or ill—are remarkably consistent. They are Lear to the arts students’ Nixon.

“Because they have no real conception of what they are missing, they spare little thought for the ‘dickless’ arts students, considering them insecure and irritating parasites. They are correct, of course, except that they underestimate the damage that arts students can do to society in the long run—and also the danger that the self-absorption of their writings can do to the marriages of very ‘male’ men when their wives reach fretful middle age.

“Another virtue of the Engineering students is that they do not believe they are special, or owed anything, and so are infinitely more charitable than the arts students. Those who live lives of instinct are rarely narcissistic; because they live by the spine, they have some sense of empathy. True narcissism requires an intellectual. Engineering students will do ridiculous things for charity (whether the charity is a reason or an excuse is another question), and the unfortunate in society owe a great deal to the coconuts these apes break and share.

“Say what you like about engineers, there is about as much chance catching an arts student doing charitable work as finding an engineer taking yoga. Engineers view health maintenance as a form of cowardice; it is as if, being born to be warriors, the only foes they can now invent are high-fat foods, red meat, and social alcoholism. Basically, engineers believe that any of the following will cause their penises to fall off:

Vegetables (Caesar salad being a possible exception, as long as the lettuce swims in a thick soup of dressing and there’s enough powdered pig to cover Arkansas)

Light beer

Stretching before or after exercise (well, stretching at all, actually; engineers have been known to experience near-fatal cramps reaching backwards for a beer from a bean bag)

Foreign films (Trainspotting is okay, though)

Jazz (Steely Dan being the border patrol)

Solitary exercise

Any music produced after they were about twenty-four

Any music where the beat changes during the song

Actually, any music with decipherable lyrics

Speakers less than the size of the slabs at Stonehenge

A television less than a quarter of the size of the wall it sits against

Snacks that are not vacuum sealed

Club soda. Just club soda.

Actually, anything carbonated without either a lot of sugar or alcohol

Sleeping with a fat woman while sober.”

Rudy grinned into the webcam. “The final paradigm, the truth of the relationship between engineering and arts students is this: engineering students build the things our society uses, and arts students destroy the foundations of that society.”

Chapter 32

The Children Discuss Their Notes

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Alice, Stephen, and Sarah sat down to compare notes.

They sat in the empty playground. The June day was wonderfully warm. Stephen read from his notes first.

“I was hoping to get these more organized, but…” he said, ruffling through his papers. “I had some good questions…”

“Should I go first?” asked Alice, a little impatiently.

“No, no… Here. Okay, here’s a good one. Prejudice. Racism.”

“Nice,” said Sarah,

“So, I say to Dad, ‘Dad, what’s racism?’ and he said, ‘being prejudiced against another race.’”

“But are Jews a race, or a religion?” asked Sarah.

“Good question,” said Stephen, making a note. “So, I say, ‘what’s a prejudice?’ He says, ‘a belief without evidence.’ So, I say, ‘what’s evidence?’ He says, ‘it’s facts which support your belief.’ I say…” He flipped his page. “I say—‘what information is that?’ He says, ‘there’s no evidence that…’ What’s an A/C?”

“African Canadian?” suggested Sarah.

“Yeah… He says, ‘there’s no evidence that they are inferior.’ So I say, ‘you should never believe anything without evidence?’ He says, ‘some people believe things from their heart, rather than their head.’”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that too,” said Sarah.

“So I said, ‘what do people believe from the heart?’ And he says, ‘God is one. Or art…’ So I asked him what the difference was—don’t people believe bad things from the heart, like racism? He said that… Oh man, I have a page missing!”

“Flip it,” said Alice.

“I already did…”

“The next one!”

“Oh, yeah,” said Stephen, peering. “So, he said that a good belief from the heart makes you a better person, but a prejudice makes you worse. And I said: that doesn’t make sense—you can’t say that a good belief is a belief which makes you good.”

“And then?”

“Then he got a headache.” He held the page up and sniffed it. “And I had some jam.”

“Hm,” said Sarah.

“Now what have you got?” asked Stephen.

“Well, nothing so high and mighty,” replied Sarah, “so try to stay awake. I listened to my parents one night…”

Alice frowned. “You’re spying too?”

“I have to!” cried Sarah. “I can’t get anything from them; they just talk and talk! I had to wait till last weekend, at the cottage.”

“Hm,” said Stephen. “Where were we on spying? Okay, right?”

“I don’t know,” sniffed Alice. “I don’t like spying.”

“Why not?” asked Stephen.

“It’s like…it’s like cheating.”

“Why? She’s not lying.”

“But they don’t know she’s listening…”

“But a good person should be able to be listened to any time,” said Sarah. “Don’t you think?”

“Yeah—a good person also goes to the toilet, but we shouldn’t…”

Stephen grinned at Sarah. “What if they’d started kissing?”

Sarah punched him on the arm. “Ew! Look, I won’t do it again, okay? But this counts; I think it’s important.”

“Okay,” said Alice.

Sarah pulled out her own notebook. “This is what I got. My dad has had five businesses, I think, and he didn’t know that the last one was failing until just before it went under. And, he kept taking investors money even after he knew it was going to fail. Now Terry is his tech guy, and Terry doesn’t make any business decisions, or know anything about the money stuff. My dad also said he doesn’t know anything about software. And they fought.”

“O-kay,” said Stephen slowly. “That’s rich, very rich… What do you think?”

“Who fought?” asked Alice.

Sarah frowned, blinked suddenly, and then burst into tears. “It’s okay, sunshine.” Alice rubbed Sarah’s lower back, in small circles, just how she liked it. “S’okay, sweetie.”

“It’s…just…” Sarah sobbed suddenly. “What if my dad is a—cheater?”

“He might not be,” said Alice. Over Sarah’s blonde curls, she and Stephen exchanged glances.

“But if he is,” said Stephen, “then you have to know, even—well it’s going to hurt, but not as much as if you don’t know, and listen to him about how to live.”

Sarah took a deep, shuddering breath. “I mean, he doesn’t seem to know anything, and he gets money just for asking for money. And they fought really badly.”

“Your mom and dad?” asked Alice, continuing her rubbing motion.

“They were really mean…” moaned Sarah. Her sobs increased. “And…and what if my dad’s employees are paying for my riding lessons?”

“Huh,” said Stephen. “We all have hobbies.”

“What if…what if it’s just wrong to… Everything is not right, where we live, what we wear… Oh!” Sarah doubled over, wracked with tears. Stephen and Alice held her, murmuring soft words.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” said Stephen. “It’ll be our turn soon…”

Eventually, Sarah calmed down. She sat up and rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand.

“Ohhh,” she sighed. “I don’t—I don’t like this any more. It’s too hard.”

“It is hard,” said Stephen. “It is. But you are very brave. We can help each other.”

“Look at your face,” said Alice, touching Sarah’s cheek with a tissue. “It’s a good thing we gave up on makeup.”

Sarah smiled and took her friend’s hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t really want to give up now. It is hard. But we have to change. There’s something cold… in here.” She touched her heart.

The other two just looked at her.

“I can’t like it if it’s wrong,” she continued. “I can’t take stuff if it’s bad.”

“What stuff?” asked Alice.

“What they do. What they give me.”

“Your parents?”

“I know,” she said, another tear slipping down her round cheek. “I know, but I can’t believe. It’s wrong. I won’t take any of it.”

A slight chill wavered through Stephen’s heart. “What do you mean?”

Sarah raised her head. Her eyes were red; her jaw was set. “Until we know for sure, we can’t take anything from them.”

It was a hard debate, but they resolved it finally, just as the sun was slipping through the monkey bars, like an imprisoned angel. As night fell, they decided to accept the following:

❖private school

❖clothing (nice was okay, but nothing fashionable or expensive)

❖food/shelter

❖the use of what was already there (Stephen drove this position out of love for his computer)

❖family trips, since they were too young to be left alone at home

❖any hobbies which required no more spending were okay (Alice played hockey)

They decided to give up the following:

❖expensive school trips

❖summer camps and programs

❖music and sports lessons

❖extracurricular activities which cost money

❖unnecessary rides (they would use the bus, except late at night)

❖parties

❖allowances

They argued for a long time about the best way to broach this with their families. They didn’t want to just stop accepting things without being open, but recoiled from the idea of saying that they were on strike for moral reasons.

“How on earth can we tell them?” asked Stephen.

“Don’t know,” murmured Sarah. “Don’t know…”

Alice narrowed her eyes. “We’ll tell them we’ve taken a vow of poverty.”

Stephen shook his head. “That’ll bring the school psych,” he said. “We’ll get meds instead of puberty.”

They thought some more.

“It has to be something they can be proud of…” said Sarah.

“Something they can think we’ll grow out of,” said Alice.

“Ooh—charity!” cried Stephen, pounding a fist into a palm. “Like an after-school special!”

“Okay…” said Alice.

“We say: Mom, Dad, I’ve decided to use less money and would like the family to give to charity instead.”

“Not bad…” said Sarah. “They’d be sort of touched, I think…”

“And the best thing,” said Stephen, “is that they’ll think it’ll blow over.”

Alice smiled. “And they’ll be able to say: ‘oh, my children have such good hearts!’”

“No,” said Sarah, suddenly grave, “it’s going to be really harsh.”

“What can they do?” asked Alice.

“They know we hang,” said Stephen. “They could separate us.”

Alice shrugged. “We go to the same school. We have phones in our rooms. Email.”

Stephen smiled. “See, everything they could take away we want to give up anyway.”

“No,” said Sarah. “Not that kind of pressure. They’ll be irritated and disappointed. They’ll sit down and have long talks with us. They’ll be hurt.”

“They’ll pout!” smiled Alice.

“Yes,” replied Sarah seriously. “They will. They’ll be scared. They’ll use whatever they can.”

Stephen suddenly shuddered. “Do you think that they care so little about us?”

Sarah just looked at him.

Chapter 33

The BoyBand’s Promotional
Material

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Justin (JT!)

Favorite Color: Royal Blue

Favorite Band: Do you have to ask?

Favorite Movie: Scary Movie III

What Justin looks for in a girl: Justin likes girls who are down to earth. He loves a sense of humor, a great smile and a confident attitude. And if you know the whole theme song to ‘Different Strokes,’ that’s good for some serious bonus points!

Justin’s dream date: Skating, because he can pretend to be bad at it (actually, he’s quite good!) and fall into the girl’s arms.

Justin’s status: Single—and looking!

Todd (Toddy!)

Favorite Color: Emerald Green

Favorite Band: N’Sync

Favorite Movie: I Still Know What You Did Last Summer

What Todd looks for in a girl: For Todd, the question is simple: does she get along with his mom? Anyone who can charm his mom is all right in his books!

Todd’s dream date: Burgers and Shakes at Chuck E. Cheese, because she might as well get used to his playful side early on. But look out, girls; he has a habit of picking from other people’s plates!

Todd’s status: Recently broken up with a girl because she wanted all her fries for herself!

Gerald (Geeeez!)

Favorite Color: Tartan

Favorite Band: BSB, of course!

Favorite Movie: My Own Home Movies

What Gerald looks for in a girl: He doesn’t look anywhere but into the eyes of the girl of his dreams.

Gerald’s dream date: He’s never really been on a date, so how would he know?

Gerald’s status: Still dating his junior high school sweetheart.

Chris (Papa-man!)

Favorite Color: White, because it has every color

Favorite Band: My local symphony

Favorite Movie: A Room With A View

What Chris looks for in a girl: Three words: conversation, conversation, and more conversation.

Chris’s dream date: Any place where the music is not too loud to talk all night.

Chris’s status: Single—and willing to discuss it!

Iain (I-Mack!)

Favorite Color: Black

Favorite Band: The retro, but still relevant Erasure

Favorite Movie: Plan Nine From Outer Space

What Iain looks for in a girl: Someone not too tall, who can help me open my jam jars!

Iain’s dream date: Miniature golf, because it makes me look taller.

Iain’s status: Looking high and low.

The boys loitered around in Al’s office, staring at the pages. Al smiled.

“I imagine that this is all cheesy enough for you guys. Now I want to talk about the video.”

“But we don’t have a song!” said Gerald.

Justin snorted. “Shut up, ‘Geeeez.’”

Todd laughed. “JT; let’s have a video where you get shot as the cliff-hanger, and in the next video we find out who did it.”

“I did it of course,” replied Justin, “but who cares; none of the new-blues we’re after would get the Dallas reference, goat-boy.”

“New-blues?” asked Al.

“Those just past puberty.”

“Don’t get it.”

Iain smiled. “That blue liquid in tampon commercials.”

“Yeah,” said Chris, “you got that coming out of you, your biggest problem is whether your panty line shows.”

Al grunted. “Well, let’s just keep that little gem among ourselves, shall we?”

“Though it would be a good band name,” said Gerald. “‘New Blues.’”

“I’ve got some suggestions…” said Al, picking up a sheet of paper.

“No,” said Justin. “I’m going to play my alpha male card and give the name.”

“What?”

He turned and wrote on the whiteboard: “BöyBand.”

There was a pause.

“‘BoyBand?’”

“Yes, but note the umlaut over the o.”

There was a pause.

“Not bad,” said Chris. “It snags the ironic as well.”

“Fairly amusing,” said Todd. “I like the umlaut touch. Gives us an indefinite edge.”

Iain smiled. “It says: sure, we are a boy band, but we could beat up other boy bands.”

Chris cocked his head at Justin. “Kinda literal, dude. Does that mean you’re going to change your name to ‘Lead Singer?’”

“With an accent aigue?” added Todd.

“And Al, you could be ‘Chiseling Parasite Manager.’”

“Can I be ‘Untalented Backup Singer Destined For Rehab?’” asked Iain.

“No, you get anorexia, remember?” said Justin.

“All right, my wee herd of black sheep,” said Al. “The video. Do you want to hear my idea?”

“Sure—lay it on us, CPM.”

Al frowned, then told the following tale, his hands tracing it in the air: “So you all work at a car wash, and you’re bored, then this girl drives up in a red convertible, and you fight over cleaning her car, and she’s laughing and talking on her cell, and then you see the number on her phone, and Justin calls her, and she switches to him, and he’s singing the chorus, and then you all drape yourselves over her car and sing to her, and spray water or whatever, and at the end of the song you blink and you’re all cleaning some ugly old broad’s car, and it’s all been a dream. And then the girl’s car comes up, and you all stare at each other, then break into a run to clean her car, and that’s it. That’s just—it.”

“Very middle aged,” scowled Justin, sucking his teeth. “A red sports car? Why middle-aged men want to sit in a clitoris with a retractable hood is beyond me.”

Gerald sat forward. “No, the car wash could work. How about this? At the end we drive off with her for a picnic in the desert and when we open the trunk there are cut-up bits of other car-wash boys.”

Chris jumped up and down in his chair. “No—the car wash turns out to be a laundry in jail, and at the end a big guy comes in looking for hot, prison-bitch love, and we all pee ourselves and scream ‘no Bubba nooo!’”

There was a short pause.

“Yeah, that would be different,” admitted Todd.

Chris giggled. “And now, the new video from BöyBitchBand!”

“Let’s get serious,” said Justin. “We’re looking to snag the preteens, so we need a video which contains the perfect metaphor for new-blue lust, something sanitized and holy and safe and cute.”

“ChoirBoyBand!” cried Gerald.

“Hot church-bitch love!” shouted Chris.

“Stop—stop—we’ve got the name!” barked Al. “Let’s hear Justin’s ideas for the video!”

“Okay…” mused Justin. “Something very delicate, very thin, very false… About a group who believes in something very strongly, yet would never impose it, except through good example. A group which pities bad people; a group who… Saints of the modern world; the sainthood of… Hmmm.” He squinted, shaking his head. “Sorry, this part of my brain doesn’t work too well.”

Al nodded slowly. “No, you’re doing great. Go on.”

Justin frowned. “Animal rescuers? Too obvious. Something for all of us… Peace corps? No, too druggy. We’re intelligent, and if we do it right… Not too goody-goody… Nothing in uniform, nothing too individual anyway… Greens? Angels? Too arrogant. Wait—wait—assistant angels! Prankster angels! Angels trying to earn their wings! Nice—not too supernatural, a lot of room for tacky humor, bad acting, amateur double-takes…”

“What’s the set-up?” asked Todd.

“Let’s see… The test for heaven is after you die, and you have to do the most good to get in—no; we’re already in—and we want to become Head Angels, because we’re ambitious… So we compete—yeah, that’s it—we compete with another group of angels who are always beating us, and finally we give up and accept that we’ll never be Head Angels—and that of course is when we are promoted to Head Angels, because Head Angels have to renounce ambition. And at the end of the video, our competitors are running past us to beat us in doing good, but we can just snap our fingers and do good from a distance, because we’re not competing with them anymore.”

There was a pause. No one could tell whether he was serious or not.

“Can we work the girl in somehow?” asked Al. “I have someone in mind.”

“Why would we pimp for you?” asked Justin.

“All right, don’t get shirty.” Al winked. “Do some groupies, then we’ll talk…”

“Would it be too self-referential to have the angels save a pretty girl from a sleazy agent?” asked Todd.

“Hey—there’s no such thing as too self-referential,” said Chris.

“I don’t care,” said Al. “Could work out. I think the idea’s great, but I’m funding the damn thing, so let’s keep the costs down; no helicopters crashing into the Golden Gate…”

“What about the Pearly Gates?”

“Where Arnold Schwarzenegger has been sent to sub for Saint Peter because he talked back to his captain.”

“‘You girly-boys want to get into heaven, you’ll have to get by me first!’”

“One of the few angels allowed to smoke stogies.”

“And we have to scale the gates with a knotted rope, like marines in training.”

“With angels pecking at us.”

“And the metal is electrified…!”

“Boys! Boys!” cried Al. “Let me ask you—when you go off on these MTV schizoid ramblings, do I just let you run? Will you just tire yourselves out, or never come back?”

Justin shrugged. “What’s ‘back’?”

“Never mind. Take some lunch, go somewhere bright and caffeinated, work on Justin’s idea. I’ll start looking into costs. Can we shoot this weekend?”

“Lord on a stick, man,” said Chris. “We need a song, right?”

Al nodded. “We’ll come up with the song after we get the images. It’ll fit; I have an instinct for this stuff.”

“Style before substance,” laughed Justin, grabbing his jacket and standing up. “Well, we’ve never exactly objected before, right?”

Chapter 34

The Parents Regroup

￼Dingbat Diamonds

The lunch was the first time the wives had all met. It took some planning—and had to be postponed twice—but eventually they all had coffee at Angela’s house. It was just the women. And Alder, who was off for the summer. They all sat in a bright Ikea-style breakfast nook with yellow cushions and lots of blonde wood.

“Now,” said Angela, after serving everyone, “I guess we all know each other individually, but is this the first time we’ve all sat down together?”

“No,” said Greta, adjusting her scarf and gazing around the room. “There was the Saunderson’s barbecue.”

“Yes, that’s right. But alone, this is a first.”

Joanne nodded. “So, it would seem that we have a little rebellion on our hands.”

Greta laughed, pushing down a scarf and taking a sip of coffee. “It would appear so.”

“Do Alice and Stephen carry those little notebooks too?” asked Angela. The others nodded. “I feel like I’m being cornered on 20/20.”

“Makes you think twice before opening your mouth,” said Greta.

“And do we know what has put their precious little backs up?” asked Angela.

“That phase of ‘why is the sky blue?’ was one thing,” said Joanne. “This is quite something else. We get so wrapped up in unanswerable questions that even my husband has nothing to say.”

“For any husband, that’s quite a feat,” said Angela.

“Having nothing to say never stopped mine,” laughed Greta.

Alder raised a hand. “Umm—husband present.”

Angela smiled, then held up a plate of maple cookies. Neither of the other two women took any, of course. Alder did—a handful. Joanne flinched, knowing that they were all about to be treated to the sight of Alder’s desire to spray both his crumbs and his wisdom simultaneously.

Angela put the plate down. “I can’t get squat out of Sarah about why she’s gone all Dalai Lama. She says it’s just something she wants to do.”

Greta groaned. “If I get another phone call asking why Alice doesn’t do this or that activity anymore, I think I’ll go mad.”

Alder smiled. “They are going through a phase in their development where they’re obsessed with ethics. It lays the foundation for teenage absolutism. They are preparing to become monumentally disappointed in their parents.”

“Huh,” scowled Angela. “I don’t know about that. I do know that there’s something going on that’s not being talked about. They’re playing something close to their chests.”

“The point being,” said Greta, “what do we do about it?”

“If Alder is right,” said Joanne, “this isn’t going to blow over for some time.”

“Years,” said Alder.

“But where did it come from?” demanded Angela. “What’s going into those notebooks? I’m not into prying, but I’d give my eyeteeth to read Sarah’s.”

Alder’s responding comment was perhaps ‘just get hold of it while they’re sleeping,’ or ‘just set a stoat on them while they’re weeping.’ Joanne noted that one of his crumbs had managed to reach Angela’s coffee, and could not help but wonder if she had noticed. Being married to Alder was like having Tourette’s-by-proxy…

“What is the point of all these questions?” asked Greta. “My dinner table is like an interrogation room. ‘Why do you do this? What about that? How does this fit with that?’ It drives me mad. We’re not saints. We don’t have the answers.”

Alder lifted a cloth to his face. Please, God, thought Joanne, let it be a napkin, and not the tablecloth again.

“The point,” he murmured, “is not to give them answers.”

Angela and Greta turned to him, rather irritated, but willing to give him a minute or two.

“I face this all the time,” said Alder, spreading his hands. “First-year students. Realists. Randroids. A little philosophy is a dangerous thing…”

“Go on,” frowned Joanne. Don’t mime wiping your mouth—he hates that…

Her husband said, “You have to break down their certainties. Ask them questions. So far, they’re the ones driving the debate.”

“Debate,” muttered Angela, but leaned forward anyway.

“So we—what—cross-examine them back?” asked Greta, chewing on a corner of her scarf.

“Well, with all due respect,” said Alder, taking another handful of cookies, and almost knocking over a little jug of cream, “I think I should be the one to do it. That’s my training, after all.”

“Won’t it all be a little…academic?” asked Angela, skeptically.

“I can simplify it. The point is to show them that what they think of as black and white is a lot more complicated. At the moment, we can’t answer the questions; we need to ask them questions that they can’t answer, and everything will fall into place.” He jammed a cookie into his mouth.

“Uh huh,” said Angela, tapping her teeth with a fingernail. None of the women wanted to ask him another question, at least until his cookie had been partially ingested.

Greta spoke first. “If that’s such a great idea, why hasn’t it worked with Stephen?”

“There’s no point doing just one,” smiled Alder. “That’s why I’m here. If I talk to Stephen, give him some perspective, all he does is go running back to Alice and Sarah and they reinforce his absolutism and the problem starts again. Same for both of you. We have to get them all together.”

“Uh huh,” said Angela, narrowing her eyes. “With all due respect, what if it doesn’t work?”

“That would be bad,” said Alder.

“Why?” asked Greta. “I mean, what have we got to lose?”

“Well,” said Joanne, “Alder has authority because of his position. He teaches philosophy. So if he fails, the kids will really think they’re on to something.”

“Oh,” grimaced Greta, glancing at Alder nervously. “Right.”

Alder smiled. “I’m certainly open to other suggestions. But the purpose of a teacher is to open the minds of his students. I am not unfamiliar with the best ways to create productive doubt.”

“Bit of a heavy gun for a small problem,” said Angela. “It could peter out on its own.”

Greta scowled. “Yeah, but until then… I mean, it could be years.”

Joanne took a sip of wine. “My husband’s been a teacher for—what—five years now?”

“Eight if you include being a TA.”

Angela shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Alder smiled. “Angela, please! I can handle two hundred nineteen-year-olds. I think I can just about manage three twelve-year-olds. Let me try.”

Angela looked at him doubtfully. Joanne smiled encouragingly.

“Okay,” said Angela finally. “But if anything goes wrong, you’re on the hook for the psych bills!”

Alder grinned confidently, his crumbs and lips spreading wide. He made an ‘okay’ gesture, and Joanne closed her eyes.

Chapter 35

Alder Instructs the Children

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Alder sat in his office with the children: Sarah, Alice, and Stephen. There was no need to hold the meeting there, since it was August, and the place was almost deserted, but Alder liked the implicit authority in his bookshelves. He smiled genially and gestured for them to sit down. He had purposefully found the largest possible chairs. Let’s see if they can best me when their feet can’t even touch the ground!

“Now, your parents have asked me to talk to you, because you are having problems at home. I am not a psychologist, of course, but I am trained in ethical issues, so I hope I can help you understand your parents’ positions.”

They stared at him, openly curious. The curiosity encouraged him. The staring did not.

“So, why don’t we all talk about what is going on here? Alice, would you like to go first?”

Alice nodded. “How would you like me to start?”

“Well, why don’t you tell me why you’ve gone on strike.”

She stared at him.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “This will all be confidential. A secret. I won’t be telling anyone.”

Alice glanced at the other two children, then turned back to Alder and narrowed her eyes. “My father is in the music business, and I think he’s taking advantage of his acts.” She looked down and opened her notebook.

“What’s in those, anyway?” asked Alder, leaning forward.

Stephen coughed. “We’ve been taking notes of conversations we’ve had with our parents. We’ve been trying to understand their—um—their story, their way of life, you know…”

“All right,” Alder nodded, smiling. “Go on.”

Alice turned a page. “Well, my father says that he has no idea which bands will be successful or not, but he still takes money for representing them.”

“I’m sure that comment was taken out of context. Or is it possible that he was being modest?”

“No. He really meant it.”

“And have you tried—talking about this with him?”

“Yes, but he wouldn’t let me take notes. I had to write it down after.”

“And what happened?”

“He told me that he worked very hard, and that a lot of people had dreams, and he helped some of them come true, and that a family was very expensive. I said I’d heard him telling Mom that he didn’t know which bands would be famous, and he said that I must have misunderstood. I asked him if he did know, and he said that it was complicated, but he did have an instinct.” Alice glanced down at her notebook. “I said… how many bands have you managed, and he said quite a lot, and I said how many became famous, and he said not many, but then not many bands do become famous. I said did he tell bands that they were very unlikely to succeed when they started, or did he tell them they would become famous. He said that he told them it was risky. I said I would check with my brother Iain, who is in a band my dad runs. Then my dad said that he needed people to be confident, that confidence really helped them—make it, and I said does that mean you say it’s not risky, to make them confident, and then he got mad and sent me to my room.”

Alder nodded. “I see. So can you tell me in one sentence why you have gone on strike?”

Alice took a deep breath. “I came here because of Stephen. I don’t know you very well.”

“So—you want to know why you should tell me.”

“Yes.”

“Well, if we talk, no matter what happens, your parents will accept your decisions. Your—restrictions. The stuff you don’t want to do. Or take.”

“It’s okay, Alice,” said Stephen. “I think it’s a good idea. Dad is supposed to know. He can help.”

Alice stared at Stephen, and then Alder, for a long time, and then resumed speaking as if she had never stopped. “I think that my dad takes money from people by telling them they will make tons of money, but he doesn’t know if they will or not, and doesn’t tell them that he doesn’t know.”

Alder paused. He clasped his hands together, flicking his forefingers against each other. “But they might become famous, right? These acts?”

“Sure, but people who sell lottery tickets don’t tell you you’re going to become rich.”

“But people who buy the lottery tickets know that the odds are low.”

“But the boys in the band my dad has now are like, sixteen years old. He also deals with other kids.”

“But their parents know the truth.”

“I don’t know that they do. They come to my dad as an expert, who knows music. I don’t think he tells them. The truth.”

“All right,” said Alder. He seemed hypnotized by his flicking fingers, but tore his eyes away. “I don’t know enough about the music business to tell, but I can tell you this: hopes and dreams are very important to people. Without dreams, we are just—you know—flesh and blood. Mammals.”

There was a pause. Stephen frowned. “Uh huh. Can Sarah tell her side?”

“Of course,” smiled Alder. “Go ahead.”

“Well,” said Sarah. “My dad runs businesses, and most of them fail. He doesn’t tell the truth about his failures to his investors, and he runs businesses he knows nothing about, and he works his employees to death, and always comes up to the cottage.”

“So your complaint is very similar to Alice’s.”

“Yes. Yes? Yes.”

“And you, Stephen?” said Alder. “Can you tell me what problem you have with your mother and me?”

“I’d rather say at the end,” said Stephen.

“All right,” said Alder, looking around. “Now. Does anyone want a drink, or snack?”

All three children shook their heads.

Alder smiled, settling back in his plush chair. “Now who knows what I mean when I say: compromise? All of you? Stephen, why don’t you tell me what it means?”

“It’s like if you want the toy another kid has, you agree to share.”

“All right, that’s good. Now, sharing means…”

“Not taking everything for yourself,” interrupted Alice.

Alder smiled. “Good, good… Now—when you’re playing with a toy, and someone else wants to play with it as well, what do you do?”

“You try to play together,” said Sarah. “Or you take turns.”

“Quite right,” said Alder. “Now, it takes a long time to learn that, because we all want to believe that we are right, you know, just plain right, without any ifs, ands, or buts. But you learn—and it takes a long time—that it is important to look at yourself and say: perhaps I am not right, all the time. Perhaps other people’s needs and feelings are as important as my own, and have to be respected.”

“So how does that fit with my dad?” asked Alice, leaning forward.

“Well, Alice… I’m sure your father believes that he is helping people, and he is also worried that if he tells them how difficult it’s going to be, they will not pursue their dreams. He’s trying to balance risk and encouragement.”

“How?”

“Well, if you made a mistake on your math homework, and I said to you: ‘Alice, you are terrible at math, you’re never going to be any good at it!’ that wouldn’t be very fair, would it?”

She thought about this. “But he’s not telling people they have less of a chance, but more. Much more.”

“Encouragement is a good thing. The chance of becoming a professor is very small, but I managed to do it. If someone had told me the odds, I might have given up, and then where would I be?”

“So you—believe that lying can be a good thing?” asked Sarah.

“No, it’s not that. It’s like, if I say honestly: ‘Sarah, you’re so cool,’ and then I say sarcastically: ‘Oh Sarah, you’re sooo cool,’ they both have different meanings, right?”

“Sure.”

“So, it’s not that lying or telling the truth are always good or bad, but rather it’s in the context and intention. Sorry, that was adult babble. If your father says to a band: ‘you’re going to make it!’—and he genuinely believes that saying it will help the band make it, is it really a lie? Or, if you do a drawing, and it’s maybe not the best drawing in the world, but your mother says ‘it’s beautiful,’ and puts it on the fridge, is she lying?”

“But what if she says: ‘it’s the best drawing in the world,’ when it’s not. Is she lying?”

Alder nodded, leaning forward. “Let’s say she was lying, but because you believe her, you grow up to be a great artist—one who maybe does produce the best drawing in the world—then is what she did actually bad?”

Stephen frowned. “So lying is good if it makes something true.”

“No—it’s not so much good, as it is… What I’m trying to explain is that your parents have really good reasons for what they do. And perhaps there is a certain amount of delusion—or useful fibbing—in the achievement of everything worthwhile. Sometimes we have to believe in ourselves before we have any reason to. Some people paint pictures for twenty years before being shown. They have to tell themselves something to keep going, because there’s so much rejection.”

“So, Dad,” said Stephen, “if you find out someone has cheated on a test, what do you do?”

“Well, it’s against the rules to cheat…”

“Why?”

“Because it’s unfair to those who have studied.”

“What if everyone cheats? It wouldn’t be unfair then.”

“If everyone is cheating, you’re not a very good teacher then, are you?”

“What if the person who cheats becomes a great professor—is it okay then?”

“That is a very theoretical—that’s not something that happens in the real world.”

“Why not?”

“It just doesn’t. My point is just that you shouldn’t judge your parents so harshly.”

“But what if they’re doing something wrong?”

“It’s very hard to understand adults when you’re a child.”

“So there are different rules for adults than kids? Is it okay if we lie?”

“I wouldn’t say that. I would say that the problems of an adult are much more complicated than the problems of a child, and when things get more complicated, you have to be more flexible.”

Stephen thought about this for a moment. “So when things become more difficult, you need fewer rules?”

“Not quite,” sighed Alder. “It’s just that—when you’re a kid, you have to please your parents and your teachers—and maybe your friends. When you’re an adult, you have to please everyone, and it just gets a lot harder to be so—black and white about things. You know, like ‘this good,’ ‘that bad.’”

“So lying is okay if you please people.”

“What? No! I never said that!” cried Alder, waving his hands and sitting up quickly.

There was a pause.

“Why don’t we try this,” said Alice. “Why don’t you tell us why lying is wrong.”

Alder looked at her for a moment. “Don’t you think that lying is wrong?”

“I do, but it’s really confusing. Maybe if we knew why lying was wrong, we’d know if it was ever okay to lie.”

“This is all so toadstool-Socratic,” muttered Alder. “All right—lying is bad because it confuses the other person.”

“What’s wrong with confusing people?” asked Stephen. “People used to believe that the world was flat, right, and then when someone said it was round, people were confused.”

“Well, let’s say that lying is wrong because it makes someone believe something is true which is not true.”

“So that is always bad?”

“No, not if it could be true, and lying makes it possible.”

“So it’s okay to lie to someone if it encourages them.”

“Only if they act on that encouragement.”

“Do they have to succeed?”

“No—to try is enough!”

“So how can you tell?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” said Stephen, “someone could encourage me to be a—a girl, or an elephant, or a spaceship, and I could waste a lot of time trying.”

“But no one ever would tell you that!”

“Okay,” said Alice, “but the person telling you that you can really do something doesn’t know if you really can! My dad doesn’t.”

“But sometimes you can if someone says you can!” said Alder.

“Then more of my dad’s bands would be successful!”

“That could be bad luck…”

“Forget that, Ally,” said Stephen. “We’re drifting. Dad, let’s say that lying is okay if it’s, you know, encouraging, and realistic, and results in success. Then you’re saying that the end justifies the means.”

“Yes. Yes, I am. But in a very limited—place—way. It’s like stealing. Stealing is bad, but if you’re about to die of hunger, you can take some bread. You see, every rule has some sort of exception. Remember how much fun it was to believe in Santa Claus.”

“And how do you know them?”

“What?”

“The exceptions to the rules.”

“That’s a matter of experience—and—and well, taste, at least to some degree. Like, think of this: some killer comes into your house and says: ‘I want to kill your mom—where is she?’ You know where she is, but you wouldn’t tell the truth, right?”

“But some things are—certain? Rules, without any breaks?”

“Certain?” said Alder. “Certain. Well, I’m fairly certain I’m sitting here talking to you three ethical Mouseketeers.”

“I mean about good and bad. Can you say that there is something which is always bad, without exception?”

Alder thought for a long time.

“No—everything I can think of has exceptions. Look at it like—okay, imagine that you’re playing Monopoly. Sometimes you want to buy properties; sometimes you want to sell them, so you can buy hotels or stay out of debt. You can’t say about Monopoly: always buy properties. It depends on the situation.”

“But, Dad,” said Stephen, “you do that to win the game; that’s how you know what the right thing to do is. Isn’t there some big rule that makes the—the differences—make sense?”

“Not that I know of. Many, many, many people have tried to come up with them.”

“What about going up to someone you don’t know anything about and shooting him?” asked Alice.

“That’s only legal in America,” joked Alder.

“Really!”

“You see, there’s always a reason why people do things, and if you understand that reason, you’re a lot better off. You know—kinder. Like the person could be crazy.”

“What if they’re not?”

“Well, someone who goes and shoots someone they don’t even know is not really sane, now are they?”

“What if they are sane, but do it anyway?”

“Well, maybe that person reminds them of someone who really hurt them. Maybe they’ve been starved, whipped, unemployed for years. Maybe they’ve become addicted to some drug that makes them act bad. Maybe it’s a man of color, and they hate them.”

“So they’d never do it because they were just bad?”

“Everyone has a reason for what they do,” said Alder.

“So there is no bad?”

“There are bad actions,” said Alder. “Like if you tell a lie, then you have told a lie; you are not a liar. Who you are is different from what you do.”

“What if you only tell lies?”

“Then you are not well, in the head. There’s term for it: pathological.”

“So there is good and there is—not well, right?”

“Yes. That is my belief.”

“But it’s not true?”

Alder frowned. “True like how?”

“True like—like that the world is round.”

Alder smiled suddenly. “But the world is not round.”

“What?”

“The world is not round. ‘Round’ is like math; it’s perfect, but it doesn’t exist.” Alder got up and drew a circle on the chalkboard. “That’s round, right?”

“Sort of.”

“Pretend I’m better at drawing circles. But if you look at it up close, it’s not perfect. The chalk bleeds; there are spots at the end. The world is ‘sort of round.’ There is the Mariana trench, about seven miles deep, and the Himalayas, about five miles high. It’s not ‘round,’ but we use the word because it’s easier on the tongue than saying ‘roundish’ all the time. So the idea that there is good and ill is not quite ‘true,’ but it’s ‘truish.’”

“What part of it is false?” demanded Alice.

“I’m sorry?”

“Well, the circle is round, and the world is round except for mountains and stuff. So the mountains and stuff is the part that is not round. So what part of ‘good versus sick’ is not true?”

“That’s circumstantial. Sorry, it depends on what’s happening at the time.”

“So if a policeman shoots a black man because he doesn’t like black men, sometimes that’s wrong, and sometimes that’s okay?”

Alder paused. “The problem is that the policeman will never say: I shot the black man because I don’t like black men. You have to find out why, and that’s very hard.”

“Let’s say that he uses the n-word, and you find a Klan card in his wallet, and the black man was doing nothing, and there’s a letter saying he’s going to shoot a black man that day.”

“All right—let’s really stack the cards!” smiled Alder uneasily.

“So is that always bad? I mean—ill?”

“Yes, I can’t think of anything which would make that okay.”

“So what do you do with the policeman?”

“You put him in jail.”

“Why? He’s not a bad man.”

Alder paused. “You put him in jail to make other people not shoot black men.”

Stephen frowned. “So you make an example of him.”

“Yes. Yes.”

“So other people might choose not to shoot black men if they see the policeman going to jail.”

“Yes.”

“So doesn’t that mean that…” Stephen paused.

“Go on.”

“That—that other people can choose not to shoot black men?”

“Well, if there are bad consequences… If they could go to jail, then yes, they might not.”

“So it’s not really the same as being ill, not like if you have the flu,” said Alice.

“How so?”

“Well, if you have the flu, you can’t choose to feel sick or not. You just are. But if shooting someone is like being sick, but you can choose to shoot someone or not, then it’s not really like being sick.”

“And why should someone go to jail for being sick? You don’t send them to jail for having the flu,” said Sarah.

“But people have to know that they have options,” said Alder heatedly. “You can’t blame a doctor a hundred years ago for not using antibiotics, because they weren’t invented. You have to teach people that they have a choice, that they don’t have to hate black people.”

“So you send the policeman to school?” asked Alice.

“No; you have to punish him, but you aim to teach the next generation that they don’t have to hate black people.”

“So hating black people,” said Stephen, “is always wrong.”

“Well, someone might have reasons. If someone you loved was killed in rioting in South Africa, or after the end of white rule you lost your property.”

“So it’s okay for them to hate blacks?”

“No, I’m just saying why they might!”

“So it’s wrong for them to hate blacks?”

“Mostly, yes.”

“So when is it okay?”

“I don’t know, but it might be possible. See, in science, everything, every belief, every idea is sort of ‘just for now.’ Like Newton said an apple falls this way, and everyone said: ‘okay, so it does.’ Then Einstein came along and said: no, under certain conditions an apple falls this way instead, and everyone said: ‘okay, so it does.’ So because everything we know is always dependent on what we can measure, or what knowledge we have—or even the instruments we have—we have to say, everything we know is ‘just for now.’ That’s what I mean by truish. Racism is not good—that is truish, but it’s possible to imagine that there might be a condition that it would be right. Like if we discover a race on Mars where everyone always hated us, then we would be justified in judging that race as a whole. That would be racism, but it wouldn’t be wrong.”

There was a pause here.

“No, I don’t see that, Dad,” said Stephen. “I think both of those are wrong.”

“Why?”

“Well, the Martian race thing—it’s not racist to say that blacks are darker than whites, is it?”

“They aren’t always. There are a lot of gray areas.”

“Sure, but in general.”

“Yes, blacks are darker than whites.”

“So if these Martians always hate us, we are not being racist. Racism is saying a person has a—belief, or something about them, which they don’t have. If every Martian hates us, we aren’t being racist by judging them. It’s like saying it’s racist to judge every Martian as coming from Mars.”

“All right—what’s the other one?”

“This Newton thing,” he said. “Alice is better at science—we talked about this the other day. How did they know that Einstein was more—better—than Newton?”

“How? Well, what he described—what he predicted was more accurate.”

Stephen frowned. His forehead was damp with sweat. “So there is some—some standard. It’s more true because it’s more accurate.”

“Yes, but it’s not perfectly true.”

“Sure, but if something else comes along that’s better, it will only be because it’s more accurate.”

“Yes.”

“So there’s some standard of truth, which you compare the—theory to.”

“Yes.”

“So why not in right and wrong?”

“Because everything—every country has their own ideas. Everyone has their own viewpoint.”

“So, Dad,” said Stephen, “when you teach people about right and wrong, what do you say?”

“Well, I can’t teach you the whole course today!” laughed Alder. He noticed that his fingers were trembling, and clasped them together again. “And besides, it’s for university students. Though you’re doing very well, I must say! But I’d say that I try to teach people to think critically about ethical issues, and try to understand that there are no hard-and-fast answers, and that there are a lot of opinions about things that are hard to—put together.”

“So nothing is for certain in right and wrong.”

“No—we all want there to be—I mean wouldn’t life be great if there were! But there aren’t.”

Alice leaned forward. “So you just teach your opinion of what might be right or wrong under some—some—times.”

“Not quite—are you sure you’re not thirsty?”

“Okay, okay,” said Stephen, raising his hands and closing his eyes. “So there aren’t any clear answers.”

“No—and of course you’re a little too young to know this—this is supposed to come later…”

A sort of electric current ran through the cold room. Stephen lifted his hands to his mouth. “So we have been lied to.”

Alder blinked, and suddenly felt the chill. “What? What?”

Stephen stared at him. “You never said: ‘share sometimes, and sometimes don’t.’ You never said: ‘don’t lie unless you’re saying something nice.’ If I hit someone, you never said: ‘I’m sure you have a good reason.’ If I stole something, you never said: ‘it’s okay sometimes.’ You told me there was right and wrong. You never said it was just your opinion.”

“Well, it’s too complicated for children!” cried Alder, the cold slithering down his spine. “There are no answers for certain!”

“Dad,” said Stephen softly, “now I want to say why I am on strike.”

Alder stared at him, his eyes wide, awaiting a sentence.

“Dad, I think that you are pretending to teach something you do not understand.”

Alder’s eyes narrowed. The three children sat staring at him, and he felt his heart contract into a tiny point of darkness.

Chapter 36

Alder Walks and Smokes

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Alder’s failure to win over the children—especially his son, was a great sting, but it is something most parents do to themselves. They teach their children with the lazy dominance of absolutes, then defend their own actions with the lazy fog of relativism.

Alder dropped the silent children off at their houses, and then escaped the inevitable phone calls from their parents by going for a long, long walk.

What the hell was that all about? he wondered, feeling a strange, empty rage—and the need for a cigarette for the first time in years. Everyone has to grow up sometime; sooner is better than not at all.

But he also felt a strange heaviness, and a thin thread of underlying terror. His son’s eyes, their curiosity fading into confusion—and then, at the end, a kind of horror that made Alder’s heart contract painfully.

But how could I teach him that everything is relative without turning him into a monster? He pictured Stephen in the playground over a crying boy, staring back at the teacher, fists on hips: my daddy says I must have good reason!

Did I ever have this problem? he asked himself. I think I just accepted that my parents had good reason (there’s that phrase again!) for what they did, and that when you grow up, it is time to put away childish things. There is no man in the moon, and no absolutes in man…

He suddenly thought of Joanne sitting with Stephen; he felt sure that Stephen was crying bitterly, his thin chest heaving, and Alder felt an awful mix of brutal power and horrible loss. It’s time he knew warred with I wish he didn’t have to know…

When did I know there were no absolutes? He thought back, the years dropping in time with his random steps. I suppose that’s how I explained the growing tiredness of my parents. The years left their treads on your back. Perspectives just sort of attached to you, hanging heavy, and eventually your legs just buckled, and you lay there…

An old ache, old sadness, came upon him then, and his throat thickened. Am I becoming tired—at forty-four? I think my parents lasted at least a decade longer than that before falling under the rolling ball of general goo…

A violent inner motion seized him; he felt himself as a prison, all of a sudden, and had a wrenching desire to peel his skin off, and run in a flurry of blood and muscle to some unknown horizon. Everyone has good reason, he thought, and then the question came: Why did Joanne marry me?

He stopped and blinked. He did not know where he was, and for once lost the sensation of being observed. Why did Joanne marry me? We don’t talk about ideas—well we used to, when I wanted to impress her, when I showed off my brain as a sex organ, but now… Lord, I bet she doesn’t even know what courses I teach! What do we talk about? Mortgages, Stephen, financial administrivia of every kind, her parents’ health… My God, he thought, jerking his head as if to avoid a blow, what if I were just for Stephen? The vision of them at the kitchen table, Joanne comforting his crying son, suddenly turned a venomous green. She doesn’t care about my work, not really, or about my thoughts, such as they are, I don’t think I turn her on especially; that is mostly routine and familiarity and the occasional spice of runaway hormones…

He shook his head and walked on. He passed a convenience store, went in, bought cigarettes, matches, left the wrapper and silver insert on the counter, went outside and lit up, inhaling deeply.

A balance of opinions is more than just an opinion, he thought, unable to avoid circling back to Stephen’s barb. It’s called informed opinion, you brat! But what would you know; you have all the certainty of a twelve-year-old. Suddenly, he thought of the teenage years to come; the manly bloating, the strange smells, the sleep schedule that circled the globe, the openly scornful looks, his own desperate ex–alpha male posturing, the demand for respect that could never be satisfied, never reciprocated… He saw himself, at fifty-five, snarling at his students. Oh shit, I’m going to become one of ‘those’; we always thought they weren’t getting any at home; we never thought of what they were getting at home; the narrowed eyes of their children, who saw right through them…

The cigarette was making him dizzy. Wait a moment! What does that mean, right through them? There’s nothing to see through. I can balance perspectives like a clown with spinning plates! (Bad metaphor, he thought; a twelve-year-old would respect that, and the clown part doesn’t help you.) Right now I’m working on something pretty good; how Nietzsche was misinterpreted by the fascists…

He had been working on that for about a year, but it was so hard to find the time; the comfort of routine always beckoned, summoning interest was always hard. It’s just one more year that Nietzsche is behind me in time…

Television was also becoming a problem. There are some good shows on now, but I still spend too much time… It was so seductive; at the end of an evening, to beta out to the media space station and enjoy its zero gravity; he even wandered out to the TV room to floss and brush his teeth, and more than once thought of peeing in his empty beer glass, feeling too lazy to rouse himself. Next commercial, next commercial… And God forbid he found a goodish late movie while he flossed; he could increment his bedtime by fifteen minutes at a go until two, three o’clock, easy. And then curse himself before going to sleep, and again when he had to reel out of bed, helium-headed and crusty-eyed, at 7:00 a.m. Joanne was always up before him, and always went to bed at ten, while he fidgeted and surfed the net and checked pomo newsgroups and read old magazines while peeing sitting down and never quite wanted to go to bed or felt sleepy or felt that his day had really been worth resting from.

It’s because I spent too much time in grad school; I have the internal clock of a manic-depressive stewardess! The problem was that his day just never seemed quite over, not in the way of a farmer who had finished ploughing the back forty. And what the hell is a ‘back forty’ anyway?

Alder suddenly came back to himself, to his day, with a sickening thud in his stomach. Really, how am I supposed to explain complex moral issues to twelve-year-olds? And what if Alice’s father is some parasitical scumbag; probably is; what the hell does a grown man want to hang around a boy band for anyway; Boy Scouts is probably too obvious these days, and the priesthood takes too long to get into…

But there it was; there was no way to know if Alice’s father was any good or not. So why did I agree to talk to the kids? Well ,what the hell was I supposed to do—I am a professor of philosophy after all—which means I can’t confront people over the age of twelve… He frowned. Al frightened him a little, of course, all that bullish, random energy. What was he supposed to say? Do you think your daughter has a point? Man, that cigarette was good! I can’t wait to become that great camouflaged species of the modern urban world: the Stealth-SmokerTM. There’s nothing like a clandestine affair with nicotine to give every waking hour it’s furtive purpose! When to smoke, where to smoke, should I try to sleep or get up and smoke? No more than four a day! Occasionally bending a pack in frustration and throwing it out, then sneaking back at night and taping the half-broken cigarettes together with masking tape. The after-affair ablutions, the lip-washing and toothpaste! His wife was a bloodhound of scenting…

He came back to himself again; becoming quite jittery. He lit another cigarette. Christ I’m a fucking disco ball, fragmenting into tiny spinning thoughts!

But he could no longer remember exactly why he had been so upset, so he stubbed his cigarette out, then threw the pack away, and bought another one on his way home. Then he got lost, and hailed a cab.

Chapter 37

Dinner with Terry and the Bugles

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Angela greeted Terry in the hallway with a smile so bright it could have knocked over a lighthouse.

“Terry, so good to see you again!”

“Hello, Mrs. Bugle,” said Terry, grinning and blushing, thinking: I wish there were older daughters… He glanced around the house. It was nicely done up, in that careless Ikea fashion, but with much more expensive furniture. Bachelors just can’t scatter magazines and pillows that artfully.

“My children are not down yet,” she said, taking his coat, and turning her head. “Sarah, Justin, dinner!”

Sarah came down the stairs, a notebook tied around her neck. She came up to Terry and reached out her hand.

She’s very serious, thought Terry, taking her small hand. It’s hard to shake properly without any leverage.

“Do you like Terry?” she asked.

He felt oddly displaced for a moment, then realized it was half of ‘or Mr. Coleman?’ “Terry is fine,” he said, feeling like Jimmy on Seinfeld. Terry’s getting confused!

Sarah took her notebook from around her neck. “How long have you worked with my father?” she asked, pen poised.

Angela sighed. “Sarah, that can wait. I’m sure Terry would like a drink. She’s going through some sort of Brenda Starr phase. Reporting everything,” she added to his blank look.

Dave also appeared at the door to the basement.

“Terry-boy!” he boomed. “How the hell are you?” He walked forward and gave his standard handshake, which seemed designed to crush all Terry’s finger-bones into one tiny fossil. “Come down for a drink!”

“No, Dave,” said Angela evenly, “he’s not here to talk business. Come up and we’ll have a drink in the living room, like people who live together. Justin!” she cried. “Terry, what will you have? We have beer, wine, spirits, lemonade, every kind of pop, even Brio Chinotto, juice—milk?”

“Umm, a beer would be nice,” he said, feeling like someone who is nineteen and three days old, over at a friend’s parents’ place.

“What kind?”

“Smithwick’s?”

“Done. Dave?”

“I’ll have the same.”

“Lemonade for me, please,” said Sarah, her eyes never leaving Terry. She’s a little undersocialized, he thought.

Angela went off to get the drinks. Terry, Dave, and Sarah went into the living room.

Terry never ceased to be surprised by the neatness and well-proportioned nature of rooms maintained by stay-at-home women. This was part of the great mystery of knickknacks—what was the point of the descending row of ceramic ducks on the mantelpiece, where would you even buy such things?—it was part of the mystery of all the little things that go into making up a home… It was like visiting another planet. Terry was a bachelor through and through, which meant old gray coffee in scattered mugs, a half-hanging shower curtain, no matching plates, speakers almost half the size of his futon. And pictures hung wherever the last tenant’s nails happened to be.

But this room—it was well done, no question about it. It was fairly girly, true, but in a pleasing, mom-like way. The cushions were well placed, dark but flowery; there was ridged beige wallpaper with little vertical stripes—and a bar of color just around the ceiling. A wicker table with nice magazines, a thin brass cat, stitched, homey homilies over the fireplace. And a whole lot of ducks.

“Angela loves ducks,” said Dave, settling into the sofa.

“Actually,” said Sarah gravely, “Mom said once she likes ducks, and now everyone in the family gives her ducks. It’s a joke,” she added.

Terry blinked, then shook his head and sat. Sarah was a little hypnotic.

Two golden Labradors waddled into the room, their hind ends like swaying blonde carpets.

“This is Timber and Woodrow,” said Dave. They came up to Terry and sniffed his crotch.

“They do that,” said Sarah.

“Just flick their noses,” laughed Dave.

“No—push them gently,” said Sarah.

Terry laughed, blushing again. “Good boys!”

Dave whistled piercingly. Terry jumped; the dogs withdrew.
Angela came into the room, carrying a tray with a checkered little cloth and frosted mugs of beer.

Wow, thought Terry.

“Beer, beer, lemonade, hard lemonade for the hostess… Is Justin down yet?”

“We got the house wired last fall,” said Dave, “because you can spend your entire life trying to get a teenager to hear you. I’d rather have wired him. Don’t put that in your notebook, Sarah,” he said, seeing her pen rise. “Just—interact with us. You’ll make Terry feel like a specimen.”

Terry wanted to smile at her, but Dave was looking at him. He gave her a good thought instead.

“I’ll get him,” said Angela, rising and going out.

“So,” said Dave, still looking at Terry.

“How many hours a week do you work?” asked Sarah.

Terry opened his mouth. Dave laughed. “Sweetie, we’re having some big people drinks and not talking about work, at least for a while.” He turned back to Terry. “Where are you from again?”

“St. Marys.”

“Never been there.”

“Is Mary a saint?” asked Sarah. “I thought she was a Goddess.”

Dave shot a glance at her. “I don’t think ‘Goddess’ is the right word, Sar.”

“What is then?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know why it’s called that,” said Terry.

“How many people?” asked Sarah.

“Not many. Fifteen hundred?”

“Let’s just say this: when Terry left, they had to change the population sign!” Dave roared with laughter. “I grew up in a small town too; my father was mayor. I learned everything about life going about with him on the back of a hay cart while he gave speeches to the farmers. And he got them some good deals too, good cash from the Feds. He said to me: Son, you can go and preach ‘we’ve given up this, but we’ve gotten that,’ and everyone yawns. Go and yell ‘no surrender!’ and you’ve got one happy, happy mob!” He sighed deeply. “Lord, I miss that old guy.”

“He smelt of machines,” said Sarah.

“Well, he loved to fix things, no shame in that, sweetie. What does your father do, Terry?”

“He’s a vice principal.”

“High school?”

“Junior high.”

“Remember, there’s a ‘pal’ in ‘principal,’” said Sarah. “That’s how I remember to spell it. I have to use it a lot more than ‘principle’ with an l-e. The principal goal of this or that. Never: this is the ‘principle’ of something, except in science, which has a lot of principles. They’re like axioms in math.”

“She loves logic, the little devil,” said Dave. “Her math teacher thinks she’s the Second Coming. Everyone competes for second; they all know who’ll be first.”

Justin came into the room, carrying a can of Diet Coke.

“Hey,” he said, turning a chair around from the dining table and sitting astride it.

“Hi,” said Terry.

“Terry,” said Angela, “this is Justin. He’s just signed a recording contract.”

“Mom,” said Justin. “You promised not to introduce me like that!”

“Sorry, dear.”

“You’re a singer?” asked Terry.

Justin nodded.

“What kind of music?”

Justin shrugged. “Whatever we can get away with. It’s sort of a lark.”

Dave beamed. “He was doing karaoke in a friend’s basement, and the dad, who’s a music producer, signed him on the spot.”

“Like Lana Turner,” said Sarah.

“Exactly,” smirked Justin. “Exactly like Lana Turner.”

“I’ve thrown some money into the band,” said Dave. “Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur. We have faith in this family.”

“So Terry,” said Angela, leaning forward. “How do you like life in the big city?”

“I don’t know,” said Terry. “I spend most of the time in the office…”

“Well, that’s no good!” she said. “We have to get you out a little. Bring him up to the cottage, Dave.”

“When was the last time you had a day off?” asked Sarah.

“Terry is very excited with his work at the moment,” said Dave. “I keep telling him to go home!”

Terry shifted on the couch. It was very deep. “I have a big presentation on… Well, it’s…”

“No—tell,” said Angela.

“Terry has come up with a new product,” said Dave. “And we’re going to show it to some new investors on Monday.”

“Is it any good?” asked Angela.

Terry frowned. “In what way?”

“Does it follow the principle of excellence,” said Sarah. “That’s ‘principle’ with an l-e.”

“I mean,” said Angela, “will it sell a lot?”

“We have no idea; we haven’t…”

Dave snorted. “It will revolutionize the way that software is written—for Windows and the web.”

“I get tons of advertising in my email,” said Sarah. “Some of it is very rude. Can you write something to stop that?”

“No,” said Terry. “Most ads are sent from Hotmail accounts—online email. Companies create accounts, send the ads, then close them down.”

“And you can’t stop that?”

Terry shook his head. “It’s impossible to trace. That’s not how the web…”

“But what about this development thing you’ve written?” asked Angela, leaning forward. “Is it as good as my husband says?”

“Well, it’s very early, but I think it’s a good idea. I don’t know about the…”

Dave laughed. “I said to Terry—I said: tell me, my boy, would you use this kind of tool to write software? And he said yes, of course, he was creating it so he could use it. There are four million Access developers in the US alone; if we capture even ten percent of them, at five hundred dollars US per copy, that’s some serious scratch. I sit in my office these days, thinking of the environmental market, and I can barely stay awake.”

Angela smiled at Terry. “What does it do exactly?”

“It takes up valuable dinner time,” said Dave, whistling through his teeth. “I smell, I smell… Is that your famous manicotti?”

Angela smiled, white spots on her cheek.

“Italian food so good,” murmured Dave, leaning towards Terry, “you’d swear she was a Mafia wife.”

“If she were,” said Justin, “that would really help my singing career.”

“It’s not a career,” said Sarah. “It’s a lark.”

“Vulcan!” he snapped.

“Relativist!”

Angela rose. “All right, let’s go bury these monsters under some carbs. Terry, what kind of salad dressing do you like?”

“Any kind is fine.”

“We have vinaigrette, blue cheese, Thousand Island, Caesar, Greek, Italian—all low fat, I’m afraid.”

“I swear to God, five thousand sit-ups a day, I still can’t lose this middle,” said Dave, patting his stomach.

“Actually,” said Terry, “you lose that, you’re cold all the time. My dad is really skinny. Eats whatever he wants. Drives my mom mad.”

Angela snorted. “There’s one of those at our luncheons. She can eat half the buffet and still fit into a size two. Pure evil. Once, she even complained about being unable to gain weight. Once.”

“When Aunt Rachel was pregnant,” said Sarah, “she looked like a snake with a watermelon inside.”

Dave laughed. “Who told you that?”

“You did.”

“Not bad. Not bad.”

“All right,” said Angela, “get up, you slothful lot. To the table.”

As she passed by Terry, she murmured, so low he barely heard: “I need to see you.”

Chapter 38

Gordon and Alder

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Gordon was almost at the end of his rope. He had tried and tried—once more with the BabbleFish’s help—to translate his thesis into something approaching the language of modern academia, but he felt like he was burying a child in dust bunnies, or spray-painting the Mona Lisa with WD-40. And now it was September. A new term was starting, and he still had no advisor. He’d been working on his Great Idea all summer, but without an advisor—he was just swiping his library card for no purpose.

About three o’clock in the afternoon, Gordon entered Alder’s office.

Alder had been keeping his office hours, which was a good time to catch up on his paperwork, if there was any, or to stare at the bookcase and dissolve into dreamy, touchy abstractions.

Office hours were a constant source of irritation for him. His students did not tend to do very well (once, they did worse than random on a multiple-choice exam) yet neither did they come to him for help.

Like most graduate students, Alder had suffered under his own professors, and so came into his teaching role primed for contempt. The titanic indifference and incompetence of his students did not help this, and his twice-weekly office hours only added to his frustration.

The hollow terror he often felt when alone could only be assuaged by inner distractions. The following topics were well-trod habitual paths:

❖where he stood in the academic pecking order

❖where he would like to go for his sabbatical

❖how little the media understood the real issues

❖whether he would ever be called on by the media to explain them

❖why students were so indifferent

❖whether Joanne still loved him

❖how little she understood his work

❖whether the referees on academic journals had it in for him

❖how creative he could be if he ever got the time

❖how could he conceivably discipline Stephen when puberty hit?

❖who his allies and enemies were in the department

❖how stuck the older professors were in their thinking

❖how stuffy his office could be in winter

❖or cold

❖whether the cleaners really dusted, or just pretended to

❖why he had the same tacky tin wastebasket that they had in the cafeteria

❖was he hungry, or just bored?

❖he should really keep more snacks in here

❖he always had too many things on his To Do list

❖man, it’s going to be a long time until retirement

❖thinking about how America was a shiny commercial monster feasting on poor countries

❖the poor people in those poor countries!

❖they never make any good movies about academics

❖Hollywood is so anti-intellectual

❖who would play me in a movie?

❖why British intellectuals always just seem smarter

❖maybe bad teeth are inversely related to intelligence

When there was a knock at his door, it took Alder almost ten seconds to register it. He blinked, sat forward suddenly on his chair, felt dizzy, and picked up a pen. I should get a radio in here, so I could pretend I didn’t hear the knocking over the classical music…

“Come in,” he said, writing his name on an old interdepartmental memo.

Gordon entered, and stood by the door.

“One moment,” said Alder, trying to write his name backwards. Redla Redlam Redrum.

Finally he looked up. “Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon, Professor Parsons,” said Gordon. Alder heard the exhaustion in the young man’s voice, and steeled himself for a grading petition.

Gordon sat down heavily. There was a pause.

“Are you in one of my classes?” prompted Alder, since Gordon seemed to have some difficulty starting, and he hated silence when someone else was in the room; it always seemed resentful.

“No,” said Gordon. “But I did sit in on one of your lectures yesterday: ‘The History of Western Thought.’”

“Ah,” smiled Alder. “My ‘passion’ speech.”

“It was—well, quite moving to me, and gave me some…hope.”

Alder blinked. “Hope?”

“You believe that passion is central to the pursuit of ideas. That philosophy is more of a calling than a profession. That calm detachment is not as important as rabid dedication.”

“Everyone who thinks cares deeply, almost maniacally, about ideas,” said Alder.

“Well, I’d never really thought about that—I thought I was very rational, but I have been—oh, this doesn’t matter…”

“No—go on,” said Alder, fascinated. The boy hurts…

“Well, I have a thesis idea that I really care about, and I was trying to disguise it, because everyone disliked it so much, but everyone seems to see that I care anyway, so I knew that you were my last chance, because I’ve talked to everyone else, and it’s not because I don’t value you, but I kept you for last, like a reserve…”

“Who have you talked to?”

“Most everyone in the department. Two in history. One in economics.” Gordon sighed. “That was a long shot…”

“And what has the feedback been?”

“Oh, too ambitious, out-of-step, too radical, unprovable, untestable, self-referential, more of a PhD, a poor lead-in to a PhD, a lot of other stuff…” Gordon shrugged. “No one will let me do it.”

“I see. And is ‘it’ the only thing you want to do?”

Gordon shook his head, his cheeks red. “Not at first, no, but—but I think now that if no one is interested in this idea, then this might not be the right place for me, you know, if I choose something else, I will be accepting that academics is no place for what I really care about, and what would be the point of that? I mean staying here. It would be a lie. For me, anyway.”

“I see,” said Alder. The kid was almost in tears, and that was more interesting than any idea he might have. He’s almost crying over an idea—how strange! He must be an only child, unused to or unable to deal with conflict… A phrase came to him, from a long-lost psychology roommate: ‘pressured speech.’ This boy has ‘pressured speech.’

“So you think that I might be able to help you?” asked Alder, an odd sort of medieval benevolence flooding his bone marrow.

“Sure—well I think so. I hope so,” said Gordon, his voice trembling, his eyes begging orbs of naked need. “I’m—I’ve given up trying to say: this is true, or that it even might be true, but I really want to try, to see what happens… I mean, I might find out that it’s false, in which case all right, no master’s for me, but I feel that it’s true in my bones, right there, and I’ll do it anyway, even if I’m not in school, because it’s become kind of an idée fixe for me—not that that makes it any more true, but I can’t stop thinking about it, almost to the exclusion of anything else.”

“That may not be the most objective viewpoint,” said Alder gently.

“No, I know. I’ve given up on that; that will never be—believed. But I am very passionate about this idea, I know that much for certain. And that will be enough to drive me to—whatever conclusion I come to. I will either learn my theory is flawed—and it’s a big enough theory that disproving it is useful, I think—or that the philosophers are flawed—which is also important, but arrogant I know—or that rational analysis is impossible in this area. Which is also helpful. I know how important limiting reason is, these days. Not that I’m assuming anything of your beliefs, Professor,” added Gordon quickly.

“I see,” said Alder, leaning back. This unstable shimmering of need, pride, and desire was invading him, squirming through his nerves, charging him with overstimulated delight. “Why don’t you just tell me the idea, then.”

Gordon swallowed. “Well,” he said, “I think that those philosophers who believe in ‘higher realities’ have to advocate dictatorship as the ideal political model, while those who believe in empirical, objective reality have to advocate limited democracy.”

The words rolled around in Alder’s brain, awash in lovely, empty generalities. He fingered his inner depth charges, not wanting to rush this.

“That is quite a sweeping statement,” said Alder slowly. “So let’s break it down and look at it in more detail.”

Gordon brightened; it was adorable, really. “Yeah—that would be great!”

“Now ‘higher realities’ means something beyond physical reality, right?”

“Right.”

“No problem—I can accept that. But of course you will have to prove that physical reality exists.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, if you are saying that there is a difference between ‘higher’ realities and physical reality, you will have to prove that they are different at all. Some philosophers, you know—Descartes being one—believe that the physical world is no more ‘real’ than heaven. So you’ll have to show that he is wrong.”

“O—kay,” said Gordon, writing in his notebook.

Alder sucked his cheeks in, almost laughing. He could imagine what Gordon was writing: ‘Step 1: prove Descartes wrong…’

“Now,” he continued, “you will also have to prove that metaphysics is linked to epistemology, and epistemology to ethics—since I assume that you think dictatorship is not as good as, what was it, limited democracy? Finally, you have to tie ethics into politics. All in a seamless and perfectly reasoned progression.”

Gordon continued writing. “Yes—I think I’ve got that.”

Alder was dumbfounded. The boy was immune to sarcasm. “Now what do you mean by ‘democracy?’” he asked after a moment.

“Well, voting, property rights, human rights. Independent courts. The separation of church and state. Freedom of expression.”

“And does this kind of democracy exist in the modern world? Or at any time?”

“In a perfect form, no. We have a mixed economy now, so property rights are compromised… The separation of church and state is also imperfect, of course…”

“Among many, many other imperfections—of form, not ethics, since I wouldn’t want to go there. What about dictatorship?”

“The—absolute rule of an individual. No property rights or freedom of speech or the press. No due process of law.”

“Again, none of which exists in absolute form.”

“I think they are more in evidence than perfect democracies,” said Gordon, with a sudden flash in his voice.

“Perhaps,” said Alder mildly. “Now I can think of some ways to simplify your thesis—or perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that it might be improved, or more acceptable perhaps, if you leave some of the conclusions to be drawn by your reader.”

Gordon frowned. “Okay—Okay… What were you thinking of?”

“Well, let’s say that you forget about proving which one is right.” Alder held up his hand. “Just as a possibility. Assume that there is a ‘higher’ reality and a ‘mundane’ one, or use whatever term you prefer, and then say that there are certain tendencies for certain kinds of conclusions—without saying which ones are more valid—and then define those tendencies in the broadest possible terms. You can’t bring property rights into it, because there are a lot of intelligent observers who would question their validity—and even within our own society they are seriously limited for the sake of the social good. Even voting might not help you, because that is a flawed and often deceptive practice. Perhaps something along the lines of ‘collective decision-making,’ or ‘horizontal’ versus ‘vertical’ societies.” Alder began warming to his topic. “You have to steer clear of absolutes, which is hard for the young I know, but I think you are a bit of a right-winger, or a libertarian perhaps, but rest assured I have the same conversation with leftists as well. For better or worse, the Western world has settled into a belief that the middle road is best. Save the low, curb the high, that sort of thing. Now you are clearly an idealist—which is interesting, and all the more so because you are arguing against idealism—and idealism is all right in my book; it indicates that you take ideas seriously, and want to find the world through words, so to speak. But the last century, if anything, convinced everyone that idealism and absolutism was a very bloody business, very bloody indeed.” My God, I sound like C.S. Lewis, or some fruity old English prof! thought Alder, then frowned. Where was I?

Gordon cleared his throat. “So you—you don’t believe that dictatorships are worse than democracies?”

“Well, tell me what you mean by ‘worse.’”

“Worse—um—less happy. Less free.”

“You are equating freedom with happiness. That is arguable.”

Gordon’s brow furrowed. “But you live in freedom. Don’t you prefer it?”

“Of course I do, because that’s what I’m used to. That’s what I have been raised to expect. But I would never for a moment say that freedom is some sort of absolute value.”

“Are there any absolute values?”

Alder smiled. “That’s sort of a tricky question, Gordon, because of course if I say ‘no,’ then you can pounce on me and say: ‘aha, arguing that there are no absolute values is positing at least one absolute value—and since there is one, there may be more.’ And if I say ‘yes,’ then the hunt is on for what they are to me, which I really could not tell you.”

Gordon blinked. “So there aren’t any?”

“I believe that the question of universal values is much like the question of God’s existence. Unanswerable. I would say that modern philosophy has recognized the futility of asking such questions. Rather than saying: ‘does God exist?’ it is, I think, far more interesting and useful to say: ‘what does the idea of God mean to each culture or person?’ Or: ‘why do people believe in God?’ Or: ‘how does the concept of God change over time?’”

Gordon sat back in his chair. He passed his hands in front of his eyes.

“It is also a question of utility,” said Alder. “Suppose I came up with some sort of magical logical solution to the problem of God’s existence; something so compelling and obvious that it was amazing that everyone else had missed it. Suppose I can finally prove that God does or does not exist. So what?”

Gordon stared at him.

“If I say: ‘God does not exist; it is proved,’” said Alder. “Is that going to change the mind of one religious person? No—it’s about faith, they’ll say. What about: ‘God does exist?’ Atheists are not going to start going to church, are they? They’ll quibble about logic or say that God’s existence has nothing to do with organized religion. Nothing will change, really.”

“Because everything is just opinion?”

Alder smiled. “No—you’re still thinking in absolutes. If you say: everything is opinion, then one thing is not opinion, which is that everything is opinion. You have to stay away from those kinds of assertions altogether—they are very deceptive.”

“So you cannot think logically about things.”

“About things—you mean things in the world?”

“Yes.”

“But we have no proof that things in the world really exist, or that their nature is anything like how we perceive them.”

“But two and two make four; that we know.”

“Yes, but there is no such thing as the number ‘two’ in the world. There are two rocks, and two more make four, but they are not equal in the way numbers are. They all weigh slightly different, say.”

“But what is the point of saying ‘God was perceived this way last century, and now is perceived this way?’”

“I think it helps people to overcome the habitual nature of their own thinking. It allows them to become critical of their own opinions. They say: ‘oh, the Middle Ages were this and the Renaissance was that and the Enlightenment was the other.’ But every period has its contradictions; every rule has its exception, and every group opposing groups within it. Physicists don’t even know what matter is anymore, but we’re supposed to explain the Middle East? It’s preposterous!” Alder’s heart was suddenly beating fast. He took a deep breath. “The point is that it is useful to examine your own beliefs.”

“So informed opinions are better than uninformed opinions?”

“Again, I don’t know exactly what you mean by ‘better,’ but if you mean, perhaps, ‘richer’ or ‘more complete,’ then I would say yes, I think so.”

“All right,” said Gordon. He felt a spinning sickness in his innards, but pressed on, driven by his love of his idea. “I think I see where you’re coming from. It’s not—productive to talk about absolute beliefs. But what if I pursue this thing that I think is possibly true, not true just here or now or in my way, but True, with a capital T—and suppose that I fail—would you consider that a valid thesis?”

Alder rubbed his eyes. “The problem is that every single component of your thesis—of which there are scores—is in itself a problem no one cares about anymore. Are the senses valid? Is there a higher reality? Does logic lead to truth? Is there a relationship between knowledge and ethics? Ethics and politics? These questions are not even questions anymore; it’s like—it’s like you’re trying to reopen the debate about whether the sun goes around the earth or vice versa. It’s horse-and-buggy—totally out of step. And a little hokey, if you don’t mind my saying so. It’s very grand, very ‘system-building,’ very ‘nineteenth century.’”

Gordon frowned and wiped the corner of an eye. “What if—what if I were to… Okay—how’s this? You think it’s self-referential, okay, what if it is an exercise in logic which—and I can do this, I think—which says that ‘if logic were true, then this would be the result of certain kinds of thinking.’”

Alder hesitated.

Gordon rushed on: “Or if that’s too much, how about I get rid of the logic part, and say: ‘Okay, if you are this kind of philosopher, you are likely to advocate this kind of political system.’ That’s all. Do you think that might be worthwhile?”

“Another problem is that what Plato thought of as a ‘democracy’ would be very different from how we think of it now. You’d be comparing apples and oranges. Actually, they’re scarcely both fruit.”

“So even with the broadest possible strokes…”

“Look,” said Alder, “I don’t want to be the academic ogre; Lord knows we’ve all suffered under the heels of dinosaurs… I never scuttle an idea on first hearing; it takes me some time to digest as well. Do this: write me up an abstract, taking into account what we’ve talked about here. Be enthusiastic by all means, but don’t go overboard. Remember, I have to sell it as well. Does that sound fair?”

“Fair—fair oh, yes, thank you, thank you,” said Gordon, his voice thick, his hands wandering over his cheeks. “I can have something on your desk by Monday!”

“No, not Monday—take your time. Let some of your—admirable excess—evaporate a bit. I don’t want a manifesto.”

“So—so—an introduction?”

“Not more than a few pages.”

“I can—distill that.”

Alder raised his finger. “A one sentence description. Keep everything within that.”

“I can, yes,” said Gordon, his head bobbing. He rose, leaned forward, and shook Alder’s hand tightly. “Thanks again, Professor.”

“Listen, I appreciate the enthusiasm. Let’s shape it somehow.”

After the young man had gone, Alder was quite surprised to feel a pit open in his chest, as if his lungs had been replaced by a strange, breathless vacuum, and he suddenly remembered when he had asthma, as a very young boy. The memory was pungent: he was leaning out his bedroom window, at night, his tears drying in the sparkling wind, as his father poked a burning pile of teddy bears in the back yard.

Chapter 39

The BöyBandTM Video

￼Dingbat Diamonds

The costumes were ready, and Al was in a frenzy. He had not scrimped on his spending, which was a relief to him; he felt he had paid for the right to yell.

It felt like everyone was inert without his efforts; his yelling, of course, made everyone cautious, and they waited for his approval on simple things, which made him even more crazed.

Justin and the others were quite wild, naturally, and taunted him by dancing around and telling him to chill out. They had cute little wings, and had decided that, instead of having halos over their heads, they had little ‘hellos’ instead. Al doubted anyone would get the joke, or even if it was a joke. These Ritalin-kids—who the fuck knows anymore?

The delicate precision of lighting and angles, of dangling microphones and stoned extras provoked him endlessly. The director was a burly, bald man in a multicolored Moroccan fez, who had an odd, calm charismatic confidence. He was continually surrounded by people who should, in Al’s eyes, have been coming to Al.

He glanced down at his clipboard, which had the following list:

Activities For The Apprentice Angels (AA):

❖The AA arrive at a park and see a red-faced boy really freaking out about his inability to solve his Rubik’s Cube; they discuss it amongst themselves, miming how to solve the Cube. By the time they have sorted it out, they look at the kid again, but the Competing Angels are standing behind him, laughing, as the boy looks down and picks up the Game Boy they’ve dropped in front of him, throwing the Rubik’s Cube into the garbage. The AA are crestfallen.

❖The AA then go to a junior high school where a girl is dreaming about a cute boy, who ignores her. They discuss how to make her more attractive, then decide to give a special glow to her hair and make her teeth sparkle. One of them goes up and tickles her invisibly; she throws her hair back and laughs, her hair and teeth glowing. The AA look up to see if the boy notices; he is staring at another boy, who is throwing back his head and laughing, his hair and teeth sparkling, the Competing Angels behind him, giggling. The AA and the girl are crestfallen.

❖A little kid runs away after being bullied in a schoolyard, and the AA gather near him, miming that they will make his heart brave and muscles strong. They gesture at him, and his chest swells up and his jaw sets manfully. He goes up to the bully. The other kids stop and stare. The boy puts up his fists. The AA notice the Competing Angels behind the bully, who gets up with a big smile and puts his hand out to shake the kid’s hand. The little kid looks bewildered and all the other kids laugh at him. The AA and the boy are crestfallen.

❖They try to help a thin girl eat, but the Competing Angels give her a fat friend instead, so two kids are happy instead of one…

There were more, but Al thought they would just be able to handle those. (He thought the gay-boy one was too risky, but Iain had insisted that it be shot, and Al thought he could always drop it in the editing room, claiming bad lighting.) He had decided to shoot them all in the same school hallway, claiming artistic unity. They mocked him for his cheapness, but acceded.

The boys were quite natural at their roles. They easily projected that earnest happy do-goodery the video required, and did wonderful crestfallen looks. They were having a great time.

Al watched the extras carefully, trying to discern their reactions to the BöyBand. The girls were quite excited by Justin, of course; the kid was good-looking, no question, and the others were just goofy enough to complement his chiseled seriousness.

Justin was almost alarmingly professional. He strode among the extras like a seasoned politician, adjusting hats, pulling the glasses off one girl, making little jokes, pointing and smiling at kids he didn’t know.

“He’s gone beyond irony,” whispered Todd.

“He’s become Platonic Cheese,” said Jeanine, who was an extra.

“I feel myself dissolving into a vapor of perfectly poised opposites,” said Gerald, and they looked at him strangely.

“Yeah, good one Ger,” said Chris. “Tiger Beat will love it.”

“Now boys,” said Iain. “No bickering.”

“Bitch!”

“Wannabe!”

“Ooh,” said Todd lazily, “is it my turn to say ‘stop bickering’?”

“All right,” said Chris, “but only if you and I bicker next.”

Al came over. “All right, we’re ready for the great Rubik’s Cube lawsuit.”

“Lawsuit?” asked Chris.

“Well I wasn’t sure of the address of the head office in Oslo or wherever the fuck it is, so we’ll just have to hope that they’re happy with the involuntary product placement.”

Justin arrived and heard this.

“Oh no, Al—we should pixelate the product!”

“What?”

“Pixelate, like the white-trash faces on…”

They all chimed in, singing in lovely harmony:

“Bad boys, bad boys, what you gonna do…”

The extras joined in:

“What you gonna do when they come for you…”

After another few choruses, Al managed to calm them down.

“Pixelation is way cool,” said Justin. “It’s like putting (TM) next to an imaginary product. By the way, I’d really like to make sure that that little (TM) is next to every text of ‘BöyBandTM.’ It needs to be right in the graphic, and all over the website. It’s essential.”

“My God,” said Al, “and would you like me to take all the brown M&M’s out?”

“What?” asked Justin.

Chris snorted. “That’s what they were parodying with the bread in Spinal Tap, dude! Some OCD ’80s rock band.”

“It’s not cool to know the origin of a parody. The parody is all,” deadpanned Justin.

Or was he deadpanning? They had no idea.

Chapter 40

Dave Saves the Day

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Terry became a fanatic; his vision of the Database Builder grew by leaps and bounds, without reason or restraint. Pierre was the skeptical bedrock of what was actually possible, and regularly struck down Terry’s sketchy whiteboard fantasies.

They quickly perfected the art of friendly banter. For Pierre, Terry’s hair looked like two teddy bears stapled on his head; for Terry, Pierre had the soul of a sixty-year-old man trapped in the body of a twenty-three-year-old.

Pierre was initially hired to work on the Database Builder so that Terry could finish the systems for the clients. The lure of R&D, however, proved too strong for Terry’s twitchy fingers, and he began slithering new code into the product, working late at night and, sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep, very early in the morning.

Every morning, Dave would storm into the programming room and say, with forced joviality:

“Is the program finished yet?”

To which Terry would scowl: “Not yet.”

“When?”

Not looking up: “As soon as possible.”

Pause.

“It is impossible to run a business in the absence of reasonable estimates. Perhaps we should have a meeting…”

This was no idle threat, Terry knew. He would will his fingers from the keyboard, and look up. “We’re working as hard as we can.”

“No one is questioning your dedication,” said Dave. (This always irritated Terry—No one? There are five people in the company!) “I’m not trying to fuck you up; I don’t care how long it is, but I need something.”

“I’d tell you if I could.”

Pause.

“A week? A month? A year?”

“Somewhere between two weeks and two months.”

“No,” said Dave decisively. “Two months we can’t do.”

Terry paused. “Then we’ll have to drop some features.”

“Whatever you need,” said Dave. “Just give me something I can sell; hopefully at least a few days before we run out of money!”

Dave felt all the elemental helplessness of any business owner who has no idea what his employees do. His basic train of thought, repeated at least fifty times a day, was:

❖Why the fuck does it take so long?

❖Someone in this goddamned business must be finishing software; I see shit on shelves.

❖What if these fuckers are idiots; and I’ve grabbed the tail of the wrong comet?

❖When will this bull software market collapse?—what if we don’t make it in time?—this kind of gold-rush might never happen again in my lifetime.

❖They seem smart, but who the fuck am I to judge?

❖The investors are going to ask me all these questions, and I’ll have no clue how to answer them

❖Don’t these little propeller heads know we have deadlines?

❖Do they think I can just wave my hand and conjure more money?

❖Every day they don’t finish, we lose over two thousand dollars.

❖What if it doesn’t work?

That last thought was too terrifying; Dave always shied away from it. I can't have another fuck-up. That would be four in the last six years. It would become almost impossible to raise money for the next one.

So Dave sat in his office and cold-called potential clients and cajoled his way into meetings and hemmed and hawed over schedules, phone jammed ’twixt shoulder and ear, as if he were too busy to see people without adequate notice, and went over cash-flow projections, to see where another week could be eked out, and phoned people who might have another ten thou to invest and played the endless shell game of ‘just another month’ with creditors and suppliers, and called the bank and checked his stocks on-line. But most of all, in the time-honored tradition of the start-up CEO, he waited and cajoled. He waited for the product to be ready, and bullied and begged people to let them pitch, and creditors to do-si-do just once more as he fiddled with the numbers…

Finally, he could wait no more. One morning, he came in and said to Terry and Pierre:

“Listen boys, I have to be honest with you. I would love nothing more than to give you all the time in the world, but here’s where we are. We have fifty thousand dollars in the bank. We burn almost that every month. If this product is not ready to demonstrate in two days, I have no idea how we’re going to make it. We have a sales cycle of at least a couple of weeks. We get a commitment, I might get a loan to limp us to the Purchase Order. I mean—I’m open to suggestions, but I really don’t know what the fuck we’re gonna do.”

“Look, we’ve got a problem, Dave,” said Terry wearily, his eyes like white marbles in charcoal smudges. “We found out two days ago that if we try to change the data type of a field, we have to delete it and recreate it. But every time we try to delete a field with data in it, the database engine says it can’t be done. So we’re trying to figure out how to store the data, delete the field, recreate it, then put the data back in. But it’s tough. What if the field stores word processing documents? Or hyperlinks? Or the new data type isn’t compatible with the old data type? I mean, what if they take a text field and try to turn it into a date field? We’re trying to figure out what can be allowed, but it’s hard—there are so many possible combinations.”

Dave stared at them for a moment, then shook his head. “Man, I wish we were in Texas.”

“What? Why?”

He leaned forward. “Because, my friends, I would then be legally allowed to go into my office, pick up a gun, load it, and come back and shoot you both.”

Terry blinked. “But…”

“And I’d get off scot-free too. All I’d have to do is get a jury of software CEOs and say: well, my brothers, these employees of mine cratered our company because they were trying to solve problems that might come up oh, say, once every thousand fucking years! They won’t just let me off—hell, they’ll give me a fucking reward.”

“Dave—you…”

Dave suddenly threw back his head and laughed. He had a lot of cavities. “Look, boys, just finish this fucker so I can bring food to my family without having to circle the doggie park with a polo mallet! If you’re dealing with that kind of bullshit—Christ even I can see that’s pretty goddamned obscure—then just tell the user to fuck off and move on. Forget this problem—I know, I know, you’re perfectionists, that’s great, but you’re working on the Ark’s banisters when the rain has already started. Oh, that’s a great thing—let’s say to the liquidation boys: here, here’s a CD of the most perfect piece of almost-finished software to throw in your fucking landfill! Please boys, please!” Dave clasped his hands in front of his chest. “Just give me something I can sell. I don’t ask for much. It doesn’t have to have time travel and porn; just something I can click on, make people go ‘wow’ and write us a cheque. Can we do that? Can we?”

Terry took a deep breath. “We can demo the creation of a table and form, and the integration of it into the system, but not the unlimited editing of existing tables…”

“What about deleting fields?”

Pierre and Terry exchanged glances. “Sure,” said Pierre. “That was done—what—three weeks ago?”

Dave leaned his head against the door. “Three weeks. Thirty three thousand dollars. How much did your degree cost? Never mind. I’m setting meetings up for the day after tomorrow.”

“We have no idea how this is going to edit queries…” said Terry.

“I could give a flying… We’re so low on cash, I’ll have to drive us. You’re both coming. I’m hoping to set a meeting up with CanCorp in Boston on Friday. It’ll be an 8:00 a.m. number, so we’ll have to go down the night before. And I don’t want any coding on the road; you guys are taking years off my life as it is. So finish whatever you’ve got to do by tomorrow afternoon. We’ll leave at 3:00 p.m. Okay?”

Terry and Pierre nodded.

“You guys have suits?”

They nodded again.

“Not that powder-blue, grade nine grad shit, but real suits?”

They shook their heads.

“All right. I’ll give you the name of my tailor. Go this afternoon and get some suits. Decent suits. Don’t spend a fortune; tell him you’re tech guys; you’re more believable in off-the-rack. But look professional somehow. And boys?”

They looked at him.

“No system crashes during the demo. I almost sweat through my goddamned jacket as it is.”

After Dave left, Terry looked at his code on the screen. The screen saver kicked in. Pierre whispered:

“I told you, anal-boy!”

Dave went back to his office, his heart pounding. He rubbed his eyes hard with the heels of his hands. Jesus Christ, what if I hadn’t gone in there? Then he smiled broadly. Well, Davey-B—that’s why you get the big bucks!

Chapter 41

Justin Can’t Sleep

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Justin frowned at the ceiling, then rolled on his side and looked at the red LED.

3:19am

It’s 3:19 a.m. I’m back in school again. That morning (the morning of the previous day?), he’d been taking his mid-morning dump—he always had two—and he’d leaned forward to read the graffiti. A faded, cold war one: ‘Mutate now, before the post-war rush.’ And a small text, despairing in its little simplicity: ‘Shit. School’s in. Again.’ Justin sighed. Exactly.

When he was in his early anti-tainment phase, around fourteen or so, he picked on easy targets, and used to buy the Weekly World News, and frame titles like ‘Anguished Cry Of Husband: Bigfoot Stole My Wife!’ One of the ads in the rag was for an LED clock that projected the time onto the ceiling. What a terror for insomniacs, he had thought. Another minute has passed, and still you are awake!

Insomnia was becoming his Secret Ailment. Being young, he was not aware of the number of Secret Ailments being carried by almost everyone around him. Medical defects, quirks, illnesses and tendencies—small and large—are endemic to the human race, but it takes time and intimacy to find out just how prevalent they really are. For instance:

❖Al: Extreme flatulence, occasional hemorrhoids.

❖Greta: Constipation. Endometriosis.

❖Dave: Excessive sweating; if he uses antiperspirant, armpit-rashes.

❖Angela: Menstrual cramps, she compares them to rats gnawing on her intestines.

❖Alder: Crohn’s disease. Tendency to gain weight because of medication.

❖Joanne: Lactose intolerance. Irritable bowels, possibly from vegetarianism.

For the BöyBand:

❖Todd: Back pimples.

❖Chris: Penis pimples.

❖Gerald: Cankers, cold sores.

❖Iain: Erectile problems.

❖Justin: Insomnia.

Justin’s Secret Ailment had been quiet for some time; his lack of sleep had started around puberty, and generally took the following forms:

❖taking two or more hours to fall asleep

❖waking up around ninety minutes after he fell asleep

❖waking up two hours or so before his alarm

❖waking up three or more times a night, for up to an hour each time

❖after a restless night, falling into a deep, heavy sleep about twenty five minutes before his alarm went off

Justin hated the idea of taking sleeping pills and so, when he couldn’t sleep, he played the following mental games with the tireless mania of an obsessive-compulsive card sharp:

❖I really don’t care when I fall asleep.

❖I won’t worry about my day, or what is to come.

❖I will worry as much as I can, to tire out my worrying.

❖I will imagine my name being painted with a small brush on red velvet, over and over.

❖I will read until I feel tired.

❖Another glass of warm milk!

❖If I have to, I will pee into a glass by my bed, so I don’t have to walk to the bathroom and back.

❖If I pretend I’m already dreaming, and let my visual imagination wander, sleep will take over.

❖Relaxing MP3s on my Rio!

❖Audio books!

❖Olympic masturbation! Midnight, 1:00 a.m., 2:00 a.m….

Nothing really worked, of course. The body remembers all insults, submits without complaint, and rebels without words. Justin floated above sleep; he could not drop through the soft restoring clouds. He was exhausted, irritable, endlessly self-convoluted…

The video had gone well, but the image of the five of them, with white feathery wings and overhead ‘hellos,’ pretending to help, giving up all ambition…this picture went round and round his brain. His video image leaned over him like a towering angel of decay; the feathers of his wings had roots of rotted flesh—when he flapped them, the stench was overpowering.

He turned over, knowing: you can’t fight these visions; you can’t surrender to them either. Little distractions washed over him, like tiny eels in low surf. Unquenchable irritations; premonitions of the coming needs of others…

Iain’s mom wants the band so she can sell her scarves; his dad is desperate for any kind of success; my dad wants it to fund his next business scam; my mom; my mom—who knows?

But—why do I want the band?

It’s hard to be cynical at four a.m.; that’s why four a.m. exists… Justin had never had any clear idea what he wanted to do with his life; his future was a series of unthought intersections of skiing and eating small portions and perhaps something with conference calls and a large office with floor-to-ceiling windows and a desk lamp with a long arched back, yawning rainbow light over printed papers; a secretary with shapely legs and…

But the body sings… The thought ran past him, an orphan from a firestorm. The body sings; the brain just chatters…

“All right, Lao Tzu,” he muttered aloud. He hated those little voices. Fucking cryptic fortune cookies. At times like this, he wanted to grab his brain stem in both hands and say: “What? What the fuck? You have something to say to me, say it, you riddling fucking mass of skittish clues, just fucking say it!”

Of course, no answer came. Except: When we live in a lie of words, actions are the only clues…

More fucking clues, he thought. Ooh, that’s one scary little unconscious I have. Or is it God knocking? Yes, God, of course! Come on in. Thanks for all the advantages; really I am truly blessed. Shame about the Zimbabwean kid who died of rickets at six days of age, of course, but you’re the boss, so more power to ya!

This kind of thing can go on all night… He swung his legs over the side of his bed and sat up, then cocked his head to one side.

Who’s playing that?

He got up and went downstairs. A CD was in the stereo, playing softly. Odd—music? He picked up the bulbous, noise-deadening Bose headphones his father had bought when they were broke and put them on.

Terror gripped him suddenly. There was a rasping pig-breath in his ears, the distant sound of a little girl singing, and he felt a supernatural sickness shiver down his spine. There’s something in the room! He jerked around, his throat thick. The pig-breath started panting, and the girl kept chanting her tune, some singsong nonsense, and the breathing circled Justin’s ears. What the fuck? He heard a bedrock to the sound; a low droning like bees in an endless line-up, a moan of endless regret exhaling for eternity…

In his ears, there was a pause, a gap of silence with only the girl singing, and then a sudden screeching shattered his head. His body convulsed; he reached up and clawed at the headphones, but they seemed to have swallowed his ears somehow. Reeling from the screaming assault, he yanked at the headphone cord, but it wouldn’t come loose. He turned, screaming himself now, and ran away from the stereo, sprinting at full speed. He ran the length of the headphone cord, and then felt a sick snap in his neck, an elemental tearing, and his vision spun and fell, then lay at an unthinkable angle on the kitchen floor, and he saw his own headless body running madly in the kitchen, careening off walls, leaving bloody splashes, groping wildly…

Justin woke up panting; he had turned around in the bed. Jesus Fuck! His breath came in gasps; he turned and stared at the door, his belly rising and falling. No sounds from downstairs.

Chapter 42

The Presentation from Hell

￼Dingbat Diamonds

The wake-up call came about a thousand years too early. Terry’s head jerked around, filled with dry sand, and he grabbed at the receiver, missing twice. The electric voice told him the time, down to the second: 6:15:32 a.m.

Pierre groaned in his bed. The thought passed between them: just a few more minutes… Terry thought of the glaring bathroom—hotels always lit their bathrooms so brightly that you could check for fractures by holding up your hand to the mirror—and shuddered. To burrow under the covers, to sleep…

The phone rang again. Dave.

“When you shower, hang your suits in the bathroom; they’ll straighten a bit. I’ve called for an iron for you guys, just in case. Meet you in the lobby in twenty minutes.”

“Oh fuck, shoot me,” said Pierre, flopping over heavily.

Terry got out of bed. There was a vertical rainbow of dim dawn between the curtains. It was cold. Time to figure out the taps.

It is a strange part of business travel that to maintain proper hygiene, you have to become a cryptologist of plumbing. For some unknown reason, the designer of every hotel on the planet believes that there is a perfect combination of knobs, levers, circular apparatus, and buttons which has not yet been discovered, but which will make choosing your water temperature so much easier. Terry fiddled with a dial, two buttons on the end of the taps, and a plunger before giving up and having a shower that almost made him scream.

They had arrived at the hotel at eleven the night before, after a long drive. Pierre had ridden in the front, to listen to Dave’s sex stories, while Terry had worked in the back, hunched over his laptop.

“Not working back there, right Terry boy?”

“No, just poking around our website,” said Terry. He had visions of being asked to change the type of a data field, and was hammering out code.

After a late drink, they got to their room around 12:30 a.m. Terry went through the presentation—there was so much to demo—and realized no reports could be previewed because they had reinstalled the operating system but forgotten to install a printer driver. So he had to get on the internet, which meant setting up his dial-up configuration, and finding, downloading, and installing a printer driver. That took until 1:30 a.m. Then, when he opened the Database Builder, he realized that he’d left test fields fubar1 through fubar9 in the database, so he had to delete them, then refresh the Database Builder data dictionary. 2:30 a.m.

Then he ran through some of his sample filters—but no data came back. Where the hell is the sample data? He realized he’d tried to delete some fields using the Database Builder, so had to put them back in manually. Then he entered some data so his filters would work properly. 3:30 a.m.

Terry tested the calendar/calculator functions (if you double-clicked on a date field, you got a calendar; a number field yielded a calculator.) When he double-clicked, the computer froze. He waited, then rebooted. Tried again. Same thing.

I could skip this, but Dave always says: show them what happens when you double-click—you’re going to love this!

He checked for the little program that ran the calendar and calculator. It was there, in the right place. Then he remembered that he hadn’t told the operating system where it was and what it did. He registered it, then tried again. Good, good, everything works…

4:30 a.m.

Terry ran through a bit more, then a little part of his brain said—quite distinctly—‘fuck it,’ and he went to bed.

Under the covers, he worried about the next day’s presentation; it took him almost half an hour to go to sleep. He was about to get up and run through it again, when he plummeted into the black sea of slumber for just over an hour.

They met Dave in the lobby and then started on the Odyssey of Client Location.

One constant of business travel is that you are lost almost all the time. A new city, cryptic directions from the internet, time pressure, cell phones that don’t work, inconsistent road signs, missing turn-offs… The internet gives you the kind of directions that Rain Man would be proud of; an ordinary human being would say “go west ten blocks, then south ten.” The internet, on the other hand, says: go west for one block (.20 minutes), then south one (.19 minutes), then west one block…

They got lost, and Dave’s face turned purple. He tried his cell phone. Nothing.

“I don’t know why they even bother,” he said, hurling the phone into the back seat. “Fucking rip-off. Might as well be two yogurt cups and a piece of fucking string! CitiCorp has two other vendors this morning; every minute we’re late is one less minute to present. And don’t we look like a fucking amateur dog-and-pony show! We’d just love to build your software architecture, Mr. Fortune 100, but fuck me, we just couldn’t find your offices, hyuck, hyuck!”

This bitter tirade went on until they spied the street. They entered the mother ship of parking garages, and finally found a spot about twelve levels down.

After signing in at the front desk, they were met by a jovial middle-aged man in white shirtsleeves and suspenders.

“So—you made it!” he grinned, shaking their hands. “Stan Jenkins.”

“Stan, good to meet you,” boomed Dave. “This is Terry Coleman, and Pierre Laurin, part of our technical team. They’ll be doing the part of the presentation that puts all the non-technical people into a coma!” he laughed.

“Come on through—we’re a little late, so I’ll have to round up some of the troops. Do you want a coffee?”

“And how,” said Terry.

“It’s in here,” said Stan, opening a double door. It was a long conference room, with a UFO-shaped speaker phone in the middle of the table. Three people sat around, chatting. “Make yourselves at home,” said Stan, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Terry started setting up the notebook. Dave introduced them to the people around the table. Pierre started unpacking the overhead projector.

“Dang,” muttered Terry. The notebook’s power cord did not reach to the wall plug. He looked under the table, hoping to find an outlet.

“Can’t reach the power cord?” asked a fair-haired woman.

“No—it’s a bit too far…”

“It’s only an hour presentation,” said Dave. “Let’s just use the battery.”

“Don’t know if we have enough juice,” said Terry.

“Do you guys have any extension cords lying around?” asked Dave. A squat man offered to go and look for one.

“Terry,” hissed Pierre.

“What?”

“Can’t find the VGA cord…”

Terry’s heart froze. Software demonstrations are projected like a movie onto a wall; to do this, a VGA cord is needed to link the notebook to the overhead projector. Without it, there was no way to show the software without everyone cramming around the tiny notebook screen, which is generally considered suicidally bad form.

“Not good,” muttered Terry. “Double-plus ungood!” He rooted around in the thousand or so pockets of the projector case.

“Could it be in the car?” whispered Pierre.

Terry felt a flash of rage. Of course not… Where the fuck could it be?

Stan came back in the room. “Coffee all round,” he said, “and I found the rest of the crew.”

A dozen or so people shuffled in. Introductions abounded.

“Are we ready?” asked Dave.

Terry swallowed. “I left a cord in the car—can I have the keys for a sec?”

“Sure,” said Dave, his cheeks coloring slightly.

“Pierre will talk about the architecture while I’m gone,” said Terry, grabbing the keys and gracing the room with a sickly smile. He left the room.

Oh God, oh God, he thought, what the fuck am I going to do now? He thought of going to check the car, but there’d be no reason why it would be there; that option was thoroughly depressing, like mechanically searching somewhere for the tenth time.

He had a kind of inspiration, the kind that may be a good idea, or might just be a way of manufacturing action in the absence of hope. He went down to the lobby and walked up to the security guard.

“Is there a software store around here?”

The guard paused. A toothpick levered its way from one side of his mouth to the other.

“Well, there’s a CompuCenter in the mall two blocks north, but they don’t open till nine.”

Terry glanced at his watch: 8:16.

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

Terry took a step back from the desk, his vision squeezing. I’d pay five thou for a cord right now, work it off somehow!

He thought of Dave and Pierre upstairs.

What the fuck am I going to do?

He wandered out into the street. A cab was disgorging a large, admin-type woman.

He ran up.

“Do you know any computer stores around here?”

The cabbie frowned. “What, open at this hour? Sorry man.”

“Can you take me to the mall two blocks north?” Sometimes they’re there early… The cabbie nodded, and Terry hopped in. “I’ll double your fare if you get me there and back in fifteen minutes!”

The cab lurched forward, and Terry’s feet almost hit the roof.

At the mall, Terry leaped out and ran inside. The store was locked glass, next to a pet store. Terry ran up and shielded his eyes. No movement inside; the store’s name rippled across a sea of monitors.

8:21.

Terry saw a man walking towards him from far up the mall; he was bald, portly, with a thick gray beard and suspenders. Geek!

Terry ran up to him.

“Excuse me, do you run the CompuCenter?” he asked.

The man shook his head. “Nope.”

Terry frowned, then realized the man was a UNIX freak, and so loved twisty logic. “But you work there.”

The man nodded, scraps of a cinnamon bun in his beard. “Sure.”

“Listen, I really, really need your help. I’m doing a software presentation a few streets over, and I don’t have a VGA cord.”

“Store opens at nine.”

“I know, but I’ll pay double for a cord; they’re waiting for me now!”

The man grinned. His teeth were ringed with yellow, like an old wolf’s. “Ah, the entrepreneurial life! I got out of it when GUI’s came along. They attract amateurs.”

Terry swallowed dryly. “Will you help me?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said.

“Can we walk a little faster? I hate to be a…”

“‘A failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part,’” quoted the man, and seemed to slow slightly.

They got into the store, found the cord; Terry paid and ran outside. The cab was waiting.

8:31.

“Please—get me back quick!” panted Terry. He was bathed in sweat, and felt like throwing up. His hands were wet, clenched around the plastic bag. He forced them to open slightly.

When the cab pulled up, Terry got into a vicious argument because the fare was ten dollars, and he had only fifteen dollars, and had promised double. Finally, he just ran away.

When he got back into the conference room, he saw that Pierre had filled two whiteboards with network diagrams, database and server specifications, bandwidth estimates, and Dave’s face was almost purple.

“Are you okay?” asked Stan, staring at Terry’s sweaty face.

“Sorry,” said Terry, “couldn’t find the car…”

“Did you go to CompuCenter?” asked a thin man snidely, looking up from a computer magazine. Terry looked down at his hand clutching the bag.

“No; we bought this last night,” he said, thinking: man, why are corporate tech guys such assholes?

Terry took a deep breath and started doing the presentation. Things were going quite well. He stretched out his feet under the desk, relaxing a little.

Beep, beep!

What the… Terry’s eyes danced around, confused. Then he saw the flashing light on his notebook. Low battery… He glanced down, and saw that, by stretching his legs, he had kicked the power cord out of the wall. Lord God, I must have plugged the notebook into a dead outlet last night at the hotel, and worked the whole time on the battery…

Everything seemed to slow down. In his mind, he heard the groaning horror of a slowed-down nooooo! He ducked forward, banging his head against the table, groping for the cord. His chair would not go back; it was right against the wall. He couldn’t get under the table. He humped his back up, and the table titled forward; from the other side he must have looked like some burrowing animal. Just as he grabbed the power cord, he heard the soft click and slowing whirrrrr of his computer giving up the ghost.

He closed his eyes for a moment, then put the plug in slowly. Levering himself back out from under the table, he stood up.

“Why don’t we take five minutes while I reboot?” he said. “The power cord came out.”

“You should try a lithium-ion battery,” smirked the thin man. “No ghosting.”

“Thanks—yes we will,” said Terry.

“Rebooting shouldn’t take long,” said Dave. “Let’s press on.”

“I need a bio-break,” said Terry.

“Sure,” said Stan sympathetically. “Five minutes.”

The group rose and mingled; the thin guy came over to Terry.

“That sudden power-off can’t have been good for the database,” he smiled.

It was true. Access databases in particular don’t do well if power is lost suddenly.

“Should be okay,” said Terry, thinking: go away, go away.

“What is that, a Eurocom?” asked the man, leaning forward. “Never heard of them.”

“It’s a Canadian company,” said Terry, logging on to the computer. How can I get rid of him? Ask him to get me a coffee? No—he’d be offended.

Fortunately, Pierre came to the rescue.

“Hey,” he said to the thin man, “is it Lie-nux, or Lin-nux?”

The man turned. “Everyone thinks Lie-nux, ’cause the guy’s name was Linus, but it’s really…”

Terry ran Access, then opened the database. There was a pause; the hourglass flickered. His horror mounted. Then the message box:

“This is not a database file, or needs to be repaired. Do you want Access to try repairing it now?”

Of course, thought Terry, feverishly praying to the dark gods in Redmond. Why is that even an option? He clicked ‘Yes.’ The disk drive thrashed. A pause, then:

“Access could not repair this database file. Please choose another.”

Oh sweet evil gods, thought Terry. His fingers flickered the keyboard, looking for a backup. Nothing. Oh, that was smart…

The group was coming back into the room.

“We have another fifteen minutes,” said Dave. “We’re going to power through the remaining features, then leave a few minutes for questions. Any response so far?”

The thin man laughed. “The little I saw looked pretty good…”

Terry pulled out his last ace. There is a little-known command you can run Access with called ‘decompile’; it rewrites the entire database from scratch to a new file, and can sometimes recover even dead databases. He tried it. The blue status line started its slow nomadic crawl. Everyone looked at him.

“We’re ready, Terry,” prompted Dave.

“Just a moment,” said Terry, staring at the status line: 19%.

Slow fucking piece of shit machine!

22%.

“The normal value-add of this product is one hundred thousand dollars,” said Dave, leaning forward suddenly, “but we are having a promotion at the moment, and if you make a purchasing commitment in the next two weeks, we are prepared to offer it to you at a discount of fifty percent. This represents a substantial reduction, which we are doing because we want to establish a foothold in your vertical market.”

Stan looked at Dave for a moment, then laughed, glancing down at Dave’s card. “Mr—Bugle, we are looking for a long term partnership, not an offer from a used-car salesman.”

The status bar leapt forward, and the system paused; the hard drive thrashed, and then the database’s splash screen popped up, and Terry willed the urine back into his bladder.

“Okay, we’re back from the dead,” he said, switching the view back to the overhead projector.

“Seems to be running a bit slower,” said the thin man.

“We got decompiled in the crash,” said Terry. “But we’re okay now…”

He ran through some of the remaining features, but was quite distracted by the time crunch and the growing reservoir of coffee sitting over his groin.

When the meeting was dispersing, the thin man came up to him. “Quite a show,” he said.

“Well,” admitted Terry, “that was one of our more exciting ones.”

Across the room, Dave stared at him, then slowly drew his finger across his neck.

Chapter 43

Alder and Joanne at Night

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Joanne shifted back on her ass. Come on, ten years of marriage, it’s not a goddamned nomad! Alder’s tongue worked around her clitoris; she tried guiding his head with her hands; she wanted to grab his jug ears and just move him to the right spot, but was trapped in moaning limbo:

I have to moan enough to encourage him, but not so much that he stops looking for the right spot…

She tried to still her hips. This was a constant source of tension; through strained joking he had let her know that just finding her clitoris was hard enough; keeping track of it while her hips rolled and sank was like trying to catch a leaf in a hurricane. Quite frustrating.

His tongue found the spot; her hips jerked involuntarily, and he skidded off. Goddamn it! She tried fantasy briefly; the lean-hipped young man in her bookstore, who had asked for her pen and sucked it… Not bad, not bad… She imagined the boy’s tousled blonde hair over Alder’s thinning black; sometimes, when she looked at her husband’s balding head between her thighs, she thought of an enormous penis; if he wore a beige turtleneck, it would be eerie…

The fantasy was not taking hold; she could not find the connecting moment, where borrowing a pen led the blonde man to finding the spot and following it perfectly through her hip-storms… We have some vintage Baudelaire in the back… Wait—sucking on the pen is the connecting moment; he takes me right on the counter, among the hardcovers… Wait—he had to have a fetish that she satisfied, a thing for back freckles, perhaps, or sunken nipples, which left him helpless before her sexual power. I don’t know why I’m feeling this way, Joanne…

Okay, this is not working at all, she thought, and suddenly imagined Alice at the doorway. ‘Daddy’s trying to get back inside mommy!’ Oh yeah, that’s erotic!

“Are—you—okay?” asked Alder, pausing between each word to continue licking.

“Yeah—let me do you now,” she said, shimmying away from his lost little tongue and preparing herself for the great coaxing.

Ah, the middle-aged man’s erection, she thought, the endless seduction… She knelt beside the bed and licked the length of his penis. I remember when he picked me up on a date already hard! Oh, those days of uncomplicated coaxing! Draw breath, be vaguely available, dab a little perfume, and he’s hard enough to show head through new jeans! Now, sometimes she felt like a boater with an uncertain outboard engine; prime, pull, adjust, pull, tinker, prime, pull… And even when it was coaxed into life, sometimes it just fell dead again, like a heart failing under a defibrillator. It would take a team, she thought, drawing him into her mouth, trying to suck some productive blood her way, one woman to whisper his studliness into his ear, another to toy with his nipple, another to tickle his balls, another to make porn noises…

Sometimes she had to suck him for a minute or more to get a semi-erection (a demi-rection, she called it—but only to herself, of course…), and she could feel his concentration, his straining; she would glance up (nervously, afraid he was watching), and wonder what was going on behind his tightly furrowed brow. Is he trying to contact the long-lost ghost of his teenage sex drive? The days when he never thought he would get any, and masturbated, by all accounts, two, three times a day. What happened? We should know each other better by now; I’ve read of couples who claim sex in their sixties is better than sex in their twenties. What’s up with that? She tried flicking her tongue along the bottom of his cock head. More than what’s up with this. He groaned, but she couldn’t tell if it was from pleasure or strain. Okay, I’ll make you a deal; you get a proper erection, I give you full permission to fantasize about my friend Kate or some cartoon chick in thigh-high leather boots and zero gravity tits…

This flaccid, she could get the whole thing in. She sucked hard while moving her head back, giving up on seduction and trying physics. It needs blood, we bring it blood! Do they ever worry about biting? she wondered. I would. I mean, I would worry about him biting my clit if he knew where it was. This thought almost made her laugh. However, she knew better than to giggle when he was having trouble getting hard. This turned her from sexual wife to some sort of Kathleen Turner hard, bitchy woman who loved nothing more than to mock men for their inadequacies. Not a pretty scene, she well knew.

She balanced herself on her knees (tough on the shoulders) and tried pulling on his shaft while tickling his balls. Sometimes this combination cracks the safe, inspector! There was a brief stirring; she glanced up surreptitiously. He was sweating. Why on earth do we really do this? The last uncomplicated sex we had was probably… The thought trailed off, and she almost lost her rhythm. Holy shit—the first time? What was that like? Easy, yes easy, I remember; he fucked like a teenage monkey…

Things were moving along; she hummed along the length of his cock, always imagining being a flutist. For this evening’s performance, I would like to play ‘FleshFlute,’ by Hugh G. Rection; I think you will find the climax most stirring; those in the front rows might want to open their umbrellas for the final movement…

But the climaxes were always good. They had to be chased furtively, like shy deer, but when they were brought down, oh God that was sweet! She could always tell when he was going to come; his cock stiffened; his balls hardened; nothing could stop them. Here comes the countdown! Enter the salt! Her orgasms, though, were so easily distracted; they seemed to have some sort of attention deficit disorder… A car alarm, a phone call, a minute change in rhythm, and they were gone, vanished, evaporated without even a trace… This would always exasperate her. It was like losing your keys when running late. I search, then forget my destination…

And there was so much that changed; Alder’s cock was like a fussy customer. More pressure, less pressure, more hand, less hand, faster, slower, steady pace, change pace… It was like one of those heavy-printed maze games she played when she was a child: start with the pencil, try this route—no? Dead end? ’K, turn around, try this route—no, turn, try… She tried countless combinations to keep him hard, to move him forward, and she listened hard to his noises; she became like a bat trapped in a bell-tower, navigating entirely by sound and feel. Dang, wish I’d remembered to put music on… She was always surprised that the music she listened to while having sex never turned her on later; there seemed to be no associations…

Now all she had to do was figure out where they were going to go next. If he came in her mouth, she would remain completely unsatisfied; he would offer to lick her again, but the energy would be gone. If he came inside her, she would be a little more satisfied; she wouldn’t come, of course (she only came with him inside her maybe twice, and once was when she was playing with her own clit), but there would be a satisfying kind of biological end to the whole thing.

The problem, though, was the Great Leap; this was the transition from mouth to pussy, and it was not to be attempted lightly; it had to be completed quickly enough for him to keep his erection. (This had become completely impossible during the ‘condom phase’ of their relationship; there was no way to get the condom on without him losing it, and then she was reduced to trying to get him erect in a condom, which was like trying to massage a man in armor.)

Okay, I think that we can try to make the Great Leap now, she thought, standing quickly (it had to be fast enough that he didn’t lose his erection, but not so fast that she startled him). She lay back on the bed; she knew better than to try mounting him; he almost never kept his erection when she was on top; what felt good for her was, apparently, not good for him, and she would end up trying to wring her orgasm from a fading erection; the gas station is in sight; do we have enough? Too stressful by far; if she missed, or he faded completely, he would sense her disappointment, and there would be no more sex; his erection would be lost beyond reclamation.

Alder rolled on top of her. He frowned, groping himself and looking at the pillowcase. He rubbed the head of his penis against her pussy and clit. Sure, I said that I liked that once what, eight years ago? Now, every single time… She felt him pushing against her, and the head of his cock slipped in. She gasped. No matter how often, it was always a kind of intense mix of sensations: a longing fulfilled, a shocking widening. She looked up at him; he was moving his hand, milking himself. Well not quite ‘milking,’ she thought. Trying to get the cow to stand up… Don’t laugh!

He moved a little more into her, and he looked down. She lifted her hips, so he could see better, knowing that it turned him on. Wish I could get a better view, she thought. We should really have sex in a room of mirrors, like Enter the Dragon… I know that I’m supposed to be all intimate and loving and womb-y, but I’d love to see that thing fucking me properly! Oops—does that mean I’d love to see it fucking me properly like a good view, or fucking me properly like a good fuck? Let’s just leave that aside for now…

He grunted, and began moving. She held his shoulders, wishing she had even a little cleavage. She knew that he was a breast man, and that he loved the idea of breasterbation, or tit-fucking, but she just didn’t have the equipment. They had attempted it once; she had tried squeezing her breasts together until her shoulder blades felt about a foot apart, but she couldn’t fold enough flesh to wrap him.

He was moving fairly well now; straddling the pleasure divide quite nicely. He liked it slow, she liked it fast, and never the twain could meet. He was uncircumcised, and that meant he was easily overstimulated; the hearty pummeling of lopped cocks was not for him; it was for her, though, and she used to urge him faster, but ‘fast’ turned ‘soft,’ and that was that.

So he would go fast for ten, twenty seconds, and she would feel an electric churning in her spine, and then he would fade and, in the manner of a master tease, go slow, get hard, then start again. It was like Chinese water torture, but better than all slow, which drove her insane.

He rarely came on top. She knew that he felt that was bad, that she might feel used, that he sentimentalized female sexuality in the manner of all intellectuals, who idealize and dehumanize. He liked to come from behind, she knew, but what he didn’t know was that she liked it from behind; she liked the strange sensation, the whole new pussy that seemed to emerge from that angle. Also, it was sexy in an earthy way to watch his balls swinging against her clit, thinking of them rousing, pumping, draining into her. Ahah, the infinite Earth Goddess steals the essential essence from another helpless male! The best combo: Earth Mother and porn star. And it’s always Russell Crowe from behind…

They had tried porn, but Alder was always scorning the plots and commenting on the cyborg nature of the enhanced actresses. And the men took too long to come, apparently. But they stay hard the whole time, she thought, watching their pumping cocks with fascination.

Alder withdrew from her and sat on his heels, looking at her slightly apologetically. Okay, okay, make like a dog, got it! She turned over and raised her ass in the air. He stroked himself a few times, then slid into her. I wonder if he thinks about going into my ass every time? She had heard a friend talk about anal sex, that it made her climax quickly, and this had been quite confusing. Does the clit have roots, like a tree, that go to the bowels? She had thought about it; it sounded uncharitable, but Alder’s cock was not exactly the kind of monster that would tear her up inside. But it was creepy, sort of decadent, and seemed a line to be crossed that did not bode well for their intimacy. It would be like him dressing me up and calling me ‘Helga’—why would we need that?

He slid into her, and she gasped. He settled in so well; her pussy, over the years, seemed to have changed in size to wrap him perfectly. She felt a drop of sweat fall on her buttocks, and it was a little lovely sensation, like listening to a favorite song on great headphones and hearing a new instrument buried deep inside.

He snaked inside her; it was different from a full erection; he pushed and slithered and, if she squeezed, she could sort of push him out. She turned her head on the sheet to look at him, he was staring down at her ass, his cock, and she wished she could see what he saw.

Quite nice, she thought. No orgasm was anywhere near, but this was good nonetheless. Orgasms sort of obliterated her; they were fantastic but unsettling; it was pleasant to feel him, to feel sex, without losing herself.

She reached down to feel his balls. Coming along nicely, she thought, thinking of little muffins in EasyBake ovens. She rolled them along her fingertips, and he groaned. His cock stiffened, and she remembered to moan. A few more thrusts; he shuddered and twitched, and she felt his pounding need, and the little inner flood, and he sank and softened.

As he settled into her shoulder—the one time I can cradle him, she thought—she turned to check the time, and saw over the red LED (12:16), her pills, and suddenly felt mildly uneasy. What is the date today? I’ll check the dispenser later…

“Mmmrgh,” he groaned, and his weight fell, and she shifted under him, looking for air.

Chapter 44

The BoyBand Gets Their Song

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Al had called them all into his office, and was sweating and speaking too loud when he told them the news.

“Boys, boys, boys,” he crowed, “two things. First, we have a song, and second, we have a shot at being on an MTV special in November!”

He paused for a moment.

“But—“ said Gerald, “we’ve been at this for seven months, and we haven’t done anything yet…”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Al. “You were born, you have nice cheekbones! Here’s the thing—I showed some video clips to a friend over at MTV, and he borrowed the tape and showed it to his daughters, and they went wild over it!”

“Wild?” asked Justin slowly, squinting up through dark eyes.

“There’s no sound, but you guys look fabulous in those faggy little wings, and the ‘hellos’ on your heads are genius, pure genius. I think they’ll be the ‘Choose Life’ T-shirts of the Naughties.”

Todd frowned. “The what?”

“This decade,” said Chris. “Like, after the Nineties come the Naughties.”

“Oh how very ’30s Berlin,” laughed Iain.

“That should be the look for our next video,” said Todd. “Slicked-back hair, high cheekbones, top-half tux, bottom-half stockings.”

“Perfect!” cried Iain. “I just shiver with anticip…ation!”

“Toast-hurling toady,” Todd shot back.

“All right, my pretty darklings,” said Al. “Let’s just put that one on the back burner, shall we?”

“The black-burner,” interrupted Gerald, “for us darklings!”

Todd rolled his eyes. “Man—can’t you ever be the strong, silent type?”

“Leave him,” said Justin, rubbing his face.

“You look a little worn, sport,” said Al, leaning forward.

“Not sleeping well,” he muttered.

Chris picked up a binder from Al’s desk and flipped through it. “Now according to my script, Al, this is where you get him hooked on pills.”

“Hey, kid, take it easy,” said Al. “This is supposed to be fun.”

“What’s the song?” asked Justin.

“It was emailed to me,” said Al, moving his mouse. “Some chick in BC; she’s new to the game, sings it herself, sounds like Enya on helium. It’s a bit folksy, so try to ‘de-granola’ it in your minds.”

A woman’s voice came through the speakers. “What You Want Me To Be,” it said, “by Flaar Tishin.”

A trilly guitar melody started, and the woman took an impossibly deep breath and sang:

I want to be
What you want me to be

I want to see
What you want me to see

A mirror of every single need
A rose rising through a knotted weed

A single cloud to cool your face

Oxygen when you’re lost in space

Gravity when you can’t come down

Peaches when you wear a frown

Angels when your darkness grows

Kevlar for your body blows

I want to be
What you want me to be

I want to see
What you want me to see

Whenever you take what you cannot share

Whenever you scorn what you cannot bear

When you decide to stitch what you always tear

When you fall in faith, I will be there

Sun-block when the sky beats hot
A Band-Aid when you bleed a lot
A bookmark when you lose your place

A mask for when you lose your face

I want to be
What you want me to be

I want to see
What you want me to see

The song did not quite stop; the woman (and they could all picture her; long straight hair, a horsy face, big teeth) seemed to want to do the ‘repeat and fade’ thing, and so just played softer and softer, and ended up whispering the last verse in a voice of almost pure breath. The boys squirmed in delighted embarrassment.

After the song ended, Justin laughed incredulously. “It’s pure shit!” he said. “‘Kevlar’?”

Todd whistled. “My God, I think she did the whole song on one breath!”

Iain smiled. “Yeah, I can see how the notation goes: ‘repeat and expire.’”

“I think it suits to a ‘T,’” said Al, “and I’ll tell you why. Every girl loves the idea that a pretty boy will do anything for her.”

Todd whistled. “Now that’s profound.”

“It’s catchy,” said Chris.

“Yeah,” said Gerald. “Catchy like herpes.”

“Strong,” reminded Todd. “Silent.”

“Look, we’ll give it a shot,” said Al. “When can you guys get into the studio?”

“We’re dancing in the video,” scowled Justin. “How will that fit this molasses?”

All shrugged. “So we slow it down… We were never going to get a song that matches your rhythm; it’s artistic either way. Faint crowd screams and slowed dancing is a perfect intro; it looks passionate and says: these boys have paid their hardy dues in unknown lands!”

“Sure, but I don’t think I can do this one perfectly straight,” said Justin.

Al frowned. “What do you mean? The video is already done…” His eyes glazed over a little. “‘Apprentice Angels…’ just think of the movie it would make!”

“Come back, glitter-boy,” said Iain. “We can do it Saturday morning, right gang?”

“Sure, Spanky!” said Chris, sitting up and clapping his hands.

“Actually,” said Al, “and here’s where the corruption truly begins—I would prefer it if we could do it on a weekday; weekend time is fierce money.”

“You want to take me outta school?” asked Chris, doing a passable Elvis. “Shucks, Colonel—y’all just tell me where to sahn!”

Todd laughed. “You ever hear Letterman’s take on Elvis’s last words? ‘Momma—is there any more mayonnaise? Aik!’”

“How is Friday afternoon?” asked Al.

“I have pep rally practice.”

“Ooh sorry; that’s when the yearbook proofs are due.”

“I’m signing up for Cheerleader Stalking then.”

Al held up a hand. “So we’re good to go then.”

“Of course.”

“Justin?”

Justin nodded, staring at the floor.

On the bright lawn in front of his house, Iain pulled Justin aside.

“Don’t fuck this up, Kurt C.”

“What do you mean, ‘don’t fuck this up’?” demanded Justin, settling black Ray-Bans on his perfect nose. “This is a joke, remember?”

Iain leaned towards Justin, his voice low. “Well, Mr. Howell, for those of us without trust funds the size of Malta shoved up our asses, it’s taking on a slightly more serious tone.”

Justin paused, then laughed harshly. “I don’t want to appear ungrateful to the toiling masses who keep me aloft, but this is never going to stick. What, we’re pretending to write for the Weekly World News, suddenly we’re journalists baying for a Pulitzer?”

“MTV, man!” said Iain urgently.

“That just means it’s all shit, bovine-boy!” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hello? We don’t have a song, and we’re on MTV!”

“Look, if that’s how it works, so be it. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, but you signed onto this ride, and now becoming the peevish prima donna before we’ve even sung in public seems to be putting the cart just a tad before the horse. Let’s at least become middling-sized before we self-destruct. Be as predictable as you want, just at the right fucking time.”

Iain stalked back into his house, slamming the door. Justin watched him go. The terror of being predictable enveloped his struggling heart, and he lowered his head. A little bead of sweat fell into his Ray Bans, blurring the complicated grass.

Chapter 45

Gordon’s Thesis

￼Dingbat Diamonds

The following Monday, Alder was approaching his office, and was surprised to see a brown envelope leaning against his door. He picked it up, went into his office, opened it, and saw:

Worlds Apart
Senseless Ethics &
Rational Dictatorship

￼ ￼ ￼

“Rationality ex post facto—Whatever lives long is gradually so saturated with reason that its irrational origins become improbable. Does not almost every accurate history of the origin of something sound paradoxical and sacrilegious to our feelings? Doesn’t the good historian contradict all the time?”

Nietzsche, The Dawn (1881)

“He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization.”

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

￼

Introduction

The thesis of this paper is that there are two opposing philosophical positions in Western history. These positions originate in beliefs about reality, beliefs which in turn condition opposing theories of knowledge, ethics, and political theories. The purpose of this paper is to trace the logic of these beliefs, both internally and with reference to four major philosophers: Kant, Hegel, Locke, and Hobbes. The first section of the paper will outline the philosophical reasonings of both positions; the second will show how these beliefs have manifested themselves in Western history; the third will show these paradigms at work in the writings of these four major philosophers.

The two approaches are referred to as sensualism and supra-sensualism. These terms represent the following philosophical approaches: ￼ ￼ ￼

Sensualism
Supra-sensualism

Metaphysics
Objective Reality
Subjective perception

Epistemology
Empirical rationality
Revelation

Ethics
Individual rights
Despotic will

Politics
Limited democracy
Totalitarianism

￼ ￼ ￼ ￼ ￼ ￼

The first section will analyze the theories of reality and knowledge of the sensual paradigm.

SENSUALISM

Human consciousness is neither automatic nor infallible; it needs guiding principles to help it determine truth from falsehood. Our body does not guarantee perfect health, therefore medicine is necessary; similarly, our minds do not guarantee infallibility, therefore philosophical principles are necessary. Philosophy is a set of principles and procedures designed to aid consciousness attain and maintain truth, just as medicine is a set of principles and procedures designed to aid the body attain and maintain health.

The central premise of sensualist philosophy is that all processes of consciousness are subject to error. We will call this premise the Uncertainty Principle. The Uncertainty Principle contains two premises: the first is that error occurs, and the second is that error may be detected by comparing it with some external standard of accuracy. To continue the medical analogy, we know that illness occurs because there is a deviation from an external standard, called health. Philosophically, the concept of error requires the concept of accuracy; if our minds never erred, or always erred, or had no capacity to tell truth from error, we would have no need of philosophy. The Uncertainty Principle thus holds the implicit premise that error is always possible, but can be perceived and corrected by some objective methodology.

In the sensualist position, the discipline of philosophy is directly analogous to the discipline of medicine. We know that the body is ill by comparing it to a standard of functioning, or the purpose of the body. The purpose of the body is physical survival; we know that it is unwell when it fails to fulfill its purpose. Similarly, our minds may err, and we know that we err by contrasting our thoughts with a standard of functioning, or the purpose of our mind. According to sensualism, the purpose of the mind is to aid the survival of the body, thus it errs when it fails to fulfill its purpose.

How does sensualism know that the purpose of the mind is to aid the survival of the body? The sensualist approach to life is that consciousness is a physical process, an effect of the physical brain. Being physical, the mind cannot survive without the body; being alive, it wishes to survive, thus aiding the survival of the body is its highest standard of functioning.

Human life, of course, is a choice; we need not live; yet, if we desire life, we have chosen a value, a preference for life, over an opposite value, a preference for death. In the sensualist paradigm, the attainment of the value of life requires specific choices and actions, i.e. one cannot choose to eat sand or drink sunlight. No action is required if our choice is death; we need only sit and starve. If we choose life, however, specific actions are required. The purpose of philosophy is to determine the best methods by which life may be secured and maintained, just as the purpose of medicine is to determine the best methods by which health may be secured and maintained.

Philosophy, to detect and correct error, must recognize a hierarchy of values. The first and highest value of sensual philosophy is the existence of human life, for without human life, no values can exist. The syllogistic expression of this is:

1) Philosophy requires values

2) Values cannot exist without consciousness

3) Consciousness requires life

4) Therefore the highest value of philosophy is the existence of life.

Life is a process, for all its operations involve time. Thus the values of philosophy must be those processes which aid the continued success of life, just as the values of medicine must be those processes which aid the continued success of the body. For medicine, the sum purpose of those values is health; for philosophy they are truth…

Alder stopped reading; the text went on for many more pages, but he felt an odd, ugly rage in his bowels. This arrogant little shit, scribbling away in his attic… He resisted an urge to crumple the paper up and hurl it from him. He felt all the irrational anger of a childish man with a sunburn. For some reason, he saw his son’s face, turning up to him, some years past, his face aglow with the pleasure of having tied his shoelaces for the first time…

He took a deep breath. From the graveyard of the Enlightenment, straight to my desk! What time machine does this boy think he’s riding? The age of reason is past!

There was something creepy about this document, something woeful, dark and depressing. To argue this strenuously for certainty; this is thin twine around a dissolving mind… Gordon’s yearning, vulnerable face seemed to flicker before him, and another wave of anger slammed into him. Please, Mr. Professor, please let me do it!

How on earth could I present this with a serious face? thought Alder, imagining a chortling group of his peers: This boy’s approach needs a little seasoning, to say the least; Alder, how could you have encouraged him? It was most cruel. Of course, we could always broadcast the final email: Newsflash! All problems of philosophy solved! All uncertainty laid to rest! All obscurity brought wriggling to the light! Put down your pens and go home!

Alder laughed out loud, startling himself. He stared at the paper, fighting a violent desire to crumple it. The number of logical leaps are astounding! And even if the reasoning were airtight, it’s just Western prejudice. Show this to a Muslim Imam, you’ve got a holy war! He thought of Salman Rushdie, and shuddered. Then he frowned. But why should religion come into it?

Alder shook his head and swiveled his chair. Outside his window, beyond the ripples of old glass and black window frames, a game of hackey-sack was going on in the quad. Everyone dropped it, as normal. Students sat on the steps, sunning themselves. One pale girl rooted in her knapsack, searching for the tinny song of her phone.

Something skittered around the edge of his consciousness; there was something terribly invasive about Gordon’s thesis, something imperious and arrogant and scattering. Fascist! To have this idea come through you, and then to hurl it in the face of others… This is the kind of idea that should be contained, like radium; sealed in a skull’s leaden tomb, then taken to the grave, to spare a skittish world…

His phone rang. He jumped, then picked it up.

“Alder, it’s Bez,” said the head of his department, a short, bald Iranian man with bushy eyebrows, twinkling eyes, and a manner of almost pure liquid warmth.

“How are you?”

“Good—got a couple of minutes?”

“Sure; I’ll come by.”

“Bring a Danish.”

Alder went to the cafeteria, got a Danish, two coffees, and went by Bez’s office. As he approached, a young woman was leaving, dabbing at her eyes. Bez was a gentle, humane, understanding man; his office could generally be found by the trail of relieved tears radiating from it.

Alder knocked. Bez stood and waved his hand.

“Poor girl,” said Bez, sitting down. “Listen to this, and tell me what you would do. This girl has not been coming to my class; she failed her midterm, and then I asked her to come see me. She was in tears, a lot of family problems, so I say all right, you can make it up in the final. Final comes, she doesn’t show up. I call her three days later, when I’m doing the marks, and she’s crying and says that she’s just had a baby.”

“Oh. You didn’t notice…”

“Sure, she was heavier, but she didn’t come to many classes, and sat in the back…”

“So what did you do?”

“Well, this is the thorny part. I said: look, my dear, I have to fail you, and she says: my baby is not well, and if I fail your class, I lose my student status, and I’ll be shipped back home, and my child will not be taken care of properly.”

“Hm. Tricky.” Alder’s gaze was distant.

“Are you all right?”

Alder shuddered slightly. “Yes. Yes, sorry. Taken care of properly.”

“So, we go through the options; she’s estranged from her family, no father in sight, no other means of support. It all comes down to my decision.”

“She could have told you before the exam that she was pregnant, made arrangements…”

“Of course, of course… The baby was not premature; she knew. There’s no doubt she is being irresponsible, but the baby’s health is at stake, and it’s certainly not his fault.”

“But if you aid her irresponsibility, you only encourage her.”

“Yes, I know.”

Alder paused. “I would fail her.”

Bez leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with curiosity. “Why?”

“Well, she failed to make proactive arrangements several times; she skipped a lot of classes, failed her midterm, missed the final, and never came to you. She only responded when you told her she had failed.”

“So you think if she is punished, she will change.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with that, if you’ll excuse me,” said Alder, thinking: is this some kind of test…? “As far as marks go, the only real question is: what was her academic performance? Baby, no baby, alien abduction; it doesn’t matter. You can only assign marks on academics.”

Bez smiled ruefully. “My wife says the same thing; so does my sister. They don’t seem to like the girl.”

“And what do you think?”

“It’s a tough one. The baby will suffer; I don’t know how much…”

“Or even if the baby is ill,” added Alder.

Bez paused. “Yes, I’d never thought of that.” He looked up quickly. “I suppose, though, that there is a baby.”

“It would be too audacious if there weren’t,” said Alder.

“Let’s say there is. Life is worth more than ideas, I think. I gave her a ‘K.’ ‘Incomplete.’ No credit, no fail either.”

Alder nodded. “That’s a good compromise, I think.”

“It’s the best I could come up with. Who knows what kind of past this girl has?”

“You are a humanist poster-boy,” smiled Alder.

“I try. Now, Alder, the reason I actually asked you here was for the Danish. And, to tell you that Cat Larry has died.”

Alder’s eyes widened.

“Yes,” said Bez. “It’s for real this time.”

Cat Larry was a professor of philosophy who had been legally dead eight times. He had been raised on a commune in the fifties, had done campus drugs in the sixties, and OD’d twice in the seventies. Then his liver had started to fail, due to Hepatitis. Then his spine had collapsed, and during neck surgery he had flat-lined under anesthesia. A year afterwards, he had had a stroke and gone under once again. After a slow recovery, he had been struck by lightening on sabbatical and gone to greet his relatives yet again. Then he had developed some stealthy form of diabetes, and left again. Then, it was rumored, a suicide attempt. Then another stroke.

Cat Larry had started life with a restless, somewhat random intellect, and the constant exposure of his neurons to the white light of a possible afterlife had not exactly settled his reasoning. His classes had become more and more like the cheap ‘let me take you on a journey’ seminars held in motel rooms by quack psychics.

“How?” asked Alder, feeling an odd thrill when he remembered that Cat Larry always believed that, after his last ‘death,’ he had in fact only one more.

“Jumped to avoid a bus; was hit by a bicyclist, then fell down a manhole.”

They sat silent for a moment, both thinking that, if the universe really wants to get rid of you, it can be very creative.

“That’s very sad,” said Alder.

Bez smiled. “I only hope that when I go, the story is as good. I’ll do a lot for a good story. He should have retired years ago, but I think the change would have futzed his mind too much. I don’t think he’d have ever been able to find his office again if we’d moved it.”

“Is that why he was still in the psych wing?”

“Yes—and the psych students liked him. Good material.”

“I never knew him very well.”

“The point is, of course, that a position is opening up, and I want to be perfectly frank. I think that you can do good work, and that if you loosened up a bit you could be a good teacher, but I don’t really know…” Bez laughed. “Well, there’s no way to say it without sounding odd.” He raised his head and gazed straight at Alder. “I don’t know how deep your heart is.”

Alder blinked. “My heart?”

“Being a student is all about the head,” said Bez. “These are entirely unreconstituted opinions, I know, but they’re real nonetheless. To go from student to teacher requires that you widen your heart, not just your head.”

Is that why you asked me about the pregnant student? Alder wondered, but held his tongue.

“There are two reasons for that,” continued Bez. “First of all, you have to be able to judge students very closely; if they’re not doing well, they may be shirking, or confused, or not so bright, or in the wrong program, or pursuing the wrong topic, or not well—either in body or mind—or in love, or recently out of love, or a thousand other things. Of course, that doesn’t matter as far as marks go, but to lure people into the life of the mind—which we, as a society, need so desperately—you have to find and remove the real obstacles.” Bez paused. “No, I didn’t put that very well. To judge someone, you have to feel them with all your heart. That’s point one. Point two is that I believe that philosophy really operates below consciousness. At its root, it’s physical, not intellectual or abstract. You look skeptical; that’s all right. Do you mind if I perform a little experiment?”

“No—of course not…”

“I saw the BabbleFish do this once—have you ever met him?”

Alder shook his head. “Heard of him.”

“An amazing young man, but too much instinct, too little reason… No—perhaps that is for later.” Bez looked down, frowning, then lifted his head and gazed straight at Alder. “All right; I have read a good deal of your work, and there is some passion in it, but it’s all about the past, not the future.”

“Uh—huh. Go on.”

“You come from an unintellectual family—and social circle, as far as I can tell. You have ability, but you’re trying to prove that the life of the mind is worthwhile, which also means that you believe that it is not worthwhile. So you expend enormous amounts of effort producing work that is very hard to understand. You work because you believe ideas are worthwhile; you obscure because you believe that they are a complete waste of time.”

Alder blinked. “I—see.”

“Now if you were to find your heart—doesn’t this sound like ‘Oz’?—then you would find what is clear and productive for you. And you would be a good teacher, because you would understand your students.”

Alder stared at Bez, then shuddered slightly. “So if I want Cat Larry’s job, I have to find my heart.”

Bez nodded. “Quaint, isn’t it?”

“But—how will you know?”

“Because I have found mine,” smiled Bez, tearing off a piece of Danish and holding it up. “Want a bite?”

Chapter 46

Late Night Ambition

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Joanne,” said Alder softly. It was late; he was still awake.

“Mmm?”

“Do you think I am—without passion?”

“Without…” She turned sleepily. “You have many fine qualities, Alder.”

“I think that I am—without passion.”

“You can’t get…” She yawned. “…as far as you have without caring.”

“No, I care, I care…” He frowned. “Bez said something very strange today.”

Her lazy movements stopped. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes. Cat Larry has died.”

There was a pause. Joanne sat up. The female abacus of second-hand ambition clicked rapidly.

“Where are you in line?” she asked.

Alder shrugged. “Not at the front; not at the back.”

Her face loomed over him, black in the dark. “So what did he say?”

“That—that I had to…” He laughed, biting at a cuticle. “All right, I’ll just… He said that I had to find my heart to get Cat Larry’s job.”

“That comes with tenure, right?”

“Of course—there’s no way that short-circuiting nightmare could have kept his job otherwise.”

Joanne frowned, thinking hard. “What does that mean, you have to find your heart?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.” Alder sighed. “Apparently, if I already had my heart, I wouldn’t have to ask anyone. And I would be able to have purely psychic conversations with Bez.”

“That is odd,” said Joanne. “And doesn’t seem legal.”

“I think it’s okay to have a bias against the heartless.”

“Heartless…” echoed Joanne, chewing her lip. “Okay, think for a moment. Why does he think that of you?”

“Don’t know. My writing isn’t exactly poetic, but it’s pomo; the important words are between the words. Unless…”

“What?”

Alder told her the story of the pregnant student.

“Hm,” said Joanne. “Well, you didn’t know what he was asking, so… Let’s think—what would it look like, to Bez, to have a heart?”

Alder shrugged. “To have great ideas, I guess, and thoroughly understand my students…”

“Okay. Okay.” She leaned forward, clacking her nails against her front teeth. “Do you have any great ideas?” She paused. “Sorry, that’s more sympathetic than it sounds.”

“Great ideas?” Alder exhaled slowly. “God knows.”

“Something cross-disciplinary?”

He scowled. “What on earth do you mean by that?”

“I don’t know! I’m just trying to help. It’s a little refreshing to have some idea what goes on over there.”

“I keep saying: come to my lectures.”

She turned on him fiercely; he jumped inwardly, but lay still. “Alder, you have to get that job!”

“What?”

“I can’t work, not with Stephen where he is, and…”

“Why? Why would you work?”

“Oh God,” she exhaled, flopping on her back. “I’m channeling my mother. ‘Bob, is everything all right at work?’ She knew more about rising interest rates than the Fed. Just—look, we took this fifties route to a family, where you work and I don’t. We have no breathing room. We can cover one month with the line of credit, maybe another with credit cards. But that’s it.”

“I’m not going to lose my job!”

“We have nothing for Stephen’s university. My parents are getting older, and your mother… Just—if we have to wait for another one of these academic buzzards to drop off the perch…”

“So you’re saying, just come up with a great idea, learn the inner ventricles of my students, and claim the prize that’s rightfully mine.”

“Alder,” she said softly, placing her hand on his cheek. “Alder, I’m pregnant.”

There was a pause, then an exclamation, and then many, many more words, but they all washed over Alder. After Joanne fell asleep, all he could see was the image of Gordon bursting out of Joanne’s widening belly, and when he got up in the morning, black-eyed and dizzy, he found that a decision had come to him.

Chapter 47

The LWL Make a Decision

￼Dingbat Diamonds

The LWL met the following Friday, and all had various reports from the home fronts. Their desire to turn their pyramid money into liberating cash seemed to be meeting with unexpected obstacles.

Angela presented last; all the previous possibilities had been rejected because:

❖One woman’s husband was a compulsive liar (or, just a ‘husband,’ another woman laughed).

❖Another’s business was already shedding investors and employees like spray off a sneeze (naturally, she did not use this metaphor—though fine with fraud, the LWL were staunchly opposed to anything gross).

❖Another’s business was riding the high end of a ‘pump and dump’ IPO, and was expected to implode any day; the lifeboats were already lowering.

❖Another’s was in the initial ‘spend and see’ phase of a start-up, and had yet to make a sale, or even a product.

❖Another’s had no business they could figure out; it was some kind of ‘incubator,’ which also led to a few jokes about husbands able to run businesses of that kind when they were unable to stomach the birthing room in a hospital.

❖Another’s was so obviously an investor-scam that they spent no more than a minute tearing it apart (they knew the keywords; a ‘consulting company’ in ‘executive training’ translated to: ‘we’ll milk some contacts and make good salaries, then get a real job when the economy improves…’)

Angela’s presentation aroused some real interest; there was a product, a modest but possibly brilliant technical person, a vision, and some actual sales. (The LWL also knew enough about software to know the power of a non-customized product; in the absence of the Database Builder, they would have been unlikely to invest.)

“So, ladies,” finished Angela, “they are off, presenting to CitiCorp as we speak. Dave has great hopes for the sale. They have a great product, but are almost out of money, which I know because Dave has stopped dry-cleaning.”

“What about the money coming in from existing projects?” asked one woman.

“That will trickle down; the projects are almost done, and there’s not enough money in software support to keep them going.”

“Why don’t we let them go back to their original investors?” asked another woman. “Then we can invest when they’ve gotten past the dangerous part.”

Angela shook her head. “Dave’s been complaining about the lack of capital these days. Everyone’s tightening their belts. I think the well is dry. This business is in the perfect place for investment. Look, there are nine of us here, and I’ve got the only opportunity. Do we really want to wait until the planets align themselves again?”

There was more debate, but it was largely show. Angela was right; they had nothing else to look at, except boring investments at seven percent, which would not give them the security they need. Dave’s company. It was agreed.

When Angela got home that afternoon, Dave was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a beer.

“How did the presentation go?” she asked brightly. She could see he was fuming, and obviously wanted an open fight before the kids got home.

“Like we just opened our mouths and yakked all over their boardroom table,” he said heavily. “I couldn’t take those morons any more, so I rented my own car and drove back alone. With any luck, they’ll be detained at the border and strip-searched. A little rubber-glove love for the boy wonders.”

She sat down. “What happened?”

“Christ; I’ve got the pedal to the metal; I turn the steering wheel over to them and they just fuck me with it!”

Dave, Angela knew, always mixed his metaphors when he was enraged, usually ending them with brutal epithets. It was like he was beating his down-home, folksy personality to death with a sack of porn tapes.

“Did the program crash?”

“No, the goddamned program was fine. We just crashed.”

“So you won’t get the sale?”

“Fuck—listen to me why don’t you? I’ll be happy if they don’t sue us for wasting their goddamned time!”

“Hey—it’s not my fault!”

“No, of course not,” snarled Dave. “You didn’t fuck up the presentation. You’re just not listening. I say we fucked it up, you ask if we’re going to get the sale? You’ve been spending too much time standing on your head in yoga.”

“I think I’ll just take a walk,” said Angela.

Dave stood up suddenly. “So we’re going to need two things: professional salespeople and more investment, and I thought hey, I’m a goddamned trooper, I’ll just come home and make some cold calls, so I go to get my address book, and what the fuck do you think happened to my home office?”

“It was cleaned.”

“It was cleaned,” he repeated. “By some outside agency? By aliens from Albuquerque?”

“I cleaned it then, if you prefer that.”

“Why? Why did you clean it? I pay for this whole fucking house with that one little office—God forbid I should get something with a skylight when Queen Wifey needs sunshine for her exercise room—and all I ask is that it be left alone, but no, that can’t be right—why should little Davey have any privacy in his own home?”

Little Davey, Angela knew, was rarely a pleasant companion; she had no idea from what depths of childhood misery the little monster came, but he brought only rage to the playground.

“Look, you might not like the lack of a punching bag,” she said, “but I’m in no mood to be shit on by your bad day. So just give me a little space, and a small fucking break.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, of course—Angela doesn’t want to be upset, Angela never does anything wrong, Angela doesn’t provoke, Angela doesn’t intrude, Angela is an excellent listener! Everything is Dave’s fault! I need a little sympathy, not some dumb fucking broad to waltz in here from another hundred dollar lunch asking me stupid-ass questions. Is it so hard, my love, to squeeze a few drops of human compassion from that over-tanned raisin you call a heart?”

“Do you want me to call 911 again?” shouted Angela. “Do you? Huh? Then shut up and back off!”

Dave circled towards her from around the table. “Sure, that’s a great idea. Put me in jail for having feelings, and then try paying the bills with your most accomplished ‘downward dog.’ I am not your fucking dray horse, Queen Ang! Sometimes you need to tend the livestock, just a little!”

Angela felt fear in her heart then; fear and an almost unbearable rage. “You are the boss of everything, Dave. I know that. So when something bad happens, why is it always everyone else’s fault?”

“What the fuck does that mean?” His wild eyes searched the room. “I need a translator; I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but I just can’t speak ‘crazy bitch.’”

“What it means,” she said, backing away to the door, “is that if you take another step towards me, I quit.”

He stopped, and blinked. “You quit?”

Her hands shook; she curled them into fists. “Yes, I quit. I wouldn’t take this shit from a two year old. You want to bully me, I’ll walk out of here with half of everything—including one of your pitifully underfunctioning balls.”

Angela turned and stormed out of the house. She got into the Blazer, and screeched out of the driveway.

She drove blindly, far away from herself. Then she shook her head violently, and phoned Dave’s downtown office.

“Terry Coleman,” a quavering voice answered.

She took a deep breath. “Terry, it’s Angela Bugle.”

“Oh yeah? Hi.”

“I’m sorry to hear the presentation went badly.”

“You and me both.”

“I’d like to drop by the office, if that’s okay.”

There was a pause.

“Is Dave with you?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I want to ask you some questions.”

Another pause.

“Sure, if you like…”

When Angela arrived at the office, she sat Terry down in the boardroom.

“So, this is your first time in business,” she said, “right?”

“Yes.”

“And—well, forget today, but tell me: how is it going?”

“Without today?” He shrugged. “Good, I think.”

“I believe that you are very smart. And very honest.”

“Um—thanks.”

“So I want you to tell me something.” She took a deep breath. “This program—the ‘Database Builder’—do you think it will be a hit?”

“A hit?” Terry rubbed his forehead. “Actually—yeah, I do. I think that if I could get myself out from under all this customization, and really finish it, it could be really big.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Well, my dad used to say, if you want to invest, invest in a product you like and use. I like this thing, and use it all the time.”

“Would other programmers use it too?”

“I think so.” He smiled wanly. “I’m good, but not unique.”

“Show me.”

He stared at her. “Sorry?”

“Show me the product. Everything it does.”

“Really?”

“Pretend I’m a client.”

Terry frowned. “Wow. Um—why?”

“Dave needs some recharging. He takes all this very personally. I want to be enthusiastic, but I don’t have a clue what you all do up here.” Angela paused. “I’m afraid he’s at a low point, thinking of folding it all in…”

Terry’s face went white. “Oh, God.”

“So I want to pump him up, but I need to know what this thing does.”

“Er—sure. Sure. I need to get the projector.” Terry stood, running his fingers through his bristly black hair.

“And Terry?”

“Yes?”

“This has to be between you and me,” said Angela slowly. “If Dave knew I was here, he’d never listen. He’d think I was going behind his back.”

Terry paused. “O—kay. Wait here.”

Terry set the equipment up, then spent over an hour going over the software. Angela asked question after question, and at the end of it stood up and kissed him on the cheek. After the standard ‘are we doing both cheeks?’ dance, she kissed the other.

“Thanks—you’ve been a great help,” she said.

“Sure—whatever I can…” He paused. “Do you think things will be all right?”

“I do,” she said decisively. “Now you get back to making this thing work, and I’ll make sure you have everything you need.”

Angela parked the Blazer by a payphone, got out, and made a call.

“Hi, Ralph,” she said, when a man answered. “It’s Angela Bugle. Dave’s wife. I need to talk to you about setting up an account.”

Chapter 48

The Children Visit Terry: Part One

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Terry sat silently at his desk, his work forgotten in front of him. He gazed around the office; it was decorated in entrepreneur chic, which meant whatever had been left there by the previous occupants. ‘The 10 Laws Of Direct Marketing’ advertised the market for truly niche humor; there was a Coming Soon! poster for Windows 3.11, and one of those motivational posters with a group of hands reaching down over each other, signifying teamwork. Terry and Pierre had a joke: that was what happened when you dropped a quarter in the office.

They had returned from CitiCorp truly depressed. (Terry knew better than to submit his expense receipt for the VGA cable.) Pierre had left for a rare bout of mid-afternoon binge drinking with some shifty buddies, but Terry had dragged his sorry, skinny ass back to the office for a rather dejected stab at coding. Angela’s news that Dave was thinking of closing the business hit Terry hard.

People often want to keep what comes to them unexpectedly even more than what they chase after. Who imagined that I would be able to create software? Terry thought, scrolling through code listlessly. Now I’m here, I think I would die if it were taken away… A grim, fearful rage flowed slowly through him, like a river of hissing lava, and he shook his head, leaning forward. This motherfucker will work if I have to stay awake for month!

Deep in code-land, he did not hear the soft knock on the front door until the second, perhaps third time. Frowning, he got up and opened the door.

Sarah, Alice, and Stephen stood in the hallway. Terry seriously wondered if he’d fallen asleep at his desk.

“Umm—no one’s here except me,” he said.

“Good,” said Alice. “May we come in?”

Like vampires, he thought oddly, they have to ask. “Of—course,” said Terry, stepping aside. The children entered in an even row, with great solidity of footsteps and a deep, deep purpose. For some reason, the Weebles song came into Terry’s head: ‘Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down…’ He recalled the toddler game he and a cousin used to play, where they put a Weeble into its little see-saw, lifted their fists, and went for distance…

Terry trailed them into the boardroom. The children lined up at the back of the room and looked out the windows.

“Nice view,” said Stephen.

“Yes—there’s a joke,” said Terry, coming up to them. He pointed down, to the back-end of a warehouse, at a motley jungle of junk. “We say that this view has everything—including the kitchen sink.”

“I see it,” said Alice, peering down at the porcelain.

“That’s an okay joke,” murmured Stephen.

“Let’s get started,” said Sarah.

Stephen nodded. “Sure.”

“Terry,” said Alice, turning to him, “we’re doing a project about jobs.”

“Well, lives actually,” said Stephen.

“Yeah, but lives in jobs.”

“Okay.”

“So, Terry,” continued Sarah, “we want to ask you about this company. What people do.”

“O—kay,” said Terry slowly. “Should—your dad be here?”

“No, we’re good,” said Alice, coloring slightly.

“Sure—well, whatever you need. For school?”

“For our education,” said Sarah. It seemed like an odd distinction, but Terry put it down to some Montessori thing.

Sarah turned to the others. “Okay—who has the questions?”

“Me,” said Alice, fishing in her little rainbow purse and handing a notebook over.

Sarah opened it. “Pen?”

“Here,” said Stephen, passing her one.

“You need some water?” Alice asked Terry. He shook his head slowly and sat down.

“Okay,” said Sarah, opening the notebook and frowning at a list. “So what do you do with your day?”

“Here? At work?”

“Your weekday,” said Stephen.

“Well,” said Terry. “I sit at my computer and write—code. You guys computer-literate?”

“Only about a jillion-fold,” said Alice.

Terry nodded. “Okay, so you know about computers… Well, that’s sort of my whole day. I could go into it, but I don’t know what…”

“So how do you decide what to program?” asked Sarah.

“The clients tell me what they want, and I write that for them.”

“And this new—product—the ‘Database Builder’—what…” She squinted at her creased notes. “…what does it do?”

“Oh, it’s something I developed to make customizing our software easier.”

“So that’s what you work on during the day?”

“No, during the day I work on software for clients.”

“So, when do you find the time to work on the Database Builder?”

“Oh, that’s nights and weekends.”

“Like homework,” said Alice helpfully.

“And do you get paid extra to work on the Database Builder?” asked Stephen.

“No, but I hope it will make the company richer.”

“Yuh,” said Sarah, writing. “So how many hours a week do you work?”

“Oh go…sh—I don’t know,” frowned Terry, rapidly correcting a potential cuss. “Gotta be at least eighty.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?” asked Sarah.

Terry blinked. Alice grinned. “No, Sar—that question is for cute Pierre.”

Sarah blushed. “No—I misread that…” She coughed. “Okay, so when you present the software to clients, who does the talking?”

“I do.”

“Only you?”

“Well, ‘cute Pierre’ does some,” smiled Terry.

“And—and what do you know about the—finangles? No…”

“Finances,” said Stephen.

“Nothing,” said Terry. “No, less than nothing. Empty out nothing, that’s me. Less than that.”

“So do you make any business decisions?” asked Sarah.

“Like what?”

“Like—how much to spend, where to spend, what on, that stuff.”

“No—that’s Dave’s job.”

“So,” said Stephen, leaning forward, “to sum up…”

“Wait—there’s more questions!” cried Sarah.

He sank back in his chair. “Yeah, okay, go ahead.”

“How much do you get paid?”

Terry swallowed. “Well, that’s…”

“You don’t have to say it, but it’d help us,” said Sarah.

“It could be our secret,” added Alice.

Terry paused. “Okay, well, it’s forty thousand per year.”

“And did you get a bonus for the Database Builder?”

Terry paused. “Nooo.”

Sarah smiled. “And how much does Pierre make?”

“I can’t say.”

“But less,” said Stephen.

Terry paused again. “No, I can’t say that either.”

Stephen nodded judiciously to Sarah. “Less.”

“Okay, but I didn’t say it!” said Terry.

“And how much does Pierre work a week?”

“About the same as me. Maybe a little less. He—stays out late sometimes.”

“How much does Dave work a week?”

Terry frowned. “Well, I don’t know really. He commutes a lot, and he works at home sometimes.”

Stephen lifted a fingertip. “How much time does he spend in this office each week?”

“Well, I don’t know…” said Terry uneasily.

“Pass that here,” said Alice, holding her hand out for the notebook. “We asked Sarah’s dad this.” She scanned it rapidly. “He said…twenty to twenty-five hours a week here, ten commuting, fifteen to twenty at home.”

“Or at the cottage,” said Stephen.

“Yeah…” Alice glanced up at Terry. “Does that seem right?

He nodded slowly. “Yeah, I think so.”

“The thing is,” said Sarah, “that I’ve never seen him work at home.”

“Or at the cottage, right?” asked Stephen.

“Right.”

Stephen turned to Terry. “Do you get emails from him when he’s working at home?”

“I don’t know,” said Terry, not wanting to be disloyal, but feeling a rising gorge of irritation. I will just have to check that, he thought.

Alice scribbled something, then passed the notebook back to Sarah.

“All right—we’re almost done…” said Sarah. “It’s… It’s… Okay—how much of the company do you own?”

“This company? No, that’s—kind of personal…”

“That’s okay, Dave didn’t want to tell us either,” said Sarah.

“Does Pierre own any stock?” asked Stephen.

“Again, that’s not—I can’t tell you.”

“What about options?” asked Alice.

“Uh—yeah, we do have some of those.”

Stephen stood. “How’s this: is it more in stock, or options?”

“Stocks.” Terry frowned. “No wait… No, it’s more…”

“Okay; about the same,” said Stephen.

“Are they vests?” asked Sarah.

“Vested,” corrected Alice.

“Yes,” said Terry.

“So like—three years—a third each year?” asked Sarah.

“Yup.”

“How many investors are there?” asked Alice.

“There are four investors…” said Terry.

“They’re on the—on the board?” asked Sarah.

“They are the board—with Dave.”

“You’re not on the board.”

“No.”

“How much did they invest?”

“Oh—eighty thousand, I think. We’ve needed more since then; don’t know how much…”

“Daddy always takes a half,” said Sarah softly.

Stephen nodded. “Fifty percent of the company is Dave’s. So—with eighty K of investment, that’s got to be at least twenty, twenty-five percent to the investors… So we say that Pierre has five percent, then that’s twenty percent to Terry.”

“But they need more shares, later, for new people,” said Sarah.

“And Terry says that the company has needed more money since the first eighty K,” added Stephen. “So Dave’s had to give up more ownership for that.”

“Yeah,” said Alice. “So, Terry, your share can’t be more than ten, fifteen percent.”

Terry’s eyes were still wide. Dave has fifty percent?! Over five times what I have?

“‘A smaller piece of a larger pie,’” he murmured. “That’s what Dave always said.”

“Okay, sure,” said Alice decisively, “but it seems that you’re coming up with new products and coding all night to make other people rich.”

Terry stared at them. Montessori seems to have gone slightly communist…

“What project did you say this was for?” he asked.

Sarah ducked her head. “It’s a—personal project, I guess you could say…”

“We’re trying to find out what our parents do for a living,” said Alice. “I mean—what does your dad do?”

“He’s a vice principal,” said Terry.

“With an a-l,” said Sarah.

“So, yeah—you see, your dad has a job you can understand,” said Stephen.

“But us?” said Sarah. “I mean, what do our dads do in their offices all day?”

Terry stared at them. In his head was a picture of the office of the British Prime Minister; the office of the boss, with the number ten on the door. Ten Downing Street.

Ten.

Ten percent.

Hmm.

About an hour later, long after the kids had left, he called Pierre’s cell phone.

“Pierre, do you ever get emails from Dave when he says he’s working at home? I can’t find any!”

“Dude, give it up!” said Pierre. “Come drown your sorrows.”

“Where are you guys?”

“Gabby’s.”

“I’m cabbing it now,” said Terry. “Stay sober till I get there.”

“Too late!” laughed Pierre. “But remember your roots. Come catch up!”

Chapter 49

Justin Discovers His Music

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Somewhere between sleep and waking; somewhere between sloth and dreams; in the shadow world where falling off a skateboard means jerking awake; somewhere here are the voices, and it was only a few weeks later that they found Justin.

Justin found himself unable to sleep for more than an hour or two a night. If healthy sleep may be likened to a slow underwater stroll, Justin’s sleep was more like a witch being violently dunked in cold water. He would fall asleep without warning, in the middle of some endless mental riddle, and would be plunged instantly into the most violent and powerful dreams, and would then be jerked awake with a seaweed splutter and an almost infinite drop of disorientation.

His mind was, suddenly, quite terrifyingly, alive. Some of his dreams had a lucidity and depth of detail that he had never before experienced in waking or dreaming life. Once he flew over a city and could see every pixel of every advertisement, each hair on each person’s head, the make of every tire on every car; another time he dreamed he left a cheap hotel room and was transfixed by the crippling depth of the wallpaper in the hallway…

But he knew sleep, and he knew waking. He remained disoriented, which was a good sign.

After one terrible dream where his legs were being torn off by a killer whale, Justin jumped out of bed. His hands were shaking. Something bulky and interstellar had entered his mind, his soul, something larger than himself, which could not be subjugated. He felt as if his whole surface world, all his shallow beliefs, were being collapsed by shifting instincts hidden beneath his sight.

He stood over his desk, and switched on the light—the sad admission of the insomniac—and wrote the following, still standing:

God is dead; the world has no reason
The future is dark; fate has no season
Every carrot is a noose; every stick a fear
Every word we will not speak, an answer we cannot hear

School is the sanding of all that you own

Friends a spent cage for a bird that has flown

Our parents hid their deaths in our pearly skin

We are ancestral mausoleums within

I live to impress, but leave no impression
I yearn to be loved, but bring only depression

I am an empire of endless war
A slanted shadow of mushroom light

A silver trophy of endless ash

A stone statue of cold cash

I am the best of what you cannot be

An envy, a test, a marketing plea

You stare up and I sit pretty
I look down and you all look shitty

And that’s all
That’s all
That’s all
That’s all I’ll ever want

The height of a noose in a windy night

A stolen statue in a policeman’s light

A locked child scratching at a trunk
A snake approaching the leg of a monk

And that’s all
That’s all
That’s all
That’s all I’ll ever be

Everything you are not

Is everything I am

I am the mirror
Of your hellish despise

If you want peace
Fold your wallets
And open your eyes!!

Justin was dizzy. Have I ever written a fucking line before? He could not remember. He read it over. What the hell am I trying to say? It was close—but to what?

It’s your song, the thought came. Justin shuddered. He reached forward, grabbing the paper. He crumpled it violently, but a sharp pain stabbed into his hand. He opened it, and saw a bent staple impaling the words to his palm.

A sudden wave of incoherent rage possessed him; a bile, a tension, a sudden biting savagery, and he leaned forward and scratched the following into the paper, his pen half-tearing as it went:

Fuck the pretty cage of my empty heart
Fuck the lift tickets, the stupid huge fucking car

Fuck my cheekbones; they are a moon’s craters

Fuck all I was given; it was never for me

I am an Oscar held before a hollow hall

Everything I have corrupts me

Everything I am corrupts others

I am a venom of indifference
I whisper that caring is cowardice

Rage is knowledge
Bitterness experience

I am a wide devil of pettiness
From the top of my horns
Hang the white flags of surrender
I rage against the god I betray
And feast on the maidens who could make me whole

Fuck this poem; it doesn’t come close

I am not a metaphor
I am a ruin of violation
I am no simile

No comparison

I am what remains when history wins

Chapter 50

A Kleenex

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Alder did not relish the interview; he was strangely terrified of Gordon. Somewhere in the boy, a terrorist had made a nest, staring with narrowed eyes from an empty ribcage…

Gordon came in slowly, head ducking, eyes wandering. Alder felt his anger grow; there was something about the boy which invited striking. To be so intellectually courageous, and so physically afraid. Ugh! His hands twitched.

Gordon sat. Alder waited, gathering height for the drop.

“It’s too long I know,” said Gordon in a sudden rush. “I tried to cut it down, but I wanted to let you know what the premises were; it’s not worth anything if the logic is out of order…” He jerked back in his chair, struggling with something. “I know I seem a bit messianic, or rabid maybe—but this idea is sort of coming through me, you know, like Deuteronomy. Something like. So it’s odd that something I claim to be so rational is sort of inspired; I know that doesn’t make it true, but it makes it—well, enjoyable, if that makes… Sorry, I’ll be quiet… What did you think?”

“Well, it’s well written…” said Alder slowly. “No question of that. You’re talented. I think the examples of ‘object constancy’ are a bit obvious—balls and blankets, if I remember correctly?”

Gordon nodded rapidly, like a fast-forward plastic drinking bird. “Yes, yes, I think that’s true, that’s a good…”

Alder held up his hand. “Okay, okay, easy… I don’t pretend to understand this vision of yours; like the quote: ‘if you understand, no explanation is necessary; if you don’t, none is possible…’” He shrugged. “It’s well written, and flows nicely in parts. The problem is that I’m not really a literary critic, and I can’t help but look at this as some kind of—literary experiment.”

Gordon frowned, then shook his head slightly, his eyes widening a little. “Literary…” he echoed.

Alder smiled. “I mean, all philosophy is a form of storytelling, an argument for preferences in the absence of agreement. Socrates has to look wise to be wise. Something like that. So you are trying to put forward a new narrative, where heaven is a gulag, I think. That’s fine. Sure. New narratives always stimulate debate, right? But here’s the thing: I don’t know whether you’re going to convince anyone who doesn’t already agree with you. You’re either preaching to the converted, or to an empty hall. My son has the same habit…”

Gordon stared at him, his cheeks coloring. One of his hands contracted. The other opened.

Alder leaned forward slightly, his fingers curling together. “I mean, you really want to grab the reins here. Marx mostly limited himself to economics; you cut through the whole layer cake! But academic narratives—well narratives which work anyway—are incremental; there’s no point just spouting ideas and antagonizing people. You have to massage a little, give a little—at least pretend there’s room for debate.” He gestured at his desk. “Sorry; I left your piece…elsewhere. But I really don’t see how compromise is going to be possible.”

Gordon swallowed. “You think—I should—qualify what I’m saying?”

“Well, that would be a little dishonest, no?” asked Alder, his eyes gleaming. “I mean, you’re not saying these are subjective tendencies, but objective absolutes. It would be fraudulent to hedge your terms.”

“So—so I shouldn’t?”

“You can’t,” said Alder shortly. “You misread me. I really do understand what you’re trying to do here.”

Gordon’s face worked. “I could say that, within the narratives of Western thought…”

“Of course you could, but you can’t say there are absolute tendencies in any narrative. It’s like trying to prove that King Lear has to end with the death of the king. They’re all choices; they all work to differing degrees. No, I don’t think that this will work.”

Gordon took a deep breath. “But there must be something to do with this idea—something that can be done. Do you think it is a bad idea?”

“Truthfully?”

“Yes—yes.”

“I think it is a work of undergraduate enthusiasm, with a little youthful vanity and all the grandiosity we have when we imagine we can build a system to explain the whole world.” Alder’s words slowed. His eyelids closed a little. “I think it is perfectly commonplace.”

The playing was done; the sword was down. Gordon’s eyes brimmed with sudden tears.

“Would you like a Kleenex?” asked Alder gently. Gordon nodded and looked away, drops spilling from his eyes.

Chapter 51

Justin Offers His Music

￼Dingbat Diamonds

In the recording studio, Al and the others sat and stared.

Justin lowered the piece of paper, his cheeks mottled. He had dark circles under his eyes, an eyelid twitch, and a little extra weight.

“What we’ve been doing is just milk and cookies,” said Justin hoarsely, jabbing his finger at the paper, “but this has some juice!”

Al took a deep breath. “I think it’s beautiful, man.” He got up and put his arms around Justin. It was like hugging a surfboard. “That’s a wild, different, ‘stanky’ piece…” (Britishisms were good for pop; wealthy anguished white rap really demanded Ebonics.) “You’re like an Eminem from Rosedale!”

“S’okay with you guys?” said Justin, turning weary eyes around the room.

Iain smiled a little. “Sure—I can fold my arms at the elbows, list twenty degrees starboard, and say ‘whuah’ with the best of them.”

Gerald raised his hand. “Can we have an umlaut over the a in ‘RapBand?’”

Todd cocked his hand. “Don’t make me bitch-slap you.”

Chris laughed. “Yo yo, down, homies!”

“I think that the liberal—if sociologically unjustified—use of the African-American term ‘yo’ does in fact qualify us as honorary ‘home-fellows,’” said Iain.

“Ahh, it’s such a short journey from malls and new-blues to gold medallions and drive-by shootings,” said Todd.

“Remember,” said Iain. “Perfectly controlled rage, muscle shirts, oiled arms, and really tiny sunglasses.”

“Life is a party that should make you angry,” added Chris.

“We’re in pursuit of big cars and big asses!”

“We treat women very sensitively until they cross us!”

“Rage against the black breast!”

“Is that the name of our band?”

“Fuck whitey and the matriarchy!”

“Hey!” shouted Al, his face purple. The babbling stopped; they were genuinely shocked.

“Get this straight!” he snarled. “We are not going ebony.”

Pause.

“But you said…”

“Yeah, it’s great fucking urban poetry! ‘I am oppressed by ski lifts’? Give me a small fucking honky-dicked break!” He whirled on Justin, whose dropping eyelids snapped open. “Listen, Tupac of the SUV, you can screw around on your solo album, and if you want to rap your way into the hearts of the dis-en-fucking-franchised I’ll hire you the Harlem-fucking-gospel choir, and you can all beat Kenny G to death with whatever the fuck he plays, but I poured way too much money into you assholes to have you zagging when the contract clearly specifies zigging!”

Another pause.

Gerald looked around. “Is ‘zigging’ really in the contract? Really?”

“Shut up, Gerry!” hissed Iain.

Al lowered his large face to Gerald. “Yes, please.” He turned to Justin. “Now. Given that I am not going to rewrite your Tiger Beat bio to include a preference for Toni Morrison and long white cars, what say we actually cut the fucking song we came in for and I promise to drive you all home in time for The Chris Rock Show!”

Justin nodded, his face inert.

“And one other thing, Meatloaf,” said Al, patting the boy’s stomach. “It’s a fairly simple choice, but one that clearly needs explaining. Let me tell you how it works. You can have plane-loads of money and millions of screaming fans, your face on every preteen magazine, immortality in the realm of art, power to bring life to any cause you like…you can have all this, or you can have a fucking donut. I’d prefer it if you chose the former, just so we don’t have to lash you down and bring in a liposuction machine the size of the Canadarm. Okay?”

“’K.”

“Now let’s cut this fucker,” said Al, retreating into the engineer’s booth.

Justin stooped for a moment, then slouched up to his microphone, his rap lyrics clutched in his pale, sweating hand.

Chapter 52

Rudy Consoles Gordon

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Gordon sat with Rudy in his little painted shoebox of a room. The tears had subsided, leaving salt in their wake.

“Gordy,” said Rudy softly, “you have the right to an academic review. Have you talked to Bez? The department head. A decent man.”

Gordon shrugged. “Yeah, but he doesn’t do grad students. I could go for a review, but what would that do? Enthusiasm is the most fragile plant. I’d just end up working with someone who scowled every time I showed my face… Creating something new is hard enough in a supportive environment.” He paused. “And if I get it through, and do a PhD, try to become a prof, become one, teach for thirty years… What then? The odds against it are staggering. I love objectivity, reason, capitalism. I’m a white male. Everyone opposes me for reasons that make no sense! I mean—what the hell do I do that pisses people off so much?”

Rudy hesitated. He rubbed his face violently, then took a deep breath. “Look—do you really want to know?”

Gordon swallowed, then nodded slowly, his eyes serious. “Yes.”

“Well, you’ve been treating your ideas as a difference of opinion, as nothing personal, which is bullshit. Nothing is deeper than belief. Nothing.”

“Uh huh.”

“So you go to Alder and say: subjective beliefs make you a Nazi. Jesus man! He’s nothing but subjective beliefs! You’re telling him that not only is his whole life a lie, but also that he corrupts his students! He doesn’t believe in evil; you say not only that evil exists, but that he defines it. You draw a serious line, man—and he’s not on the sunny side of it!”

“Huhhh,” exhaled Gordon. His shoulders hunched and he squinted, as if trying to see an eagle against the sun. His mouth slowly opened. “You know, I wonder… I thought I was going insane. I mean, not once—not once the whole interview did he ever advance one single argument against what I had written! It’s like giving a speech and being criticized for your accent. I mean, I knew that he couldn’t say if anything was true or false, but he didn’t even look at the internal consistency of the thing!”

Rudy laughed, shaking his head. “Jesus, Gordy—your internal consistency is the amazing thing! You’re like a force of fucking nature!”

“What?”

“Well, Christ man—every single time you run up against this shit you have exactly the same reaction! Actors would kill for that kind of emotional reproducibility!” He rapped the wall. “Arts professors don’t believe in truth. You know that, I know that, but you still go running up to them with your proofs in your hand and cry foul every time they smack you down! The same bully takes your lunch money every single day of your natural life, and you are equally surprised and enraged every single time! How do you do that? I mean, does the sun shock you every morning?” He mimicked Gordon, grinding his fists into his eye-sockets. “The liiight—the liiight—where comes this white sky-god?”

Gordon stared at him for a moment. “What are you trying to say?”

Rudy dropped his arms. “Don’t fuck around. What are you going to do?”

“I’m leaving,” said Gordon.

Rudy’s eyes widened, and he touched his throat. “Oh no. Oh no!”

“I’m tired. What you’ve seen is just the tip of the iceberg of my fight.”

“But you’re letting them win.”

“Win? Win? There’s not even a fight!” cried Gordon, his voice catching thickly. “No one’s putting up their dukes; they just press a switch and a fucking trapdoor opens up in the ring! A fight? I would love a fight! All everyone does—they just talk around everything I say! There’s no conflict at all! I say two plus two is four, they say numbers don’t exist, or, math is a Western prejudice, or, I am too white in my assertions, or, there are many valid cultures without science, or, logic is just what we were raised with. If someone were to actually stand up and say: ‘I disagree that two plus two makes four—and here’s why’—I think I would faint dead away. And marry them, of course, man, woman, or other.”

He took a deep breath, then leaned forward and continued.

“So let’s say I believe you and stop being shocked by this stuff. I don’t know; perhaps retaining the ability to be shocked is the only way I got this far… I see forty years ahead of me of being willfully misunderstood, ignored, rejected for no real reason, mocked—and entering a profession where I believe that most everyone is corrupting my students! And I’d be trying to teach students who’ve been taught by them, and believe in truth and reason and right even less.” He leaned back and shook his head. “No, I don’t have the spine for that kind of fight.”

“Sidney Poitier…”

“Oh, please! Sorry, but don’t give me that ‘breaking down barriers’ bullshit! Racism is so clearly wrong—that was easy to see… And he had countless allies as well. People cast him in films, audiences went to see him. Great actors and directors wanted to work with him. It’s like I’m black, but no one believes in races, let alone racism—let alone that it is a factor, or even that it is wrong! Here am I, shouting on a mountainside, no allies, no echo, no incentive… The pay is bad, the hours are long, the students indifferent, the faculty hostile. And the top of the mountain? More of the same. Sorry. Sorry, it’s just not enough to keep me going.”

“So what happens?” murmured Rudy, staring at the floor. “Just turn Rome over to the barbarians?”

“There is no Rome!” cried Gordon. “And you still don’t get it, with all due respect… We don’t fight for a city. There is no clash of arms. It’s more like—trying to convert a Muslim to atheism when you don’t even speak Arabic—or he English. There’s no connection of language, let alone ideas. It’s an empty desert. We rage only at sun and sand.”

“And mirages, of course,” said Rudy.

Chapter 53

Dave’s Ship Comes In

￼Dingbat Diamonds

There was a grim détente in the Bugle household after the Great Fight. The rift, so often filled by the antics of performing children, was unfillable, since both children were on a kind of sabbatical.

Sarah was eyeing her family. She stood in the silent arena where the good fights with the known… She was in a phase of passionate anthropology; the transition from the empathy of the child to the justice of the adult was occurring a little early for her.

So Sarah could not help her parents; she was studying them, and did not want to disturb her subjects by direct intervention. She sat in her low-orbit Enterprise, a well-thumbed copy of the Prime Directive in her hands.

Justin, of course, was an unwilling tourist to the Mad Planet of Sudden Caring, and had little time to raise his head from his shaking trench to take note of his fighting thunder-gods. Sleep still eluded him. His stunning visions had settled into a grim, endless tension in his chest, and he took every step as if balanced on a fraying rope.

So Dave and Angela were largely left to the devices and solutions they had developed during the course of their long marriage. These were, in alphabetical order:

1. Avoidance

Admittedly, it wasn’t the most varied toolbox, but they did what they could. Angela kept the white-hot rage of the unexpressed wife at high kindle. (She was the kind of woman who accumulated grudges like an elk collects burrs: at this point in her marriage she was more burr than elk.)

If they were to be really pressed, Dave and Angela would say that their strategy of avoidance also included the following secondary tactics:

❖Wait for something external to unite or distract us

❖If nothing comes, create it

This can be very productive for couples with no ability to honestly resolve disputes: avoid long enough, and something will come along to distract us from our distance.

These distractions do not have to be bad, of course. What broke the wall of ice between Dave and Angela was a single phone call, which Dave took one night in his office (which had been allowed to return to its state of nature).

“Mr. Bugle?” A bland man.

Ooh, something professional! He pumped depth and shine into his voice. “Speaking!”

“I hear you are looking for investment.”

“Why yes, yes, I am. May I ask who is calling?”

“My name is Bhanu Kohli, and I represent a group of investors who have been following the progress of your company, and are most impressed, and would like to have the opportunity to invest.”

“Yes, yes, that’s great!” Dave frowned. “But—we haven’t met, right?”

“No, but we will.”

“Right, right. So Bhanu—do you mind if I call you Bhanu?”

“That’s fine.”

“Bhanu—do you know how much we’re looking for?”

“That’s not really of interest to me. This is what I do: I say how much I have to invest, and you tell me if you can use that much.”

“Oh. Can you talk about that now?”

“Sure. One million dollars.”

“One… One…” Dave took a breath—then a deeper one, hardly daring to hope…

“US dollars?”

“Canadian.”

“Well! Well, I think that’s just fine. That’s not far off from what I was originally thinking of, when we first packaged the offering, but I wasn’t sure, given the current climate, that we might be able to get—to find—that much. But certainly, we have a need—and, more importantly, a concrete use for that kind of capital. We have a software product the like of which you have scarcely seen…”

“That’s good, Mr. Bugle, but you don’t have to sell me. We’re already committed. When can we meet?”

They arranged a time and place, then Dave tried to hang the phone up three times before hitting the cradle properly.

“Ang!” he shouted, his voice shiny with joy. “Ang!”

She appeared in the doorway to his study, her hands bright with recreational paint.

“What?”

“Ang, I think that—Ang I’m sorry about what I said. Holy shit, I’m a cosmic asshole for railing at you when things went against the grain. I’m sorry, I really am. You are a princess!”

He stood there, almost panting.

“I appreciate that,” said Angela eventually.

“All my fault. All. Your patience is the sum root of my talents. How are you feeling?”

“Well, guarded…”

“Of course, of course. I respect that. Why not? I was cosmic. But listen, Ang, listen: I just got a phone call, and it turns out that this water bomber of cash is just opening up over the business. It’s going to be a fucking deluge, Ang, and we’re right at the core!”

“That’s great.”

Dave took a deep breath, then exhaled in a whoosh. “I’ve been in a vice, Ang, feels like forever. I had no idea how tense I was… I feel like I’ve been struggling for ten years, Ang—ever since my first deal, nothing seems to have gone right. I was beginning to feel like an asshole asking people for money. But I have faith in this thing—that’s why I was so fucked up the other day. I was so disappointed, I couldn’t shit for a week. Now there’s a mill coming down the pipe, Ang. Everything I ever wanted to do in business…” He lifted up his hand and counted down his fingers. “It’s the right industry, the right product, the right time, the right team… Terry can’t present worth shit, but if I get a real sales force together… I’ll call Bill and Carl from the old days… This is going to be big, Ang. No more scraps and leftovers. We’ve broken through, my love, and now life begins for real!”

There was a pause. Dave’s eyes were pleading. Angela knew she had only a few minutes of that pleading before the hostility came; the rage at her refusal to participate in his legitimate joy, her unholy dampening of all his healthy enthusiasms, her stinginess, withholding—and inability to take pleasure in anything—most of all his happiness…

Angela knew the pattern; it was tattooed on her very bones. It was the same totalitarian forced-cheer heartiness her father had subjected her to, when she had to join in his drinking songs. She thought of the future, and nodded slowly, forcing a smile.

“Lord, Mr. B, that’s fantastic!”

His tense face dissolved into formless, relieved joy; a bully’s joy at the absence of a teacher.

That night, she blew him with a prostitute’s passion, claiming her period. Afterwards, when he was snoring, she lay back and thought: Good Lord; my period was last week; he knows my body about as well as I know his soul…

She got up, and headed to the bathroom for a sleeping pill. Passing by Sarah’s door, she thought she saw the flicker of a light against the floor. She turned and opened the door. Sarah lay on her front, her butt slightly in the air, shadowed under the windowed moon. Angela came in, touching the door handle, thinking: I remember holding onto this with all my might, the night Sarah slept alone in her room for the first time, when she pulled and pulled and screamed… All houses carry such Armageddons of passion; the walls should rightly carry nuclear shadows. On the wall of this hall should be the outline of a mother holding a door closed, with two branches of the same biology crying endless tears on either side…

Angela reached down and touched Sarah’s cheek. How tight it is; how tight and smooth; how loose and slack my own is; and her hair; every blonde hue of the ditzy rainbow… The idea of her daughter as ditzy almost made her laugh.

A notebook stuck half-out from under Sarah’s pillow. Angela reached for it, to put it away, then stopped as Sarah spoke.

“Mom?”

She looked down, suddenly frightened. More than frightened. “Yeah?” Softly.

“What do you love about Dad?”

Angela’s face froze, sealed by a sudden sheen of hiding. She drew her hand back and looked down.

“Why, honey?”

“I need to know.”

Angela took a deep breath. “Well, what do you love about your dad?”

“He can be funny…”

“Yeah, that’s true,” said Angela, thinking: fucking, fucking charm!

“So what do you love about him?”

“He’s a good family man. He’d do anything for us.”

Sarah gazed at her. Angela almost shuddered. This is going to be hard… Blink, you little beast!

“What about before Justin and I?”

“And ‘me,’” corrected Angela, rubbing her mouth. “Well, we always talked about having a family, so…”

“So he was for the family. He’s for us.”

“No, not just that, of course. We were married for a few years before Justin…”

“Why did you love him then?”

“He can be very romantic… That’s easier before kids—but kids are romantic too,” she smiled.

“How was he romantic?”

“Oh, he’d buy little presents. Take me on trips.”

He bought you things—the thought was as clear as black neon on Sarah’s dark forehead.

Angela plunged on. “He was very ambitious, and I admired that… I really liked his family. I respected his—work ethic. He was very punctual.” Oh, good one! “He was quite modern, for our day. He would’ve let me work…”

Sarah looked down for a moment. Something was building in her, and Angela had to fight from jumping up and running away. Something emerged, shifted forward, and then opened Sarah’s mouth and shuddered into the room, eclipsing the bed, the moon, the window—and, almost, the very bond of blood. It is, really, the oldest question of family:

“Mom,” asked Sarah softly. “I need to know.”

Angela tried twice to swallow, then gave up. “Know…what?”

Still unblinking, Sarah opened her mouth slowly and asked:

“Is Daddy a good man?”

Chapter 54

The BöyBand at the FunkStation

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Linus was the head of programming at the local FunkStation. He was skinny, mop-haired, thin goateed, and was partial to bowling shirts, two-toned shoes, and near-constant motion.

FunkStations are pomo television channels. They rake the muck of human vanity—but make fun of their rakes, which is okay. They are the media reincarnation of every clique people couldn’t get into in high school; they have pretty-people dance shows with outsiders pressed against cold glass, cheering in hopeless devotion. The motto of any self-respecting FunkStation? There’s no Truth, so let’s be Beautiful!

They believe that everything is permitted as long as it is self-referential. In ads for upcoming movies, they say things like: “come on, folks, you have to watch this so we can afford The Simpsons.” They air aggressively underclothed fashion shows and hint at the masturbation potential: guys’ night in… News anchors sit on the edge of their desks, like teachers who used to be hippies: ‘forget the text, man; let’s just rap.’ They are alternative, cutting edge, with capped teeth and great hair.

Linus was obsessed with ‘grabbing eyeballs,’ and to keep them glued he used every trick to induce a kind of inert epilepsy. The watcher could remain motionless; all the seizures were on the screen.

Linus had been brought up in a media household. There was a TV in the bathroom; he had even lobbied successfully to get one in his tree house. He and his friends were all ‘media-literate’ (which meant visual media, and so was a contradiction), and knew the tunes and words to every conceivable commercial. Once, a day care teacher had taken a group of them to the local Coke factory, and a marketing representative had played commercials after the tour. They had all sung along, and the man’s eyes had positively glowed…

Through all the comings and goings of Linus’s nummies, one great Eye had remained fixed on him. The glaring television never blinked; it lacked even the static-sleep of the TVs his parents had watched at his age. It even seemed to grow with him, increasing in size and stature until, by his mid-teens, it dominated an entire wall of the basement, and was attached to a sound system so powerful that the subwoofer—especially during action movies—could actually make him burp.

The quickness and impatience of Linus’s generation of media junkies forestalled the gathering of any wisdom. They were wildly competitive, quick, cynical, funny, and rootless. Some part of them really believed that no valid knowledge had been generated before the advent of the visual media. (These people, if they went to Hollywood, made movies which often spent a thousand times more on special effects than on the script.) They tired easily, and so needed a lot of stimulation. They often got depressed in middle age. Most of them were fanatical about diversity, to the point that all the beautiful women they hired were of different racial origins.

Linus brought Al and the BöyBand into his tiny, cluttered office, and then changed his mind and took them to an empty morning-show set, where they all sat on deep, baggy couches.

“We want the message to be right in the medium,” said Linus rapidly. “We don’t want to pretend we found you busking at Yonge and Bloor. You’re a product. We want to present you as such.”

“Can we show our barcodes?” asked Gerald, rolling up his sleeve.

Linus favored him with a scant smile. “You must be the ‘Ringo.’”

Al smiled at Gerald warningly. “We’re still working on what he is. So, you’ve seen the photos. Now, in the flesh, what do you think?”

Linus regarded them. “Justin, right?”

Justin nodded.

“Very ‘ski-bum,’ very ‘healthy pot user.’ Very ‘wise beyond your years.’ But you’re not the ‘man’ of the group. That’s…you?” He turned to Iain.

“Yes, I’m the he-bitch,” said Iain. “Sorry, the ‘Mature One.’”

“So we’ll introduce you as just that: the ‘Mature One.’ Like the Spice Girls; they were better known by their nicknames. I like the BöyBand thing, though. We introduce you as the boy band ‘BöyBand,’ and put your names up with your types.” He held up his hands. “‘Iain: The Mature One.’ Nice. High branding irony, coming from a corporation. You’re signed, right?”

“We’ve just got the single,” said Al.

“I like the content: ‘What You Want Me To Be.’ Nice, clear for those in the know… So who’s the spokes-boy?”

“I am,” said Justin.

“You okay?” asked Linus, squinting at the boy’s dark eyes. “We’re going to have to wallpaper over those circles, man. The spokes-boy has to be carefree. Your success is a surprise, like you could be a banker, too. You’re committed, but not obsessed. You’re ambitious for—what? What are your causes?”

“Causes?” echoed Justin.

“Well, what kind of boy band are you? Party or goody?”

“Both,” said Al immediately.

Linus smiled thinly. “Okay, that’s the standard dubious answer… But, maybe I can trip over something you do, some good in the community…”

“No,” said Justin.

“We’ll see…” said Al.

“No!” repeated Justin. “We’re doing this straight, but without all the icing. No causes. We’re a boy band without a background. To be filled with fantasy, we have to be empty.”

“Mmm,” frowned Linus, then turned to Al. “Don’t know if Kierkegaard here should be your spokes-boy.”

“Is there going to be an interview?” asked Al.

“Maybe—we might have room for one. It works like this: we’ve got an applause-o-meter, on the screen. You get the most, you get the couch.”

“Nice cheese,” admired Todd.

“Thanks.” Linus sat back and clasped his hands behind his head. “So, let’s see you shake your money-makers.”

Al scowled. “What? No warm up? No mikes?”

“Let’s do it naked,” smiled Linus, snapping his fingers behind his hair. “Come on.”

Al nodded slowly. “Okay, boys.”

“Let’s rock!” cried Iain. They giggled, jumping up. Al sighed, vaguely remembering what it was like to have springy knees after sitting on a couch for ten minutes.

The boys got into position. The backups began their joyous shoo-woppery, and Justin walked forward, through them, and opened his arms wide, and sang with glorious clarity:

“I want to be / What you want me to be…”

The next few lines were a tad shaky; then Justin’s voice slipped into a sudden growl.

“Hold up!” cried Linus. “Hold up, we’re on a naive demographic, Nirvana! What’s with all the angst?”

“We’re working on that,” said Al, feeling a prickle of sweat.

“You growl like that, wolf-boy, your backups just look like Courtney Love gone cheerleader.”

“Sorry,” said Justin. “Nerves.”

“No problem,” said Linus, leaning back again. “Start me up.”

They began again, and Justin got a little further, and then a tear escaped an eye and ran down his cheek, looking like a silver thread under the lights. His voice thickened achingly. His friends threw him some concerned glances, but sang on professionally.

“Holy ‘Sinead!’” murmured Linus in wonder. “Is that for real?”

Al shifted uncomfortably.

“Does he do that every time?”

“It’s…”

“Man, he’s gone! That’s amazing! It’s so ‘Paul,’ but so ‘John’ as well!”

“He’s quite—talented.”

“No one will believe it!” whispered Linus. “A boy band called BöyBand, with a weepy singer. Cute, vulnerable, snarly… Fuck—it’s like watching the Snuggle Bear go postal!”

Justin’s voice soared, with the keening loss of a muezzin. The final ooh-aah of the song resonated and stopped suddenly, echoing. A few technicians looked on.

“Bravo, man,” said a fat cameraman, nodding his head slowly.

“You liked it, Yentz?” asked Linus, turning his head from the depths of the baggy couch.

“Yeah.”

“Good, ’cause you’re about as close to our demographic as Methuselah!”

“Fuck you!”

Linus laughed. “Justin, that was great!” Keeping his eyes on the band and nodding, he whispered to Al, “Better milk that cow before it tips, dude.”

Al crossed himself surreptitiously. “Amen to that, brother!”

Chapter 55

Terry and Pierre Meet Bill and Carl

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Dave patted the bank statement as he drove back to the office after his lunch with Bhanu Kohli. Soon to be a cool and sweet million… Man, that’s more sperm than I produce in a year!

Entering his office, he sat in his chair, swung around once and culled his messages:

“Dave, it’s Ted Howell from Cyrux. Listen, I hate to be the bearer, but we’ve got real issues with your software. I don’t know if it’s a beta thing, but it seems like everywhere I click I get an error—and I’ve looked and looked, but damned if I can find half the features we paid for. I’ve tried calling Terry, but I haven’t heard back from him. Give me a shout, Dave, talk me down from the ledge.”

Beep.

Dave stood up, his hands in brute fists. Those little fuckers! You give them a little rope…

He strode into the office where Terry and Pierre sat working on the Database Builder. Two new employees had been hired in the interim: a support person, Pradeep, and a quality tester, John.

He took a deep breath. “Terry, what is going on with Cyrux?”

Terry turned around. “They got their beta last week. Thursday? Yeah.”

“And how did it go?”

“Okay I think. We clicked around some, and I showed them some of the features.”

Dave folded his arms. “Well, they’re not very happy.”

“Okay. Why?”

“He says there are an unacceptable number of errors in the program. That half the features are missing.”

“I mean… Are they errors like a crash, or errors like ‘you can’t do this’?”

“Who knows? Who cares? The important thing is that the client is not happy. You have to get out there and turn this thing around.”

“I’ve got a demo of the Database Builder to send out to FedEx.”

“That can wait!”

“They’re presenting it tomorrow. And what features are missing?”

“He didn’t say. The problem I have, Terry, is not in the details, but in the fact that a client of ours seems to have no idea how to work a system specifically designed for them. Is there a manual?”

“No—there’s nothing in the budget for a manual.”

“Lord, Terry! Help me help this guy! I just want the son of a bitch as a reference.” Terry paused for a moment, then nodded slowly. “I’ll go out there.”

“Great, great. Now listen, I have some news for all of you. We’re going to open some offices in the US.”

There was a pause.

“O—kay,” said Terry.

“Where?” asked Pierre.

“Tentatively—Houston, New York, and—Chicago, I think. There are a lot of potential clients in the south. You have to be in New York, and Chicago just works because it’s within a few hours of everything.”

Terry smiled. “Holy…”

“Pierre, how does the idea of heading up your own office sound?”

Pierre grinned. “Well, good I guess.”

“Well, it’s gonna happen. We’re opening in under a month. Where do you live?”

“Apartment, Yonge and Eg.”

“Rented?”

“Yeah.”

“Break your lease. Today. Let me know how much it costs. Listen, since our less-than-stellar performance at Citicorp, I’ve contacted two old friends, Bill Hartman and Dave Campbell, and they’ve agreed to come on board as sales reps.”

“For what?” asked Terry. “The environmental system or the Database Builder?”

“Whatever we throw at them,” grinned Dave, flopping in a chair. “We’re going to spread a network of sales reps across the south and east, opening offices as we open up territories. I gotta tell you, I love this part of the business. We just clean up our existing messes, get the products finished, and it’s like the cars just begin to drive themselves off the lot! We’re going to raise the price point of the environmental system to a hundred K, and I think we’ll introduce the Database Builder at four-ninety-nine US. Tell me Terry-boy, I’ve been getting a lot of interest in how this thing would work with Oracle. Any thoughts?”

Terry frowned. “Don’t know. It would be tricky…”

“We need to keep that on our radar, at least.” Dave leaned forward, rubbing his hands together. “The hard part is over, boys and girls! Most of the slog is in the start-up; now we’re getting momentum. We’ve cleared the trees, and the sky is the limit!”

He left, and Pierre looked at Terry.

“Holy shit,” he said. “Twenty-three, and my own office!”

Terry smiled. “We’ve got a lot to do before then. I’d better phone Ted and see what his problem is.”

“Mr. Howell? Terry Coleman. How are you? I’d like to come in and go over the software again. Dave said you had some questions. Okay, problems. When would be a good time? Well, sure, we could do it by phone. Do you have a few minutes now? Sure, I’ll wait… Okay, you get an error starting the software. Can you tell me what that is? Workgroup not found? Okay, I’d like you to open Explorer. Explorer. Umm, do you have a little key on your keyboard with the Windows logo? Bottom left, or right. No? Okay, can you click on Start? Bottom left. Great. Now can you click on Programs? Is there a little icon called Explorer? No? Okay, is there a little shaded arrow at the bottom of your list of programs? Great, move your mouse over that—but don’t click. Excellent—can you see the Windows Explorer icon? Great. Click on that. Do you see a list of files on your screen? Okay—can you click on Program Files, then EMIS, and tell me what you see? Is there a file called system.mdw? Yes? Okay, good, now go to the Start Menu and click on Program Files, then EMIS, then EMIS again. Okay? Good. Now does the error come up? What do you see? All right, type your login password. What happens now? Good, it’s opening now. Hm, I wonder why… How do you normally open the program? Okay, how did you get the shortcut on your desktop? Who’s that, is he from IT? Okay, well you have to open it using our shortcut, Mr. Howell, because it has to know where the password file is. No problem…

“No, that’s not really an error; you can’t search for text there because it’s a date field. Yeah, it could be more user-friendly, but that’s Microsoft’s error message, we can’t really change that…

“I don’t remember discussing that feature, but I’ll check my notes. Was that something you talked about with… Okay, I’ll check with Dave…

“If that shadow doesn’t print, we can’t do much about it. Windows and your printer handle all the printing; we just issue one command. Maybe get your IT guy to check for new printer drivers. Oh, well is there anyone else who can help you?

“Those reports can’t do watermarks; I know they’re on the word processing documents you gave us, but Access isn’t a word processor, and doesn’t support that. Sure, I understand, but Dave…”

Finally, after about half an hour of troubleshooting…

“Okay, I think I understand. You have another copy of the database running on your computer, and you’re editing that record there; that’s why you can’t edit it here…

“A password timeout? No, that’s definitely not in my notes; I’d remember that, because Access can’t do that. The login happens before our code ever runs. Well, what about your other Access databases? Well, how did they find out about this one? Oh, the shortcut. Sure, I know about security standards, but… Well that seems quite extreme, but I’ll check into what we can do…”

They talked a while longer, then Terry hung up the phone. His ear felt extruded, and his heart was pounding. Fucking, fucking assholes! Why the fuck do clients become such assholes? He looked down at his list; it was over thirty items. The great vortex of business promises had him in its icy grip. Everyone had said everything to create an impression of what was going to be done; expectations had been raised far beyond the possible, and everyone felt comfortable in their cloud castles until gravity came a-callin’.

He went into Dave’s office.

“Whazzzuuup?” grinned Dave.

“I just talked to Ted…”

“Everything smoothed over? You going to send him flowers?”

“Well, there are a number of things I didn’t hear about until now, and I don’t know how I’m going to…”

Dave’s grin widened. “Sure—sit down, make yourself comfortable. Let’s sort this out.”

Terry took a deep breath. “Well, he wants the program to force password changes every thirty days, and make sure they have some text, some numbers, and that the same password isn’t used for five changes, and some other stuff, and it can’t be done by Access.”

“But the system is secure, right? You told me that.”

“The system is secure, but that means you have to have a password to log in, but we don’t have the power to force users to change their passwords.”

“Why not? How can a system be secure if we can’t do that?”

“This is a little database, Dave. It’s not that sophisticated. We have no way of knowing if a password has been changed, or when. Access handles all that. By the time our code runs, the login has already happened.”

Dave frowned. “I’m confused. So you’re saying that the system is not secure.”

“Yes, it is, you can’t get in without a password, but it doesn’t have all these features Ted wants. Where are they listed? I’ve never seen them?”

“Let’s check the paperwork.” Dave buzzed his secretary. “Zenaida—can you bring us the Cyrux contract?” He turned to Terry. “What else?”

“Well, he says that the system will talk to Outlook, export his ‘to do’ items there.”

“Yeah, you told me that Access was integrated into the Office suite.”

“It is; it can export to Word and Excel, but not Outlook.”

“But Outlook is in the Office suite—I have it on my computer! So Ted asks me if the system is integrated into Outlook, I say sure!”

“But it’s not! We’ve never showed that in the demo! Outlook is not in the Office suite. Have you ever seen that feature?”

“Hell I haven’t seen half the things you geniuses come up with! How difficult is it to integrate the system into Outlook?”

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin!”

Zenaida came in and handed over the contract.

“Right—one thing at a time,” said Dave, flipping through it. “There was a paragraph about… Here—security standards. ‘The EMIS system will conform to all of Cyrux’s corporate security standards…’”

“What are those standards?”

“Christ, they’re not the military! I mean, we’re not storing trade secrets, right?”

“No, but we access employee records from their mainframe…”

“So what are their security standards?” asked Dave.

“I’m just getting them piecemeal,” said Terry, rubbing his face. “Who knows?”

“So I’ll email Ted and ask him to fax us over their security standards,” said Dave, turning to his computer.

“Dave,” said Terry, “I’ll need…”

“Listen,” said Dave, “I have about a jillion phone calls to make this afternoon. Write up your issues, send them to me; I’ll have a powwow with Ted, figure out where we can meet in the middle. Don’t worry. He’s our client, Terry. Not our mortal enemy.”

“Look—also, Pierre is wondering what sort of salary he’s going to get in Houston, so he can decide on what sort of place to look for.”

“Check!” said Dave, making a note on a piece of paper—entirely too quickly for Terry’s happiness.

Terry nodded, and left. In the hallway, he pressed his forehead against the cool wall. Mmm…nice…

The new salespeople flew up the next day, and met with the technical team.

Carl was a tall, crusty engineer, a New Englander with a gray buzz-cut and a voice like a buzz saw set to ‘snarl.’ Bill was a short, twitchy, balding chain-smoker who had held various middle-management positions in the sales field. Both of them definitely knew what was what.

“The important thing,” said Carl, interrupting the technical presentation for about the twelfth time, “is to put yourself in the client’s shoes. They don’t care how things work, as long as they do work.”

“With all due respect to Carl,” said Bill, twirling a pen through his twitchy fingertips like a magic trick, “they’re also looking for a product which makes their jobs easier, and that means processing paperwork more efficiently. Most of the contacts I have in the field say the same thing over and over: ‘just help with my paperwork!’ That’s what this really comes down to.”

“I think what we’re talking about here is document management,” said Carl, with a teeth-gritting combination of loudness and slowness. “Documents are how ninety percent of our clients spend ninety percent of their time!”

“We don’t have any document management in this system,” said Terry.

“Now that’s why you’re in tech,” smiled Carl. “You would never say that to a client. A client wants to know that you understand what is important to him.”

“Features can always be added, am I right?” asked Bill. “But knowing what to add, that’s the trick.”

“And when,” added Carl significantly. “Bill is my esteemed colleague, but we have agreed to disagree on certain approaches. Bill believes that you should talk about the technical direction, I believe that you really need to hold the client’s hand. Take this problem of Access, for instance…”

Terry frowned. “What problem?”

Carl grinned. “Well, Access is not what people want to hear when they ask: ‘what’s this thing written in?’ They want to hear ‘Oracle,’ but they don’t want to pay ‘Oracle.’ So you don’t say ‘Access,’ you say ‘Visual Basic.’”

“But it’s not written in VB,” said Pierre.

“Tech people would spot that in a second,” added Terry.

“Ahh, now here is where you can learn something,” winked Carl. “We all know that, but what you don’t know is that I’m not just some tech-hick salesman. I have a master’s in engineering from MIT, and I have done my fair share of programming in my time. I’ve seen this code. It looks like VB, right?”

“It’s quite similar,” said Pierre.

“It’s called VBA, actually,” said Terry.

“Which stands for?”

“Visual Basic for Applications.”

Carl jabbed his finger on the table. “Exactly! So you say that this program is written in VBA, and if they ask what that means, you say ‘Visual Basic for Applications,’ which will comfort them. But you never, ever say ‘Access.’”

“But the back end is in Access,” said Pierre.

“I disagree,” said Carl, leaning back.

There was a pause.

Terry cocked his head. “Um…”

Carl laughed; it sounded like a handful of gravel sliding down a tin roof. “You see? You’re tech guys, so you think in a little box. We say: this EMIS is available in the database of your choice. Access for small installations, SQL Server for larger, or Oracle for enterprise-wide applications.”

“O—kay,” said Terry.

Bill nodded rapidly. “I mean, if we charge a quarter million US for an Oracle installation, are you telling me that we can’t make money? Are you?”

“You see,” said Carl, “it’s all about managing perception. You never tell a lie; it’s all a matter of focus. That’s the value I bring to the table. Clients want you to make their decisions easier for them.”

“And once they’re working with you, it’s not impossible to get extra money for extra work.”

“It’s like a marriage,” said Carl. “You get hitched, then you work at it.”

Dave burst into the boardroom, notebook under his arm.

“Oh boys,” he cried. “We’ve got an artistic genius in the building!”

“Ah, Davey,” smiled Carl. “Always a calming influence.”

Dave set his notebook down. “Terry, hook this thing up to the overhead.”

Terry fiddled with the cables (always, always remembering the presentation from hell), and then a picture of Dave came up on the wall.

“This is the advertisement,” said Dave, grinning from ear to ear. It was a full-length portrait of Dave, with the following text:

Dave Bugle, CEO of EMIS Systems, would like to thank the following major corporations for their consideration of the EMIS system:

A bulleted list of all the corporations they had phoned followed.

“What do you think?”

“Nice,” said Carl. “Professional. Good image. But you need contact information for Bill and me. Addresses of the new offices. Something like: ‘to arrange a personal demonstration, please contact a sales manager at one of our regional offices.’”

“Why not have a picture of the whole company?” asked Terry.

“What, all seven of us?” asked Bill. “Sure! ‘Buy from us; we operate out of the back of a van.’”

“Put my house down as a regional office,” said Carl. “A New England address never hurts.”

“You don’t want to play the Canadian angle,” said Bill.

“Yeah,” said Carl. “Don’t put down Toronto as the head office. Make it another regional office.”

“And what are you going to do about the website?” asked Bill.

“I’ve got a kid on it,” said Dave. “Friend of a friend of my son’s. He’s good.”

“What’s happening with the website?” asked Terry sharply. He had written the first one.

Dave shrugged, “Nothing much, just needs to be spruced up. Needs graphics. Better graphics. A history of the company. Client lists. I’ll also need some idea of how we could tie all of our products together. An environmental suite, something like that.”

“Everyone loves an integrated product,” said Bill.

Dave turned and smiled at his electric image. “Now, lunch, ladies?”

Terry frowned. “We have some more stuff to…”

“I think we’ve earned it,” winked Dave, getting up slowly. “All work and no play, eh?”

Chapter 56

Alder’s Decision

￼Dingbat Diamonds

One afternoon, two weeks after his interview with Gordon, Alder sat in his office and stared at a brown envelope, a dull helium wonder in his mind.

I started this as a sort of joke, an experiment, just toying with the Idea, just to see how it translated… But it seemed to work, in a way that was hard to understand; it was fascinating; it was never going to see the light of day—but nonetheless, footnotes began to spring behind me…

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the Choice had gone from a doodle to a drawing to a work of art, but no decision had been made along the way; no concrete commitment to action. But the Choice drew closer with each reference, each translation, each convoluted twist of phrase… It started as nothing, and grew into something, and then it seemed inevitable. Free will is in the details, the tiny choices at the beginning of things.

It really wasn’t so hard; the idea was not beyond rescuing, but it had to be salvaged from all that medieval rationalism… The idea was saved, sir, but the patient died…

Titles began swirling around in his head; the colon fulcrum of modern academia: poetic title: academic explanation. He had a few on a scratchpad:

Semioticist Socialism And Lyotardist Narrative

The Dialectic of Reality: Neotextual Theory, Derridaist Reading And Subdialectic Narrativity

Dialectic Narratives: Realism and Semioticist Postcapitalist Theory

Conceptual Narratives: Subtextual Objectivism And Capitalist Poststructuralist Theory

Postcultural Capitalism, Nihilism And Neodeconstructivist Capitalist Theory

Tweak, tweak… Alder’s pen had flown on mighty, foggy wings. Change ‘democracy’ to ‘Western assumptions,’ ‘reason’ to ‘Enlightenment proceduralism,’ ‘totalitarianism’ to ‘globalism,’ ‘capitalism’ to ‘the logic of multinational expansionism,’ ‘logic’ to ‘consistency with a subliminal viewpoint,’ get rid of the Big Four philosophers, find alternative thinkers, throw in a few “scare quotes” when words just can’t be changed…

So he labored on this work, late at night, and after two weeks—with some serious alterations—it stood on different legs. If you take the picture quickly enough, he thought, a hippo can stand on stilts…

The ‘evidence of the senses’ was a problem; Gordon’s ‘Uncertainty Principle’—that all operations of consciousness were susceptible to error—was easy enough; that was a central tenet of postmodernism. The problem was the argument that the mind was prone to error, but that it could be corrected by reference to the senses. Bringing sensual evidence into pomo arguments was an oddly disjointed notion, like trying to compare a Picasso portrait to an actual person. Alder decided in the end (well, not so much ‘decided’ as ‘allowed’) to risk it and talk about the ‘Western obsession with the validity of sense-experience,’ which seemed bitchy enough to stand.

The problem of religion still haunted him, but he felt that eliminating the arguments for the validity of the senses would take care of any threats to God. He talked about the ‘semiotics of the cultural other’ instead, which should be enough to fell any curious theologians.

Well, it’s all over and done with now, he thought. It’s all done but the sending. The commitment to action. The fork in the road that can never be revisited.

He suddenly felt very sad; it was a deep, deep ache, somewhere down in his heart’s darkest pumping places.

Poor boy… Something might be saved…

He shook his head then. What the hell? Ideas can’t be owned, just their expression—and there’s no doubt that the expression is damn different! He just gave me a possible destination; I’ve carved my own road…

He thought of Cat Larry’s job then; the job and a faculty dinner with his family. A stab of rage at his son’s wide, curious face… See? See? A new baby, a new life, a new house… Students racing to him, jostling outside his door. I’ll have to flee by the window, like Indiana Jones…

All belief is faith in a lie; I just have to have a little faith. Is that so hard to imagine, even for a modern dry-brain like me? People believe in reincarnation, resurrection, UFOs—I can’t believe in myself?

Something very primitive arose in him; something face-painted and heavily pierced… Stone Age hunters did not weep over the feelings of a mammoth. My God I have become a sad, spineless specimen! Power is what you take, right what you define…

He thought of Stephen again, of his son’s stinging words: “Dad, I think that you are pretending to teach something you do not understand…”

His face twisted in the growing dark. Who says I don’t understand it?

Alder picked up the envelope, dropped it in his mail basket, left the office, locked it, then checked his door twice before going downstairs and driving home.

Chapter 57

Bill and Carl Make a Promise

￼Dingbat Diamonds

The client seemed very interested, and this was throwing Terry off. There were a lot of interruptions.

He was used to interruptions from Bill and Carl, the salespeople. They would generally rouse themselves to interrupt a technical explanation with some gripping and innovative business comment, such as:

❖The most important thing here is to not just satisfy, but delight the users, and that’s what we are committed to

❖If the software flow follows existing business practices, it will be much easier for the users to use

❖The key thing is to get the right information to the right user in a timely fashion

❖The core of project success is limiting variables; you can’t manage the unknown

❖We are committed to RAD, or Rapid Application Development, because that allows us to develop software rapidly, and without errors

There were many other such comments. Terry and the client’s tech guys would sometimes catch each others’ eyes, and Terry would be tempted to say something like:

❖The important thing is that the code compiles and executes correctly

❖We aim to focus on not crashing the server, or deleting files randomly

❖We are committed to creating software that is useful—to you

❖We aim to deliver a system that adds value

“All right,” said Lyle, a thin-faced and caustic man clearly in love with being demanding. “Now, according to your RFP response I received—what, last Friday?—you are working on a web—what—extension? Add-on? A net solution, certainly. Now tell me about that.”

Bill and Carl leaned forward as one, nodding energetically. Terry frowned. “Web solution?”

Carl leaned forward. “What we are aiming to do, Lyle, is explore the various technologies available to extend the desktop interface of the EMIS system to a browser-independent architecture.”

Bill nodded some more. “We are fully cognizant of the need to reproduce the essential web experience in the EMIS paradigm.”

“What language are you using?” asked Lyle, narrowing his eyes, scenting blood.

Terry blushed. “Well, I would imagine—ASP is the closest to VBA.”

“How much of the application are you expecting to port over?”

Carl grinned. “We’re looking at providing core data-entry functionality within four to six weeks. We are still reviewing what other features to bring over. That decision, of course, will only be made after extensive consultation with our existing and potential clients. Marketing should always drive R&D, that’s our motto.”

“Really?” asked the tech guy. “Four to six weeks? We can log in and see it then?”

Terry turned a little pale. Used to dealing with the absolutes of software, he was quite out of his depth in the fog-planet of shifty sales.

“Absolutely,” smiled Bill.

Terry sat back down, and let Bill and Carl finish off the presentation. His mind was racing. Four to six weeks?

In the car, Bill and Carl sat in the front seats, congratulating each other on the presentation. Rain washed down the windows. They did not mention the promise of the web interface.

Finally Terry couldn’t take it any longer.

“Where did that web stuff come from?” he asked.

Carl turned and grinned. “Terry-boy, that’s why it’s so valuable to have you out on the road. And might I say you did a magnificent job out there in front of the client.”

“First rate,” added Bill, lighting yet another cigarette. “Fuck me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s in the bag.”

“But we don’t have a web solution,” cried Terry, gazing dismally outside, almost expecting a racing white rabbit to be keeping pace with the car.

“Absolutely,” said Carl. “But you understood how important it is to never say ‘no’ to a client, and that’s what counts. You never say ‘no.’ You say ‘no,’ the next asshole says ‘yes,’ and he gets the contract!”

“But we’ve never…”

“Sure, I know that. You know that. Bill knows that. But I also happen to know—don’t ask me how, inside job—that Lyle needs to make his recommendation within two weeks. So they won’t have a chance to see our web stuff before we get the job.”

“O—kay, but…”

“And,” said Bill, “you’ll spend about six months defining their system, by which time I’m sure you can come up with something.”

“And,” said Carl, “by the time they get their desktop systems installed, they’ll be too exhausted from the customization project to start mucking about on the web.”

Bill grinned. “Yeah—after that thing gets installed on five hundred machines, they’ll be done like dinner.”

“Five hundred?” asked Terry, his cheeks whitening.

“Sure—they’re a big client,” said Carl, lifting his huge hands from the wheel and rubbing them together. “Much wampum, Kimo Sabe!”

“But there’s no way our system will work for five hundred users!”

Carl waved a hand, returning the other to the wheel. “Well, they won’t all be logged in at the same time.”

“And Oracle can handle that many, right?” asked Bill.

“Sure, if the code is written in Oracle, but we don’t do Oracle! We’ll have to download all the data locally for calculations—it’ll take forever!”

“So they really should have a web system,” said Carl thoughtfully, drumming his fingers on the leather steering wheel.

“But we don’t have…” began Terry.

“Let’s call him this afternoon,” said Bill. “Say: ‘Hey Lyle, we’ve done some more thinking, and we’d recommend going straight to the web.’”

“Due to the number of users…? Nice.” Carl lifted his hand and pointed a forefinger at Bill. Together, they said: “‘Because we’re thinking—of you!’”—and laughed loudly.

In the back seat, Terry took a deep breath.

“Terry, don’t be so doom-and-gloom,” said Carl, glancing in the rear-view mirror. “We’re old hands at this. You have to show a little leg to get picked up. We manage client expectations; that’s our job. The web is a better solution, right?”

“Sure, but…”

“Now wait a moment—you work on the web, we’ll work on the client, and make sure everything comes together tickety-boo.”

“And remember, kid,” grinned Bill, “you’re working with professionals. Do not try this at home!”

They two men laughed again, and they drove on, a little cube of rolling smoke in the darkening rain.

Chapter 58

Alder Gets Phone Calls about Gordon’s Thesis

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Alder’s article was published in the October issue of a technical journal, and he began receiving calls almost immediately.

The first was from a newspaper in Florida.

“Professor Parsons?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Ralph Yoakam; I work for the Times Dispatch, out of Miami. I’m not really used to the academic beat, but my daughter says that you have an idea which might be thought of as—in her words—‘radical cool.’” The man laughed.

“Do you mean the article in Historical Quarterly?”

“Yeah, I think that’s what she said. Now don’t get excited; I don’t know if there’s a story, but… Can you tell me, in one sentence, what this idea is? I couldn’t get much out of my daughter; we pay and pay, she just gets more obscure.”

“One sentence?” Alder giggled despite himself. “It’s not really a ‘one sentence’ kind of idea.”

“Didn’t some guy once send a famous two-hundred-and-fifty-word cable describing the whole theory of relativity?”

“Yes, but…”

“Okay, well thanks for your time.”

“Wait—wait a moment! One sentence. Okay, how’s this: People who believe there is a ‘higher realm’ of reality prefer dictatorship to democracy.”

There was a pause.

“Okay, got it. You mean heaven.”

“Heaven is one, yes,” said Alder, feeling a sick dread—and an almost unbearable excitement—in his hammering heart.

“What are some others?”

“Well, a lot of spiritualism. Like people who believe groups should rule over the individual.”

“Yeah… Okay. So mystics. Religious people.”

“That could be one group, yes.”

“Huh. Dunno, Prof… I know a lot of nice Christians.”

“No—that’s not what I mean, that every Christian is a fascist! It means that the beliefs themselves logically end in dictatorship.”

“Right. That’s… Well, there’s no real human angle, you know. Can you think of anyone who fits this idea?”

“Oooh, not off the top of my head. It was a work of pure philosophy…”

“Huh.” Pause. “Well, I’ll tell you what. You think of someone, you let me know. Nice talking to you, Doc.”

“Sure. You too.”

Alder hung up. He felt a little dizzy. Media convergence!

The phone rang again. It was Bez, the department head.

“Alder, just wanted to say congratulations on the article. It’ll do you no end of good.”

“Thanks, Dr. Tabarrok. Have you read it yet?”

“Sorry? No, no not yet.”

“Have you ever been called by the media?”

“Once in a while. Expert opinion, such as it is. Why?”

“I just got my first call.”

“About your article?”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, congratulations! What happened?”

“It was a newspaper reporter. He wanted more of a human angle.”

“Sure. Sure. Well, you might want to popularize it a little. Get it out to a wider audience.”

“Maybe,” said Alder. “I don’t know… It’s not really what I signed up for.”

“Come on!” Bez sighed. “Well, it’s up to you, of course, but for the greater good… We shouldn’t be so ‘ivory tower.’ Society does pay our bills, you know.”

“Hm. Let me think about it.”

“Of course. Let me know if I can help.”

“Bez…”

“Yes?”

“I… When will you know about the appointments?”

“You’ll have an interview…” Alder heard pages flipping. “Hooo—next week. Friday, two thirty.”

“Great. Great. Thanks a lot.”

“Take care.”

The phone rang again.

“Professor Parsons,” he said.

“Ah good; no answering machine,” said a brisk female voice. “Well, Professor Parsons, I’ve just read your article, and there’s something in here quite remarkable. You are quite a smuggler!”

“Um—who am I talking to?”

“Louella Brisbois,” she said. “I run the Department of Women’s Studies here at Brock.” She laughed. “Do you know, you are quite sneaky!”

“How so?”

“Well—this bit about higher realities and dictatorship. Did you know that ‘higher realities’ is a totally male concept? Plato, Kant, Hegel, all those testicle loonies. For a woman, a ‘higher realm’ is an epidural on the birthing table. But you’re really on to something. If we can say that these male ideas lead to patriarchal—I know, I know, the dreaded p word—governments, we’re a long way towards solving the problem of the growth of anti-female, anti-democratic power structures, don’t you think?”

“I’d never really thought of it as male or female.”

She snorted. “And why would you? Maybe you don’t know what you’ve done. No matter, wouldn’t be the first time. But listen. Come talk to us. Guest lecture. Spell this idea out; drop all the pomo rubbish—yes, we value clarity too. This ‘higher reality’ business is an old feminist idea, but it would be good to have a man talk about it. Diversity. Can you come?”

“Um, I’d be delighted…”

“When?”

“I’ll have to check my calendar…”

“Put me on hold. Do you have good music? Indigo Girls?”

“No—no—how is next Wednesday?” That’ll sound good to the ‘Cat Larry’ committee…

“Arrr, sure. 2:00 p.m. I’ll meet you outside the Admissions Office. Louella Brisbois, don’t care about the ‘Doctor’ part.”

“Great.”

“Done,” she said, and hung up.

He had just replaced the receiver, when it rang again. He picked it up.

“Professor Parsons,” he said.

“Oh, great!” said an enthusiastic female voice. “Professor Parsons, my name is Sara Levy, and I am a member of the Jewish Defense League. Do you have a moment?”

“Sure…”

“Well, I’ve just finished the article, and… Are you following the latest developments in the Middle East?”

Is that a coded question for: are you Jewish? he wondered. “A little…”

“Great. I was talking about your text with our board, and we’d like you to come and give a talk.”

“Uh huh.”

“You’d be the first academic to…” She laughed. “I know, it sounds odd, a Jew dissing intellectuals, but we haven’t found them too helpful in our struggle—the Europeans especially, don’t get me started! But you’ve got something here, something we need.”

“What’s that?”

“Ah, a modest prof, how special! Well, we’ve got a big problem with the afterlife, if you know what I mean.”

“Umm—no?”

“Jews don’t believe in an afterlife; we blow ourselves up, we just make a mess. But Muslims, they believe that they go straight to heaven—and reserve ninety spots for their nearest and dearest. So you argue that mysticism leads to violence, that’s really interesting to us. I mean, we’re religious—most of us—but not mystical, at least not the way our Islamic brethren are.”

“But—don’t you have more pressing…”

“Issues? Yes, of course. I’m not on the board. But I think—and they’ve given me the go-ahead for this—that we have to wage war not just on the ground, but in men’s minds.” She laughed. “Listen to me—people’s minds. Especially now that they’re pretending to be pregnant to blow us up. So come and talk to us, and we’ll put some enterprising grad students at your disposal, and we’ll all show just how much the mystical Muslims oppose our noble rationalism. You name the day.”

“I’ll need a little—a little more information.”

“So—we’ll do lunch.” The woman paused. “I mean, you do have the courage of your convictions, right?”

Sure, I’ll send little Gordy, thought Alder, almost giggling. He took down the woman’s number and promised to call her back.

Alder sat back. Gosh! Four phone calls in half an hour! He tried adding up how long—excluding his wife—it took for the last four to occur, then gave up, suddenly depressed.

The phone calls kept coming, all afternoon. Something of the Great Idea had survived in his article; people recognized it; it was like a Muzak version of a masterpiece. Something missing, of course, but still catchy…

That evening, he confessed his success to Joanne. Stephen was at the table.

“Oh Lord, that’s great, Alder,” she said.

“Where did you get your idea, Dad?” asked Stephen.

“It just came, you know, like how a tune gets into your head.”

Joanne frowned, thinking: oh, don’t be condescending, Alder. That only cranks him up.

Stephen stared at his father. “It’s just that you’ve been saying that being a professor can be really boring, and it wasn’t what you were thinking of when you started.”

Alder laughed. “Sure, it has its ups and downs. When did I say that?”

Stephen fished out his notepad.

“No, that’s okay, Stevie,” sighed Joanne. “Let’s just be happy for Daddy. So, what happens now?”

Alder shrugged, grinning. “Well, I have a number of speaking invitations. The calls I got today… Everyone thinks that if I make it more popular, it would be…it would be, well better, easier to sell.”

“Can you do that?”

“Sure—well I think so. It’s tough. You know what Lincoln said: ‘sorry this letter is so long; I didn’t have time to make it shorter.’”

“That was Churchill,” said Stephen. “So where did you get this idea?”

Alder blinked. It’s such a simple question, you’d think I’d have figured it out… “You wouldn’t believe me.”

Stephen smiled.

“Okay,” said Alder. “It came in a dream.”

He continued looking at his father, quite sweetly.

“A man in long white robes came down from a high mountain, and held up a tablet of rules, and when I took them from him, his arm stayed up, and I realized it was a Nazi salute.”

Stephen frowned; the idea worked its way into him.

“But I don’t know what the idea is,” he said.

Joanne ruffled her son’s hair. “Oh, it’s that if you believe in heaven, you end up wanting a—what?”

Alder smiled. “Taking away people’s votes, putting them in prison if they disagree with you, burning books, that sort of thing.”

Stephen nodded slowly. “Because…because you can’t get people to agree with you if you can’t argue and—and have some truth you both—agree on. Believe in, but not just believe in. Prove.” He shook his head slightly.

Alder stared at his son; his jaw dropped completely. Holy shit, I should have come to him first! “That’s very good, son! Very close.”

He frowned. “What’s missing?”

“Now, now,” said Joanne, “we’ve just stopped discussing the moral strike, let’s not spend our entire lives up to our eyeballs in ideas. Let’s let loose and go out for dessert!”

Stephen got up, but could not keep his eyes off his father, and before they left, excused himself to the bathroom and wrote three pages in his notebook, feverishly fast.

Chapter 59

A Pointed Review

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Dave was called to Cyrux in mid-October, and asked to bring all his paperwork relating to the project. He brought Pierre and Terry to the meeting. They were ushered into a conference room. After a few minutes, an East Indian man, accompanied by a man even younger than Terry, entered the room.

The man sat down and opened a large binder. “Mr. Bugle, thanks for coming in on such short notice. My name is Nabil Gurgis, and this is Wes Leeds. I am a senior IT project manager. Wes here is our database expert.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Dave, rising and beaming. “This is Terry Coleman, my CTO, and Pierre Laurin, the technical lead on the project.”

“Pleased to meet you. Now, the reason I’ve called you in is that I need some answers to the project you were working on with Mr. Howell.”

“Sure—where is Ted? Is he okay?”

“Mr. Howell has gone on indefinite stress leave.”

Wes grinned. “He came to work in combat fatigues. And answered his phone like it was a walkie-talkie.”

Nabil frowned at him, then continued. “So, I’ve been asked to review the projects he had on hand, and I’ve come to yours. Tell me a little about it.” He glanced down. “The paperwork is a little—scattered.”

Dave grinned. “Well, in short, we were attempting to create an operating system for the environmental manager!”

Wes looked up quickly, then stared at Terry. “The what?” he asked.

“Our aim,” continued Dave, “is to place all the technology needs at the fingertips of the environmental manager. Everything he needs to do, he does through our system.”

Nabil frowned. “Riiight. Now this project was supposed to be finished—what—in July? Over three months ago?”

“Well, the original date was based on a scope, which Ted himself asked to have expanded.”

“Can you give me the original project plan, as well as all the subsequent changes?”

“Sure,” said Dave, opening his binder. He ruffled through it for a moment, then turned to Terry. “Terry, you were dealing with him about the changes, right?”

“Yes. We spoke about it quite a bit…”

“Let me see the original project plan,” said Nabil, holding out his hand.

“Well, it’s mostly outlined in the contract,” said Dave, turning the pages slowly. “I’ve gone through the contract,” said Nabil, “and I can’t find any real specifications. I do have something here, dated March 10, which says the customization will run ten thousand. How was that number arrived at?”

“I talked it over with Terry,” said Dave.

“Okay, Terry, where did you get that from? That was the original estimate, right?”

“Yes…”

“So, how did you decide the scope?”

“Well, I met with Ted, and he showed me the reports he had to create. And he had some spreadsheets. And he saw the program as I was going along.”

“So you have an estimate of hours?”

“We charge fifty dollars per hour, so, yes, I thought it would take two hundred hours.”

Nabil jotted something down. “Okay, so ten weeks.”

“Yes.”

“Does that include testing?” asked Wes.

“Yes,” said Dave. “Twenty-five percent of that time is QA/QC.”

Nabil frowned. “So, how are those two hundred hours broken down? Where do they fit in the project plan? I couldn’t find a project plan. I need a copy.”

“As I said, it’s mostly in the contract, and we had a lot of verbal conversations…”

“Okay, okay. And then things began to change. There are some notations here about—metric and imperial conversions? Tell me about that.”

There was a slight pause.

“Terry?” said Dave.

“Well, Ted said that he needed the US plant in the database, and so all the reports needed to be in metric and imperial…”

“Okay!” exhaled Nabil. “Did you talk this over with Ted?”

Dave smiled. “I told him we were putting the conversions in the database, and he seemed delighted.”

“Did he also mention that he has no reporting requirements for the US plant? That’s all handled out of Lansing.”

Dave paused. “Um—no, no he didn’t mention that, but…”

“How much was the conversion capacity going to cost?”

“Well, I asked Terry, and he didn’t seem to think it was that difficult…”

“How were you doing it?” asked Wes.

Terry clasped his hands together tightly. “I was going to store standard units in one field, then let the user display whatever he wanted in another one.”

“Huh. How many fields?”

Terry glanced at Pierre. “Maybe a hundred?”

“I think a little more,” said Pierre, unsuccessfully hiding a dark, Quebecois scowl.

“And the reporting?”

“I’m still working on it…” said Pierre.

Nabil held up his hand. “Okay, so how much did this cost?”

“We decided to include it as a complimentary feature,” said Dave. “Our reasoning was this: since we failed to take it into account at the beginning, it was our responsibility to make it right.”

“But it’s not mentioned in the contract, right?”

“No—we realized it later.”

Nabil nodded. “So you decided to do it for free, sure, that’s your prerogative. But where is the documentation which says: hey, we made a mistake, we’ll fix it gratis, but it’s going to extend the deliverable by x hours? That’s what I can’t find.”

“Well, according to Terry, it wasn’t going to take that long…”

“Let me ask you something else,” said Nabil, sitting back in his chair. “Who is the project manager here?”

“Terry,” said Dave promptly.

“Okay, Terry, what is your training in project management?”

“Well, I took systems analysis in college…”

“How long out of school are you?”

“Six months.”

“Is this your first software delivery?”

“Yes.”

Dave smiled. “However, in school, Terry…”

“Okay,” said Nabil, holding up his hand. “We need to pause for a moment. Let me tell you what I see, coming in from the outside. We have a project with no scope, no project plan, no clear delivery date, and you have decided to solve a problem which is not even a problem without telling us. If you’d gone to Ted, and said, ‘hey, this metric/imperial thing will cost you another ten thou, say, and extend the project by a month,’ he would probably have said: ‘it’s not really that important.’”

Dave leaned forward and smiled. “Mr. Gurgis, I am confident that we can get the software to you—error-free and ready to go—by Friday of this week.”

Nabil smiled. “I appreciate your confidence, Mr. Bugle, but I’m not sure what it’s based on. As far as I can tell, you made the sale—you’re the salesperson, right? Okay, so you made the sale and then Terry took over, and I’m sure he’s a fine programmer, but he has no idea how to run a large project.”

“Well, with all due respect,” said Dave, “I think that Cyrux should stand by the decisions of Mr. Howell, who was a valid employee at the time.”

“Of course,” said Nabil. “The problem, though, is that we have no idea what those decisions actually were. Frankly, there’s no real documentation of any kind. And we don’t really want this metric/imperial thing. It will just confuse the user, and we have no idea how long it will take to remove it.”

“Quite a while though, I think,” said Wes.

“Let me ask you something else,” said Nabil. “How many hours have you spent on this project?”

“We didn’t bring that information with us,” replied Dave. “It’s in our time and billing system back at head office.”

“Okay, but roughly—you’ve been on this thing for what—five months?”

Dave nodded. “Yes, that’s about right.”

“Terry, have you been working on this full time?”

“I’ve been doing some presenting as well, and some specs for other clients.”

“And reviewing RFPs,” added Dave.

“So Pierre, you are the lead programmer then, is that right?”

“Yeah…”

“And is this your first software delivery?”

“Uh huh.”

“And you’ve been working on this full-time?”

Pierre nodded, his head low.

“Is there anyone else on the project?” asked Nabil.

Dave nodded eagerly. “We have a full-time QA/QC manager, whose resources are entirely devoted to the project.”

“And the hourly rate?”

“It was a fixed fee project. A not-to-exceed…”

“So you have no hourly rates?”

“Well, they’re fifty dollars, officially, but…”

Nabil pulled out a calculator. “Okay, so let’s say half of Terry’s time, all of Pierre’s, and all of the QA guy’s time. So that’s sixteen thousand dollar hours for Terry, thirty-two thousand for Pierre and the other guy’s time, which gives—eighty-eight thousand dollars worth of time, not counting any of yours, Mr Bugle. And that’s assuming no overtime. And not counting the presentation and on-site time. You are charging—what, thirty-five thousand for the whole thing? And you’re not done yet. Did your quote include training?”

Dave paused. “Yes.”

Nabil laughed. “So, even with very conservative estimates, I think you’re spending more than a hundred thousand dollars on a thirty-five K project.” He held up his hand again. “Sure, I know, you’ll say it’s a loss leader, but frankly you don’t have any processes in place to avoid this kind of loss in the future. No project management, no specification process, no triggers for overruns… So even if we take the software, I have no reason to believe you will be around to support it by this time next year.”

“Well, Mr. Gurgis, let me be the first to say that…”

“But that’s all pretty irrelevant,” continued Nabil, closing his binder. “The point, Mr. Bugle, is that we are now in a legal position to cancel this project.”

Dave nodded slowly. “Hmm. This is serious.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I’ve got to tell you, Mr.—can I call you Nabil? Nabil, I understand where you’re coming from. You think we’re cowboys, right? There’s some… Okay, I hear you. We’re going to fix this. We’ve got…”

“Mr. Bugle, I am cancelling this project.”

There was a kind of strangled silence in the room. Dave’s eyes widened slowly. A genuine facial tic crossed his cheek, like a spider struggling to get out. “Cancel!” he cried. “Cancel! But Ted had no problem with us taking a little extra time to get it just right! The data is all across… We’re just testing the final interface! So you want the conversion stuff gone, we’ll just hide the fields, it’s really not that big a deal! Nabil…!”

“There is also the matter of security, right, Wes?”

Wes nodded. “You’re using Access, so security doesn’t meet our corporate standards.”

“As far as I can tell,” added Nabil, “this database contains very sensitive information.”

“We talked about this with Ted,” said Dave, “and he and Terry put their heads together and came up with some great solutions!”

“Sorry, but we can’t use Access for data that sensitive.”

“We could upsize it to SQL Server,” said Terry. “Microsoft has a wizard…”

Wes shook his head. “We’re an Oracle shop.”

“Okay,” said Dave, taking a deep breath. “We’re getting way ahead of ourselves here. Surely there’s something that can be worked out.”

Nabil shook his head. His voice was suddenly steely. “No. You are too small. You have no processes. You are way over cost. And, frankly, you are unprofessional. You go over and don’t tell us. You’re late and don’t tell us why. You add significant features without due process. You have no project plan. No change documentation. And all evidence points to the fact that you pulled your initial cost estimates out of a hat. You wanted the sale at any cost, and made it. Now I have to unmake it.”

“Now, Nabil,” said Dave, his cheeks reddening, “I don’t mean to sound harsh, but don’t you think you’re sort of springing this on us? We had no warning that the process was going to change, just like that!” He snapped his fingers. “We have worked for months with a representative of Cyrux who had no problems with what we were doing!”

“Sure,” said Nabil evenly. “That’s why I decided to meet with you. I thought—maybe Ted just kept bad records. Lord knows his exit was not the most graceful. But there are no records of anything, Mr. Bugle. This project was just floating in space. I would bet my job that this thing will take another six months to finish. And even if it were perfect, it will perform like a pig. I mean my God, man—you sold us a corporate-wide program built on a toy database!”

“That’s what was bought, yes. We told Ted about the limitations, but he didn’t have the cash to…”

“Why did you sell us something you knew would not work?”

“Waaaait just a moment!” cried Dave. “We didn’t know it wouldn’t work!”

“I know everyone wants to make a quick buck,” said Nabil, “but it’s people like me who have to live with the consequences—and people like Terry and Pierre, I think, too. You just come in and make the sale, and let inexperienced people produce the software, and then browbeat them. You never work with anyone who knows what they’re doing. Because of people like you, Mr. Bugle, corporations need lawyers and people like me. I swear, you give everyone in a suit a bad name!”

“This is bullshit!” snarled Dave, leaping up and grabbing his papers. “We’re leaving. Our lawyers will be in touch!”

Nabil nodded slowly, then picked up the contract. “We’re in a legal position to cancel, Mr. Bugle. Our lawyers work very hard on these. And now I think that, based on this conversation—and what is in here—I will also charge you for our lost time, as well as the customization fees.”

Dave’s face worked grotesquely. “I once worked for a big company, Mr. Gurgis, and it was people like you who drove me out.”

Nabil smiled. “Competence has a way of doing that, Mr. Bugle.”

Chapter 60

The BabbleFish Speaks

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Rudy was not an absolutist, but something about Gordon had gotten to him. One night, when he could not sleep, he got up and spoke the following into his computer:

“I know it’s all bullshit, but it smells anyway. I sometimes feel the most God-awful depression—not in my soul, because that’s been deconstructed, nor in my loins, which are the keystone of my male dominance, nor in my heart, which is dammed off by western materialism, but somewhere important in my being, somewhere down in the marrow, something is clamoring at me.

“I know it’s all a kind of shell game, and I need to spend every waking hour cursing, spitting on, and undermining my culture—in the hopes of being paid a middle-class salary to teach those who come after me to do the same—but there’s something about all this mess—and come on, people, admit it, it is a mess—something we need to look at a bit more carefully.

“A lot of you out there have been helped by me. I sent you off into the deserts of your theses armed with just enough food and water to get back, if you rationed yourselves fiercely. I always knew that there was nothing in my advice. I have always just had a knack for wet-fingering the prevailing social winds, but there is something in me—something… I want to know where the winds come from. It’s all very Magellan and Peter Pan, but there it is.

“Someone recently came to me and had what I could really call a Great Idea. This thing would blow your minds, people. But it has no hope of getting anywhere here. I tried ‘upshifting’ it, but I couldn’t—brothers and sisters, I just couldn’t—for the first time in my life I was unable to translate something alive into pomo, which I now classify as a dead language, like Latin. Pomo cannot contain this Great Idea. All it can contain is what we already believe—which is that there is nothing to believe.

“And we are so certain that there is nothing to believe. We think we are open-minded, but it’s just a slack emptiness. We hate anyone who’s certain; we do, my brothers, in the secret vessels of our hearts. We hate certainty and confidence, and love cynicism and empty charm.

“We are so funny, we are. We know all the hideous recesses of modern culture. We sing of obscure things and in so doing we say that what is important is not truth or courage or nobility but the theme song from some 1950s sitcom.

“We are a cancer in the throat of the modern world. We have invented a language through which we cannot be detected. We have swarmed the halls of academia, camping in the highest places of thought in our cluttered and twisted tent cities.

“We carry a self-hatred so deep that we cannot see it; not in ourselves, and not in others. We go through each day like a pantomime. We are scared of shadows in the halls, and hate the world for not making our lies true.

“We ask every question but: are we right? What if the world does exist, what if language is supposed to have meaning, what if there are such things as truth and goodness? Where in that shining city is there room for us rodents? Every time an anchor is thrown overboard, we chew the rope. Every time a man reaches up to climb, we attack his ankles.

“We are a pestilence of perfection. We live for finding flaws. Every advantage, every virtue is eclipsed by a deficiency. We cripple heroes for their tiny flaws. Our standards are not goals, but weapons.

“We are an acid. We undermine what we cannot achieve. We shadowbox our enemies into exhaustion. We feed on the natural doubt of the honest thinker. We never prove, we only imply. We never say, just infer. We never explain, just embarrass.

“None of us has any idea what truth is. We have no clue what we are saying, we just play with the words we accept without thought. We parade for each other, pretending at rebellion, but we never challenge, and are never exposed.

“We are paid to be thinkers, but never come to any conclusion. When society picks its teams, we are not even picked last. We don’t even know where the field is. We may as well be on the dark side of the moon, making hand gestures in spacesuits, our faceplates painted over.

“We have no utility, and so are nothing but arrogance. We have no truth, so are nothing but scornful assertion. We have no honor, so are self-righteous, backstabbing villains. We have no purpose, so scorn all certainty. We make all the noise we can to cover up our awful silence. We bite the hand that feeds us, and call it education. We corrupt the young, and call it education. We erode the foundations of our society, and call it education. We only criticize, and call it education. We work for evil, and call it education.

“We are the hateful kid who dares the honest kid to strike him. We are the natural plagues of society, invading a society unaware of our danger. We have taken over the pillars of learning—the first and last defenses—and now slither through the shadows of the last days.

“The entire point of our lives is hiding. We are ghosts, visible only in clanks and shadows. We damn truth because truth would damn us.

“What was our birthing? Why are we drawn to speak of ideas that we believe do not exist? Why do we lower the earth to make a false tower? I think it is quite simple. At least it was in my case.”

Rudy’s voice caught.

“I was curious, and asked many questions. For every child a question stops somewhere. The sky is blue because of x, x is because of y, y from z, z just is. But I was never happy with that end point. Always and forever, there had to be something more.

“But that is at the very edge of society, of family, of loved ones near and dear. To sail beyond visible land requires more navigation than I possessed. The ‘why’ of what is right is what everything is built on. If you sail beyond that, if you take one step past the painted horizon, then you dissolve into air, and that is where real terror lies. We are social beings, but we are also beings who yearn for truth. I yearned for truth. I went that one step past the line of no more. And so society dissolved, my family, which was my society at the time, sifted into puffs of dust. My father’s authority: nothing. He did not know what or why he ordered. My mother’s heart: she loved and grieved for what she did not understand.

“I became arrogant. I believed that I had gone past all trappings into the truth, which was that everything is will. I was ordered for the sake of order; there was nothing of my benefit in it, any of it.

“I must wear a coat when it’s cold, but to apologize for speaking out of turn? To not shoplift? Lie? Not lie? Good God—my parents told me not to lie while having no idea why lying was wrong. It hurt people—my father is a dentist! Is there a worse lie than punishing for lying without knowing why it is wrong?

“So rather than being instructed, I was just being commanded. It was a dare, the crying of ‘Uncle!’ under a bully’s knee. No one had any real idea why I should or shouldn’t do things. It was habit, convenience. And power, of course… Power.

“And I wouldn’t have minded even that, except that it was—it was a coward’s power. A bully is more honest. You can hate the bully. He doesn’t pretend to represent right. But my father, my teachers, all our petty little leaders, they all said submit to the good, not me, but then when I asked, they had no idea what the good was! So what the fuck was it but power?

“So to hell with it. My heart becomes a thin desert of stark shadows. Anyone who claims ‘right’ is now my enemy. Every fuck who pomps and preens and drapes pretty ethics on the thick shit of power is my eternal foe. I will rip the gilding from every empty altar. I will become cancer to see if the body should live.

“I was not alone in this attack. I thought I was, but to my left and right was a sea of ghost-riders. We all sensed something false and self-serving. It was all a form of advertising. ‘This’ or ‘that’ is no more the ‘right’ than Coke or Pepsi. Every pronouncement is propaganda.

“I hoped I was wrong. This was our great secret—and who among us would not welcome the restoration of righteousness? If there is such a thing as goodness, then our parents are saved, the world is saved. We are saved. Even if they did not understand why, they still did the good, and all is not power and control.

“But we cannot find goodness. It is gone from our times. It has been emptied from the words of our elders. We have been fooled once. We are hardened against trust.

“But in our hatred, have we lost the capacity to keep looking? We fell from illusion because we demanded truth—have we now lost even the possibility of looking for truth? We have learned that leeches made us sick. Now we say that medicine is without worth. Yet still we study to be healers. We have become what we despised. In our pursuit of predators, we have become but teeth and claws. We say we do not believe in truth, but pursue knowledge nonetheless. We have become as false as those whose blindness first spurred us on this path. They said: ‘this is the good,’ but knew nothing of right. We say: ‘this is knowledge,’ but know nothing of truth.

“But we may be wrong, brothers and sisters. This path we walked, past the line of ‘nothing more,’ this path that has led into the gray desert of indifferent opinions, where we can only nod at each other in silent passing, this path may have become something we defend as our very homes, not as a route to something else. We found our maps were false and became lost—is our journey now to defend our disorientation? Would we rather curse all maps and stay lost? Do we love our false lessons so much that we will falsify the world to save them?

“Maybe… I don’t know. Maybe it was a false line, that line from ‘false’ to ‘nothing.’ False, yes, it was all bullshit, but that doesn’t mean that it always must be bullshit.

“If we’ve given up looking for truth, let’s all just turn in our library cards, empty our cubicles, rise up from our basement bedrooms, take the jobs our training has prepared for us, and say with one proud, honest, accurate voice:

“Would you like fries with that?”

Chapter 61

A Father-Son Chat

￼Dingbat Diamonds

The beauty of a shifty life is that there is always one more card to be played. Dave was down. His company was in trouble; his debts were unrelieved. He had opened offices, bought fabulous equipment, spent a fortune on advertising, and the company was just not bringing in any money. Knowing that, he went down to talk to his son, who was in the basement.

Justin was learning the bass. He wanted to be ready for his solo album.

“Justin!” said Dave, coming down with two beers. No one else was home, so it was okay.

“Yeah, Dad?” asked Justin, frowning at a book of fret notations.

“How’s it going? Here,” he said, lobbing a can of beer towards his son. Justin was holding the bass in one hand, and his Learn the Bass book in the other, so the beer just sailed past him and over the couch.

Dave frowned. “Well, that wasn’t quite as ‘James Bond’ as it could have been, eh?”

“I’m good, Dad.”

Dave went around the couch and retrieved the beer, then sat down in the Lazy-Boy. He reached back and flipped up the footrest.

“Man, I love this basement,” he said. “Good times, here…”

Oh, man, thought Justin, he wants something. He suddenly flashed back to a scrap of the movie Sid and Nancy, when Sid is trying to learn the bass, and the lights go out.

“So what’s going on with the band these days?” asked Dave, taking a pull of beer.

“Not much—we’re practicing…”

“How many songs you got now?”

“Just the one…”

Dave grinned. “Well, that’s all it takes, right?”

“Mm hm,” murmured Justin, peering at his book. I don’t know any songs with really good bass lines—‘Walking On The Moon’ is waaay too retro…

“I tried that once,” smiled Dave. “Some frat party. I got up and wanted to rock and roll! I think I did ‘My Sharona.’ I do one verse, the guitarist pulls me aside and says: ‘I think there’s more than one note to the song, man!’ Never tried again. Don’t know where you got it from. Angela sounds like a cat being fed ass-backwards through a blender.”

Dave took another sip.

“I envy you, though. Cut the song, it’s done. Software is a fucking mess. It’s never done. Next time, I’m starting a construction company. You can sell a half-finished building if everything else screws up… So do you think you’re going to be big?”

“Don’t know, Dad…”

“Because I’ve gotta tell you, son, if you don’t…”

Justin raised his head. “What do you mean?”

Dave raised his hand and touched his thumb and forefinger together. “Because, you know, we’re just hanging by a bit of a thread here.”

“What?”

“Things have taken a sudden turn… The business is not doing so well.”

“What the hell? You got all this financing…”

“That’s not my money, son. The board won’t let me increase my salary. They want to keep me at ‘start-up starvation’ forever. And it’s been too long already. Five businesses failed. Eight K, for ten months. Nothing for eighteen months before that. Things are getting ugly.”

Justin shrugged. “Been down that road before…” Yeah, like my eleventh birthday, Dad, when you cried…

“Oh no,” said Dave sadly. “This is different.” He smiled. “I’m sure I’ve said that before, but… I mean, your mom’s not about to start working. Sarah’s too young, damn these liberal laws.”

“You think I should get a job?”

Dave sat up hurriedly. “A job? You have a job, and a damn good one too! You gon’ be a soooperstar, son!”

“Well, it’s early to tell, Dad…” said Justin wearily.

“I hope not. I put some money into your band, with that toad Al. We’re facing a fucking wall, Jus, but we’re only going about mach three, so we should be okay. Bit messy, but… I mean, your sister loves that school. You do too, right? I mean, it costs enough.”

“’Scuse me?”

“We’re on the same page, right?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You could make some real scratch here, right? Don’t all these superstars buy their grandparents boats and stuff?”

“This is—like—a possible source of income?”

“I stress possible,” said Dave, holding up his hands. “I’m not trying to ride you, Jus—I just want you to know that it is important for me, for us, for our family.”

“How important?” demanded Justin.

“Hm?”

“Like we’re busted important? Like we don’t eat if I don’t do well?”

“Well, yeah. I’m sorry, but yeah. Mostly, it’ll all go. School for sure. House. Cars.”

“What, you’ve got nothing socked away?”

“Look—we’re talking frankly, like men, so don’t get all… But yeah. Pretty much. Nothing.”

Justin threw down his bass. A low wounded hum filled the room.

“What the fuck? This is a fucking lark, Dad! This is not something for you to fucking—feed off!”

“Whoa!” cried Dave, wriggling to his feet. “What do you mean, feed off?”

“Dad—you know what I mean.”

“No—what?”

“All these kids you get involved with. These little wide-eyed computer nerds. I’m not going to be one of your—I don’t know, what the fuck.” Justin backed away. “No way, Dad. No way.”

“So we all go down, and who benefits? Will you feel as holier-than-thou when you turn your uniform in? You, the little lord of the social set? ’Cause you know, being big in grade eleven doesn’t make you shit in the world, Jus. We all have to grow up sometime. This is your moment, and you’re not doing too well.”

“Grow up? Grow up? You fucking lie for a living!”

Dave pursed his lips. Just like Ang. “Maybe,” he said softly. “But you live off those lies.”

Justin stared back at his father, then threw his instrument down and ran up the stairs, towards the air.

Chapter 62

Cute Newcomers

￼Dingbat Diamonds

The day of the MTV special had arrived. Greta and Al were in the dressing room with the boys, fussing and adjusting and criticizing the makeup staff.

The boys themselves were quiet. It was suddenly quite clear how very young they actually were. They spoke little, and went through interesting and rather inhuman shades of color as the hour of their first appearance drew near.

The level of interest in BöyBandTM had been quite intense. It was perfect for the pomo kids—they could feel lust and cynicism at the same time. The boys’ images had been plastered over MTV for the past two weeks—along with the other ‘Cute Newcomers’—and they had already started receiving fan mail. Their single was getting good airplay—it was the kind of Elton John-ny pop that grows on people through repetition. They showed up on web searches (not as high as Al hoped, but then he figured out people had problems with the umlaut over the o, and cursed that decision again).

Various word games had arisen over the name of the band and their ‘types’ in large letters under their name: ‘the funny one,’ ‘the shy one’ (a few enterprising VJs just used these ‘types,’ foregoing the boys’ names completely). A local pop radio station had a contest to see the public unveiling of BöyBandTM. They had a contest for it, called ‘A Cöntest to See BöyBandTM.’ There seemed to be no end to the possibilities for self-referential language. Al had barely averted the renaming of ‘What You Want Me To Be,’ to ‘Pop Single.’ The ‘Apprentice Angel’ video had also gotten a lot of airplay. Linus had convinced Al to insert ‘Pop-Up Video’ balloons over certain scenes. For instance, the initial shadowed outline of the band was labelled the ‘keep-them-hidden’ anticipation shot.

So there was great anticipation The crowd outside was screeching and yawning in an unleashed, pre-teen, hysterical way. The VJ kept popping in to make sure they would be ready. They heard the other acts going ahead of them, and saw them on the overhead monitors. The VJ put ‘GrüngeBand’ under the first one, but incensed managers stopped that joke pretty quickly.

Sitting in the makeup room, Justin felt himself floating aloft, over the world, rising on a strange, dark, helium passion growing in his chest. Where my heart should be, he thought.

As he stared from a thousand miles above into his perfect mirrored face, Greta’s multi-colored hair eclipsed him, and he jumped as she snapped her fingers.

“Jus, get with it,” she scowled. “Lean your head back, let me tie your neck.”

What, thought Justin. He suddenly remembered a joke from years past. A messenger runs up to Anne Boleyn as she climbs the steps to her own beheading. ‘A message for you, milady,’ he says. She smiles. ‘Drop it in the basket on the other side—I’ll read it in a minute…’

“Jus!” cries Greta, lifting a scarf of dusky pink and black. “Head back!”

She threw the scarf over his head, like a lasso, and pulled it tight.

“Oh!” Justin cried suddenly, grabbing at the fabric. “Back it off!”

Al’s head jerked up from a magazine. “What? Everything OK?”

“Yeah,” said Greta.

“It’s too goddamned tight!” cried Justin, kicking his rolling chair back from the maze of blinding lights that was his makeup mirror. He tore it from his neck; his shoulders were unbearably tense.

“So?” said Greta, rolling her eyes. “We’ll just tie it looser. It’s a bit early to become a total prima donna, Jus!”

“You know,” said Justin slowly, his eyes focussing on the pink scarf, “these things are really gay.”

Iain snorted. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

“Jus, we have no time!” snapped Greta, grabbing the scarf from his hands. “Head back!” She leaned forward and curled the fabric around his neck.

“I don’t want the scarf!” cried Justin.

They fought violently for a moment, then Greta said: “OK, OK—you’re going to tear it! I’ll take it off. All right? All right!” She straightened, rubbing her back. “Justin, you have known about these scarves for six months. I have shown you about a thousand designs. I was up until two this morning getting these ready.”

“It was a joke then,” said Justin, rubbing his neck.

“Hey!” cried Iain uneasily. “Blasphemy, brother. It’s still a joke, and don’t you ever forget it.”

“I don’t want to wear these…” said Justin, in an unnaturally small voice.

“Al, talk to him, for Christ’s sake!”

Al stood up slowly, his lips compressing into two fat little pink sausages. He peered at Justin, then snapped his fingers. “Makeup here.”

A woman with pink hair appeared at his side.

“Fix that neck,” he said, pointing at Justin.

“Kinda red,” agreed the makeup girl, pulling out her powder and approaching Justin. “What’s—he got a rash?”

“Al!” cried Greta in a wounded voice.

“The boy doesn’t want the scarves, Gret! Stop screwing around.”

“I’ve worked for months on these goddamned things! What the hell!”

Al’s eyes narrowed. “Do you really want to do this now, Gret? We know how he is.”

The makeup girl’s pink hair bobbed as she worked on Justin’s neck. “Don’t rub it out there,” she whispered. “It’s really red.”

Greta’s face was red with ill-suppressed scorn. “Oh, we can’t disturb his majesty? It’s a little scarf, just a little goodie for the maternal unit—talk to him, Iain, can’t you? This is my big chance!”

Iain sighed. “I don’t think it’s quite the breakthrough you’re thinking of, mater.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, Christ, you’re both like some Dungeons and Dragons geek wandering a public park casting spells!” cried Iain, spinning his seat violently. “This whole thing is one big joke! Don’t you remember? The scarves are supposed to look stupid! No, mom, don’t make that ‘on-the-cross’ face. You knew it once, then you forgot, because you got greedy. Like Dad. Like Tupac here.”

“Iain…” started Al.

“No—let me finish. If we sing badly, we’re a joke, right? If we sing well, we’re a better joke! Mom—if the scarves look shite, it’s funny. If they look great, it’s even funnier—but in a sad way—because you’re trying to make us look good, and it’s all crap! All of it!”

Iain’s face was red; his lips were twisted. Justin stared at him, his jaw opening slightly, back in high space.

Finally, they went out, and were greeted by Keezer, the spiky-haired, smooth-skinned, laconically unfunny VJ for the Cute Newcomers show.

“So, my friends, let us put our hands together to welcome the most literal band on the planet: BöyBand!”

The applause was great. They sailed out of the corridor onto the set, and there was something oddly familiar about the scene. For most of their young lives, the boys had been accepted immediately, due to looks, wealth, confidence, connections… This crowd was theirs already, and it was not an unknown feeling.

“So, members of BöyBand—wait, is that how you pronounce it? BöyBand? What do the dots do?”

“Nothing at all, actually,” said Iain, narrowing his eyes. “They represent our hard edge.”

“Excellent, excellent… Well, we’re going to do the ‘pseudo-intimate chat’ now. As you can see, we’re being quite clear about that.” Keezer gestured at the monitor, which displayed the phrase. “So which one of you came up with the name of the band?”

“Well,” said Chris, “we were talking about names, like Baker, Smith, and so on…”

“But we were thinking,” said Todd. “So there’s ‘Richardson,’ which is the ‘son of Richard,’ but what about the son of ‘Richardson?’ We had differing viewpoints.”

“I thought: Richardsonson,” said Todd.

“I thought: Richardson squared, Richardson cubed, so on,” said Iain.

“Justin thought Richardson, you know, with that little musical line over it, you know, ‘repeat and fade’…” said Chris.

“So: Richardsonsonsonson…” said Iain.

“And that got us thinking about music and names,” said Todd.

“That’s your day?” asked Keezer. “Man you guys got some time.” He turned to Justin. “So you’re the intense one, right?”

Justin nodded.

Keezer nodded, in a slow stoner kind of way. “So you’re quiet. Excellent. Very ‘Bono.’ Very ‘Rattle and Hum.’” He grinned at the camera. “No, gentle viewers, I can’t get through a show without a U2 reference. So you guys all, like, go to school together? How did you meet?”

“Karaoke,” said Todd.

“No kidding!”

“That was our first name for the band: Bad Karaoke,” said Chris.

“I wanted Tequila Mockingbird,” said Todd, “but I think it was on The Simpsons…”

“I preferred Thong Squeegee,” said Gerald. “I mean—just imagine the video!”

“So you all said: let’s make a boy band?”

“No,” said Todd. “Iain’s dad is an agent, so…”

Keezer blinked. “What—he had you in the house the whole time and never knew you sang?”

Iain smiled. “I never really did it at home.”

“Before, we always thought boy bands were sort of cryogenically grown in vast South American biospheres,” said Todd.

“And after a year or two of ritual combat, the most mighty among them were released into the media,” said Chris.

Gerald smiled. “But as it turns out, you just have to have connections.”

Keezer grinned. “Well, boys, it’s been a slice, but now it’s time to see what all the fuss is about. You ready?”

Justin nodded.

The boys put on their earphones, got up and went over to the stage. They struck their poses. Iain started snapping his fingers and whispered, “One, two, three, four…”

The other boys started their harmonies.

Justin stared into the crowd. Something was happening to him. It took him about half a second to realize what it was. Oh man, I hate this moment. The moment in the movie when the talented newcomer is out in front of people for the first time and freezes… You just know they are going to find their voice and do fine, but… It was such artificial tension. Oh, I see—I’m having my little Shine moment…

The music faltered. There was a pause. The hastily typed phrase ‘Dramatic False Start’ came up on the monitor. The boys behind Justin swooped back into the beginning of their harmonies fairly smoothly.

In the dressing room, Al involuntarily clutched his testicles.

Ready to sing, ready to sing, thought Justin, but there was a cold tension in his heart—and something underneath it, a geological well of—anger? Sadness? Is this really what I want to be doing with my life? He thought of Jimmy Carter, some ex-president, writing poems and nailing roofs on poor houses. I will become candy floss and disappear… Did I even make a choice to…? Sing, you motherfucker!

Desperation clouded the room. The greedy eyes of the audience glazed over in the mute pleasure of witnessing a very public crash-and-burn. The camera zoomed in on Justin’s pale sweaty face, then pulled back jerkily and centered on his neck. Rivulets of sweat carved through his makeup, exposing red welts like running blood…

Holy shit, thought Justin. It’s going to happen!

He suddenly leapt forward, his agonized growl almost shorting the music system:

“Fuck the pretty cage of my empty heart!

“Fuck the lift tickets, the stupid huge fucking car

“Fuck my cheekbones; they are a moon’s craters

“Fuck all I was given; it was never for me

“I am an Oscar held before a hollow hall…”

There was no delay in the sound. It was a boy band special, after all; who was worried? As a result, four ‘fucks’ and one ‘fucking’ made it on the air. In the video booth, jaws and coffees were dropped. A hip was fiercely bruised as a stunned technician dove across a board to yank the feed.

Just before the cut, though, something quite odd happened. As Justin drove into his rant, the four boys behind him stared in shock, glanced at each other, then shrugged, folded their arms, cocked their hips and shifted into nice urban rap poses.

It was not an elegant cut. White static filled the screen. Justin’s cursing continued to ring out. The technician grabbed the nearest tape and popped it in. It was the video for ‘What You Want Me To Be.’ The man stared at it in horror, but knew that another cut would be worse than letting it play. On the screen, Justin’s oversized face smiled beautifully over his angel’s wings, as his swearing rap rant continued. Finally, the technician switched to the sound of the video.

In the studio, in front of the open-mouthed tween crowd, Justin gave vent to a high, agonized scream, then burst into tears and wet himself.

Chapter 63

Alder Meets Rudy

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Alder received his first hate email in mid-November. It was fairly well written and grammatically correct, and went like this:

Dear Dr. Alder Parsons:

It is with great dismay that I read of your attack on Mohammed (praised be his name). Your association of faith with dictatorship is quite incorrect, as even the most cursory glance at Islamic history will prove. Muslims were the first to abolish slavery and advocate the rights of women, and we are not all fundamentalists. Where would the West be if we had not held onto Aristotle for you? Faith is more liberating than decadent Western liberalism, which leads to godlessness and sin.

You really should learn more about other cultures before making these kinds of gross generalizations. Especially in these sensitive times, we need more dialogue and less criticism.

Yours sincerely,

A concerned friend

Not bad, Alder thought, and was about to delete it, when he noticed that the return address was kill_dr_alder_parsons@hotmail.com.

That’s probably not just a coincidence, he thought, and suddenly laughed out loud, amazed at his ability to make a joke. He glanced at his hand. The cold fall light seemed to chill his skin. Alder leaned forward, holding his hands up together. I’ve never noticed how old the backs of my hands look…

The phone rang, and he jumped.

“Alder, it’s Bez. Do you have a few minutes?”

Alder stared at the email. “Sure.”

“Listen, I’ve decided to give you a slightly authoritarian push towards popularizing your article. I have Rudy—what? Right, the BabbleFish here in my office, and we’d like to take a stab at turning your text into something a little more accessible. Sound like a plan?”

“I have…”

“Sorry?”

Alder cleared his throat. “I have a few concerns about this article.”

Bez paused. “Oh?”

“I just got some hate mail.”

“Really? Email?”

“Yes.”

“All right. You’d better come to my office.”

Alder sighed, and went over. He saw a slightly chunky, red-haired, intense-looking student sitting in Bez’s office.

Bez stood up when he came in. “Alder, this is Rudy Fisher—also known as the BabbleFish. Rudy, Dr. Parsons.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Rudy, standing and shaking Alder’s hand.

Bez sat on the edge of his desk. “I kept him here because I wanted to make a case for populist publication sooner rather than later. Can you wait in the hallway for a moment, Rudy?”

“Sure.” Rudy got up and went out.

Bez turned and stared at Alder, frowning quizzically.

“Sooner?” prompted Alder.

“Look, this thing is already out in the marketplace,” said Bez, shaking his head suddenly. “I’ve had a few calls confirming your status here—and one from the editors of Historical Digest, asking for your address. They can’t send their mail about your article to a PO, there’s too much. So I think it’s safe to say that this thing has gotten away from you, at least so far. Now, maybe it will die down, but I’d say: probably not, for a few reasons. Your idea is applicable to a lot of the problems facing the world today, and it’s a real slap in the face for cultural relativism—which, in my view, has had it coming for far too long—so it’s also cross-disciplinary. You touch on philosophy, science, law, ethics, religion, politics… Everyone with a stake in those pies will want a piece of you. So you have one of two choices.” Bez smiled. “Actually, that’s academic, since I’ve already chosen for you, but I wanted you to know what I was thinking. First, you can hide under a rock and hope it’s a tempest in a teapot. Take the high road, refuse to respond to criticism. But I think that’s not only impractical, but also irresponsible. If any thinker in my department can provoke this kind of debate, I consider it a significant achievement. Also, the originator of a thought has the most clout in directing debate—look at Einstein and nuclear weapons. And if you present your ideas more clearly, debate will be considerably clarified. Finally, I think that the idea is good—very good—and I want it to be spread as far and wide as possible.” He threw his head back and laughed. “I mean, imagine if you’re right. You’ve solved the problem of the ages—where evil comes from—and made philosophy the most important discipline in the world! You can’t rightly hide that under a bushel!”

Alder paused. “Well, thanks for the thought, but I don’t really think I’ve solved the problem of evil!”

Bez shrugged. Alder noticed that the older man’s body was alive with an excitable tension. “Well,” said Bez, “if evil is violence and fraud, and a belief in ‘higher realms’ leads to both, you’ve found the source. Perhaps not the only source, but an important one…”

Alder closed his eyes. “I really, really, really wasn’t expecting this,” he said fervently.

Bez laughed. “That’s good. I mean, thinkers want to make a difference, right?”

“Yes,” said Alder slowly, “but I think I sort of wanted to make a difference with other thinkers, not…”

“Not the groundlings? Sure, we’re all prey to that… Believe me, I’d have killed to have that idea of yours. But I think I ruined myself, in 1996, when I wrote an article praising relativism, which I don’t believe in. I was ambitious, wanted this job…” Bez shook his head. “I haven’t had a good idea since. Ah, well. Can’t undo the past, but I swore it would never happen again. Not on my watch, anyway.”

“But… Bez, the religious aspect was not something I’d ever considered…”

“Oh, come on!” grinned Bez. “That won’t do at all! It’s all over the piece. I hear God is hiring a lawyer!”

“But they’re talking about how it affects the Middle East… I mean, it’s just an academic article.” Alder’s voice caught. “Those people can be a bit—hasty.”

“You’re thinking of Rushdie.”

“Yeah…”

“He was hated because he was a Muslim. He knew where to hit, how to hurt. Mohammed in the flesh. In comparison, you’re lobbing firecrackers from a spaceship.”

“That’s not what the Jewish woman thought. She thought it was directly relevant.”

“Hm. Perhaps. Perhaps. But, if that’s the case, and you could do something for that region, even a tiny bit… It’s the Holy Grail of world peace.”

Alder sat, looking down. Bez pulled up a chair and sat in front of him.

“Look, Alder, I’m no ‘rah-rah’ coach, but I think you had an unconscious motive for putting such an idea into the marketplace. This idea wouldn’t have come to you if you couldn’t handle it. And even if it had—if you weren’t ready, you would have kept it to yourself.”

Alder thought of Gordon for a moment, recalling his pugnacity and vulnerability with virulent distaste. That little bastard would relish this fight!

“No,” said Bez decisively, leaning forward in his chair. His leg tapped rapidly. “This is the right idea at the right time. The world is clearly out of answers. Religion has failed. Relativism says there are no valid answers. Postmodernism doesn’t even recognize the value of clear questions. There is a world of riches in your work.” He nodded slowly, thinking. “Yes… No. Sure. You have to go public with a clearer text.”

Alder hesitated, but he had not gotten to where he was by making decisions. He saw himself in flames, on a dark lawn, and thought of Stephen, and his own unborn child. I just wanted to provide for them, give them a little more, and now I might take myself away completely…

“Good!” said Bez energetically, going to his door and opening it. “Rudy, we’re ready for you now!”

Chapter 64

PoMo in Slow-Mo: Rudy’s Interview

￼Dingbat Diamonds

When Bez Tabarrok arrived at his office the following morning, he found a brown envelope leaning against his door, marked urgent. He picked it up—almost spilling his coffee—and went into his office. He opened it. Inside were two stacks of papers; a thin one and, underneath, a much thicker one. He picked out the slim stack and read:

Rudy Fisher: Well, Professor Parsons, I thank you for being the very first guest on ‘pomo in slow-mo.’

Professor Parsons: Thanks for having me, Rudy.

Rudy: It’s a good thing. You get to practice your media skills free of the pressure of, well, extensive listeners, while I get to practice my interview skills with someone I know quite well.

Prof. Parsons: [laughs]

Rudy: For those Netizens who don’t know, Professor Parsons is the justly celebrated author of ‘Dialectic Narratives: Realism and Semioticist Postcapitalist Theory,’ a rather technical document which has caused quite a ripple outside of academic circles. And, for the record, I am working with Professor Parsons to help downshift the document into pidgin. Bez Tabarrok, the department head, is quite keen for these ideas to have a wider audience, and I have been enlisted to apply my small skills in this area. So, Professor Parsons, let’s pretend I’m Oprah. Can you tell us how you feel about the idea?

Prof. Parsons: [pause]

Rudy: Nah, Oprah won’t do. Just tell us about the idea.

Prof. Parsons: [laughs] Okay, well I can’t downshift as well as you can, but I’ll give it a shot. I think that there is a parallel between a belief in noumenal reality and a constriction in what the Western tradition labels inherent rights.

Rudy: Okay, that’s pretty good, that only needs to go down another layer or two. So: noumenal reality. Plato’s ‘forms’?

Prof. Parsons: Sure, as well as Kant’s, and Hegel’s—and a lot of other thinkers. Everyone who’s not a nominalist.

Rudy: And religion, that comes into it as well.

Prof. Parsons: Yes, in that most religious beliefs require the existence of a noumenal realm.

Rudy: Like heaven.

Prof. Parsons: And hell, yes. Or nirvana.

Rudy: So what is your definition of the noumenal realm?

Prof. Parsons: [pause] My definition? Well, I’m an academic, so I generally give more examples than definitions.

Rudy: Sure, but in the paper—actually, let me create a pre-scripted-but-unrehearsed moment. I have a copy of your paper right here. I thought we’d do some downshifting right here, right now. What do you say folks? If there were folks, they’d be going wild about now.

Prof. Parsons: I don’t know. I take this quite seriously.

Rudy: Absolutely—so do I! Hey, it doesn’t work, we can scrap it. That’s the beauty of non-live performances. Dead performances? The canned laughter goes in later as well.

Prof. Parsons: So—what is your plan?

Rudy: We take some sentences of yours, and downshift them to pidgin, and see what we get.

Prof. Parsons: [laughs] A live translation? Surely that won’t be interesting.

Rudy: On the contrary—I get much meat and wine from doing this live. Let’s give it a shot, come on, even academics can climb into the sandbox once in a while.

Prof. Parsons: Okay, let’s try a sentence or two…

Rudy: All right, the first sentence in your article…

Bez flipped forward a page or two. What on earth is this about? In the transcript, academic jargon and plain English were being batted back and forth. He flipped over another page, and read the last one:

Rudy: So let’s say this: after an exhaustive process of elimination and reduction, we can get your thesis down to the following: those philosophers who believe in ‘higher realities’ have to advocate dictatorship as the ideal political model, while those who believe in empirical, objective reality have to advocate limited democracy.

Prof. Parsons: [pause] I think that’s pretty good.

Rudy: Accurate?

Prof. Parsons: Well, you’re the expert. I think that does get something, though. Like anyone, I hate to hear my ideas translated into something else. Another medium, almost! I guess I’m
a little possessive. It’s like you’re doing a cover of my song…

Rudy: Sure, that would be tough. Now, I want to tell you something very important. Alder, what I have read to you is the conclusion of a paper by one Gordon Marrow, which you reviewed about a month before yours was published. A paper which you told him was not up to scratch. A paper whose rejection by you caused him to quit grad school. A paper whose idea you rejected and stole.

Prof. Parsons: [Long pause. Muffled curse. Sharp rumble of microphone being torn off]

[end of transcript; please see www.rogers.com/babblefish for the video of this program]

Bez frowned. This was pretty stern stuff: accusations of plagiarism. But why be so circumspect? Why all the frou-frou? Why this elaborate set up? He should have just come to me—we have mechanisms in place to deal with this kind of thing…

Bez opened his browser, and typed in the URL. He saw the BabbleFish’s home page. He clicked on the link for the video, and after a moment or two, it opened up. He clicked near the end of the progress bar, scanning for the moment when the BabbleFish put his cards on the table.

He saw it: the pause after the BabbleFish told the truth. The two men sat there. He saw the sick ripple go through Alder’s body, the hand flutter up to the mouth, the horror in his eyes, the laugh frozen on his face, the still, un-breathing chest…

Oh sweet God, thought Bez. The damn fool went and did it! And now it’s in the most public realm!

Using the online student directory, he found the BabbleFish’s home number. Willing his hands to be still, he dialed slowly.

Chapter 65

Retribution

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Cyrux’s response was remarkably swift. Dave opened the letter and read:

Dear Mr. Bugle:

Pursuant to our conversation on October 17th, we submit the following bill as costs for project cancellation:

License Fee: $50,000

Customization: $10,000

Labour and Materials Costs: $37,512.45 (for details, please see breakdown starting page 3)

As I’m sure you are aware, paragraph 9.3.1 of the contract states that if the project is late, as of July 30, Cyrux is entitled to a recovery of all costs associated with the project, as well as the costs of cancelling said project.

We also require that you remove any mention of ‘Cyrux’—as well as our logo—from your website, promotional literature, and all other written or verbal communications.

Please call me within 48 hours to discuss payment terms.

Sincerely,

Maanoj Pundit, BA, LLB

Vice President, Corporate Law

Dave stared at the letter. His mind raced in a thousand directions. He was no longer calculating how long they could stay in business, but rather how long he could personally stay afloat.

The phone rang. It was Carl, the salesman.

“Dave, talk to me about Cyrux.”

“They’ve gone ballistic on us!”

“What the hell is going on? I’ve gotten three messages from clients cancelling demo’s. Apparently, they checked Cyrux for background, and were referred to their legal department!”

“Our contact went on stress leave, and this new asshole is shitting all over us. I don’t know why.”

“What’s his beef?”

“He claims there’s not enough documentation. It’s bullshit.”

“How late are you?”

“Christ, you know, Carl. Try getting a straight answer out of tech-heads. Month or two.”

Carl whistled. “So sweeten the new guy’s pot. He’s angling.”

Dave shook his head. “Don’t think so.”

There was a pause. “This is a motherfucker of an iceberg.”

Dave sighed. “Yeah, I know.”

“So—how long have you got?”

“Couple of months.”

“What? But you just got—what—two mill?”

“We’re burning a quarter mill a month now.”

“Well, ratchet that the fuck back! And me and Bill, we’ve got to get off commission. Now. We won’t be able to move this dog with dynamite!”

“So you need—what are you looking for?”

“Cold, hard cash. We’ve gotta start looking, this one’s going down.”

“We’ll take Cyrux off the list—you can still sell stuff.”

There was a pause. “Cyrux was our leverage. The whole pipeline rested on that.”

“We’ll go for smaller fish. Guys that don’t need Fortune 500 references…”

“Buyers that inexperienced are hard to dig up. You know what a find that loony at Cyrux was. And Bill and me are the wrong guys for that. We don’t do penny ante.”

Dave took a deep breath. “Okay, okay. So we have a few months. I can get it to maybe five if I break the leases on the new offices and fire everyone in Vancouver. And there’s not much point traveling now…”

“Christ, Dave! The board will have your balls on a stick. You don’t tell them, you’re dancing right over that line we all know so well.”

“Yeah, I’ll have to come up with something.”

“How long?”

Dave took a deep breath. “Maybe two weeks.”

“Shit. So, I guess it’s kiss the fucking stock goodbye!”

“Yeah, we’re going to augur in…”

“Great, well that’s just fucking great. Okay, I’m not going to talk for Bill, but if you want to keep even a veneer of market presence, I want another ten K a month. You can keep the commission on paper if you want. And yes, that’s in US dollars.”

Dave sighed. “Okay, so we’ve got to find a buyer for this dog. Know anyone?”

Carl laughed. “I’ll check my ‘Nixon list,’ see if I hate anyone that much. Gimme a day or two. And Dave?”

“Yeah?”

“Cheer the fuck up. It’s not the end of the world. We always land on our feet.”

Dave hung up, and looked at the office. Somewhere, deep in the canyon his soul used to inhabit, was a lake of tears. He sensed it, flew over it mentally, noting it from his satellite of distraction…

But more tangible problems beckoned. Oh, I’m not looking forward to this… He buzzed Terry, and asked him to get Pierre and come in.

When they entered, Dave motioned for him to sit down.

“Did Terry tell you about Cyrux?” asked Dave.

Pierre nodded.

“This alters the shape of our landscape a little. Puts things on hold. Sorry, buddy. You’re not going to Houston next week.”

Pierre started. “What?”

“We’ve got to get in the lifeboats for a while,” said Dave. “It’s possible to survive this kind of setback—it’s sort of what I’m famous for, actually—but we’ve got to bring our costs way, way, down.”

“Holy shit,” said Pierre, staring miserably at the floor.

“Bill and Carl are working on a new strategy, to sell without Cyrux as a reference. It’s not permanent. Don’t worry too much. I shouldn’t have let this project get away from us the way it did. And it’s rare to meet someone as inflexible as that asshole Gurgis. So mistakes were made, but let’s not panic. This is all part of the game. Now, the key is to minimize the damage. We need a united front. We need to project confidence. So Pierre—Pierre, look at me. I know this has fucked you royally. It has all of us, but you can afford it least. So do this for me. Put a list together of what this has cost you. Everything from a cup of coffee to breaking your lease. Don’t sweat, buddy. Your covered.”

“Okay,” said Pierre.

“Dave?” said Terry softly.

“Yup?”

“Are we going to be okay?”

Dave stared at him evenly. “It’s not up to me, Terry.”

Chapter 66

Sarah’s Question

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Now that they had all their evidence, Stephen, Alice, and Sarah decided to talk to their mothers first. For the most part, their families were divided along traditional lines: the men ran the world, the women the homes. The danger was that when they confronted their fathers, the families would be so destabilized—and the collusion of the mothers so demanded—that there would be precious little objective information to be gleaned.

With the natural sensitivity of children, they knew something was coming. They knew the faint shadows that desperation threw on the flawless walls of their homes. They decided to act at once.

They waited together after school, and the mothers came to pick them up.

Angela was distracted as she drove, but Sarah was persistent.

“Mommy, why does Terry work so hard?”

“Well, I imagine that software is a difficult job, sweetie.”

“Daddy never works that hard.”

“Mmm. That’s not true. He travels a lot.”

“So does Terry…” Sarah paused for a moment. Childhood thinking is always helped by a furrowed brow. “So Terry works a lot harder, but…”

“But your Daddy brings experience. Please, pick a lane! So, tell me about your day.”

“Does he make more money than Terry?”

“It’s rude to answer a question with a question.”

But you’re not answering my questions! thought Sarah. “We have to find out more about our parents’ work.”

“Well!” cried Angela, her voice shiny with false energy. “Let me tell you about my day then!”

“Later. Who makes more money? Dad or Terry?”

“He’s not the only interesting person in this family, dear,” Angela said, through gritted teeth.

There was another pause. Sarah rallied her troops. “Is Daddy an honest man?” Angela smiled tightly. “You know, it’s illegal for a wife to testify against her husband in a court of law. I’ll have to take the Fifth.”

Sarah turned these spiky works over in her mind. “We don’t have the Fifth. So he’s not honest.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“How long have you known?”

“Dear, I’m driving.”

“So you’re going to leave him.”

“No!” said Angela, her cheeks coloring.

“Sorry. We’re going to leave him.”

Angela wrenched the wheel. Sarah bounced in her seat, terrified. They careened into a mall parking lot.

“What is going on?” demanded Angela.

Sarah’s face was white. “Nobody tells me the truth,” she said softly.

Angela’s face twitched. A sudden tear flickered in her eye. “Oh, sweetie, what do you mean?”

“Everyone talks all the time, and it’s sort of fun, but I can’t get anyone to slow down and—and look at me, and tell the truth. And there are these girls, at school, I thought they were my friends, but since I became friends with Alice, now they all have secrets and won’t tell me, and say that I have no friends. I have to play with the grade fours if I want to have any fun. And I think that daddy—I’m scared that daddy is not as good as I thought he was. I’ve been trying to ask about it for ages, but…” Sarah paused, glancing up at her mother, who returned her gaze with stricken eyes.

“Go on, Sarah,” murmured Angela.

Sarah took off her seatbelt and sat against the door, her knees up, her feet on the armrest between the seats.

“Stephen said that his dad wasn’t happy because he wasn’t a good man. And the way he put it, I don’t know… It suddenly seemed so important, you know, to be good. And not, like, soup-kitchen good, but like tough good, you know, fight-the-bad-guys good. Not ‘nice girl’ good, but good like a sheriff in the Old West. But I didn’t know what that meant. And it’s hard to know if people are happy, you know, really happy. No-regret happy. Ethical happy. A lot of people hate making other people mad, and call that good. Others are good here, or to your face, but not over there, or when you’re gone. Or they just look good, you know; they have tons of stuff, but no… No…” Sarah paused, taking a deep breath. Angela’s heart was hammering in her chest. It was almost unbearable, like watching a butterfly trying to fly after being trodden half a foot in the mud.

“What?” whispered Angela.

“It’s all of it. It’s so huge. It’s the whole world. I mean, what if everyone’s pretending? No one has any idea, like, how to live. Or we give up everything for little things, for people liking us, or an A, or a bike. What if everyone is really, really that—cheap? And just pretend like they’re not?”

“Oh, sweetheart, it’s not that they’re cheap…”

“No?”

Angela settled back. Don’t cry yet. Don’t cry… And don’t tell. “So this is why you’ve been writing everything down?”

Sarah nodded. “You and Daddy always said the right things, and I thought they were good things, but there was something… Something like… When I fell from my bike, and you said: ‘be brave,’ I thought: why? And Dad keeps working with these—I mean, Mom, they’re kids, even I can see that! Why?”

“Uh huh.”

Sarah’s blue eyes widened slightly. Angela picked out geometric shapes from the sparse freckles on her daughter’s forehead, like making little brown gods out of tiny constellations.

“And everyone wants to be Justin, you know, he’s the most popular kid in school. I got friends ’cause I was his sister, and everyone has a crush… But it’s not like he’s the best kid in school. I mean, everyone just talks about it. Every after-school special is about not judging people by appearances, but you know, we’re not making a lot of progress. Everyone just talks about the right thing… And I was scared, me and Stephen and Alice, we’re all just so scared that nothing will change, you know, later on, that everything just stays the same and the words get longer and more complicated and no one has any idea what is going on but because no one tells the truth you’re all just lost, lost you know, ’cause you don’t know where you’re going and you don’t know where you are so there’s nothing to be lost from, you know… So we thought of our teachers, and we thought hey, if you don’t know what’s going on, you have no right to teach us, not anything more than facts anyway. We are without leaders, Stephen says. I thought: no, we’re… But I think, I think he might be right, Mom…”

“And me?” Angela had to mouth the words twice before getting the sounds out.

Sarah looked at her mother for long, long minute. Angela felt the hypnotic peace and imminent doom of truth, arcing in like a slow bomb.

Finally, Sarah said: “You don’t love Dad, Mom. You just want his stuff.”

Yes, well there it was, the truth. It hung in the shiny Explorer, but so much larger than it was.

Angela nodded slowly, her face frozen, tears falling on her blouse. Sarah looked at her with great relief and mute approval in her eyes. She thought: the truth will set you free, but I guess you have to be really cornered first.

Tell her, said one of Angela’s relatively unknown inner voices. What’s that, my conscience?

Tell her—save her!

“Sweetheart,” she whispered, without thinking. “I think you’re right about Daddy.”

Sarah’s eyes widened, and then they were both crying.

In the end, Angela did not tell her daughter everything, but left enough clues about upcoming changes to leave little doubt.

When they got home, Dave was jumping up and down on the front porch. “Good God, ladies! You’re almost late! He’s just coming on!”

They ran inside, just in time to flip to the FunkStation and catch Justin’s memorable performance on Cute Newcomers.

Chapter 67

The Alder Affair

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Bez was fairly old-fashioned, and so could not believe what came next.

A large number of students (and, furtively, some faculty) were regular visitors to the BabbleFish’s website. News of Alder’s plagiarism quickly hit the discussion forums there. Bez scrolled through them, amazed:

From: dlereum

To: radikool

Re: The Alder Affair

Your cries of ‘plagiarism,’ in these post-structural, post-Napster days, are entirely archaic. Let’s grant you the benefit of the doubt for a moment and say that Professor Parsons *did* hear the idea from Gordon before publishing his article. Will you now try to say that the idea came *entirely* from Gordon? Were there, perhaps, library resources involved? The teaching of professors—possibly even Alder himself? Social resources back to Kindergarten? Oh no, you say, this idea belonged to Gordon, and Gordon alone. The *social* nature of thought seems entirely lost on you.

Another thread read:

Besides, even if it were proved, and even if we all accepted it as wrong, so what? I don’t buy Alder’s idea personally, but it seems to provoke debate. A professor with tenure is a far, far better vehicle for this idea than what seems like an emotionally unstable grad student. If I had an idea like that, I’d be happy to have it shepherded into the realm of public debate by a dedicated prof.

And:

In a time of crippling public funding cuts, should we really be waving the bleeding sores of academia in the public’s face?

And:

Alder was completely right. The very idea of an unknown grad student taking on Plato, Kant, Hegel et. al. in a hundred or so pages stinks of messianic madness. Alder definitely rescued an interesting idea from oblivion.

And:

Who cares? Just white males arguing over white males. Everyone posting here will be first to go come the revolution!

And:

Boys, welcome to the world of women, whose ideas have been pillaged since Eve squeezed out her first enemy. How do *y’all* like it?

And:

What you all fail to realize is that the content of an idea is far less important than the context of its expression. One question: who is the better writer? Clearly, Prof Parson. He’s got a grasp of modern language, while ol’ Gordy’s text sounds like a primer: “see Jane think, see Spot create an oligarchical collectivist society because he believes in the Higher Bone.”

Bez stopped, his head throbbing. It’s been too long since I taught, he thought. All undergraduates strain for originality. He knew that, but this collection of mental refuse seemed like it had been beamed in from some Ritalin planet. And the hostility, the posturing and condescension…

However, there was no small temptation in these random missives. When the world changes under us, as it certainly had in Bez’s long career—he had started fighting Marxists and now seemed destined to battle fog—we can fight and fight, but the fight is a great strain, like confronting the same phobia over and over. The temptation of giving in always hovers. The bus that leaves for the Old Intellectual Soldiers Home pulls up from time to time, offering a plush, comfortable ride to where we can sit on a porch, whittle, read the old masters, and complain about the endless vacuity of all who come after us…

Bez sighed deeply. This really shouldn’t be so complicated… It’s simple plagiarism, amply proved. Not for the first time, he envied his friends in the sciences (he was one of the few arts academics who crossed the Great Divide). They can just mark something right or wrong, based on commonly accepted rules… Students don’t complain that they fail ‘two and two make five’ due to white-bread Western prejudice.

“Scare Quotes,” he thought, turning the phrase over in his mind. He’d heard it a few weeks before, at a faculty party. It referred to the habit of encasing ideas one didn’t like in quotes, as in: his whole argument rests on the ‘reality’ of ‘western empiricism.’ The quotes indicated that you knew that these concepts were constructs, but that your opponent swallowed them wholesale.

Bez shuddered, then got up and looked out the window. Fall was coming along. Leaves fell, geese flew, turtlenecks rose…

He looked out the window for a long, long time. Then he turned and called Alder into his office.

Alder entered looking emboldened. He had obviously been reading the newsgroups as well.

“So,” said Bez without preamble. “Is it true?”

“You know, in hindsight, I think that I might have absorbed some of Gordon’s concepts when talking to him about his idea.”

“Did he submit any written work?”

“Yes, but I only read a few pages before realizing it was impossible.”

“Why was it impossible, in your view?”

“Well, you can’t do all that in a hundred pages. He wanted Plato, Kant, Hegel, Locke… That’s what, fifty dense books of primary material, and about a billion secondary sources!”

“So what did you suggest?”

“That he limit himself, try something more reasonable. Keep that one on the back burner, for PhD perhaps. Work with less hackneyed primary sources. At least learn to read German, for heaven’s sake!”

“What did you think of the idea itself?”

Alder paused. “The idea itself? Hm. I thought that it might have merit, but—but it’s like Darwin. You want to prove evolution, you can’t say: ‘give me four months.’ You sail on the Beagle for five years, then write every day for the next forty.”

“So you think it was a great idea.”

The young professor shifted in his seat. “It’s not that. I didn’t evaluate the idea itself, because there were so many technical problems to be overcome first.”

Bez sat down, then leaned forward. “Do you think that what you did is wrong?”

“I’ve been thinking about it, really turning it over in my mind. Of course, there’s the letter and the spirit of the law… By the letter, the case is arguable. I was in a student’s dorm, for heaven’s sake, staring at a webcam. It was a joke. I certainly cannot in good conscience admit to plagiarism, because I don’t think I’m guilty of it. Simultaneous ideas have occurred before—the theory of evolution is one, of course. So by the spirit of the law, I am not culpable.”

“So you did not take this idea.”

“Did the idea have any effect on me? Yes—perhaps. But to go by the letter of the law, I did not use any of his text; proving plagiarism beyond a shadow of a doubt is impossible, because the language is so different.” Alder allowed himself a little smugness. He didn’t go into this thing blindly.

“Hm,” said Bez, leaning forward. “Let me say something else, then, Alder. I’m not saying you did anything wrong, but hear me out, just to humor me. I believe in the conscience. I believe that if we do something wrong—and I don’t mean something a little wrong, like a white lie or something where the answer is hard, but something we know is wrong, that we would admit in our heart is wrong, then we cut ourselves in two with a knife. We go to war with ourselves. We go from human beings to fighting layers of heaven and hell. We always know the truth, Alder. That cannot be changed. I want to tell you about this thing, this thing you might or might not have done.” Bez leaned forward even more. “To come to a superior with a cherished, original idea, is about as brave an intellectual act as I can imagine. I am not creative that way, so I can only imagine it. Gordon really cared about his idea, and as far as I can tell he wandered through my department in search of a supervisor, and no one took him in.

“Why is that? Why did everyone turn their back on him? It was an unpopular idea, of course, but so were all the ideas we teach, when they first appeared. I am quite terrified at the idea that we teach Socrates in my department, but would vote to kill him should he appear in our midst.

“So everyone scorned him, and he left our school broken-hearted—that much I got from Rudy. I find that disturbing enough, but then, when an article appears which you admit to having the same content as Gordon’s paper—wait, I shall finish!—then what Gordon suffered through becomes more than a tragedy. It becomes evil.

“Now if you do evil to another, you kill yourself. Life becomes unbearable. You cannot sit still. All peace of mind is lost, never to be found again. You cannot bear your own thoughts, your own heart. You begin to hate yourself. You lose the ability to love. You cannot look your children in the face. Happy people become your enemies. Everything becomes fake, shallow, unbearable. Life seems endless, pointless, unendurable. Your bones ache, you snap for no reason. You become discontented, overcompetitive, you can no longer talk deeply or listen richly. Every shred of authority you possess becomes false. You have to lie just to get out of bed. Vanity and rage become your constant companions. Your very flesh will rebel; you will squirm under a rain of untreatable ailments. Your life will be taken over by the wrong you have done; you will become its slave, doing anything to keep it fed, keep it alive, keep it justified. And if you defend your wrong, in your own heart, you will have to do more and more, to keep it company. Will you now be kind to the next vulnerable soul who comes begging for your help? No, I think not. More and more people will fall in the hole you dug to bury Gordon. A hole, Alder, that is you!”

Bez paused. His forehead shone. His cheeks were flushed. Even he had been surprised at the depths of his passion.

“Trust me,” he said to Alder. “It’s not worth it.”

Chapter 68

Stephen’s Answer

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Alder brought it up over dinner with his family.

“So, there’s a little trouble at work,” he said, adding to his son. “You might want to bring out that little notebook of yours.”

“Oh?” asked Joanne.

“The article I wrote is being contested.”

“It’s in a contest?” asked Stephen, licking his pencil. He liked the way 1940s reporters did that in movies, and wished he had a rakish hat.

“No, there is a student who thinks I took some of the idea from him.”

Stephen paused, then put his pencil down. “Huh.”

“So what happened?” asked Joanne.

“A student had an idea for a master’s thesis, which I didn’t think could be done. He got pretty sucky, dropped out. Then Bez recommended another student to work with me on making the article more—well, easier to read. That student—Rudy’s his name—thinks I took too much from the other student’s—Gordon’s—essay.”

“Took too much,” echoed Stephen, frowning. “How much are you allowed to take?”

“Well, it’s a gray area, which I know you don’t like. It’s complicated. You hear something in conversation, you can develop it on your own.”

“Do you have to say thanks to the person who told you first?”

“Not always—it’s a matter of proof. The person who first proves the idea gets the credit.”

Stephen pursed his lips. “So you proved it?”

“No, I wouldn’t say it’s proved,” replied Alder. “But it’s in the public arena now. It’s a matter of opening a discussion.”

“Did you take it?” asked Stephen.

“It’s not really that simple…”

“Yes, it is,” said Stephen. “Sorry for interrupting, but it is.”

“Stephen,” warned Joanne.

“What? You never say things are that complicated for me. I don’t steal things. You didn’t say: don’t lie or cheat or hit unless it’s complicated. Things are only complicated if you’ve got something to hide.”

“Stephen!” cried Joanne. “That is not fair!”

“Son,” said Alder, putting down his fork. “I only said it was complicated because it’s complicated to prove or disprove. It’s not complicated in my own mind.”

“No?”

“No. I did not steal that idea.”

Stephen blinked, wanting to believe with all his small being.

“Then—then why…”

“Academics is very complicated, Stephen. You know how some people will cheat to get ahead? Well, there’s one job opening up in my department. Everyone wants it. I’m way ahead of everyone else, mostly because of this article. Someone is making things up about me.”

“This student? Rudy?” asked Joanne.

“No, not him… He’d never… I don’t know.”

“But, you didn’t steal the idea,” persisted Stephen.

“Son, I did not.”

There was a pause. Joanne could see trust and uncertainty warring on her son’s pale face. Finally, Stephen nodded. “Okay, Dad.”

“Good!” said Joanne. “So is it serious?”

“Serious enough,” said Alder, staring at his food. “The problem is that this idea is now in the public domain, whether we like it or not. People think it can help solve everything from the Middle East to welfare to God knows what else. This idea has a momentum all its own, which I’ve heard of, but never seen—and certainly never been a part of. It’s…exciting. I could be a little celebrity—this idea could put me square in the center of public debate.” Alder grinned. “To sum up, this idea might be, to quote a coarse phrase, ‘my ticket!’” He frowned suddenly. “What’s that, Son—what are you writing?”

Stephen looked up. “Do you really want to know?”

“Sure—I’ve nothing to hide!”

“I wrote: ‘in one speech, five times Dad said: “this idea.” He never once said: “my idea.”’”

Alder’s expression left a strong impression on Stephen. After dinner, he searched the web for the name ‘Rudy’ on the university website, and found the BabbleFish’s home page. After reading some strange things about bluts and arts students, he finally saw the video of his father’s interview. At the end—that most terrible of moments—he noticed that his father’s expression at the end was almost exactly the same as it had been at dinner.

After watching the video once, he went to bed and cried for exactly two and one-half hours. Then he got up, took a deep, shuddering breath, took his notebook from around his neck, and tore it up, page by page.

There was really no reason for it anymore.

Chapter 69

Joanne’s Decision

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Joanne glanced over at her husband’s sleeping form and thought: he’s not asleep. The impulse to wake him up came to her, and she whispered his name, almost inaudibly. He did not stir, and she turned away. She was mildly relieved that he did not awaken, and that saddened her.

She got up, her feet arching as they hit the icy hardwood floor. She spent almost a minute feeling for her slippers, her hands groping silently over the floor, like delicate crabs. It’s strange how we always remember how to prowl, she thought. And this floor needs a good sweeping…

Stephen was sleeping soundly, in the shot-soldier manner of the young. He was sprawled half over, half under his duvet, his arm reaching for the window. Joanne walked up to him, remembering to duck under the model airplanes that hung from the ceiling. She sat on the bed. She felt the need for a good cry, and watching her sleeping son always seemed to do the trick. To help trigger the tears, she reached forward and brushed his hair from his forehead, then saw a little silver line and leaned forward.

The moon shone in through the window, peering through the threaded tree branches. Very gothic, very ghostly. Her son’s eyes were closed, and there was a thin silver line along the eyelids. As she watched, the silver line bulged at the bottom, and a tiny tear rolled down her son’s face.

He’s crying in his sleep, she thought, and felt a stick insect of horror delicately climb her spine. Leaning forward, she saw a fine corrugation of—salt?—along Stephen’s smooth cheeks. Slowly, she reached her hand over his face and touched the sheet. Wet, cold…

Joanne took a deep breath, different tears coming from her now. She stood up quickly, holding her mouth tightly. Turning to go, she saw little scraps of paper littering the floor. She grabbed a few of them and, not breathing for fear of sobbing, ran out of the room.

Sitting in the kitchen, she felt as alone as she ever had in her life. The house seemed to have a secret, broken heart she had never noticed before.

Everyone alone, she thought, thinking their own lonely thoughts…

She turned a little table light on, then opened her hand and looked at the scraps of paper. Smoothing them out, an internal shock hit her almost physically. She touched her swelling belly. That felt like a kick, but it’s far too early for that…

Stephen’s notebook had seemed quite funny; there had been a lot of Jane Goodall jokes, and once, Alder had mock-awarded his son a degree in suburban anthropology. Strange. Alder and I never discussed what he was writing… I just thought it was some kind of childish phase, like making your own Mother’s Day cards or handing out newsletters about life in the fifth grade. He’s been doing this for…—six months? She tried to remember the longest game she had played as a child. Probably the soap opera involving my dolls—that was what, a year? Something like that. In the odd manner of memories long abandoned, she suddenly remembered trying for weeks to get her parents to sit in for a show. Only Sally watched, only Sally saw, she thought, remembering a playmate for the first time in about twenty years, and another tear escaped her lowered eyes. Something inside me is breaking…

There is such richness in old tears. Joanne lowered her head. She seemed to see her life from a great height, but not in a detached way. Ignored children habitually misplace gloves and toys; as adults, they can lose entire decades. She saw herself reaching for her parents, but they were busy, they ran past their children, tending them like plants. The great strain of trying to get her parent’s attention came back to her, and her head lowered still further.

Opening her eyes (like most ignored children, Joanne had mastered the art of silent crying early and well), she saw the following, written on a scrap of paper—

Dad lied about the

—On another, turned at an angle, was—

ignores what he says because

—and another—

don’t seem to love

—and another—

never asked me about

—and the last—

morality is not what they

Joanne squinted, shaking her head slowly. Morality?

Morality… That was a word from another time—and a rather chilling, medieval word it was, too! Stern black hats and back-hand canings. Repressed sexuality and witch-hunts. The Middle East. Killing for a seat in heaven. Intolerance. Psychology. Projection. A weapon of guilt, leveled at the insecure. Religion. A consolation prize for women: not money or power, but goodness.

My son is a moralist? Joanne shuddered, then grinned suddenly. I mean, the word is a sort of joke, isn’t it? A right-wing conspiracy. She felt a titanic drying of her tears; she was a water-planet on the edge of a supernova. A great black wave of cynicism rolled over her raw heart, like thick oil over a skinned seal pup. He cries at night because the world is imperfect?

But another thought struck her: No, no, Jo. He cries because you are imperfect!

Joanne shook her head slightly, quickly. That’s quite silly—we are all imperfect. She felt a sudden desire to strike her son, to bury his sensitivity under a scabby blanket of scars, to protect him by killing him early, and prickles of sweat suddenly formed on her forehead.

The danger of her son’s thoughts overwhelmed her, and she got up, then sat down again.

I should go for a walk—I should go back to bed, no, not bed, there must be something on TV, some bad movie I can laugh at…

What the hell does the little bastard mean by ‘morality is not what they…?’ Respect? Pursue? Indulge in?

No, no, be fair, he’s just a boy. Think back—when did you realize that your parents were not perfect? Joanne frowned. Umm, Dad talking too loud at a dinner party—I was what, four? Mom tried to kick him under the table, kicked me instead, I cried out: ‘mommy don’t kick!’ and the table went quiet. Later, she got mad at me, picked at everything. That was the beginning of the ‘children’s table,’ if I remember rightly…

Okay, so they weren’t perfect, but they were always there, in their own way. I have great teeth because they took me to the dentist. Mom helped with makeup. Dad fixed my bike, hands-on, hardware-dad that he was.

My brother is a drug addict… Now that thought was strange. She hadn’t thought of Dan for months; he had been banished to that odd totalitarian corner of her transient brain reserved for ‘un-persons,’ or people too toxic to be close, but too related to be distant.

Dan was a standard drug addict, a funny, uninhibited, mouthy kid who went off the rails shortly after puberty. About a year after his voice broke, his sunny personality had become a kind of wild, waving laser which reduced anyone who came close to smoking ashes, and finally, when he caught sight of himself and stared in the mirror, his laser fired back from his reflection and burned him quite away, from the tip of his lime-green hair to the scuffed stubs of his Doc Martens.

The last time she had seen him—when he had invited her to the graduation of his last twelve-step program—he had said, up at the microphone: ‘I took drugs because I needed to erase how bored I was.’ This statement had resonated powerfully through the room, and Joanne had turned it over in her mind about nine times before forgetting it, until this moment.

Disasters murder unspeaking families, but do not break them up. It’s almost impossible to get away from people you grew up with, but were never close to. Joanne did not know the moral nature of her parents, because her family life was one endless crushing distraction. Even now, she’d go over to her parents for a Sunday, and her mother would go over the operation of new appliances (there was always at least one), and her father would turn on the TV to ‘rock her world with the sound quality,’ and then he’d flip around, looking for something to show off his DTS speakers, and they’d find a sports game and spend an hour or two making comments on it. Then he’d go out and fire up the barbecue, and her mother would take her on a tour of the garden, talking about the flowers, their histories and prospects and various ailments. Then Joanne would wander over to her father, and he’d give her instructions on how to make a good marinade or when to flip meat or how to clean the grill or the time he barbecued in winter and went through an entire propane tank it was so cold.

Then they’d eat and Joanne would talk a little about Stephen or Alder, and they’d listen, but there were no cues to continue or go deeper, so then they’d go through a list of people they’d met since the last time they’d seen her who said to say ‘hi,’ and gave a sentence or two about how they were doing, and she said to be sure to say ‘hi’ back to them.

The evening would generally end after their desultory conversation—prodded to occasional movement—mercifully wheezed its last, and expired in the living room. The odd thing was that the signal for the evening was always the same: twenty, thirty seconds of silence, followed by Joanne saying “well…” and her mother saying: “you have to get up early, I’m sure,” and her father suddenly leaping up and shaking her hand firmly and disappearing upstairs.

She would spend about half an hour getting away from her mother (Women always need such a rhythm of exiting! she thought). Joanne always suspected that her mother didn’t want to have to go upstairs until her father was asleep—and then would drive home in a daze of disassociation.

Not bad people, not particularly good, but not bad either. Solid, I suppose. Salt of the earth. Not ones to wear their hearts on their sleeve, but if you have to move furniture, they’d be there at any time; six, seven in the morning, whatever you needed… They’d be at your deathbed, round the clock, getting you water, while all the unspoken things flowed freely between you…

Joanne sniffled again. Her cynicism returned. Good Lord—your deathbed? Who put on ‘Self-Pity’s Greatest Hits?’ These were always sung by Karen Carpenter, for some reason…

But the image of her parents’ unemotional demeanor crumbling in the face of mortality was too much for her. Her face folded into an origami of sentiment, then she paused, frowning. But why would I be in the deathbed? They’ll likely go before me… And then another thought came to her: her brother weeping at the table, at about fifteen or so, and her mother and father sitting opposite him, stern, unforgiving—the sense of rage and betrayal palpable in the room, like an asthmatic gas…

What if they never open up? she thought suddenly—and the pain of that thought was too deep to cry over. They’ll go to their graves hoarding their empty, useless hearts… When it comes to disassociation, you can take it with you.

And then, of course, it came to her, and her mouth dropped open.

It may not be surprising to anyone else, because it is fairly obvious, but it came to Joanne with all the subtlety of a bomb in a baby carriage.

I married Alder because of my parents…

He was cold, entertaining, distant, presentable, maddeningly elusive. They talked of every functional thing on the planet, and never opened their hearts to each other…

This was the saddest thing in the world. Like many older siblings from screwed-up families, Joanne secretly loved the fact that her brother was a mess. It justified all her conservatism. It gave her a sense of strength, of self-satisfaction. She thought that through a rigorous application of self-discipline and conventional living, she could escape the maw of whatever had swallowed Dan. He represented self-indulgence, self-destruction; she, to herself at least, represented the triumph of plodding, bourgeois respectability. I am the sensible suburban burgomeister!

Her mind was awakening in a mad rush: it was like watching a dark city from a high hill as the power comes back on line. She flashed through restaurants bathed in sudden light, to subways lurching to motion again, to elevators rising to the sky, to movies in mid-reel growling back up to speed. Would it stop? Would it stop, or would the new light ignite to fire?

A cold wave came over her, and she shivered. The walls seemed to be glowing a vague gray, and she realized it was dawn.

She heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and from the lightness—and the slight scratching sound—she realized it was Alder.

“You okay, hon?” he asked, yawning.

“Why are you up so early?”

“Didn’t sleep very well,” he said, scooping coffee into the bodum. “Heard you get up. Rough night too?”

“Yeah. What time is it?”

“Quarter to seven. So what’s on for today?”

“Not much. Groceries. The basement.”

“It’ll be cosy when we’re done,” said Alder, sitting down heavily. He glanced up, then smiled suddenly. “Now ask me.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ve got a meeting with Bez, then I’m going to be interviewed on TV.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just heard yesterday, then I forgot, what with our wee Gestapo dinner.”

“Where?”

He got up to unplug the kettle and pour it. “Channel twelve. Well it’s not really an interview. It’s a panel thing, on the Middle East. They want a ‘big picture’ guy.” He giggled. “I’ve never been accused of that before, but I think I like it. I want to wear a spacesuit, and say: ‘well, Fred, the view from orbit is…’ Ah,” he said, stirring the coffee and inhaling the aroma. “I don’t know how people got through the Middle Ages.” He sat down. “This is nice. What’s this?” he asked, picking up a scrap of paper.

“Bits of Stephen’s notebook.”

“Ahh, the famous Rosetta stone of middle class observation. What’s it say?” He peered at it, then took a sip of coffee and rolled the other papers around so he could see them. “Ah. Well, at least we come off all right…”

“Do you think—he’s okay?”

Alder shrugged. “He’s a funny kid, I think. Verrry into right and wrong. Probably’d have been fairly high up in the Spanish Inquisition. Ethics is always at war with imperfection. He’s going to have it rough if he doesn’t throttle back.”

Joanne’s eyes narrowed slightly. “He’s very good though. Himself, I mean.”

“Sure, he’s screwed down really tight. It’s odd; I mean we’re not hippies, but we’re not right-wing PTA nuts either. I think he’s got a kind of inner tyrant, never lets him steal any cookies. I’d love to see some missing though—wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know…” said Joanne. “When I was getting up, he was crying in his sleep.”

“Huh,” said Alder, glancing at his coffee. “I lose the sugar wars again,” he said, spooning some into his mug.

Joanne waited for a moment, staring at Alder. Nothing.

“Have you ever heard of that?” she asked softly. “Crying in your sleep?”

He shrugged. “I did it when I was a kid a couple of times, to punish my mom.”

“You think he was faking?”

“Can you cry in your sleep? Really? I—don’t think so.” He grinned. “Good Lord. Now I’m hungry, but too wired to eat!” Then he frowned. “Do you want to come to the studio for my panel thing? What did you say you were doing with your day?”

She smiled, infinitely tender, infinitely sad, and touched her growing belly.

“I’m leaving you, Alder.”

Chapter 70

Alder, His Mother, and the Criticism of Women

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Alder’s mother Samantha was—well, ‘primitive’ might be the best word. She was very loyal, very devoted, very hardworking, but would only be able to recognize an abstraction if it left muddy tracks on her linoleum. She was very blunt, and almost immovable in her opinions. (In fact, the word ‘opinions’ was quite foreign to her rather dictatorial mindset; it was somewhere between ‘multicultural’ and ‘relative.’)

When he took the bus to his mother’s house, to tell her about Joanne’s decision, Alder was quite terrified. He felt it was a terrible failure. He was most shocked at her response.

“Good riddance!” said Samantha, her jaw muscles working.

“What?”

“Oh you modern men! A PhD in—what? Ethics? Women?” She snapped her fingers. “Kindergarten!”

“She—I couldn’t understand what it was about.”

“Because you tried this equality thing!”

“This—what?”

She rapped a cigarette on the kitchen table. There were no ashtrays; she lit up and continued, fashioning one out of the silver foil.

“Tell me this: is your house kept clean?”

“Clean? Like hygienic?”

“Clean? Clean! Clean like you grew up with!”

“No, it’s not like this. She’s not into that.”

“So who cleans?”

“I used to; now we get a maid.”

“A maid!” His mother barked a laugh. “Right. That makes sense. You’re horny, you ring a call girl too?”

His mother’s crudeness continued to shock him. (In fact, his rank Platonism might have been a reaction to his mother’s rank earthiness.)

“Tell me this: do you come home to a cooked meal at night?”

“No—Joanne doesn’t like to cook. We take turns.”

“Your father came home and put his feet up for half an hour while I cooked. I was so quiet, sometimes he napped!”

“Well, that’s…”

She held up a hand. “Who takes care of the finances?”

“I do,” said Alder, and a sudden tendril of anger curled up from his belly.

“Drives dear Stephen around?”

“Shared—that’s shared,” he said.

“Pays the bills?”

“Well, she does…” Through the internet though, he thought suddenly.

“I don’t mean licks the damn stamp,” snapped his mother. “I mean puts the money in the account.”

“She doesn’t work—you know that!”

“Doesn’t work,” she echoed. She smoked rapidly, barely inhaling before expelling smoke, like a tiny pollinated sneeze. “Of course she doesn’t work. I mean my God these modern women have it made! They don’t have to have jobs if they don’t want to; they don’t clean. They don’t cook, they don’t run the household, which is no small feat! Of course your marriage failed, but not at the end. It failed all the way through.”

“Mom—you can’t get women like you anymore.”

She smiled tightly. “Well, that’s the first compliment I’ve gotten from you since you were ten. Modern men are weak, Alder. Modern women need husbands—as women always have—but you’re all so grateful you treat them like princesses, so of course they treat you like dirt.”

He paused. “It’s not as simple as when…”

She wagged a finger. “Laziness, Alder. The word is laziness. You work, she sits around and does—hell I don’t know what she does all day, no work, one kid in school—one—and then you come home and cook for her? What’s the matter with you? Didn’t I teach you anything?”

Alder blinked. The word ‘laziness’ had never really occurred to him. It seemed far too simple, like ‘evil.’ Too reductionist. He frowned. There was no way to explain any of that to his mother. It was like screwing up the calculations of a sailor bound for home by introducing quantum mechanics.

“So now,” continued Samantha (never ‘Sam,’ she liked being a woman, thank you very much!), “now you are truly damned, in the way only a modern man can be. And so am I. She’s going to hit you for all you’ve got, half of everything—plus alimony, plus child support—and she’s never going to do a stitch of work again.”

“No—she’s not like that…”

She smiled sweetly and stubbed out her cigarette. “Lazy people are too lazy to change, dear. And that’s it for you as a father. Or a boyfriend.”

“What? Why?”

“Well, now she comes with an income—you come with an expense. Can you really afford to support two households on your salary? Smart you may be, rich you are not. You won’t be able to have any more children—they’re expensive. We women have our clocks, but men have their weak spots as well. You’ll get Stephen half the time, but pay for all his costs. You’ll spend the next decade paying for a family you’re not even part of anymore.” She grinned humorlessly. “Welcome to the liberated world of the modern man.”

“So what are we supposed to do? Never marry because it’s risky?”

“Hell no—get a prenup! Women want to be independent, let them put it in writing!”

“You can’t get a prenup and have a woman stay home.”

“Why not? Then she’s got to make it work. It’s too easy to get out these days. I had my bags packed with your father two—no, three times! But it was much harder back then. Courts were more difficult, neighbors—Lord! Vicious. We all tore down women who ran off, so when it was our turn… But I was glad I stayed. Marriage is hard. Does he get a lunch at least?”

“Who? Stephen?” Alder shook his head. “He buys his lunch.”

She snorted. “I told you she was going to be lazy! Laziness for women is like drinking for men. Just as bad, just as wrong.”

“Huh,” exhaled Alder, sitting back in his chair. In the still air of the kitchen, smoke drifted in dreamy wide banks. His mother glared at him skeptically, sympathetically, then lit another cigarette.

Chapter 71

Dave’s Decision

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Dave sat on his deck—a deck he had built with money from one of his companies, he couldn’t remember which—and stared out at the setting sun. It was Friday. The rest of his family would be up later tonight. Angela had stayed in town for—why? Something to do with a real estate course? Nah, that can’t be it…

A flock of geese coasted over the pines and swung low over the lake; the water so reflective it looked like a sky buried in the wet earth. Their wingtips brushed the water, and Dave imagined that sensation briefly; it would be nice, like dipping your fingertips into ice cream on a hot day.

Guilt—where was it in his soul? Perhaps there is no such thing as conscience, but that seems hard to believe… Dave lied for a living; he corrupted the young and stole from the gullible. He had learned some accounting tricks, and knew the legal mazes of incorporation and taxation fairly well, had some contacts in the investment world, but really—what value did he really bring to the foundation of his businesses?

Dave’s answer to that was fairly simple. Without me, there would be no businesses. It really was most irritating how everyone seemed to miss that rather essential point. Everyone blames me when things go wrong, but goddamn it don’t they crowd and line up for their paychecks when everything is going well! He had read some email once which listed all of Abraham Lincoln’s failures before he became president—including a nervous breakdown of some sort, which gave Dave some comfort. He had never had any troubles that way. It was good to feel stronger than a great president.

He sighed, and settled back in his deck chair. This should be more relaxing… He imagined a view of himself from various angles, as if snapping photos for a J.Crew catalogue cover. Craggily handsome, silver-haired, casually attired, the business leader relaxes after a long week of conducting media convergence! He narrowed his eyes, wondering if one should look piercingly intelligent while watching a sunset, or if that would look too fake, too self-conscious. If Norman Rockwell painted me it would be: Businessman with a Beer… He liked Rockwell. There was no cynicism in his portraits, unlike Alex Colville, who was always depressing; everything seemed too meticulous, almost neurotic, frozen, like an obsessive-compulsive late for a plane. Dave had once seen a Colville painting—the name always escaped him—which was of a horse thundering down a dark, curving track towards an oncoming train. The painting had always bothered him deeply—what the hell was it about? Instincts are doomed in the face of industrialization? The horse has delusions of grandeur? You put something on a track which is supposed to run free, it dies? Who knew? But the painting returned to him at times, insistently.

Finances also came back to him, as they always did… Dave owed forty thousand in back taxes, three thousand to his accountant, seventeen thousand to his lawyer, twenty thousand on a line of credit, almost eighteen thousand on credit cards—not counting the underground economy Angela had going with her cards. The house was on its second mortgage. The cars were leased. The private school bill notices had lost the friendly, vaguely-British politeness, and were threatening to turn his case over to rather less educated people.

What else? Dave explored his debt with a sick fascination. He owed twelve hundred to his vet (that felt especially bad, of course, because Sarah had at one time wanted to be a vet). Every utility bill was right on the border of credibility, at the three-to-four month mark. He was three months late on property taxes.

People like Dave were a gold mine for those charging interest—they were the foundation of enormous slabs of the modern economy. The shadow between bills and payment is a dark, wet, and earthy patch where great sustenance flows into the mushroom veins of those who profit from procrastination. There is great reward here—but also great risk. The more people are late with their payments, the more money is made from interest—until they become infinitely late, and never pay at all. Then, alas, great money is lost.

Dave hated his debt. Debt was a bottomless monster. He felt he was constantly being mugged. Every time he came home with some money, he had to hand it over to nameless entities. It really felt like theft. Paying Visa a thousand dollars a month seemed a whole lot cheaper than paying twenty thousand at once.

And one could never really be free of it. After a certain point, there was really no point trying. Dave was self-employed, which means that he paid his taxes at his own discretion. Money piled in, and was spent—some of it to service debt—he was not that self-destructive. (Although, to be accurate, he was. He was too self-destructive to embrace bankruptcy, which might have actually helped. He controlled his addiction, so it killed him in increments.) There was always some great bill that eclipsed any natural inflow of pay. I mean, forty K in taxes? I have to make almost eighty to pay that! What am I supposed to do, hunt game for six months to save that up? And the money I withdraw from the business to pay my taxes, well I pay tax on that too!

And there was more—he charged GST at seven percent, but rarely repaid it to the government for several years. It was like an instant raise. He owed over twelve thousand dollars in GST. There was a few grand in corporate taxes, provincial taxes, taxes on investments. And he had also gone the gray route in declarations, writing off Barbados holidays as consulting ventures, Sunday brunches as business meetings, a home entertainment system as office furniture. Well shit—I’m so stressed I need to relax! And even if I wanted to pay my taxes tomorrow, I’d need another couple of thou just to square things up with my accountant!

Of course, like all addicts, the solution was not to change his behavior, but his resources. I need another hit like my first million, a bonfire of cash so big and bright it would burn away all this fucking fog! Dave lost himself in contemplation of young nurses cheering the liberating troops of infinite cash, then shook his head in irritation. Stay on target, Davey B!

But this target was always in motion. Despite—or perhaps because of—their conspicuous wealth, the Bugles were part of the Great Golden Depression. They lived hand to mouth, consuming enormous amounts of money each month—ten, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars, after taxes—and starting over monthly. As the tides of fortune came in, they spent lavishly, paying down their mortgages, paying back-taxes, and clearing their lines of credit. Then, as a company foundered or a recession hit, they remortgaged, ran up debt again, deferred taxes, and pillaged their retirement savings.

This constant financial stress was a blessed distraction, of course, from the emptiness of their inner lives. The constant stress of their situation had the additional benefit of allowing them to view ethics as a luxury they could only intermittently afford. They had all the conscience of a mother grizzly defending her young.

Of course, there were costs to be paid. The nervous system can hold out under siege for many, many years, but then it tends to give in all at once; there is little warning, and the consequences are terrible. Distraction, rage, emotional or physical violence, debilitating obsessions, delusions, hypochondria—the body submits, submits, submits—and finally talks back only in the endless scream of full revolt. And by then, almost always, it is too late.

The problem of financial insecurity weighs heavy on the shoulders of most upper middle class families—especially the women. They tend to shy away from any detailed cross-examinations of their husbands, but submit without complaints to the contracting cycle of the family economy. But, it was whispered (not least by the LWL), there is always the possibility of final collapse. It was rare. There were always more contacts to be milked, one more board appointment to cling onto. The useless classes tend to protect their own… But sometimes, sometimes the jackals of reality could not be fended off, and they brought down a family in a string of yelps and a cloud of dust. A lawsuit, a scandal, a conviction for some white-collar corruption, an implacable enemy—or, sometimes, abstract capital, whipped once too often, just lurched suddenly and died. The tax department decided to call in back-taxes, an audit occurred; legal bills fell suddenly—at a time when everything was overextended, and a strange grim absolute cut off all avenues of escape: bread costs money, and we have no money…

It was rare, but still possible… A vast amount of economic activity is dedicated to allowing people to live off credit, to dim and befog the natural truth of cash. This ‘vanity financing’—which allows people to silently consume the future for the sake of conspicuously consuming in the present—is one of the great inventions of modern capitalism. It is the economic equivalent of plastic surgery, or the fashion industry. Everyone wants to feel good by looking good, or seeming rich… There is in fact no external solution to the problem of insecurity, but people desperately want to believe there is, and there is deep gold in every gap between truth and illusion. Businesses can make money supplying people with what is good for them, or what is bad. About ninety percent of the modern economy—from food to shoes to credit—consists of the latter. This ‘illusion economy’ is the great economic engine of the modern world, and these families are deep in the echoes of its empty heart.

The terror of this kind of lifestyle cannot be overestimated. These people have few careless shrugs. There are night sweats, endless terror—and, for those who pay themselves out of their own corporations, a grim reckoning every April, when they tot up their income and expenses for the past year, and feel the final creeping horror of their madness with money. This is a world of short tempers, deep secrets, senseless savings (no more lattes!) and daily promises. It is a world of genial grins and casual appearances, hanging from a thread.

These financial ecosystems are enormously flexible, and can take great body blows without collapsing. There is a certain dependency on timing, of course, but assuming the torpedoes come far enough apart, the ship can almost always be bailed…

But, lolling on the deck, Dave knew that his ship was beginning to list beyond recovery.

So, when in radical straits, make a radical decision. Value was needed; this company needed some serious pumping. This is a four billion dollar market—we get even five percent of it, burn and ship CDs from the Turks and Caicos islands, get satellite phones, and sink back in our hammocks… He remembered watching Angela playing volleyball, a few years before when they were in the British Virgin Islands, her taut muscles and panting competition. There was another girl, with an ass like two peaches hung in a bandanna… What a trio we would make!

Dave got up, went into the house and got another beer. Coming through the porch, he banged his forehead into a well-dented overhanging roof beam. He cursed savagely, yanked the beer open, glanced at the bottle top, then sent it spinning into the lake with a snap of his wrist.

I have to sell this company… The thought was quite sudden, quite clear. The historical million of his late twenties haunted him; that had only come about from selling an asset, not growing a business. The truth was that Dave did not like business that much. He liked money and nice things, but the details, patience, and leadership of nurturing a business never really turned him on. The business cards were nice. He liked handing platinum cards to pretty counter-girls at airports, and exchanging glances with the other people in first class. He liked leg room, and watching the miniature metal Zamboni of plastic-wrapped pretzels go past him into coach. Better wine, personalized movies! He liked bypassing lines at rental car counters. He liked smoking cigars in convertibles. He liked hotel porn. On-the-road massages were relaxing and good fantasy fodder. He liked going up to the check-in girls and asking where the really good restaurants were. He liked vying with clients for the bill. He liked being irritated at delays or inconveniences, because he was important—and also liked forgiving people for irritating him, because he was compassionate. He felt that there was a good lesson in his willed, obvious patience, that people might learn something important. It was so much more fun to ride the elevator to the executive level at hotels if there was someone else in the elevator—and always a little disappointing if they rode to the same floor. He felt very kindly towards the ancient man in a tux who served coffee in the executive lounge. He liked the grim silence of the other older men who read the orange Wall Street Journal or murmured into tiny cell phones hidden in their huge hands. He loved politics and gossip. He liked asking the man who did his shoes at the airport about his family, where he was from, when he left, whether he declared everything he made. The tangy snap of the man’s polishing rag was a delight.

If we’re going to sell this thing, we need to give it a good polish! We need to stuff some big sales in the pipeline; we need to get some more US exposure, open up some offices. There’s no use for it; I simply cannot survive on salary.

On Monday, Dave made some calls, and was quickly put in touch with a man named Don Lyons, who ran a holding company called ‘CompuCan.’ CompuCan owned two other companies, one in educational software, and one that had a web-based file-sharing service. They had a short, intense conversation, both speaking in a code they were only half-conscious of:

“Mr. Lyons,” said Dave heartily. “Good to speak with you. Thanks for taking the call. You are a busy man, I appreciate that, so I won’t waste time for either of us. My name is Dave Bugle. I am the CEO of a world-class environmental company called EMIS Systems, which specializes in providing software solutions to Fortune 500 companies. I would like to talk to you about doing business together, for two main reasons…”

“Environ-mental?” asked Don. His voice was slow, rusty, ponderous, like a Soviet-era locomotive.

“Yes sir. We have been around for almost a year, and…”

“Huh,” said Don. Dave realized that this was a man who needed to make other people wait, and appreciated the trick. Most people wanted to show they were smart by responding rapidly and talking quickly. Don clearly wanted to give the impression of a great mind considering every possible alternative, like a chess computer calculating moves several generations into the future. “What did you say your name was?”

“Dave Bugle.”

“So, Dave… You say that this is software—and the environment.”

“Yes.”

“Cash positive?”

“Absolutely. And a great sales pipeline. We’ve got…”

“Huh.” There was a pause, some slightly labored breathing. “Why sell?”

“We need some cash to get into the US. That’s where the real market is. US regulations are more strict than those in Canada. And the regs are enforced, unlike here. And with SARA, companies have to report emissions publicly.”

“So we invest… We provide cash, you have the product. Marketing?”

“It’s all been done in-house so far. If you have any expertise in that area…”

“Yeah… We might be able to rustle something up along those… Where are you calling from?”

“Toronto.”

“So get your papers and get down here. You know the address?”

“I’ve got the website. I’m looking at it right now.”

“Tell me this, Dave,” said Don. “Is your company clean?”

“Sorry?”

“Clean. No skeletons in the closet. A lot of companies are just—cashing in on the boom.”

“Clean, yes. I can tell you that. I am a seasoned entrepreneur. We’re in it for the long haul.”

“That’s good. Well, Mr. Bugle, I’ve got to tell you: we’re considering several other companies.”

“Everyone’s got a dance card,” said Dave. “Everyone goes for green.”

“Yes…yes.” Don sounded a little disappointed. Dave understood. If you really want to sell your stock, green is the way to go. It gives a strong veneer of ethics, and opens the doors of ‘Green Funds,’ or institutional investors with a mandate to invest in environmentally friendly companies. Don clearly hoped that Dave was some wide-eyed entrepreneur of twenty-five who didn’t know this. Better luck next time, thought Dave.

The deal was concluded quite rapidly. Dave and Terry got significant raises and a couple of hundred thousand shares in CompuCan stock. During the negotiations—and ever-mindful of his rather pressing financial situation, Dave managed to get cash for a hundred thousand of his shares up front. The remaining stocks were vested over three years, which meant that they could legally only sell a third each year.

CompuCan was listed on the Alberta Stock Exchange, which was akin to a riverbed during a gold rush: there was a great deal of sediment and skulduggery, but one could find the occasional nugget. The ASE was considered a valid way station in the pilgrimage towards the Toronto Stock Exchange, which was the Mecca of Canadian capital and investment. This was the Holy Grail of small companies because a goodly number of institutional investors are not allowed to invest in companies not on the TSE. The criteria for maintaining a high-tech listing on the TSE are quite strict: a minimum of a million freely tradable shares worth at least ten million dollars, three hundred or more public shareholders, each with one or more board lots and full financial disclosure.

Now there are companies on the TSE whose main value is that they have a listing on the TSE. Shortly after Dave sold EMIS to CompuCan, CompuCan set its sights on Sansity, an ex-mining company which had held onto just enough shareholder value to retain its listing, and was now actively courting a reverse takeover, wherein a company would do a share swap—with some cash—to merge with Sansity. The shareholders of Sansity would gain because their company would have some actual income; the shareholders of CompuCan would gain because their stock would now be listed on the TSE.

Angela followed all this with great interest. Dave was over the moon. He saw a TSE listing, institutional investors, the stock going to ten dollars, coming out with over three million, paying off all his debts with enough to spare to never have to work again. The love of his wife, the envy of his friends, the shining respect of his children—everything would be unassailable—he would never have to answer to anyone, ever again!

She called a meeting of the LWL, and after scant debate (they all read the newspapers, and knew that a gold rush was underway), they all agreed that it was time to put a little more investment money into the market than they had originally anticipated. For many of them, this would involve taking out loans against assets their husbands had put in their wives’ names for tax and exposure reasons. But their resolves were strong; they knew that if they all invested, they would all benefit. They sealed their resolution with a piece of cheesecake each, which is the equivalent of a blood bond for rich wives.

That night, Dave and Angela couldn’t sleep, flying on the clouds of incoming cash.

“Fuck, Ang,” Dave whispered, his throat tight with savage joy. “Okay, so my son’s not gonna be a rock star, but we’re so close to the TSE that I can fucking taste it!” His voice caught. “Thanks, I mean really—thanks—for hanging in there with me when everything seemed to be going in the shitter. That took rare faith.”

Angela smiled. “I have a confession to make.”

“Yuh?”

“About investments…”

Dave turned and grinned. “Do you have your fingers in Davey B’s cookie jar?”

“No…”

“’Cause you’ve been asking a lot about the business. Come on—not even a little?”

“Not me, but—you know that catty lot I lunch with…”

Dave laughed. “Oh, it’s like that! The stitch’n’bitch. The hen party. Natter, natter. Okay, are they in for a lot?”

“Some are, yeah.”

“Well, as long as it’s not you…. Are you at least getting some kickback?”

“No, not really.”

“You, my love, are too fucking nice. Why? They’re all loaded, right?”

“It’s a hobby, you know, what you do after you’ve run out of chins to tuck.”

“Was it just once?”

“It started as a bit, but now…”

Dave smiled. “Now it’s a lot, right? I mean, we got a real infusion. It’s given CompuCan enough cash to maybe get on the TSE. Maybe you did a good thing, sweetums. Maybe we’re getting the biggest kickback of all.”

“But—you’ll tell me when they should sell, right?”

He reached for her. “Of course, my pet, my life, my love, my infinitely fuckable wife…”

Now a good deal of the economy is based on the perception of value, and this is one of the great problems of modern morality. Normally, a company gets a TSE listing because it is a solid company. There are, though, companies which manage to scrape together the necessary requirements in order to be perceived as a solid company. This is especially prevalent during times where new technology meets new business models. When everything is in flux, when investor knowledge is at a low ebb, when there is the everyone-is-getting-rich-but-me panic—ah, then the fiscal vultures swoop low over the fat, lowing, greedy herds of early-retirement-wannabes.

One of the great problems of the stock market—the ethical problem—is that the stock market is not designed to function in an absence of knowledge, but an explicit application of knowledge is illegal.

This is how the stock market is supposed to work: a company has a great product, and wants to expand. To expand, it needs money it doesn’t have. (Dave’s argument was that EMIS could sell a lot more software if it had offices in the US, and more salespeople, however, it did not have the money to fund that kind of expansion.) Now, it could choose to expand by spending the money it makes from its existing products, but that doesn’t tend to work very well, because profits tend to be in the four to ten percent range, and it can take a long time to save enough money from that kind of margin.

So if a company needs money, why doesn’t it go to a bank? Well, if the company is ninety-nine percent sure that it will make a lot of money by expanding, it probably will go to a bank. The bank will review the company’s claims rigorously and assign an interest rate based on how accurate they think the projections are. Going to the bank benefits existing shareholders because they don’t have to issue more shares—thus diluting their own holdings—to raise the money. The risk of going to the bank is that the money has to be paid back—and usually more quickly—or the bank ends up owning the business. The bank really doesn’t screw around—if you think about it, a bank makes maybe one, two percent on a loan—thus, for every loan which defaults, they have to have fifty to one hundred which are paid back in full. Banks, in other words, are not designed to underwrite risk.

So if the expansion is risky, then the company has to go to the stock market. This is where information comes in. Dave’s pitch to potential investors in the CompuCan/Sansity merger went thusly:

“EMIS has grown forty percent every year since its inception. Companies currently considering the EMIS System include Bombardier, Bell, General Mills, Nortel—and about thirty others, all Fortune 500 clients, all committed to environmental responsibility. It is estimated that a commitment to green policies contributes four to six percent to a company’s share price—and in the face of that kind of market capitalization, an investment in an EMIS doesn’t even show up on the radar.

“The market for environmental software products and services has been estimated as upwards of 4 billion US dollars per year, worldwide. With that kind of money on the table, you’d think that there would be a stampede of companies rushing to fill that need. Yet there isn’t. Our competition consists of one company in Maine who is currently attempting to upgrade their EMIS product from DOS to Windows, and a few consulting companies with trumped-up little databases designed more to sell consulting services than run departments.

“So why is this lucrative market so underpopulated? The simple reason is that providing a strong EMIS solution requires an intersection of skills, which is very rare in the software world. If you think of an accounting program, it requires skills in both accounting and software to create a best-of-breed product. This is the barrier-to-entry in the EMIS marketplace as well. The algorithms to calculate air emissions, say, require a very strong engineering, legal, and chemical background. To translate these algorithms into an effective and user-friendly software package requires strong interface design and coding skills. Most of the people in the EMIS market are either engineers who don’t know how to program or design program interfaces, or programmers who create ‘fluff’ software which doesn’t do the core processing needed by the engineers.

“EMIS is the answer to that problem. Remember: corporations in the US have to file reports to the federal government about all their wastes—air, land, water—everything. It’s about as voluntary as doing taxes. So companies have to produce these reports—the question is, do they do it by hand, or through software? I think that the answer is clear.

“So the question is not whether EMIS can sell software, but rather: how much? Now, the US regulations are much stricter than the Canadian regs, so I submit that it is essential to expand into the US market—and to do this, we need capital.

“Specifically, we need your capital. Let me sum up the salient points:

“One: EMIS has a proven product, already in use at several client sites.

“Two: The market potential is enormous—especially in the US, which means juicy conversion rates—US receivables, largely Canadian payrolls.

“Three: Client demand is governed by strict laws.

“Four: The cost of getting into the US market is quite low, relative to the projected profits.

“So now the only question is: did you gentlemen bring your checkbooks?”

This was a fairly big finish—Dave was nothing if not a showman—and there would often be spontaneous applause after his presentation. Large checks were written. Many toasts were made. Everyone was brilliant, special, and courageous. The inevitable devils readied their vanity tax.

Chapter 72

Dave and Terry Take Stock

￼Dingbat Diamonds

The reverse takeover of Sansity had gone through. There was great haste in the transaction; a certain amount of due diligence had not been performed. Not all of the existing clients had been called, and not all the key employees were interviewed. The scent of a boom was on, and time and tide wait for no man!

Based on Sansity’s position on the TSE, several significant sales had been made to institutional investors. The stock had been hovering around a dime for the past few months, and within three days it had climbed to thirty cents. Dave spent a good deal of time on the phone.

For Dave, at last, there were again great trumpets in the air. His ship had come in. He was twenty-nine once more, striding out of a tall building with a check for a million dollars in his hand. Dave could not sit still. He squirmed like a virgin on the back of a Harley. He decided to become a patriarch. He called Terry into his office.

Terry came in, grinning from ear to ear.

“How’s it going, Terry-boy?” boomed Dave.

“Got that stock price on my screen,” said Terry, his voice silver with tense glee. “I don’t know what to say. I think we did it!”

Dave laughed richly. “Yes, my boy, we certainly did. Now, I’m going to give you some advice, you know, as someone who’s been through all this before. This stock is going through the roof—thanks largely to you, my wee digital genius. Now I want to tell you about the ‘sweet spot.’”

Terry laughed. “You mean when the stock quadruples in value in three days, right?”

“No, not quite. The sweet spot is profit without regret. You sell now, you’re happy—you’ve got forty K, that’s a lot of money, right? Now suppose the stock goes to five dollars. Yeah—you heard me—we’re in play, it could happen. Now you look at the forty K and don’t see forty K, but four hundred and sixty K that never happened. You don’t see a little hill, but a big hole.”

“O—kay.”

“Now the stock goes to five dollars, you sell at five dollars, and it settles back at two dollars—or whatever the fuck—you’re a macho hero in your own mind. But that will never happen. You hear me? Never. That’s a date with Claudia Schiffer. Winning the lottery. Forget it. It’s unattainable. What you want is to make a good profit, money you can live with, and forget about the peak. Now, where is the ‘sweet spot’ between a dime and five dollars? It’s a personal thing. For me, it’s about two dollars. I can live with that. Especially if I’ve got some backup stock in escrow, which we have.”

Terry sat down limply. “You’re saying—we could go to two dollars?”

Dave grinned and shrugged. “Like I said, we’re in play. Word has got around the prom that we have the biggest dick. Our dance card is filling up fast. You have three hundred and thirty thousand shares in total—how does almost seven hundred thousand dollars tax-free, since you were in from the beginning, sound to you? That’s one nice fucking stereo. Or a beautiful house, no mortgage. Porsche, anyone? ’Course, if it goes to five dollars, well, one point five mill… Been there, smoked that, buys a whole lot… But forget that. The sweet spot is a moving target. You don’t want to sell everything, all at once. Sell on the way up, always keep something in reserve. Get some cash in the bank. Me, I’d sell ten thousand shares now, then another five thousand every dime it goes up. Right now, your whole portfolio is in high-risk, high-tech. Not good. But to diversify, you have to sell. I’ve seen a lot of dumb fucks hold out for the big payoff and get nothing. This is not Casino Rama—screw that. Sell bit by bit on the way up, and forget the peak. That’s my advice. End of lecture.”

Terry could barely keep still. He felt dizzy. “Dave—we’ve talked about stock options for the employees… What’s happening about that?”

“Don’t worry. Management is working on them—there are some legal issues, and this stock went into play faster than we expected. We’ll have an answer within a week.”

“But—but the stock could…”

“Don’t worry—they’ll be locked in at a price either today or tomorrow. You know Don Lyons is gone, right?”

“No…”

“He was found with his hand in the till, and was gracefully retired. The new CEO’s name is Robert Washington. Crackerjack man. I have his word on the options. This stock’ll be in play for at least another few weeks.”

“O—kay.” Terry got up. “Thanks, Dave.”

“Do you have a broker?”

“No.”

Dave pulled a card from his wallet and handed it over. “Call my guy Simon. Best in the biz. He’ll take care of you. Go this afternoon—don’t fuck around. Take your stock certificates.” He grinned even wider. “Now, go tell the employees we hit the jackpot. This week, we run the casino, and the house always wins!”

Terry and Pierre went for lunch at the Swiss Chalet downstairs from the office. Terry felt like ordering everything on the menu. Pierre ordered a beer, and stared at his friend, almost squirming with envy.

“You are one lucky fucker, Richie-Rich.”

“I can’t—take it in,” murmured Terry, scanning the menu without reading it.

“So what’s happening with the employee options?”

“Dave said—he said that they’ll be locked in at today or tomorrow’s stock prices.”

“Shit, we should have had them a month ago. We’ve already missed out on the four-times jump!”

“You should have put some cash in,” said Terry.

Pierre laughed harshly. “What cash? It’s a fucking start-up.”

For you, every beer in the past could have been ten beers in the future, thought Terry, but kept silent. His belief that Pierre was a social alcoholic was a sore spot between them.

“So when do we get them?” asked Pierre.

“You’ve got to talk to Dave—sometime next week.”

“Fuck!” said Pierre fervently. “I hope this roller-coaster keeps cranking up.”

Terry ordered a pop. Pierre scowled.

“What the fuck, buddy. You might be a millionaire. Have a drink.”

“Not really the time now,” said Terry. “Need to be a little clearheaded.”

“Yeah, one beer’ll make you senile. Makes sense. For a pussy.”

Do millionaires still have to deal with peer pressure? wondered Terry. He sighed, signaled the waiter, and ordered a beer.

It took a few days to set up Terry’s account, by which time the stock was trading at 70 cents. On Dave’s advice, Terry sold fifty thousand shares, depositing thirty-five thousand dollars into his account.

By the end of the following week, the share hit two dollars. Again, on Dave’s advice, Terry sold ten thousand more shares.

The following Monday morning, the stock was at two dollars and fifty cents. Terry stared at his screen and swallowed twice. Forget the five grand you lost; think of twenty thou you have…

Monday afternoon, Dave called Terry into his office and told him that the stock options for the employees had been set at seventy cents, but it would take a few days for the lawyers to finish drafting them.

That Thursday, after holding at two fifty for three days, the stock began to fall. It hit one ninety by mid-afternoon, closing at one ninety-five.

The employees were in a panic. They filed into Terry’s office about every hour or so, demanding to know where their options were. Dave went to talk to the lawyers. Terry told the employees that their options had been locked in at seventy cents.

By noon on Friday, the stock was at a dollar forty-five. Dave did not come in. All work had ceased in the office. Terry spent a good chunk of the day trying to track down Robert Washington. Pierre went for a beer.

By the end of the day Friday, the stock was at a dollar ten. The company receptionist came into Terry’s office and said that Dave had called to say that the stock options would be delivered Monday by noon.

Monday morning, Dave called Terry into his office. The older man looked tired.

“The stock options are in,” said Dave, throwing them across his desk. They spread out a little, like a deck of large, thick white cards.

Terry picked one up. Pierre’s name was on top. He flipped to the second page, past all the legalese, and his eyes widened.

“A dollar ninety?” he cried out.

“Apparently there has been a misunderstanding,” said Dave heavily.

“But—the stock is at a dollar ten!”

Dave glanced at his monitor. “Dollar now.”

“Jesus Christ, Dave—you said they were at seventy cents!”

“That’s what I was told. I can’t get a straight answer out of Robert. Frankly, I think he’s a little confused.”

“Confused! God almighty! Are you telling me that this stock popped, and the employees who made it possible don’t benefit at all?”

“If it goes back up…”

“Do you think it will?”

Dave shrugged. “I’m not any happier about this than you are. It’s a tough break.”

“Oh Lord!” exhaled Terry, sitting back in his chair. “What happened?”

“From what I got, the lawyers didn’t finished the paperwork until late last week. It’s illegal to give stock options at a lower price than the stock is currently trading at.”

“Why?”

“It’s supposed to—prevent corruption. You know, board members awarding themselves cut-rate options they can cash in immediately.”

Terry gestured at the pile of options. “So these are worth nothing.”

“They’re worth—it’s worth the difference between a dollar ninety and what the stock is trading at.”

“So right now, minus ninety cents.”

“But again, if it goes up…”

“I don’t think… Christ I don’t know. We can’t hand these out now. Everyone will quit.”

“There’s some kind of market correction going on. No one sells stock unless they think it’s going to go down. Someone’s dumping.”

“Someone?”

“The board, probably.”

“Isn’t that—insider trading?”

“Not really. We’re not about to release numbers or anything.”

“Was it all bullshit?”

Dave frowned. “What do you mean—all?”

“I mean—was it ever worth two fifty?”

Dave smiled. “A stock is worth what people are willing to pay for it.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t. What do you mean?”

“I mean—was it ever worth anything like two fifty, you know—as a long term investment?”

“Long term? A stock is worth what people believe it’s worth, Terry.”

“It’s—got to have some value beyond that. I mean, Microsoft trades at—whatever, a hundred bucks, right? More than we did.”

“Microsoft makes a lot of money. We don’t. This was all speculative.”

“But—what, a week? Ten days?”

“That’s the nature of speculation.”

“It’s just—what, then? A money shuffle?”

Dave scowled suddenly. “Hey—don’t get all sentimental on me, Terry-boy. The people who bought this stock weren’t looking for anything long-term.”

“But who’s buying it now?”

Dave shrugged again. “Shorters, I suppose.”

“Shorters?”

The older man leaned back in his chair. “Well, you can make money from a stock that’s going down. You say: I’ll buy the stock now at a dollar, and sell it back to you tomorrow at ninety cents. If it’s eighty cents, you’ve just made a dime on each stock.”

“But someone must think it’s going up again. You know—sometime.”

“Maybe. But by now I think people are just betting on how much it’ll fall.”

“Lord, Lord,” groaned Terry, his face pale.

“Relax, buddy. You cashed out. You’re worried about your escrow stock? That’s almost ten months away. Anything could happened between now and then.”

“Sure, but—but what are we going to say to the employees?”

“Don’t know. There was a misunderstanding. I’ll smooth it over. We can hand out some raises.”

“How am I going to motivate them now? They’ll…”

“Hate you? Nah—I’ll be the lightening rod. I do ‘big, bad ogre’ well. It’s not the first time. Let me handle it. Terry,” he said, leaning forward, “you’ve got to relax a little. This is your stock cherry, so I’ll break it to you gently. Very few start-ups end up with sustainable stock prices. Everyone who bought in was gambling. No one with any sense puts their life-savings into this kind of thing. Win big, lose big. Welcome to the world of penny stocks.” He smiled. “But here’s what’s happened to us—for us. Right now, Sansity is sitting on a major wad of cash. We can use that to fund the US expansion. It was a bubble, sure, but now we can really make it happen. These stock options can be worth a fortune if we work it right—and not a bullshit fortune, but something good, real. But here’s what we’ve got to do. You have got to finish that goddamned Database Builder of yours. We’ve got to get it into the US marketplace—and with a big splash! Then we can make it all right—everyone can win in the end. But we’ve got to go big now. We’ve got to go big or go home. Do you understand?”

Terry raised his head slowly. Of course, it would be heaven to believe… He wondered just what the hell was happening among his bosses. Was Dave somehow involved in this? Did he know that Don was lying about the stock options? How horrible a thought is that?

Terry shook his head slightly, and shuddered. Dave watched him closely.

Chapter 73

Bill, Carl, and the Web

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Now something odd happened shortly after Sansity’s stock price peaked and crashed in late winter. The company began to change hands, in a kind of grim decaying orbit, like a cheap woman falling down the broken steps of broken promises. A number of senior managers came through, all with great plans, rousing speeches, and promises of change—and all these men vanished within a few months.

One problem was that the sales contract had been rewritten to pay the salespeople forty percent commission on the sales of the product—as well as forty percent on the hourly rates charged to make the changes to the product. When the technical team found out about this, they went ballistic. This is how sales work in most small technical companies:

The salesperson books a space at a technical conference.

The salesperson and a technical person man a booth during a conference.

The salesperson drags potential customers over and the technical person gives short presentations.

The salesperson takes the person’s business card.

Over the next few weeks, the salesperson keeps phoning the people cornered at the conference, until he gets a couple of on-site presentations.

The technical person comes down and does the presentation.

If the client wants to go further, he or she sends a Request For Proposal (RFP) to the salesperson, who then sends it to the technical person.

The technical person then does some preliminary estimates about how much the client will have to spend.

The technical person then deals with the client’s technical reps.

Another meeting is often set up to present the costs; usually the technical person presents them.

The salesperson pesters the client until a decision is made.

Now the great question of software is: what the heck is the salesperson for? This is especially true for customized software. The product changes so much—and client demands are so varied and complex—that the average salesperson (i.e. a salesperson who is not also a technical person) has no idea how to go about selling the product.

Terry puts it this way:

“Bill and Carl have no real clue about what we’re selling. Carl drones on and on about his master’s from MIT and his experience programming in 1965, and Bill just repeats that we are supposed to be the tech experts, and that it’s a ‘team effort.’ But it sure doesn’t feel like a team effort. The salespeople make the promises, and we work nights and weekend to fulfill them. And every time we put time estimates into a proposal, the salespeople always come back yelling that the client simply won’t accept that much, that our competitor is half the cost, that we’re padding, and we’ll blow the deal for sure. So Dave hears this and everyone leans on us to reduce the costs. My view is that for every dollar we reduce our estimates, we should reduce the sales commissions one dollar as well. Yeah, right! So we end up having to fight this ghastly, depressing war where everyone wins at our expense. Dave gets to put a sale on the books, Bill and Carl get their fat commissions, and we get fucked. And—they get the commissions, even though we do most of the work! I do ninety percent of the presentations. I do all the follow-up calls with their technical and project management people, all the cost estimates… What the fuck do they do? Set up a meeting? Big wup. And why, oh why don’t they seem to understand that there is always some uncertainty in technical estimates? They are always crabbing that we can’t give a straight answer about time and billings, but they’ve never hit their sales targets, not even once. And we’re the bad guys? Yah!”

Now the salespeople have their own complaints. Carl:

“These kids don’t know squat about running a business. EMIS is not their personal playground. We have to make money, and making money requires sacrifice. Christ—do they think that I just pick up the phone and book a three-hour, high-level presentation at a top company? It’s a bit more than that, but they don’t see it, so it doesn’t exist. And do they think that General Mills is going to sink a quarter mill into a project run by a kid who barely shaves? I bring some salt-and-pepper to the mix, but that doesn’t matter of course, ’cause everyone over thirty is an idiot, right? I mean, these guys are pulling forty, fifty K right out of school and they complain that they have to work some weekends? Shit—I haven’t been home in a week. And I drive, to keep costs down. I’d trade a month of weekends for a week on the road. And does anyone call me up and say: Christ, Carl, thanks for the sale! Good job! No—they just bitch and moan and fight everything I say. ‘You’re taking too many risks, Carl!’ Riiight! I work for commission, and they’re complaining about risk? And they’re always whining about having to come down and do presentations, but if they actually finished the goddamned program—or at least stabilized it—or documented it in any way at all, then I could learn the damn thing and present it myself. But no—there’s always a new button, or a button which doesn’t work, or has changed place. They say: ‘present this version, it’s waaay better,’ then I open it up and it looks completely different, and there’s no help file, no documentation, nothing… I say: you want me to present it, finish the fucking thing! And they don’t give me what I need. I say: we need a web solution. What do I get? Another fucking reporting wizard. Huh. ‘We have no money for R&D,’ they say. I say: ‘you’re entrepreneurs, you dweebs—you built the damn thing without R&D funding, back when you had balls—what’s to stop you now?’ No, they have to get their beauty sleep. I have a wife and kids and I work like a dog. They’ve got fucking Chia Pets and lava lamps and have to be in bed by nine o’clock. Bullshit. Total bullshit. I’d like to have seen them in Korea. ‘I can’t march, Sarge—I’m tired!’ Shut the fuck up and dig the ditch, that’s what I say.”

It takes a powerful leader to deal with interdepartmental conflicts—especially essentially intergenerational departments, like sales and tech. Dave was not that leader. Dave had a standard modus operandi: figure out who is weaker, and fuck them. He sided with the salespeople at all times, because they spoke the same language, and the sales issues were far easier to understand.

But then, things hit a real snag, and it was about a presentation to Agitcorp.

Terry received an email from Bill about an RFP, which asked him to give a timeframe for rewriting EMIS for the web. Terry replied that an estimate was impossible—they had never talked about which platform to use, or what parts of the software would be ported, or what resources would be devoted, or anything of the sort.

He did not hear anything back for two days, and then Dave called him into his office.

“Terry, I’ve got Bill on speaker phone here. He says there’s a problem with Agitcorp.”

“Hi, Terry.”

Terry felt an ugly flash of anger. There you go, running to Daddy! “Bill.”

“So, what’s going on?” asked Dave.

“Well, Agitcorp is only interested in vendors with a web solution,” said Bill. “They’ll start with a Windows system, but they want to know we are at least working towards the web.”

“So they don’t want many details, right?” asked Dave, glancing at Terry.

“Absolutely not. They just want to know that it’s part of our strategic direction.”

“Erm—you asked for a delivery date,” said Terry.

“Absolutely I did,” said Bill smoothly. “Of course, the client knows that saying ‘oh yeah, the web—that’s part of our strategic direction’ doesn’t mean much. They want to have some idea when we might be in a position to offer a web solution. They don’t care about a specific date—just Q1, Q2, whatever.”

“And this could be a year away,” said Dave.

“It doesn’t matter when it is,” said Terry. “We don’t have a plan, or resources, or any idea how we’d actually do it.”

“Of course,” said Dave. “So the question is: how long would you be comfortable with?”

“How long?” repeated Terry. “I—I just said I can’t answer that question!”

“I’m not saying we have to nail it down—are we Bill?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Just, you know, if you and I were talking, and I said, Terry, how long do you think it would take to develop a web solution, what would you say?”

Terry’s cheeks were turning crimson. “I would say that I would have no idea.”

“You see?” said Bill’s voice.

Dave pursed his lips. “Okay, Terry—you have to give us a bit more to work with. Throw us a bone. It won’t take ten years, right?”

“No.”

“Neither will it take a month.”

“Right.”

“Okay,” smiled Dave. “Already we’re getting somewhere. More than a month, less than ten years. Shall we go out on a limb and say three?”

“We can whittle it down all you want,” said Terry. “The fact is, we can’t put it on paper in front of a client until we have some idea what we’re doing.”

“Absolutely,” said Bill—and Terry was really beginning to dislike his use of that word. “That would be completely irresponsible. I’m not suggesting that. We just need some ballpark Q-figure. Can be anything you want. Anything. You’re the boss here, Terry. You want Q4 next year, you got it. Anything. Just give me something!”

“Can we do Q4 next year?” asked Dave. “That’s close on eighteen months.”

Terry shook his head violently. “We don’t even know what can be converted. Tree views, pop-ups, wizards…”

“Hey!” cried Bill. “Slow down! It’s not a detailed plan—they’re not expecting that. Just—we’ll have something on the web within eighteen months or so. That’s all. No promises—just—just a direction!”

Terry took a deep breath. “Okay. Give me a few days—this is going to delay the RFP for St. Carvey Cement. I’ll look into what technology is available.”

“Terry—shit man, I’d love nothing more than to give you that time, but we don’t have it. I found out about Agitcorp almost by accident. They need something by noon tomorrow.”

“Christ!” snarled Terry, his voice thick with rage. “Well, what the fuck! Why even consult me then?”

“Because you’re an integral part of this team,” said Dave softly, ever the voice of reason.

“Am I?” asked Terry. “It’s—it’s—no one ever says: ‘huh, okay, Terry, that’s a good point, we’ll do what you say.’ It’s always: ‘thanks for the input, but here’s what we have to do anyway.’”

Dave leaned towards the phone. “Bill—can we call you back?”

There was a short pause. “I think that’s a good idea, Dave.”

Dave disconnected him, then turned to Terry. “Let’s walk,” he said flatly.

It was a bright, cold day on Queen Street. The office was just past the garment district, out where ancient grimy fabric stores gave way to a dilapidated stretch of dollar-rental stores and no-name pharmacies. The sun glared off the gray, slushy concrete. People in their early thirties living the financially ambiguous lives of students and artists argued against capitalism in Starbucks and Second Cup—never Tim Hortons.

They walked for a block or two before Dave spoke.

“Terry, I’m running out of answers.” His breath vaporized in the air.

“Uh huh,” said Terry. He felt anger, fear, almost a difficulty breathing. His hands were clenched; he worked to loosen them. I want to punch my business partner, he thought. Things are not good.

“I wish you’d had more experience in business,” continued Dave slowly. “I wish you had some ex-boss I could call up and ask for advice. You’re a good programmer, no question. But you don’t see… Everyone around you is pulling for you. Bill and Carl are killing themselves to get your product, your brainchild, your baby, out into the marketplace, in front of people who can write some mighty nice checks. Yeah, I know they can be abrasive… Salespeople only have to be sensitive in a certain way. They need strong hides otherwise; most everyone says no to them. They’re the ugly kids at the dance—they get punchy, I know that. But I’m talking too much. Help me, Terry. Help me understand what’s going on for you. Because I don’t. I don’t, Terry—and my failure is tearing this company apart. Tell me. Just tell me what you want.”

Terry did not answer for quite a few moments. “Respect, I guess.”

Dave stopped in front of a Roti shop and turned to him, his eyes wide behind his sunglasses. “Respect? Christ, Terry—this whole enterprise is based on our respect for your abilities!” He smiled suddenly. “Shit. Sorry. I’ll shut up. Go on.”

They walked on. Terry’s brow furrowed.

“I guess I mean—respect for my limitations.”

“Huh,” said Dave.

“I can’t just—make up stuff, and have it stick. I really, really don’t know how long it will take to do this web stuff.”

“But—and I know, I’m interrupting again, but this is very important. You have a special quality—genius? Who knows, that word can mean whatever…” Dave scratched a pale ear. “Lord it’s freezing out here! There’s this exercise, I learned it at some bullshit seminar on time management: you write down your goals, and they—they just come true. It happens. You plant a flag in the future, based on faith, faith in whatever, your abilities, the universe, who knows? You plant that flag, and a path just sort of opens. I’ve been up and down in my life, Terry. I’ve been around the block. You’ve got to have faith. Faith in me, faith in your partners—but most of all, faith in yourself. That’s really what this business is founded on. Faith and confidence.” Dave laughed. “Sometimes—no, most times—I think they’re one and the same thing.”

Terry paused. A bike courier whuzzed by on the sidewalk, wobbling in the slush, cursing him for stopping suddenly. “Uh huh, but faith didn’t work with Cyrux. Faith doesn’t let you jump to the moon.”

“No one’s asking you to jump to the moon, Terry!” scowled Dave. He pulled off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. “Bill is just asking you to say: at some time within the next eighteen months, we’ll have some kind of web demo. Christ—ten to one they’ll be happy with the system we build and won’t want some massive web conversion. Or, we’ll price it at a disincentive for them. Foot in the door, Terry—you know the spiel. And—and you know what this is? This web thing? Some bullshit corporate directive. New CTO says: ‘hey, don’t buy any systems that aren’t on the web.’ Department heads freak out, because half the software they need is specialized, and not web-ready. So the CTO says: ‘Okay, well, can we at least commit to the possibility of a web solution?’ ‘Sure,’ they say, not giving a shit. So it’s bullshit through and through. Half of business is being able to sniff out the bullshit. That’s the difference between us, Terry. I’m the amoral bloodhound. Sure—I know that, I’m no saint. You are a purist, God bless your shiny heart. Great, really! But you can’t smell bullshit—that’s the curse of the purist. So we don’t respond to this RFP, but our competitor, who knows that the client directive is bullshit, he responds, implements a system, makes a wad—and the client never asks for a web solution, because that was never his intention in the first place! You see? I can tell.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

Dave scowled. “What if your abilities had peaked two weeks into the business? Everyone’s taking risks here. Bill and Carl work on commission—that’s Bill’s rent money you’re fucking around with, that’s why he came to me. The investors, management, Sansity—everyone risks. That’s part of trust. I mean, you trust me, right?”

Terry nodded, looking Dave straight in the sunglasses, at both his own mirrored, fish-eyed faces.

“Aww,” groaned Dave, shaking his head. “Terry-boy doesn’t love Davey B any more!”

Terry smiled, his chest filling with giddy helium.

“Come on, sonny-boy! Give it up for Davey!” cried Dave, grappling him in a bear hug.

Terry finally agreed to Q4, thinking: December 31st. But when he received a copy of the RFP that went out to Agitcorp, things went bad very quickly. He did a search through the document for ‘web,’ and found a footnote which said that EMIS would complete a full web conversion by June 1st, using Java.

He called Bill back and said that had to be removed; he had only agreed to a web solution by Q4—and he could not guarantee it would be in Java, since he’d had no time to do research. He put the same thing into an email and sent it to Bill, Carl, and Dave.

A few hours later, he had his answer. The inclusion of Java and June 1st was an error, said Bill, left over from an earlier draft. It would be removed. Also, was Terry available for a presentation to Agitcorp on Monday? Yes.

Terry flew down to Gillette, Wyoming, crushingly early on Monday morning. Bill picked him up at the airport, and joked about their misunderstanding.

“I think you’ll find them a most reasonable client,” said Bill as they pulled into the parking lot. Terry’s eyes were already stinging from exhaustion and smoke.

The presentation went well, until the client asked Terry to give more details about the Java solution, and requested a copy of the project plan, and just how Terry expected to complete the conversion by June 1st.

Dave was quite exuberant when he got home. Angela was not. “Dave, what is going on with Sansity’s stock price?”

“Why?”

“I—have some friends who’ve invested.”

“What, the Ladies Who Lunch?” He grinned. “Someone playing with their pin money?”

“Yeah.”

“You know, that’s illegal…”

“Yeah, okay, but—what’s going on?”

“Ang—everything is fine. Some people—people who’ve been in it from the beginning—are just cashing out. But the business model is sound. Terry is doing great. We’re about to launch a product that’ll take the world by storm. Shit, I’d buy if I didn’t have to diversify. Steady as she goes.” He took her in his arms. “Tell them that, from me, from the horse’s mouth. Steady as she goes…”

Chapter 74

Justin on Ice

￼Dingbat Diamonds

The question of Justin was sort of odd. He felt the pull of his new angry persona, but he also plummeted into a kind of depression that was hard for him to fathom.

Ah, defenses, the great invaders of the natural human soul! Defenses are so endemic to our culture that it’s almost as if, having lived with bound feet for so long, we have no idea how normal feet are supposed to feel.

His ‘cool’ was ever at war with his rage. This is an age old tension. While ‘cool’ looks dominant, it is actually cripplingly subservient. To lord it over the impressionable is to be the poster-boy of natural slaves, or a prisoner of the insecure. Justin was, sadly, laden with status, and it’s important to see just what an effect that had had on his life. It started early, and only got worse.

Justin was the first son of a vain family, and so wanted for nothing but limits. An infant’s personality is a kind of liquid: it rises and spreads until it meets resistance. The ‘resistance’ in Justin’s case was almost purely verbal. He was discouraged from things, and restraints were more explained than imposed. The dictatorial nature of parenthood—the fact that toddlers are very often not in hot pursuit of their own best self-interest, and know almost nothing of consequences—was lost on Dave and Angela.

The great question of the modern world is the subjugation of will, and here we fail most often early. The problem of lax parents was formerly solved by the imposition of moral edifices which transcended the authority of the parents. The child of lax parents could be tamed by the church, for instance, or resisted by even a secular society which was sure of its moral commandments. But now, with everything blending, in flux, relativistic, the monstrous weed that grows from an untended childhood gets no pruning from society—only, in extreme cases, an un-planting and removal to prison.

And of course such monsters can get away with far more now than in the past. Our communities have dissolved, our businesses work at the highest level of abstraction, millions labor for the government (which is not known to embrace the concept of individual responsibility). There are more rocks and clouds to hide behind now than ever before.

So society can impose nothing but criminal restraints, and there is nothing more powerful than individual morality.

But such children had no guidance, and that was a very sad thing. They had no God, no social values, no instincts. They made decisions on the opinions of others, on what seemed pleasurable in the short-term, on what they felt like that day, on what was in fashion, or seemed admired. They knew nothing about the long-term moral consequences of their choices. They did not understand that the choices they made today directed who they would become in ten years, when it was too late to turn back.

And then these extraordinary children came into the picture, these little terrors of moral curiosity. Curiosity is a highly underrated virtue. Curiosity is a completely undefended position. It just ‘wants to know.’ It is unafraid of being wrong, since it does not know what is right. It is the secret of Socrates.

Because curiosity is undefended, there is no defense against it. That was the great secret of Stephen, Sarah, and Alice. They were not trying to convince Terry that he was wrong—they were just asking questions. But it is the questions which undo us, which undo our defenses, because questions are always legitimate, in a way that lecturing or hectoring is not. Our defenses can only survive by provoking other people’s defenses, thus all negotiations become ‘me-or-you,’ win/lose, and all contact between souls is lost.

Defenses are also tricky expansionists. Defenses are willed illusions, and so endlessly unstable. Because they are constantly at war with reality—with truth both externally perceived and instinctually affirmed—they can never lay down their arms. Defenses tend to provoke extreme situations and profit from evasion, expanding their dead clouds over more verdant fields of the living soul. Terry was led into the subtle hell of Dave’s existence. What would his life have been like without the intervention of the children…

He would have followed Dave into another venture. At Dave’s insistence, he would have ramped up his spending, to the point where he could no longer have lived without an overinflated salary. He would have bought a great condo, a nice car—with Dave at his ear, murmuring forevermore: Terry, you work hard, you deserve it, don’t be afraid of abundance, money does you no good just sitting in the bank, you can’t take it with you…

And so Terry would have become a high spender, a high roller, a big shot. Thus Dave would have been able to feed off him forever and ever—until a market correction came which was larger than any bullshit story they were able to spin, and then they would part, spinning off to their respective fates, never to talk again, forgetting each others’ existence for months at a time.

Now dumb defenses do not mediate, they do not let in air, they consume to crisis, and then are consumed by consequences. A social alcoholic will almost never stop drinking; the hardcore drinker who wakes up on a sidewalk in Vegas without family, savings, or wallet, at least has a chance. Terry had a conservative enough streak that he might have managed his ill-gotten gains to stave off financial destruction—Dave was exceptionally good at this. He could keep all the spinning plates of illusion going at once. So Terry might have existed in the half-world of compromise and evasion which is the perfect holding pen, the ultimate cage of evil, because evil does not want us to kill, but rather die—and then just let what happens happen. To die, we have to be removed from sensation and self-respect, and tinkering with wrongdoing while staving off its consequences is the greatest victory of immorality. Great evil self-destructs; little evils are like a cloud of flies which follow us everywhere we go. We spend our entire lives swatting them away, unable to concentrate, never fully at rest, always irritated. We destroy through distraction and petty self-warring—and that is sublime destruction, for it never ends, never diminishes. Little evils are the perfect virus: they destroy the good without destroying its host.

Justin was in this territory, and his soul was in great danger indeed. His rap was vaguely self-hating, vaguely political, full of rage towards the modern world and its falsehoods. Like most angry, empty people, he hollowed out the world and raged at a void of echoes. He wanted to change the world, when what he most needed to change was himself.

So what had happened to him? Well, the boy-band was too ironic by half. That degree of pretension physicalized his anger. He was unable to sleep, and all his ignored instincts began rising. Who he was began to become real to him, in frightening, accurate, insistent inner voices. His fragmented personality had retained the illusion of wholeness by scorning passion, empathy, integrity. His cynicism said that nothing was worthwhile, so there was no point having integrity. So his disintegration was a kind of integrity, a commitment to despair without bottom or limit.

Of course he had been well trained for this. Dave and Angela had buried him with status, rigid social discipline and shallow praise. His birthday parties included huge, inflatable, clown-shaped, bouncing rooms, Nintendo games played on a huge white wall, shone through an LCD overhead projector, magicians, laser-tag, disco-dance contests, complete with spinning-rainbow constellations… These parties were the talk of the school for weeks. Every kid wanted to be Justin, or Justin’s friend—or even Sarah’s friend. Anything to get their hands on his toys.

Envy is very dangerous for children. It is a wild, insistent pseudo-answer to the question: how to live? Great wealth, like great beauty—and, to a lesser degree, great intelligence—buries honesty under effect. Justin knew that he had value because other people wanted to be him. He was vain because everyone wanted to get their hands on his stuff; he was cruel because he had to repel so many advances, and soon preferred a reputation for cruelty to take the place of having to reject others on a case-by-case basis.

Justin could not get out of bed, and he found this very shameful. Dave and Angela were very unhelpful—they tried to pass off his ‘rap-spasm,’ as they called it, as some kind of essential joke, but the problem was that it had been like watching a comedian veer off into over-personal territory, when the line between comedy and anger shifts into audience discomfort. It was like playing with a cat who suddenly hisses and bites. It was too deep to be joked about.

Justin’s bedroom was a shrine of mockery. He had a Dukes of Hazzard poster, and another of Charlie Parker (“ironic because I don’t listen to him,” he would explain). He had an entire bookshelf of Chicken Soup for the Soul books (once making the joke that Chicken Soup for the Soulless Cynic would just be a list of all the other titles in the maudlin fucking series—but no one got it). Some constellations of stars still remained on his ceiling, from years past, and sometimes at night, he would lie awake exploring the edges of his inner horror, and imagine that he was really adrift in the vast space between stars, and a kind of terror would seize, a deathly orgasmic ecstasy. Truth was, he kind of liked having a fucked-up side. It relaxed him, but he couldn’t say how or why. It was like—it was like he didn’t have to try to be normal. He had a ‘get out of touch free’ card he could play at any time. It was his license to live without love. (Justin also had a sentimental fondness for artistic violence. He had seen Purple Rain once on late-night TV, and had watched it for its cheesy ’80s New Romantic posturing. But the rage of Prince destroying his room had electrified him, and Justin had compiled a list somewhere of similar bouts of cinematic art-rage. It made him feel special to think he was capable of such acts, of acting like a wounded, creative, raging lion.)

Now, there was a détente. Irony had failed, anger had failed, and there was a regrouping. Health nestled deep within him—he was too young and well fed to have killed it off completely. His health roused itself, and killed all his airless momentum. For over two weeks he lay in bed, looking at his posters and falling through space.

He passed it off as illness at first—a fiction which Dave and Angela joyfully embraced, given that they could tend to his body at least. But he had no fever. After a week, they took him to a doctor, who confirmed the worst. There was nothing wrong with him. It was all in his head.

Now, for those blind to depth, all mental states are mere willpower. An unhappy person just doesn’t want happiness enough. Happiness is a matter of ‘shaking off’ grim thoughts. A shepherd can keep his flock together by vigilance alone; there are no wolves large enough to take off both sheep and shepherd in a single bite. So they set Justin back in his bed and closed his curtains and brought him soup, and the whole household walked on tenterhooks in the face of this ‘home invasion,’ the manifestation of… Of…something that was wrong, and could not be explained, not with any words at their command, and which could also not be commanded, or controlled…

They tried working with the idea of ‘stress,’ which was comfort of a kind, because it came out of the pursuit of excellence, a stretching of the possible, and that seemed okay. It was like being a psychic athlete and pulling a mental muscle. One night, Dave and Angela drew up a list of all the activities and responsibilities their son was involved in. It filled an ‘8 x 11’ page (though they had some items wrong: he had left the debating club three years before), but the list was a comfort; it was something tangible. There was a failure, but failing in the face of stress is also somehow succeeding. It is permission to fall short of a high aim, like failing to climb Everest. (It also tied into the great ‘confession-of-excellence’ mantra of the shallow striving classes: they confessed to being perfectionists, or workaholics, or hard-driven, or ambitious, or refusing to compromise. They confessed to what they were proud of, like a womanizer sniggering in a confessional.)

So he was overextended; he had ‘spread his troops too thin,’ and this was his body’s way of saying he needed a rest. Fine—that was okay; Dave and Angela were nothing if not compassionate!

But time stretched on, and it became clear that Justin was fundamentally failing to mend. His friends came by, and were shocked. His face was gaunt, haunted, like the face of a ghost in a black and white movie. They found little to say. There was great fear in his fall—great fear, and great joy as well, for he had been something of a social tyrant. Everything about it was large. Groups met and discussed it. Opinions ranged from the biological (‘he’s got a virus, doofus, don’t get sucked in by psychobabble’), to the psychological (‘he must have been abused by someone’), to the social (‘he’s been humiliated, and doesn’t want to show his face’). Conspicuously absent was the moral dimension: ‘he’s done wrong, and his soul is sick…’ But who had the words anymore to speak in such terms? It would be like suggesting he balance his humors with leeches.

So what did Justin feel? He was weepy in a sentimental, leaky kind of way. Tears slopped out of him as they would slop into a boat half-full of water. These tears did not give him any relief. There was none of the relaxed settling that can come from a good, hard cry. They came and went like rain, leaving no crops. He felt a hard bubble within him, a fixed, inert, and impenetrable missingness, an absence of light that could not be seen, a vague mirage that could only be mapped from a great distance.

He slept fitfully. His dreams were shocking, lurid, indescribably violent. He tried to protect his sister from a shark that could be neither fought nor appeased. They were swallowed whole and sat in the belly of the beast, and then Justin felt the shark’s bowels working to expel him, and he was squeezed down into tight airless intestinal innards, reaching for her… His dreams were full of staggering detail and he could explore and control them sometimes, in a way that he had never experienced before.

Events of his life wound through his mind, filled with obsessive detail and circular repetition. Old pets, friends from summer camp ten years past, his first kiss, first orgasm, his model railroad set (that last one always brought tears, that he should once have cared enough to shape tiny mountains and paint plastic passengers, but now wanted only to pee the bed so he wouldn’t have to get up… What happened to the boy who cared that much? He cried because he wanted to believe he had been tender, trusting—but the tears did not relieve him much because he also remembered the tight, dead pleasure of refusing his trains to those who displeased him.) A cousin—what was his name, David?—whose orifices he had explored when they were very, very young, three, three and a half, when their bodies were pink and formless, like tender tadpoles… Everything he had learned from television, that you could talk everything out in twenty-two minutes, that moral problems were obvious—or that inner conflict came with subtitles and endless shots of sad women—none of that came close.

He tried to read, of course—the great escape of the bedridden—but found that books came in two categories. The first were thrillers with small words, simple characters, and careful plots; they distracted him but made him feel worse afterwards. The second were deep books that cut him adrift—he began spacing out so fundamentally that he had to drop them, like a child cradling a chicken egg which suddenly bursts into thousands of tiny spiders. The sickness he felt after such books was almost too much to bear. It was the sickness of a disembodied head, suddenly realizing that it cannot get to the book-show without the body—or even change its field of vision.

The voices had not left him alone. They had become random, disjointed, and he had given up trying to keep track of them. They were fragments of a great war, he supposed, but he had given up caring who won, who was currently gaining ground over his soul. He did not care to judge, participate or take sides. He felt ultimately, elementally indifferent. He had given up fighting for what he wanted, for what he preferred. His old habits had come to naught; they had not even seemed like habits, they were just himself, and sometimes, new souls grow only in the absence of motion. It was like his inner life was in a kind of body cast. He even dreamt of that once, staring through the little squares of overlapping bandages, feeling a maddening itch, then a liquid pop—and then nothing, and wanting the itch to come back so madly that he brought on a migraine trying to wrench his eyes around to see something, anything…

And he had dreams of such sweetness… From these he awoke with tears that seemed to have relieved some pressure, like light ichor from a dark abscess. Early, warm, mountainous flesh, nestling in the folds between belly and hip, feeling his mother’s bones like submerged ships, the muted hum of her voice through her skin, a deep union, a oneness, a sense of comfort so deep it was as if the very air loved him, entered his body like a caretaker, and he would never have to worry or fear… These dreams were startling, and so, so sweet. A few moments before he was to wake, he knew he was going to wake from them, and this is when his tears started, even within the dream he began crying, knowing that he was going to be yanked away, and he tried to stay, he tried to hold his mother, but that grabbing was his awakening, and he knew that the grabbing caused it, because the dream was about being held, not trying to hold. It was a maddening circle of cause and effect. One eye cried loss, the other spat bitterness.

The future was unimaginable. Something had been left behind. He felt like a general, bright sword pointing his troops towards tomorrow, but as he rode, he turned and saw them advancing warily on the past, as if it held a great enemy…

Justin personalized everything. He viewed his crushing depression as having everything to do with him, as his battle, his weakness. If he dreamed of children, they were always him; if he dreamed of women, they were always aspects of himself. His narcissism could not conceive of the possibility of injury from others. He had the problem, and he alone had to solve it.

There were times when he rallied, when he forgot complexity or the future, and he sat up in bed and felt intangible energy flowing through him. The strange mysteries of desire and efficacy and purpose began to return to him. And he would smile and think that his emptiness had somehow worked itself through him, like a piece of bad fruit or a flu virus, and would now depart from him without further effort. There are still sharks in the ocean, but I have survived this one at least…

But then he would think of his family, his household, his friends, his school, and clubs, and music, and books, and university, and his strength would fail him, fleeing like a slow flamingo under white hail. And he would leak tears again and feel crippling emptiness return, and he really began to hate such rallying, betraying troops.

His thoughts were distractions to himself. This was like the problem of insomnia: the desire to empty his mind and float in an unthinking state—but the moment he abandoned his mind, it started chattering again. This was the double bind of failing to sleep. His mind relaxed into mindless chatter; sleep was impossible. His mind was like a muscle that cramped when he stopped stretching it.

Impossibility hung on his every thought. I can’t stay in bed forever, can’t get up and do anything, can’t go back, can’t move forward, hate myself, can’t escape myself, am exhausted, can’t sleep, can’t wake, can’t relax my thoughts, can’t control my mind…

Now in such a state, it wasn’t long before the idea of suicide began to come to him. At first he toyed with it, as something he’d read about, something he’d never consider… But what if I did think about it, as something to play with, like a Russian revolver…

After a few days of playing with the idea, two things happened (well three, but one will have to wait). First he realized that it could be painless, and that was very dangerous. Research on the net—medead.com—certainly I can get the sleeping pills, find the right dosage, the right time… That relieved some of the physical terror of the thought, and knocked down a primitive biological barrier.

The next thing that happened was that he began to think of the future. Now, this is normally a sign of recovery, but he thought of the future as an endless, constricting tunnel that would require more and more effort to burrow through, to shoulder aside the draping folds and squeezing, mucousy intestinal grip.

And—and at the end of it all (and here his breath came short)—at the end of it all—why, there was the same drop off, the same plunge to nothing, nothing at all—not even plunging.

The idea that the future was just more and more of the now was truly chilling, and was the first glimmerings of great wisdom under Justin’s pink, unfurrowed brow. I could live my life as today, just over and over… I could spend the rest of my life in this bed, no matter where I end up. Without intervention, the future is just the past, over and over…

But intervention seemed impossible, was impossible. Medical intervention? Justin hated the idea of sleeping pills—it was horrible to think of silencing his warring armies with biochemical warfare. The last thing they need is an external enemy, a high-flying, drug-spraying, droning plane. It would be terrible, indifferent. All honorable warriors would find a new droning enemy, and we would be right back where we started…

These kinds of thoughts were really messing up his sense of time—like the Dukes of Hazzard poster from the ’70s, which he once saw on waking and thought was a new show. Right back where we started? What the hell does that mean? What ‘started’? Did we know it was going to start? Is there some fucking timetable I need to be on the distribution list of? CC: fucking ME? A familiar sense of helpless rage slammed into him again, a rage at the un-negotiated nature of his internal occupation. Sure, strip my life from me—why, because I liked to ski and couldn’t take every dipshit who wanted to come along?

He had been possessed by a kind of devil with ideas of its own… And it doesn’t even think I am worthy of notice, of even tossing a few crumbs of the schedule! Well fuck you, my Devil! You control the sleep, but I can get the pills! It was sad, it was petty, but he felt that somehow he had to get the attention of whatever was shaking his life to tiny, salty pieces. I need an exorcism to get my Devil’s attention, and I am quite willing to kill myself to kill the Devil!

Now sometimes these wild medieval thoughts would strike him as absurd, as self-dramatizing. And at other times they seemed deathly true, that all the old stories were true, that sometimes you had to fight tooth and nail for your gentle soul.

Sarah tried to help. Even early, at the beginning of whatever was going on for him, she had come and tried to talk to him, but he could not allow that, he could not take pity or lectures from his little sister. And when she came back with Alice and—what was that other kid’s name, the one who blinked little and smiled less…Stephen—Justin had railed against them, self-consciously screeching and cursing until Dave and Angela came, eyes frightened, and took them away. And this fear, this terror in his parents’ eyes, sent Justin off into another crying jag so powerful, so wracking, that his bed moved several inches, and downstairs his parents heard the grating wood, stared at the ceiling, and almost held each others’ hands.

And then—and this memory always made Justin cry, until the end—then, his little sister had decided to come into his room while he was sleeping and watch over him. She did not touch him, but he would hear her come in, and she seemed to be able to sweeten the air slightly, a little, just a bit, and she would sit by his bed if there were a chair, or she would sit on the floor, if none had been left there. Justin would open his eyes just a crack while pretending to turn over, to see if she was still there, and the fact that Sarah cared so much that she got up nights to be with him made him tremble, and sometimes he had trouble not crying out with agony. Once when she sat by his bed he pretended to stretch his arm out and rested his hand on her hand, and he felt her fingers tighten almost imperceptibly, as if she were afraid to wake him, and he fell from his mental chattering to a deep, dreamless sleep for almost an hour, which was remarkable. And she was there when he woke up, and he would have given almost anything to say her name.

So suicide could be painless, and the future could be just more and more of this hell. This combination of thoughts made suicide come slightly more into the realm of possibility for Justin. He still kept it at a relatively foggy distance, but it was becoming clearer, more distinct. His war was coming to a crisis.

Until the third thing happened. It was as unexpected as it was unremarkable.

After another sleepless night, a night of self-battling and reaching for something which danced close by when he looked away and darted away when he looked closely—then he made up his mind:

If I do not sleep for another three nights, I will kill myself…

There was a kind of great peace in this idea, a great commitment to action, a line drawn in the sand. This is a form of self-abuse, and I will only take so much of it. I either participate in whatever is going on within me, or I end the show. I take us all down.

Now nothing happened that night, but the next night, he felt sleepy about 6:00 P.M., and turned his head on his pillow, expecting the sort of headachy doze which had kept him going for the last month or so, and he fell right asleep, and did not wake up until 11:00 P.M., which was five hours without a break, which was amazing.

Now when he woke up at 11:00 P.M., he could hear the news coming from the television in his parents’ room, and knew that Sarah, if she was coming that night, was still a few hours away. Her habit, to make up for the lost sleep, was to go to bed two hours early.

Justin listened to the sound of the television, and knew that their door must be open. He turned his head and saw the flickering line of blue light changing under his door.

It was a strange certainty that gripped him then. A kind of certainty that he had never experienced before. It was a certainty and a vision.

Justin suddenly saw his parents lying in bed watching television, arm-in-arm perhaps, and thought—no, more than thought—he knew, knew that they were dead, and that they stared at the TV with dusty unblinking eyes—and he also knew (and this was the most terrible thing) that they would never decompose or lie still. They would get up in the morning and smile and shake hands and leave nails embedded in the palms of other people and they had courage because there could be no death for them. They had nothing to fear, and nothing to love, and were nothing but ambitious irritation, because they were cruel with the darkness of the already-dead.

And they steal, of course, as I have stolen, thought Justin, and he felt nauseated, and was suddenly happy that Sarah was not in his room, and he turned over in his bed and got onto all fours, his head swaying like a lowing, calving cow.

I have to break with my parents, he thought, and felt a species of shy joy that he feared his predators had rendered extinct.

Chapter 75

Pierre’s Decision

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Terry called Pierre and John, the software tester, into the boardroom.

“I just got a call from Dave,” he said. “We got the Agitcorp project.”

There was a silence. John’s jaw dropped slowly. Pierre laughed harshly, running his fingers through his thick black hair.

“So, now we’ve got this web project,” said Terry, “and it’s a pretty tight deadline, but I think I have a solution.”

“You’re not serious!” said Pierre.

“I am. Look—this is what I think we—how we can solve it.” Terry went over to the whiteboard and began diagramming. “We’ve got a data dictionary, which stores all the fields and screen controls in the system. Last night, I added all the screen locations of those controls to the data dictionary, the x and y co-ordinates on the screen. So I’m thinking, we get a web server to read these locations, and generate HTML code to display them in a browser. So now, if we also add another table to the data dictionary, which will store the navigation flow—which screens open which screens—and program the web server to generate hyperlinks, we’ll have a functional web interface without having to code each screen. We have over three hundred, so it would be impossible to do that anyway, by hand, given that we only have a couple of months…”

“Dude,” said Pierre, exchanging a glance with John. “Okay, you’ve got to get a grip here. We can’t do it. You know that, right?”

“I thought that—I mean, I was up all night thinking about it. But this will solve the bulk of the problem…”

Pierre scowled, his brows darkening. “No it won’t. Gotta be frank, my friend. You’re attending a fantasy camp.”

“So you think there’s a problem with my methodology?”

“No, I think there’s a problem with your grasp on reality.”

“But this will allow us to generate a web interface for any customized system! The interface will follow the data dictionary, which is created from the layout of each individual system. Do you disagree with that?”

John leaned forward, placing his large forearms on the table. “How are you going to deal with browser independence?”

Terry shrugged, his shoulders tight. “Well, we’ll just have to assume that Netscape will do as good a job at interpreting the code as Internet Explorer. It’s generic HTML, so I don’t think that…”

John held up a hand. “You can’t assume that.”

“Well, we’ll have to enforce Internet Explorer as a standard, then,” said Terry, his voice rising. “The point is that we have this project now. We fought the good fight, we lost, so… So we have to deliver.”

“Bullshit,” said Pierre. “Bullshit!”

“What?”

“Fuck, you’re going to kill us all! So the salespeople pocket over a hundred thou apiece—what, US, right? And we kill ourselves for fifty thou a year—Canadian. Why? We got fucked on the options. Hey, you made your piece, good enough. But why would John and I do it?”

“Uh, yeah,” said Terry. “That’s true. But if we develop this web interface system, we can sell it to any…”

“We’ve been fucked by that mirage once before,” said Pierre. “Don’t even try.”

There was a pause. Terry turned and looked at his whiteboard. But it’s so beautiful…! He turned to John.

“How do you feel?”

“I can’t guarantee,” said John heavily, “that this system can be tested effectively in the timeframe we have. I mean, maybe the interface, assuming one browser. But how are you going to process the data? You’ve got to rewrite the code.”

“I was thinking,” said Terry, “that we use Visual Basic, create ActiveX DLLs, keep DAO as the data access, and call them from the web server. Then we can copy and paste the code from Access, and I think eighty, ninety percent of the code will work without modification…”

“That’s a lot of code,” said John, shaking his head slowly. “I think eight months, minimum. No, ten.”

“Based on what?” demanded Terry. “You’re just pulling numbers from thin air.”

“Well, I’ll tell you how it works for me,” replied John, curling his hands into fists. “Based on my experience with you and Pierre, I take any estimate you give me and triple it. And that’s just for Windows coding. You throw the web in, the learning curve, the code translation—I think five to six times what you tell me.”

“Oh come on!” cried Terry. “That’s crap. Triple our estimates? You’re…”

“When was Cyrux supposed to be done, Terry?” asked John. “Eight weeks. Now we’re over three months.” He jabbed his finger into the table. “Not done!”

“That’s because the specs are bullshit! For Agitcorp, we’re translating the standard system to the web. We have the best spec there is, because it’s a completed system!”

“Oh, so you know exactly which features you are bringing across?” demanded John. “The reporting wizard? Query by form? Sub-forms? Screen resizing? In a browser?”

“Guys, guys!” said Pierre, raising his hands. “Let’s just take a step back, okay? It really doesn’t matter, because we’re not going to do it.”

“But we have to do it!” cried Terry.

Pierre stood up. “No—you have to do it!” He smiled suddenly. “Look, you’re a friend, and a great guy. We go way back and all. So, I’ve gotta tell you: no. For your own good. This company is bullshit.”

Terry froze. “Bullshit?”

“Yeah, you heard me. Why—why would we do this? You’ve made your money. John and I—and all the others—got fucked. You’ve gotta get a grip, Terry. This is all a fantasy.”

“So what are you saying? You’re quitting?”

“I’m no quitter. We don’t do any good to the client by pretending we can do something we can’t. Or Dave. The time has come to lay down the law. It’s all bullshit. And if you don’t raise the red flag, I will.”

Terry tried to stare him down, but faltered. “So…” he murmured. “It’s all up to me…”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” spat Pierre. He grabbed his notepad. “Time to get out of Dodge, dude. This ship is going down.”

“Everything’s been signed,” said Terry emptily. “We have no choice.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Pierre, then turned and left the room.

After a moment, John rose and followed him.

Alone, Terry turned to the whiteboard, to his hasty diagrams and brilliant thoughts…

“Fuck!” he shouted suddenly, hurling the marker at it.

Back at his desk, Pierre did not even pause. He opened the Sansity website, found the number, and made the call.

This is for you, buddy, he thought. Maybe someday you’ll thank me.

Chapter 76

Dave’s Release

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Dave had sold all of his one hundred thousand shares—netting about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Sweet, sweet, sweet. He had just over seven months to go until his next hundred thousand were released from escrow, and could be traded.

He was flying high—he was waiting to pay off his debts, just loving the number of zero’s on the statement from his brokerage house.

After its sudden spike and dip, the stock had settled back to about fifty cents. Not bad, he thought, not bad—I just have to bide my time and wait for six months or so before telling Sansity and the market as a whole about Terry’s little Database Builder. Things will go through the roof then…

It was with great pride and joy that he went down to Sansity’s head office at the TD Centre at the CEO’s request.

“Sit down, Dave,” said Robert.

Dave’s antennae went up immediately. Nothing jovial here…

Another man entered. He was young, tall, thin, and had that laser-sharky, legal thing going.

“Dave, this is Dennis Underwood, our legal counsel. I asked him to be present during this interview.”

“Uh huh,” said Dave slowly. Deep in the folds of his boxers, his testicles began to shrivel.

There was no preamble. “Tell me about Cyrux,” said Robert.

“Well, what do you want to know?”

“When we did our…due diligence, we called them and talked to a Ted Howell, who said that the project was good, risky, but he was confident it would be finished.”

Dave nodded. “That makes sense. He was the lead contact.”

“Information has come to light about the project. This morning, I called Nabil Gurgis, who informed me that he was awaiting a response from you—us now—regarding a…refund on the project?” Robert turned to Dennis. “Is that right?”

Dennis nodded.

“So,” continued Robert, leaning forward. “What is going on?”

“That’s a very valid question,” smiled Dave. “These are the facts. We took this project on as a loss leader. First client, huge industry, you know… We knew we’d probably take it in the shins. We were working with Ted, everything was humming along. Not without bumps, of course, but we were getting there… Terry was distracted by his other product, this Database Builder, shit you should see this thing, it’s going to make us all rich! Right—so, then Ted goes off the deep end, flips out or something, don’t know the details. Then this Nabil guy calls us in and wants to cancel the project—I mean, we talked some, but that was his agenda from the moment we walked through the door. Territorial, you know, his predecessor’s project and all… There was no reasoning with him. So then I got this letter.”

“When?” interrupted Robert.

“About two months—no, wait—two and a half? I’d have to check my notes.”

Dennis opened a folder. “The letter is dated October 21, so you got it a day or two after that. Almost three months.”

Dave pursed his lips. “And now you’re concerned because I didn’t tell you. I can appreciate that. I’d feel the same way if I were you. But it’s tricky. The moment this goes legal—I mean from our end—it goes public, and now we’re on the TSE, that would be… So I made a judgement call. I thought: I’ll get in touch with Ted, get him to talk to Nabil’s boss, sort things out. I mean, we were dealing with a representative of Cyrux on this project, so…”

Robert held up his hand. “So, your solution was to get an unstable employee to talk Cyrux into starting the project up again?”

“Well, unstable, I don’t know… We all have our moments! He was overstretched—on stress leave. That’s not a one-way ticket to the funny farm, right? I felt that the negotiations needed some kind of continuity…”

“And what happened?”

“I put several calls into Ted, and we’ve just played phone tag ever since… His messages were perfectly lucid, you know; just tired, I mean we all get…”

Dennis interrupted him. “Did you have any reason to believe that he would be reinstated at Cyrux?”

“Well, obviously I was going to talk to him about that…”

Robert’s eyes narrowed to beady slits. “See, the thing is, that we bought your company because of Cyrux. Looks real good on a prospectus. Logo’s on the website…”

“Yeah, I know, and I’m really…”

“Now you don’t have Cyrux. And that’s bad. And what’s even worse is that Cyrux has not just gone away, but is hanging around to extract our teeth. Which is something we have to release now, to the marketplace, because we are a public company. And we also have to explain just why we didn’t release it four months ago when you got the goddamned letter. Or, at the very least, in January, when we did the reverse takeover of Sansity. And that’s not going to be good for business.”

“Yeah, I hear you,” said Dave with feeling. “I know what it will do, the perception… That’s why I was hoping to deal with it by…”

“Why didn’t you just pay them?” demanded Dennis. “I mean it was what, not even a hundred K?”

“Compared to what this will do to the stock…” said Robert.

“It was a judgement call. If it had worked, you’d be shaking my hand right now. It was my call, and I take full responsibility for it…”

Robert scowled, jabbing a forefinger at him. “The issue is, Dave, that I have a senior manager whose company has blown a contract—their only significant contract—with a major client, and is now in the process of being sued. All of which transpired over the past three months. And not a word. Not a goddamned word!”

Dave held up his hands. “I don’t believe in being an alarmist…”

“Alarmist!” shouted Robert, making Dave almost jump. “Alarmist! The ship’s almost fucking down, and you’re not even ringing the bell!”

“Look, Robert,” said Dave. “You tell me how this conversation is going to go. You want to chew my ass out, be my guest. Obviously you think I fucked up, so fine—fine! But don’t ask me to answer a question and then just keep interrupting me. That’s bullshit, to my mind—and it’s beneath both of us.”

Robert paused, exchanging a glance with Dennis. Then he got up and left the room.

“Uh huh,” said Dave, turning to the lawyer. “So now I go home and rue my sins, right?”

“Mr. Washington has authorized me to inform you that your services will no longer be required by Sansity.”

“You—what the fuck? How old are you? Twenty-five? You can’t fire me. I mean, you can, but I’ve got a golden parachute that would float a fucking platoon.”

“Not if you do something illegal.”

“Illegal? What—what is that? Not telling Robert about Cyrux? That’s not illegal!”

“We’ve gone over your expense accounts at EMIS, before we bought. Last year, you were charging your wife’s car insurance to the company.”

“So?”

“So, Mr. Bugle, it clearly states in our purchase agreement that you were to tell us about any legal exposures EMIS had at the time of purchase. Now putting the insurance of a non-employee through the company is illegal, and thus represents a legal exposure to Sansity, which you did not inform us about. This makes your contract null and void.”

“I see. So what you’re telling me is that Robert’s not even going to hold me down while you fuck me?”

“This also goes to the stock options, as well as all stocks you hold in escrow.”

Dave’s face turned purple. “Now let’s just slow the fuck down, okay, sonny? That deal is done. That deal represents more than a year of my life. That deal represents, at its peak, more than two million dollars. That deal is not going to be undone because of some minor insurance diddling. I mean what the fuck, legal exposure? Yank my other chain! Nothing’s going to happen if Sansity doesn’t do anything! I mean,” he said, laughing incredulously, “you’re saying that Sansity is worried about legal problems which only Sansity could conceivably act on. Come on—tell me you have a better story than that!”

“That’s all, Mr. Bugle.”

Dave grinned, his eyes wide. “Okay, okay. Bad me. I fucked up. You guys are right. Point taken, lesson learned. I—understand. But what—because of that you’re going to—what, close EMIS?”

“That decision has not been taken yet.”

“What, close it down? Oh come on, man! Don’t be ridiculous. This can be spun—what, you’re young, you think that everything is black and white, a disaster… You toss EMIS, you lose a third of your valuation, immediately…” But that won’t happen, thought Dave, and suddenly understood what was going on. If you close EMIS, you will lose some value, but not as much as if you were perceived as having lied to investors, or facing a lawsuit from a huge manufacturer… And what if they find out I never even called Ted? Oh Davey-B, you are well and truly fucked at this point…

“I think we’re done here, for now,” said Dennis, closing his binder. “Your employment is ended, Mr. Bugle, effective immediately. You will receive no severance. Your stocks will not be released from escrow. Your options are null and void. You are not to return to EMIS. We will send all personal effects to you.”

“Look, you guys don’t want to sleep on this? Think about it? It’s a pretty big step.”

“You also remain constrained by both the non-compete and non-solicitation clauses in your contract, which we fully expect you to abide by.”

“Yeah, my contract is null and void, but those clauses stand. Fuck me.” He glanced up and smiled brightly. “Hey, what the fuck. Maybe the stock never goes up again. I got a hundred fifty K salary, another hundred fifty K stock. Three hundred K, one year, okay, I can live…” He stood quickly, leaned forward and shook the lawyer’s hand. “All right. No hard-ons. It just didn’t work out. You okay?”

The lawyer’s eyes narrowed. “Yes. Fine.”

Dave grinned broadly. “Okay. Sure, I’ll clear out. My call. Your company. Your decision.”

Driving home, he felt a cold, tense, grim rage coursing through his innards.

Fucking loyalty! Who stands by anyone any more? Yeah, I should have got off my ass about Cyrux, but we were so close! If Terry had finished that fucking Holy Grail, we’d have had more than enough income to pay off Nabil… That slow-ass fucking hick coder! Terry’s big brown eyes rose in front of him, and he gripped the wheel tightly. Yeah, great fucking comet to hitch my wagon to. ‘Hi, my name is Terry, I’m from a town where we marry our cousins and fuck our livestock. Let’s get into business together!’ Riiight! And Robert—I mean what kind of fucking pussy lets some snot-nosed henchmen pull the trigger? I find that a little fucking personally insulting. To be fired by some fucking undergrad, hopped up on contract law and his first shiny suit!

The idea—which had come to Dave at the end of his dismissal—came back then, just as his tide of rage was beginning to crest… He was beginning to think that he could pay off most of his debts and still have six months living expenses, when the idea returned. He could do something. But he had to be careful, careful…

Okay, I’ve just been fired, so they’ll think of me first… I need an alibi. Okay, I go home, and I’m talking as I come in, and Ang says what, and I say I’m just talking to myself, and then if she ever gets questioned she says I was home at that time—no wait, fuck, that doesn’t work. I’d have to use my cell phone, too traceable… So I use Ang’s cell phone—no, they’d think of that. Can she testify against me? Doesn’t matter—they can get the records… Wait—Sarah’s cell phone! Yeah, that’ll work! They won’t check that… But what if they did? They might be that careful… I’d sweat for six months. No good, no good… Okay, what about some anonymous email?

Dave rubbed his face. This is too sweet to cast aside, and it has to be done soon… How? How?

He drove on, his mind racing. Finally it hit him. Terry said that spam came from Hotmail accounts—and that they were untraceable! So say I’m going to the john, set one up, and send the message, and delete it again…

He pulled into his driveway, and went in to talk to Angela.

No one home—shit! No—wait—was that someone upstairs? He went up and opened the door to Sarah’s room. She was lying on the bed, talking on the phone.

“Hi, sweetie!” he cried.

She turned and frowned, then nodded sadly and turned away again.

Dave stood fretfully at the door. “Can I talk to you, sweetie?”

“Hold on,” she said, cupping the receiver. “Yeah, Dad? I’m kinda busy…”

“No, I need to talk to you… Now!” he added, his voice rising, maddened by her hesitation.

“’K,” she said. “Gotta go, Alice…” Dave knew what they would be talking about later. Parental meltdown…

She got up and they went downstairs. Dave led her into the kitchen, then realized that the living room was closer to his home office—where the computer was—and started leading her there. No good, he thought, she’ll see me go in there instead of to the bathroom… So instead, he led her back to the kitchen, and sat her down on one of the barstools by the breakfast nook.

She stared at him. He stared back, thinking: bet this is going in the notebook…

“One second, hon—I have to—just—excuse myself for a second…”

Sarah almost rolled her eyes—tween girls don’t actually have to, they have a surfeit of attitude which more than compensates. You couldn’t have thought of this before…?

Dave leapt up, realized his belly was sweating, and tucked his shirt in a little deeper. He walked through the door, then ran into his study. Cable modem, always on, great!

He opened the browser, typed www.hotmail.com, then quickly created an account. Shit—who do I send the message to? He went to the website of a certain institutional investor, then ferreted around for a moment or two, looking for a contact page.

Finally he found it, and then typed the email address into the Hotmail message. Underneath it, he wrote:

Ask Sansity about Cyrux.

Then, without pausing, he sent the message and shut the machine down. His hands were shaking. Bombs away…

Going back into the kitchen, he noticed that this time, Sarah really was making a face.

“Euw, Dad—you don’t flush anymore?”

Chapter 77

Terry is Summoned

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Terry had spent about two weeks deep in code-land, a place where great software is lashed into coherent shape with the fluorescent whips of caffeine and sleeplessness. The Database Builder was taking shape, and through it, Terry hoped that he could solve the web problem as well.

The problem was that the EMIS software had grown to over three hundred screens. Building each of these by hand would take a couple of months—and then, when a client wanted them changed (as they inevitably did) the effort required would be too great to contemplate. So Terry had yet another inspiration: I can use the data dictionary of the Database Builder to dynamically build the screens of the web system!

It worked thusly: Terry already had a record of each screen, each check-box, drop-down, and text-box—all he had to do was add their positions on the screen, and then get the web server to read those locations and create the HTML required to display them in a browser.

Getting this to start working was only a few days’ work. What made it so absorbing and time-consuming was its tweakability. Getting a Windows screen to display properly in a web browser is very, very difficult. When designing a screen in Windows, Terry could drag-and-drop a check-box anywhere. Everything in a browser has to be positioned using big grids or tables. It’s like the difference between painting a picture and doing really coarse cross-stitching. So Terry experimented with a lot of different ways to gather the screen information and display it in the browser, and found it very hard to do—one screen looked good, but the same code caused another screen to look as if someone had loaded up a shotgun with screen controls, jutted it from their hip, and fired it at a monitor from a goodly distance.

However, he did have a demonstrable system within a few weeks. He had worked two nights straight, and was home, enjoying the well-earned coma of the overstretched, when the phone rang. It was about 11 a.m.

It was Robert Washington.

“Terry?” he asked. “I tried calling your office, but you weren’t in.”

“Yeah,” said Terry, trying to summon his lively, wide-eyed employee voice. “I was working the past two nights, and needed some rest.”

“I see,” said Robert, though Terry was fairly sure he didn’t. “I need you down here now.”

“Is everything okay?”

“We’ll talk when you get here,” said Robert, and hung up.

Terry was suddenly plunged into yet another of the manic-depressive swings of the workaholic.

Workaholics are the curse of the business world; they are Protestants on steroids. They are the cult-glue which holds shaky companies together. They create impossible standards, poison cultures, alienate employees, undermine families, and generally, bring all the destruction of monomania to the fragile ecosystems of balanced modern lives.

Workaholics have very little ability to manage relationships. They are absolutists, displaced fanatics, slaves of the great illusion that happiness lies in the never-ending destruction of free time. They have almost no capacity for negotiation. They are terrified of clients, of their bosses—and thus bullies to their employees and families. They are either at your feet, or at your throat. They are cold, harsh people, who consider it a great virtue to work unpaid overtime for clients who care nothing about them.

They irritate those who encounter them, but life—as always—gets its just revenge. These people die alone or under the indifferent stares of the uncaring. The clients they spend their lives serving do not wash them when they lose the ability to clean themselves.

Workaholics spend their whole lives running from themselves, from those around them, from the past. Terry was not a cold person—in fact, he had great capacity for affection—but he was lost, and he had no close personal contacts, and had no competing interests to teach him negotiation, balance, and the necessary self-care that results from allowing more than one aspect of the personality free reign.

Terry knotted his tie as he waited for the elevator. Having felt the exhilaration of pure creativity, dead slumber, the shock of sudden awakening, the terror of an unknown summons from a shadowy superior—and a jumbo coffee to put it all into motion—it could be said that his nervous system had all the stability of a German man talking about his mother.

There was a security guard in the waiting room, which seemed odd. Robert’s secretary told him to wait. He sat for almost half an hour, reading the Financial Post, thinking about all the other functional companies in the world.

Finally, he was brought into the conference room. Robert sat at one end—wearing a white gauze eye-patch, which made him look like a pirate on the side of goodness—along with another man.

“Terry, I need to know your involvement with EMIS’s finances.”

Terry nodded slowly. Man—I wish I had some sense of politics… “I don’t know anything about them, really.”

“This is Mr. Tetley,” said Robert, glancing up, as if daring him to make a joke about tea. “He has been brought in by the Board to review spending at EMIS, because of some very disturbing accounting practices which have come to light.”

“Do you want a lawyer to be present?” asked Mr. Tetley. “You have that right, and might want to think it over.”

A lawyer? wondered Terry, then wondered it out loud: “Why a lawyer?”

“Well, if we answer that without a lawyer present,” said Mr. Tetley, “you might be compromised.”

“I see,” said Terry. He frowned, but something deep inside him suddenly got terribly impatient, and he felt a sudden, spurring need to know.

“No,” he said, “I want to… Let’s go on.”

“All right,” said Mr. Tetley. “Now I’m going to ask you a series of questions. Have you ever charged any of the following to EMIS, CompuCan, or Sansity: personal insurance?”

Terry shook his head, for this and the following questions.

“Car insurance? Any construction on your residence? Any business travel for personal reasons? Personal long distance phone calls? Meals or accommodations for personal reasons? Clothing?”

“But—what is this about?”

“I regret to say, Mr. Coleman,” said Robert, “but Sansity is terminating your employment, effective immediately.”

Terry stared. In his upper left temple, a small knot of pain began throbbing.

“EMIS as an independent entity, as a corporation, will cease to exist. The assets will be transferred to TSC, one of our other companies, where it will become a support department for existing EMIS clients. No further R&D will take place, and all salespeople will be suspended. We have informed all existing EMIS employees of their terminations, with the exception of the help-desk department.”

Terry could not say a word. The room seemed to tighten suddenly. The roof fell a few inches and the walls closed in. My web system! he screamed silently.

“Now since you are a contractor, you will receive no severance package…”

“But why?” Terry cried out. “What happened?”

“I am not at liberty to discuss that,” said Mr. Tetley. “You are terminated as of now. Please hand over your security card and keys.”

“I—didn’t bring them with me.” Terry’s face worked, his cheeks were blotchy red.

“I see,” frowned Mr. Tetley. “Directly after this interview, then, the security guard waiting outside will accompany you to your home to retrieve them.”

Terry gulped for breath. “I have—stuff—in my office…”

“That guard will then go with you to your office, where you will have fifteen minutes to empty your desk of personal effects. Everything you take will be recorded.”

“But…”

“You will have no access to your computer,” said Mr. Tetley. “As you know, everything on your computer is the property of Sansity.”

My MP3s! thought Terry, who had been a Morpheus and Kazaa addict. The patient collection of many months, gone… Fuck the music! My code…!

“I also want to say one other thing,” said Robert, leaning forward. “You’ve got two other clauses, which we fully expect you to honor. There’s the non-solicitation, which forbids you to contact any EMIS clients—either real or potential—or to work with any other EMIS ex-employees. There’s the non-compete, you are forbidden from working in any of the following areas: environmental, health and safety, education, banking, multimedia, or mainframe Tandem development.”

Terry’s eyes widened. In his mind’s eye, his keyboard seemed to recede out of reach. “Why? It’s only EMIS I worked for!”

“Your contract clearly specifies that you may not work in any field that EMIS, CompuCan, or Sansity either had an interest in, has an interest in, or has a potential interest in. The before-mentioned fields are barred to you for two years.”

Terry felt a burning rage then. That’s fucking slavery… Ahh, but what we sign in optimism so often ends up fueling our pessimism.

It took some time to piece the story together. He got a good deal from Pierre, who had a good source from within Sansity—their networking guy was a drinking buddy.

What had happened was this:

❖Dave had projected five million dollars in sales. EMIS did slightly under two million.

❖Since being sold to CompuCan, EMIS’s per-month expenses had risen from seventy thousand to just under two hundred thousand dollars. Sansity’s accountants were still trying to find out where all the money had gone. Terry knew, of course, where some of it had gone: vanity advertising, large and ineffective marketing and sales departments, investments in the US expansion, first-class travel and hotels, expensive meals… But there has to be more, he thought—and this thought was soon confirmed.

❖Dave had also billed a number of illegal expenses to CompuCan and Sansity. Sansity was considering legal action, but the general feeling—according to the network guy—was that Sansity would not exactly gain from prosecution, because of the skeletons within its own closet.

❖Dave had also booked incomplete sales as revenue. This was illegal and, if ever brought to the light of day, would expose the senior management of CompuCan and Sansity to criminal proceedings.

This last point—or rather not a last point, since it ran all the way through the events—was particularly shocking to Terry. They can’t appeal to the law because they’ve broken the law… This seemed so elementally wrong—so Mafia-like—that he had a hard time absorbing it.

Pierre was much more sanguine—there was, at his core, the eternal Gallic shrug.

“What the fuck,” he said to Terry, over beers. They had taken a cab directly from their office to Gabby’s, their local pub, not even going home. Terry was still in his suit. The boxes of their personal items, culled from their offices, were under the table. Pierre grinned. “We had a ride, now it’s over.”

“We really got screwed,” said Terry, his pale face blotchy with incoherent rage.

“Ah, sure, but it wasn’t like out of the blue or anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh come on, Terry!” Pierre held up his hand and folded down a sequence of fingers. “Corrupt salespeople, know-nothing management, no business processes—and only a proctologist with a flashlight could tell us where Dave’s sales projections came from. I lost a shit-load on that Houston thing—cut my lease, bought a lot of extra shit… That gave me my first taste of true justice, Davey-B-style. And then there’s us.”

“What?”

“Us, mon ami. Two kids, fresh out of school, working on hundred-thousand-dollar systems.” Seeing Terry’s face, Pierre burst out laughing. “I mean come on, are you that vain?”

“Hey—we did some really good work!”

“Sure we did, but that doesn’t matter.”

“Why not?”

“Because, buddy, we had no idea what we were doing. We were learning on the client’s dollar, which is total bullshit. We had no guidance at all. Come on—you knew this!”

But the expression on Terry’s face showed that he knew very little of this. The idea that he had been even slightly responsible for the disaster that was EMIS was obviously beyond shocking.

As it was, he was lucky to have Pierre as a friend. Because there was worse yet to come.

Chapter 78

Alder is Summoned

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Dr. Bez Tabarrok had a challenge to face, and it was an interesting challenge. He was an academic of the old school, in that he believed in objective truth, but he also faced the academic challenge of ‘publish-or-perish,’ and was as subject to the vicissitudes of academic refereeing as everyone else.

He had risen to his position as department head due to his extraordinary emotional skills, his talents as an administrator, and his ability to hold his nose and play the game.

He taught a class on Aristotle, where he did not tolerate ‘rank relativism’—as he put it—but also did not destroy the concept of relativism completely. He was like the BabbleFish, in that he did not like the dominance of relativism—he felt that accepting anything as automatically true stifled debate—but he did not mind the existence of relativism.

One of Bez’s articles had argued for the inclusion of arguments for objective truth in the classroom because it could never be proved that everything was relative, simply because that would create an absolute which contradicted relativism—and because if something could be true because it was proved, then a criteria for truth existed which was superior to relativism. This article had been published about five years previously, and this article came up when he called Alder in and fired him.

Alder was quite stunned, and queasily aggressive. Things had not been going too well for him over the past week. Joanne had moved out to stay with her sister, and had taken Stephen with her. The house was large and empty, and provided scant consolation for his growing fame. He knew from the tone of Bez’s voice on the phone that he might be fired, and resolved not to take it lying down. I mean, holy shit—for this fucking article to cost me my wife, son, career, and reputation—and then to have doubt cast on the value of my bringing it to the public eye—how ridiculous is that?

“Thanks for coming in, Professor Parsons,” said Bez sadly, offering him a seat.

“No problem.”

Bez paused for a moment, sucking in his cheeks. “This isn’t going to work, I’m afraid. I’ve been thinking about these issues for the past week, and I can’t imagine how I can keep you on. Let me tell you some of the reasons for my decision, so you understand, so it makes sense. First, you haven’t admitted to any plagiarism, which makes the risk of a repeat offense much greater. Second, you haven’t been very cooperative. I had to go and see Rudy’s video before things became clear. Third, you have not offered any conciliatory actions—no retractions, or the addition of Gordon’s name to your article. Overall, I don’t think you have come off very well. And I don’t think that you should be in front of students.”

Alder’s head lowered slowly during this speech. He had only one card to play. “I don’t think it’s quite as black and white as that, with all due respect. Yes, I was influenced by this idea, to some degree—but Ayn Rand came up with something quite similar—yes, I know, not the most academic of sources, but still… So there’s no evidence that this student did not lift the idea from her—quite the contrary.”

“Two wrongs, though…”

“I know, I know—I just say it to take some of the saintly sheen off the boy. Also, I think that you are not fundamentally clear in your direction on this issue.”

“Oh? How so?”

Alder opened a journal, and read it, hunched awkwardly over his knees. “You wrote in…” he flipped the cover over “…October of 1996—and I quote—‘all ideas are essentially in the public domain.’ Also, later on in the article, you say the following:

“‘Relativism is but one of the components which need to be presented to students. Contradictory though it may seem, teaching criteria for objective truth can provoke significant and passionate debate. It only weakens relativism to present it without alternatives. It turns it from mental flexibility to a kind of fundamentalist dogma.’”

“Yes,” said Bez. “And so?”

“So, you say that truth is just another opinion. So why is your opinion that I plagiarized more relevant, more important, somehow just more right, than my opinion that I did not?”

Bez stared him, then felt a desire to laugh and cry at the same time. He nodded slowly, the little sun of reflected light riding up and down his bald forehead. He’s right, of course; it seems completely ridiculous to apply modern moral theory to a real-world moral problem. That is both very funny and very sad…

“That article is scarcely departmental policy,” said Bez. “Departmental policy states that plagiarism is a firing offense.”

“Yes!” cried Alder, slamming the journal shut. “But I have to have some kind of idea what constitutes plagiarism! It’s all very well to say: plagiarism is bad, you must be fired for it—but I have a right to know what the hell that really means. Not after the fact, not later on, but before, before that decision is made! I did what I thought was the right thing! Now we apply your rule retroactively, and I am screwed, my career is shot, ten years of grad school… What am I going to do, become a salesman?” He took a deep breath. “Bez, I know you think I did something wrong—and I respect that opinion, but for the love of heaven, you owe me just the tiniest benefit of the doubt. All ideas are in the public domain! Everything is relative! Nothing is true! And yet you apply this Old Testament black and white judgement to what you will surely admit is a complicated case! If I’d had any doubt—any at all, about writing the article—I would have come to you first! How do you think I expected to get away with it? I know what an explosive idea this is, that it would gain me some notoriety. Do you think I’m that stupid, that I didn’t have any idea what kind of risk I was taking? Why would I do that? Why? No, I think you owe me more than that, Bez, both as my boss and my friend. This is a sea of gray we’re swimming in. I can’t be damned by nothing more substantial than opinions! And if there is anything more substantial than opinion, here or anywhere, none have proven this to be so—least of all you!”

Alder finished, panting; his mouth was almost positively feral. Bez looked at him for a long time.

“I don’t really believe that there is no such thing as objective truth,” he said softly. And you’re writhing like a butterfly on a nail—the nail of your own conscience. Alder, Alder… Why don’t you just tell the truth? You made a mistake. You did something wrong. You stole that boy’s idea and tried to pass it off as your own. It’s okay—we’ve all made mistakes of one form or another. Publishing that article, a few years ago, was one of mine. You did something wrong and stared as it snowballed, and now you’ve gotten caught up in it. We’re all human. Take your lumps and move on. I didn’t bring you here to fire you.”

Alder’s head jerked up. “N-no?”

“No,” said Bez. “I want to give you the chance to resign.”

Alder opened his mouth, his eyes darting.

“But,” continued Bez, “you have to do two things. You have to admit that you were inspired by this boy’s idea, and you have to put your name after his on all future publications.”

Alder’s jaw worked. He realized suddenly that the longer he let the pause linger, the more guilty he looked. His lips opened slowly; it felt as if something inside him was breaking, something black and diseased, which cracked open and left a stain on his spine which could never be cleaned.

“I didn’t—I did not take his idea—that idea was influenced by a discussion we had once… Is the fact that Plato advocated dictatorship now suddenly a proprietary notion! Yes, of course, this kid was the first to notice it! What a genius!” He stood up. He stood up and began grabbing at his things, at his coat, blindly, wishing he could be slamming the door at that very moment.

“Alder!” shouted Bez, jumping up and putting his fists on his desk. Alder started; his hands were shaking. “Did you steal this boy’s idea?”

“No! Why are we shouting?”

“Did you? Are you lying to my face?” Bez’s face was red, and for some reason Alder suddenly remembered that his department head was Iranian—or Persian, as he constantly corrected people.

“No,” whispered Alder, then gathered some strength into his voice. “No, and if you repeat that accusation outside this office I will—sue you!”

“But I can, of course,” said Bez with a sudden smile. “I can and I shall have to, because the media will want to know why I am firing our most famous academic-du-jour.”

“Then—then you will hear from the union,” spat Alder, then turned to go. As he yanked up his coat, loose change spilled all over the floor. Bez laughed sadly, and Alder felt consciously murderous for the first time in his adult life.

Chapter 79

Terry’s Losses

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Now it came to pass that Terry lost most of his money, and this is how it happened.

First, he had given his money over to an investment broker—Simon, the man Dave had suggested—and signed all the necessary documents. He received monthly statements, and had given few instructions as to how his money was to be handled.

Thus it was that Simon received the Holy Grail of stock traders: a goodly sum of money, an indifferent client, and a bull market. He traded constantly, and everything he bought went up, and he and Terry made a lot of money together.

But all too soon, alas, there was a parting of the ways. The market began to free-fall, and as it did, only one of them was left making money. Simon continued to trade, and still made his money, but Terry lost some staggering amounts, and was woefully introduced to the bipolar world of margin trading.

Apparently, when he had signed the document giving Simon power over his money, he had also given permission for margin trading. Now margin trading is to money-making what manic-depressives are to emotional stability. Margin traders bet, not on the stock itself, but on the gap between expected prices.

To see Terry’s evisceration close-up, let’s look at a margin trade in action. Nortel (also known as ‘No-tell,’ as in ‘no telling where it might go,’ or ‘no telling investors about losses’) was considered undervalued at sixty dollars—not due to any price-earnings ratios, intrinsic value or expanding markets, but because it had once been much higher.

Simon thought that Nortel would go to seventy dollars. Now Terry had about seventy-five thousand dollars. So let’s say that, without margin trading, he buys twelve hundred and fifty shares at sixty dollars. Then, next week, the price goes down to fifty dollars. ‘Ouch,’ says Terry, ‘I guess I’d better stop trading on numbers and actually learn something about the companies I’m investing in. So I sell my twelve hundred and fifty shares for fifty dollars, ending up with sixty-two thousand five hundred dollars, having lost twelve thousand five hundred dollars.’

Or let’s say that Terry continues to outguess the market, and says: ‘hey, it’s a dip, right? A lot of people thought it was worth two hundred dollars at one point—maybe they will again.’ So he hangs on to the sagging hot-air balloon, riding it right down to ten dollars. Now his seventy-five thousand dollars have become twelve thousand five hundred. Bummer. But at least he would have the hard-bought knowledge that you should never invest without a good deal of knowledge—and to avoid margin trading like the plague that it is.

But this is not what happened. What happened was that everything was gone within a week—and Terry was lucky not to be in hock to the trading firm for the rest of his mortal coil. Margin trading is like upping a gambling ante not with more money, but with one or more of your internal organs. It works like this:

❖A trader takes ten K of your money and buys two thousand shares at fifty dollars each, giving you a net holding of one hundred K

❖How is that possible, you ask? Well, the trader is betting that the one hundred K will not go down more than ten K, and that your ten K can be used to cover the spread. So if the stock goes down by five dollars, your hundred K is now worth ninety K, and the trader sells all your stock and pays the loan off—since there was a loss of ten K—with your original ten K, leaving you with nothing. He gets to keep the commission.

❖If the stock goes up five dollars, then he—hopefully—sells all your stocks and gives you your ten K back and another ten K (minus, of course, his commission). Thus a stock goes up ten percent and you double your money. Sweet.

For Terry, it worked like this:

❖Simon bought twelve thousand five hundred Nortel at sixty dollars each.

❖Nortel fell to fifty-five dollars.

❖Terry was wiped out.

Not so sweet.

Chapter 80

Dave’s Question

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Well, that’s that.”

Angela was cutting avocado in the central island in the kitchen when Dave rose late the next morning. “Hm?”

Dave rubbed the back of his head (where he still had hair) and yawned. “It’s all done. Is there any coffee?” Normally, Angela hated this question, because there almost always was; his majesty just didn’t want to get it himself. This morning, though, it didn’t even register. Her knife slowed, then fell from her hand. She brushed a strand of hair from her face, then glanced up. Her jaw worked slowly. “You—you—sorry?”

“Canned like a tuna.” Dave sniffed. “Mmm—is that French Roast I smell?”

Angela blinked. “Not following…”

“Sansity canned me. Dumb fucks.”

“Canned—you mean, let you go?”

Dave flopped into a wooden chair by the breakfast nook, sending it skidding back a few inches. “Lord, don’t tell me you’ve become a suburban morning drinker. Canned. Let go. Remember? Like the last four times? Fuck, I wish just once I could find people capable of…just doing a decent fucking job. They are nowhere to be found!”

Angela put the knife down; her hands were shaking too much. “Okay, slow down. Just slow the fuck down.”

Dave smiled, slurring his words. “O—kay. What’s—for—lunch? Me so hungry.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, the sequence is thus: your little pet Terry-boy fucked up a client deliverable, so this Indian asshole comes in and screwed us for time and materials. I hoped it’d blow over, but no—they call Sansity, who then can me for political reasons that remain obscure. Lawyers gather, powering up ungreased dildos. I’m still sore from the Indian guy, so I go.”

Angela’s eyes narrowed. “What the fuck? What does this mean, Dave?”

Dave scowled. “What, I get canned, I have to get my own goddamned coffee?”

She whirled around and poured a mug quickly, almost burning herself. Don’t get sidetracked…

“Okay,” she said. “Now I’ve got some friends who are pretty heavily invested in this stock. What does it mean to them?”

“What does it mean to them?” echoed Dave incredulously. “I get canned from the company I founded, and you’re worried about liposuction money for your rich fucking friends?”

Angela paused—well, froze is more accurate. Adrenaline coursed through her toned and tanned system. Son of a bitch, he’s right. She willed herself to slow down. Sitting in a chair beside Dave, she pulled his head to her shoulder.

“You’re right,” she said, kissing his bald spot. “Poor baby.”

He smiled; she could feel his jowls shifting against her skin. “Yeah, well it’s okay. We got out with some cash. I now have successful software experience, and a great story to tell to new investors. ‘Not only did the stock go up when I was there, it fucking plummeted after I left. Gosh, within a day, if I remember rightly…’”

“So, what happened?” asked Angela, stroking his broad back.

The story came out slowly. Angela asked a lot more questions than she usually did. Generally, Dave’s stories of boardroom politics were completely uninteresting, in the way only the endless dramas of the completely irresponsible can be. But this time she questioned him close and hard, and was mildly horrified at Dave’s way of doing business—I mean to not even mention that your biggest client was in a position to sue you… I mean, what did he think was going to happen? What was his plan?

However, she gained some grudging respect for Sansity—and Robert Washington in particular. He found out about Cyrux’s legal actions, and acted immediately and decisively. He fired Dave and closed down most of EMIS. With EMIS closed, he wouldn’t have to pay Cyrux; since EMIS had ceased to exist, it couldn’t be sued. The danger was quickly contained.

However, she thought as Dave droned on, the stocks are still probably in danger… I mean, I know almost nothing about CompuCan or Sansity—I invested initially because of Terry’s Database Builder, now that’s gone…

During their conversation, Dave thought briefly of telling Angela that the Sansity stocks were likely to crash. Her luncheon friends and all… But really, what did they ever do but complain about their husbands and dodge anti-fur protesters? They certainly didn’t do any good for Angela. Fuck ’em, he thought.

But suddenly, another thought—a terrible idea—came to him, and he asked Angela without thinking:

“Ang, you never invested in CompuCan or Sansity, did you?”

Angela paused. She had an odd allegiance to truth-telling. She didn’t mind misleading people, but hated telling an outright lie. (This habit might have had something to do with Sarah’s rabid curiosity about truth.) I will not lie—so what do I say? Then, the answer came clear: “No, I never invested in them, Dave.”

For Angela, this was quite true. After all, it was both their money.

Chapter 81

Angela’s Answer

￼Dingbat Diamonds

The call came at 4:03 p.m. Angela had just come back from a run. She caught the end of the phone ring, but shrugged, went upstairs and had a long, cool shower. The million-dollar shower, she thought later, over and over, for many years.

But it was wasn’t just the shower. She also got a call from her mother, complaining about her gardener. Then a grocery delivery came, which she had to pack away. It was about five-fifteen by the time she checked her messages:

“Ang, call me. It’s urgent!”

She frowned. Huh? No name, no number. Familiar voice, though. Who…? Then she remembered that they had call display, and scrolled through the list of names. Agent Capital: 4:03 P.M. Ooh—Ralph, her broker. Maybe asking what happened with Dave. We should probably sell…

She tried his office, but got his voice mail. After five… She then spent about twenty minutes finding his card, and trying his cell. Some garbled static, nothing more… Oh well, it’ll have to wait till morning…

But her nervous system felt otherwise, and she couldn’t seem to relax. Everyone was out. She had the house to herself. She tried her usual remedies: reading fashion magazines, painting her toenails, watching TV until she napped… Nothing.

The sky darkened. Where was everyone? She checked the family whiteboard, but everything on it was at least a couple of days old.

Finally she could take no more. She had tried Ralph’s cell phone a few more times, but… She looked up Ralph’s name on the web, and got his address. She printed out a map of directions, and drove over.

His house was large, hardwood-floors-and-white-walls, barely furnished. He was eating pizza on a white couch when the door rang. He leapt up and opened it.

“Christ, Angela!” he cried out.

His outburst startled her, but she still felt a little dazed. Life seems to have shifted a little while I wasn’t looking…

“What?”

“What the fuck—I tried your cell this afternoon…”

“It’s recharging.”

“I had to—I eventually—sorry, come in, come in…” They went in and sat on his couch. He ate pizza while talking, oblivious to the munching mess of his mouth. “I had to try your home, though I know this is all verboten…” (Angela was surprised at the word—‘Ralph’ is not exactly a German name…) “So I just left a no-name ‘call-me,’ hoping you would get the hint…”

“Yeah—I tried your cell, too. So what’s going on?”

He took a deep breath, glancing at the window. “Okay, Ang, I want you to tell me everything about what’s going on over at Sansity.”

“Dave’s been fired.”

“Yeah, I know. What else?”

“Dave’s—he thinks it’s something political, like they don’t like his methods. They’re going to close EMIS and just keep the—support department?”

“Yeah, got all that. What about this Cyrux thing? Anything about that?”

“Uh…” Angela chewed on a cuticle. “Well, he said that a project had failed—no wait, not failed—but—er—some new guy wasn’t happy, and the original guy had gone nuts or something.”

“Is it a lawsuit?”

“Nooo—I think—Dave said something about a refund…”

“Hm. Okay, Ang, now this is going to be hard. Sansity’s stock closed at eight cents as of five o’clock today. And it might be suspended tomorrow, pending de-listing of the company from the TSE.”

Angela frowned. Involuntarily, she bit down so hard on her finger that it bled. She lowered her hand slowly, leaving a trail of blood from the corner of her mouth.

“You…you’re…” Ralph held up a napkin, miming dabbing his mouth.

Angela took the napkin, and folded it in her lap.

Her eyes were wide. She raised them to Ralph. “So—what—we’re…”

“Well, when we got the info, we started to sell, on the way down. We lost some, but nothing catastrophic. And we were hedged. You took the greatest loss. You and your friends.”

She nodded hypnotically. “So you sold slowly, knowing… Wait—how did you find out about Cyrux? I mean, Dave was fired to cover it up.”

“I—can’t talk about that.”

“I mean—who would…?” Dave? she thought. Did Dave let them know somehow? God, that would be insane… I mean…

“Look,” said Ralph, leaning forward. “You are busted, Angela. Whether Sansity’s de-listed or not. You’re on the hook for just over a million. And these people are not patient. They’d take gold fillings if it was legal.”

Angela closed her eyes, thinking: well, I am calm… “Okay.” She stood up, brushed her dress, then sat down again. “Okay, so what should I do?”

“You gotta tell Dave. Declare bankruptcy. Like, now!”

“And that means…”

Ralph sighed. “Well, you’ll lose everything. Trust me, you don’t have enough assets to… It’s gonna be rough.” He nodded. “Yuh.”

“And there’s nothing to be done?”

Ralph pursed his lips and shook his head slowly.

“Tell me—what price was the stock at at four o’clock this afternoon?”

He didn’t seem surprised at the question. “About twenty-five cents.”

She laughed soundlessly. “Well, we’d have broken even at that.”

“Don’t… You’d never have been able to sell them all at twenty-five cents. I mean, a market that small, you sell a thousand, it drops…”

“But if I’d have known yesterday…”

“Nah—I mean, if you would’ve told me to sell everything yesterday, I’d have had to sell too. We’d be racing each other down the cliff. It’s hard to offload small-cap stocks…”

“Huh,” she smiled, her eyes wandering the room. “Huh. So there’s no real way out of the house. No way at all.”

He was silent, watching her. Her hand rose; she bit down hard.

“Sorry,” said Ralph eventually. Almost tenderly, he leaned forward, lowered her hand and wiped the blood from her chin.

Chapter 82

Dave and Angela and Fate

￼Dingbat Diamonds

It was a shock too large for her system to absorb all at once. For over an hour, she drove aimlessly—it was odd, she thought later; she must have filled the gas tank at one point—it was almost empty when she’d left for Ralph’s house—but couldn’t remember where or when.

Intrigue is always so easy at the outset…

Tears ran down her cheeks—again, without her noticing. She had spent the last few months—longer, perhaps, but that was all buried—expecting to get out of this fucking marriage. So close… Imagining that she was on the verge of escape, all her loathing for Dave had risen unopposed. The real prison is imagining you can get away… Now, things were unbearable—well, they always had been unbearable, but now Angela knew it, and that was worse than anything…

But why not leave? Why couldn’t she just get out? Well, Angela, a supremely unimaginative woman, couldn’t conceive of a life without money. Before, she thought, I could have gotten alimony, but now—I mean, what would I get? A bus pass? This was snobby, of course, but early wealth so often impoverishes imagination. Mentally, Angela had never compared herself with ‘poor,’ but with—with—well that was the problem—she had no comparisons, and so had no choices.

Now, for roughly one hundred percent of petty, lost people, a lack of choice must be someone else’s fault. Angela had reached this stage when she arrived home, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.

Dave was sitting at the kitchen table, licking a jam knife and holding a bagel in one oversized hand.

“Ang!” he grinned.

She passed him without comment, to the bottom of the stairs, and cried out. “Justin! Sarah! Get down here, please!”

Ooh, they’re in trouble, thought Dave, putting down the jam knife and standing up. Serious parental face—wzzzt! Ahh, now in place!

“What, Ang?” he murmured, coming up behind her, cupping an ass cheek in one hand. “Is it time for wifey to take a chill pill?”

She froze, then turned around and slapped him on the face, hard.

“What?” cried Dave, stepping back involuntarily. “What the fuck was that?”

“Kids!” she cried out, turning back to the stairs.

“Ang?” he cried out in the ‘wounded-husband’ voice she hated so much. She ignored him.

“Hello? Hello?” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Earth to Angela! Can—you—read—me?”

Her left hand unconsciously massaged her lower back. “Justin! Sarah! Get down here!”

After a moment, Sarah came down the stairs, followed by Justin.

Angela took a deep breath. “Kids—kids… Find somewhere to go and stay there, go there right now and don’t come back until, until…” She turned around rapidly, to find Dave rotating his finger by his temple at the kids, making a ‘crazy-person’ face. She leapt at him. “You stupid fucking bastard!

Justin took a step forward. “Hey!”

“Mom! Leave him alone!”

Angela’s fists rained on Dave’s shoulders. “You fucking monster! What the fuck, you just do this to everyone?”

Dave’s face turned purple. He grabbed at her wrists, stumbling backwards. “Back the fuck off, you crazy bitch!”

“How many, huh? How many? Well you’re in your own fucking club now!” She wrenched her red wrists from Dave’s hands and whirled around, her face contorted. “kids! get the fuck out of this house! now!”

Dave reached forward. “Angela—what the fuck!” He recoiled as she spun around and slapped him again, harder. “Ow!”

She turned again, jabbing a forefinger at the children. “Out!”

Justin slid against the wall toward the front door, his hands raised. “Okay, okay!”

Angela strode to the front door and jerked it open. She yanked Sarah back from the closet. “Don’t worry about your jacket! Just get out!”

Sarah burst into tears. “We’ve got no mo-ooney!”

Angela’s purse was hanging over the door handle. She thrust it at her daughter. “Take this and just—call someone!” She strode forward and grabbed Justin, manhandling him towards the door.

“All right, all right! You don’t need to push!”

She almost hurled the children outside. The dogs barked madly in the front yard. Through the tall lacy windows by the door, Dave saw the dogs trailing after the children; Justin and Sarah were walking slowly down the driveway, close together. He took another deep breath and turned around.

“Look, you fucking bitch,” he said evenly, “you ever take another swipe at me, I’ll take you down with both hands. Understand?”

“Take me down!” laughed Angela, her eyes blazing with scorn.

“I’m not kidding. You hit me in front of the children, I’ll beat you in front of your mother. Okay?”

“Yeah, Dave. Whatever.”

She turned away, and he could see her shoulders heaving. She’s playing for sympathy, he thought, rubbing his cheek. But not this time. Not this time…

Angela turned back towards him. Some color had returned to her face. She looked at her hands. Dave could almost hear the yoga mantras echoing through her underutilized head. “Yes,” she murmured. “Yes, everything is fine. Okay. Okay.” She looked up at Dave, her eyes dangerously clear. “When did this start to happen?”

“What?” Dave grabbed a jacket. “Look, cool off on your own dime. I’m going out.”

Angela seized the jacket and tore it from his hands. Suddenly, he remembered that she had been working out for twenty years. Can Tae Bo actually do damage? he wondered. She slipped past him and stood in front of the door.

“When did your business problems start?” she asked.

“Angela,” said Dave heavily. “Angela, get out of my way. If you think you can interview me after hitting me, think again.”

A spasm crossed her face. “Dave, Dave, I’m sorry about hitting you. I’m really sorry.”

Ooh, after she cries, we always have great sex! he thought, then cursed his own hormones. “Yeah. Sorry.”

She took a step forwards. “I’m sorry about everything.”

“Everything?” Oh, she wants me to accept an apology for a crime I don’t know about…

Angela saw his doubt, and took a deep breath. “Listen. This is what I am going to do. I am sorry for hitting you. And to make that more real, I will make this solemn promise to you now, right here. I will never mention your affair. Not. Ever. Again.”

Dave’s eyes narrowed. Now, he thought, this is most unexpected! Release from the Great Male Error? Could it be? Oh, she must have fucked up something bad! “Go on.”

“I will never mention it again, and—and… I don’t know. Just—listen, I have to, have to, have to get some answers from you.”

“About the business.”

“Yes.”

“And no more evil Dave?”

“No.”

“Ever again?”

“Ever again.”

Wish the kids were still here, thought Dave. This needs witnesses. He took a deep breath. “Okay.”

“When did it start?”

“Couple of weeks ago.”

“And it’s totally gone. Totally.”

Dave frowned. “You have to come clean. Where are you in this? We’ve been down this road before.”

Angela reached out to take his hand. He flinched, but she shook her head almost imperceptibly. She led him into the kitchen, to the breakfast nook. An enormous newspaper lay there, as if it had fallen from a great height and splattered, amid coffee cups with bodum sludge at the bottom.

Angela leaned forward slightly, her hand on Dave’s wrist. “Dave, did you ever wipe anyone out?”

“People lost money on my companies, sure…”

“What do you tell them?”

“It sucks, of course. Nobody likes to lose money. But those are the breaks. Business is risk. Barnacle Dave said once:” He imitated the man’s New England growl. “‘Feel their pain, keep their money.’”

“What if—what if someone were—completely wiped out? Has that…?”

Dave eyed her steadily. “That’s happened.”

“So what do you say?”

“Guy I know—Kevin—you never met him—he’s a mad fuck, over three hundred pounds… Made ten mill by the age of thirty. Put it all in my next two businesses, all gone by the time he was thirty-three. He sits in bed with his wife, they’re looking at the house that’s about to go, and she says: ‘shit, honey—we started with nothing, now we’re back to nothing, what have we lost?’ And he started up again.” Dave shrugged. “I tell them that.”

Angela looked at him for a long moment. “Huh. Do you believe it?”

“Cash comes and goes. Why?”

“Sansity closed at eight cents today… It might be de-listed in the morning.”

Dave’s eyes widened. The corners of his mouth twitched. “God-damn…”

“Do you know—anything about that?”

His eyes suddenly seemed to clear. “Holy shit!” he cried. “You know someone who invested! Someone other than those rich fucks at lunch!”

“What? Why do you…”

He grinned maniacally, wagging his finger back and forth. “Come on, ’fess up, sister! You know where the two mill came from, don’t you? You helped someone help themselves, didn’t you? Someone dabbled on your say-so? Hoh shit—that’s why you kept coming across like a reporter from the Harvard Business Review!” He laughed out loud, short of breath, pounding the table wheezily. “Christ, Angela—it was because I said things were… And then I kept quiet! Holy fuck! Now that’s some kind of hapless-ass bad luck!” His eyes shone with mad glee. “Who is it? Who, who, who?”

There was a long pause. The moon darkened overhead in the deepening silence. Finally, Angela said, as if from a great distance: “Us…”

Dave’s grin froze. He cocked his head slightly to one side. “Sorry? Didn’t catch that.”

“Us.”

His grin remained, but his teeth seemed to grow. “Us? What? What?”

“I invested on margin.”

Dave laughed harshly. “What the fuck, you did not. Margin… You… Okay, what the fuck, what did I forget? Birthday? Anniversary? Can I call the kids back in now? Who put you up to this?”

“No one, Dave. You perhaps.”

He looked at her skeptically. “What’s really going on, Ang?”

“We’re fucked, Dave,” she murmured, sitting down delicately. “We went down with the ship.”

“Come on, you drama queen. You saying you put some money in? How much?”

“Two million.”

He snorted. “Sure, you sold the kid’s spare kidneys, a mill apiece, and invested. No, what the fuck really?”

“I got it on margin.”

Dave smiled. “Where?”

“I went to talk to Terry. After our last big fight. Found out about the Database Builder. You said it was great, but what did I know? Then I talked to Ralph, and invested in margin.”

“Right, with what? He puts up my house without telling me? I’d fucking sue him to the Stone Age!”

“We decided not to tell you—it wouldn’t be insider trading if you didn’t know.”

Dave stared at her for a long moment. “So that was our mill?” he said finally.

“About a hundred thou was ours.”

“You got ten to one on margin? Bullshit!”

“No—others got into it too… We did about a mill. Mill and a bit.”

Dave rubbed his temples savagely. “Holy shit—my head is… Okay. Okay. What—when… Tell me the story.”

Angela smiled. “I heard you saying it was all great, so I took the money from the pyramid thing and put it in, on margin. Ralph gave me ten to one, in exchange for some of the action himself.”

“Collateral?” asked Dave. There was no response. His hands itched to shake her neck. “The cash wasn’t enough. Angela—collateral?”

“Everything is in my name, Dave! The house, RRSPs. Remember? For taxes?”

Dave’s eyes widened slowly. He felt he was suddenly sliding down an inclining ice floor. He jumped to his feet. “This—are you saying this fucking sinkhole has just taken everything we have? What? Are you saying that you went and invested in my business behind my back, without telling me? Are you saying that you just nailed me to my own table and fucked me up the ass? Christ, Angela—that’s insider trading! What the fuck were you going to do if we hit it big? Why? Why? What did you need the money for? You…needed…” Dave’s eyes narrowed; Angela could hear his teeth grating slightly. Then his shoulders sagged. “Oh, you were going to fly, weren’t you?” he said softly, leaning his knuckles on the table top. “You were thinking of getting the fuck out. You were nest-egging just a bit, just a bit, weren’t you? Tell me—don’t space out on me now, Angela Jones—you keep those beady little eyes right on mine!” He reached forward with both hands and closed them over her jaw. “Head up, come on, head up!”

She jerked her head away. “Let go of me!”

Dave turned away. His hands rose and smoothed the back of his hair. “Everything, she just lit a fucking fire and threw everything in—Christ, I wanted to fuck, you wanted to talk balance sheets… A suspicious husband would have wondered, but I thought no, little Ang’s just taking an interest in the work-horse’s load, just a little…”

“Dave, stop it!”

“Okay, let me see…” He gazed around the kitchen. “This house is no longer ours. We’re house-sitting for a fucking investment bank! This vase, that was my mother’s. So I drop it, like this—nothing. It means nothing. This picture—I can just break it—what does it matter? Not ours! Who cares? We could torch the whole fucking shit-hole and sit with ’mallows on the front lawn—or throw ourselves in the whole fucking pyre—who gives a shit anymore?”

This horror went on for hours—the madness, the recriminations, the bottomless lava of a marriage caving in over a void of pure falsehood. It was only fair, of course, in a way—Angela had made Dave suffer for his Great Male Error, and now it was her turn…

But rail as they might, it didn’t help at all, or change the one salient fact. No matter what was said, in the end, they knew they would lose everything.

Well, almost everything. They got, of course, to keep each other.

Chapter 83

The Children Decide to Visit Terry: A New Chapter

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Stephen, Alice, and Sarah sat on the school swings, idly trailing their legs back and forth on the sand. Glancing up at the rusty bar, Stephen remembered that, when he was young, he was terrified of going over, and of swinging with his head thrust all the way back, where the firm earth became a lunging sky. He smiled, recalling that when he jumped off, at the height of a high arc, there was a giddy moment when gravity seemed optional, and flying almost inevitable.

“You know,” said Sarah, “I can’t see my life very well any more. Do you feel that?”

“And how!” said Alice fervently.

Stephen scuffed at a loose rock. “What did it look like before? For you?”

Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know. School, work, marriage, kids…”

“You can’t do that anymore?”

“Oh no. Not really. Not the same anyway.”

“How come?”

“Because,” said Alice, running her fingers up the cooling chains, “because everything we want to do—all the girly stuff anyway—involves everyone else. Other people. You know. Prince Charming. Children. Family. Boys get to climb mountains and be monks. Everything girls do is with others.”

“Huh,” said Stephen, staring at his knees. He smiled suddenly and raised his head. “We’re ‘others.’”

Sarah shrugged. Her legs were getting very long. “Yeah, of course… But it’s hard not to feel that it’s—less, you know, somehow. Like a party—sometimes you want a lot of people.”

Alice exhaled slowly. “You remember the sleepover, the night we met?”

“Of course,” said Sarah.

“I loved it when everyone else was asleep.”

Stephen nodded slowly. “They are out there, you know,” he murmured.

“Who?”

“People like us.”

“Right.”

Stephen clambered out of his swing. He walked to the edge of the playground, where the gravel dissolved into grass. The sun was high overhead. For some reason, the world seemed deserted. No cars, no strollers, no children, no cries. It was very hot; everyone sealed up in the cold.

Stephen turned around, spreading his arms wide. He was wearing tan pants and a bright red T-shirt.

“Do you—think it was a good idea?” he asked.

The two girls stared at him.

“Sometimes,” said Sarah slowly. “It’s very hard.”

“Yeah,” added Alice, shaking her head. “You know, it’s like we were somewhere, which was like nowhere, but now we’re nowhere, waiting for…somewhere.”

“It is!” cried Sarah. “It is like waiting!”

“Don’t you want…” said Stephen, and his voice caught. “Don’t you want—this world to be a great place? A beautiful place? Where people are happy, and good, and you can—believe what they say? You’re both looking backwards, you know. That’s good—you taught me that. I just go and go, forward, you know, into the future, like a spear. Because I see that the world is beautiful, and the place we live in, the school we go to, the families we came from, are just shadows, like when a bird spreads its wings, it’s dark, for a moment, underneath, but then it flies up and away. And I think that I have—that I feel so—constricted around people who lie, or who think they know when they don’t really know. That’s everyone, don’t you think so? It’s all so small. We’re supposed to be so small. I can’t stand it. To me, life, what is coming, is a glory and a greatness and—a hymn, I guess. Stupid, but…”

“Yeah,” said Sarah. “I feel a bit of that.”

“I don’t know why everything and everyone has to be so small!” cried Stephen. “It’s like, we can go to the moon, mankind, and we can breathe underwater and…and fly over mountains. And I don’t know where any of the people are who do those things. They’re not here. I thought—I thought maybe they were just in my head, or my dreams, or in books… Until I met you two. And you are both so brave.” Stephen clenched his fists in front of him. “You stand in the face of storms.” He smiled suddenly. “Don’t be too embarrassed. Isn’t that all we really want to hear, that we have… That someone has listened to us, and that they know and appreciate what we give, what we are. Because me, I’ve always been this way, since day one. I think and ask questions, I have to, like people have to breathe. But you’re—I mean, neither of you were this way to begin with, so you’re not starting with the same—habits, or thoughts, or something. But you do it. I’ve done this since the crib. But you both pick up this huge sword and start cutting the shadows away, and I was alone my whole life and now I look around and I have two great friends in the dark with me, and I am no longer alone, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that, and thank you both for it. And I have more to say, but I…can’t speak as well, when I feel this strongly, so that’s it.”

There was silence for a few moments. The birds were quiet.

“Thank you, Stephen,” said Alice gravely.

“Yeah,” said Sarah. “I complain, I know. But thanks. Really.”

Stephen sat down with a sudden little crunch.

He squinted up at the girls, into the white light of noon. “So—last update, I guess? Alice?”

“Not much with us. My dad’s getting all these legal letters from the government and that TV station. He’s smoking a little, at night, like we can’t tell.”

“And your mom?”

“OK, I guess. Trying to save her store. Still looks mean at Iain. For the scarves that never were.”

Stephen turned to Sarah.

“And you?”

Sarah looked away. “It’s horrible at my house.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Justin won’t get out of bed. My dad’s in the spare room. No one talks. I’m just—reading tea leaves, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Stephen?” said Alice, leaning forward. “Why did you say that this was going to be our last update?”

“Well, because we’re all going away, right?”

“Away?”

Stephen turned and gestured at the lush lawns, tight hedges and time-stained buildings of their private schools. “This isn’t going to—survive.”

The three of them gazed at the sparkling granite walls and freshly painted monkey bars.

Sarah said: “It’s like, we just left our friends, and thought that would be it, that we’d be able to pick and choose, but you can’t just leave a little bit, can you?”

“I don’t think so,” said Stephen. “It’s like you want to dip your foot in the pool, next thing you know you’re like a mile underwater.”

Alice wrinkled her nose. “Something more breathable would be better.”

Stephen laughed. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“And you?” asked Sarah.

“My dad is gone,” said Stephen, staring at the school.

“Oh, God!” said Alice, twisting on her swing and glancing at Sarah.

“Oh, we’re so sorry!” said Sarah. “How are you doing?”

“I am very sad,” said Stephen, turning to them. His brow was furrowed; his eyes were wet. “Because, you know, he was always gone. Always. It’s like—like I’m not sad for the future, but the past. All of it.” He pursed his lips; his brow furrowed even further. “All I want is somebody to love, to respect. Look up to. It’s very sad when it’s not…” He took a deep breath.

“Yeah, I know,” said Alice. “My dad is kind of a goof. He’s got some kind of bond with mom, but I don’t get it. Maybe because they both grew up poor, who knows. Probably not. I mean, we grew up rich with this lot,” she said, jerking her head towards the silent school, “but it doesn’t mean much.”

“My dad is just kind of angry,” said Sarah. “He just wants everything to come to him, like it should, just because he’s him—and when it doesn’t he just gets angry. And there’s like no bond there. In my house. Everyone’s just—around. Coming and going. Never saying anything. And I think it’s all going to go,” she said, her voice getting softer. “That’s what you mean about the—final time, right?”

“Yeah,” said Stephen.

There was another short silence, and then Stephen stood up again, brushing the gravel from his trousers, leaving indentations like the craters of soft bullets.

“We’ve got one more thing to do,” he said. “Who’s got a notebook? I tore mine up about my dad.”

“Uh—me,” said Alice uncertainly. “But—but why? Our families are…”

Stephen waved his hand. “Nah, not our families. Someone else. A good guy in danger of becoming a bad guy. The last thing we have to tie up.”

“O—Kay, International Man of Mystery,” said Alice, pulling her notebook out of her knapsack. “Are you going to be this cryptic for the rest of the day?”

“Perhaps,” smiled Stephen, rocking on his little heels. “Perhaps.”

After about an hour of writing and talking, they got up from the playground—where they were, in fact, never to return—and took a bus downtown. They stopped off at an internet café to get the address, then found the building, climbed the stairs to the third floor, and knocked on a weathered door, awaking the person asleep within.

Chapter 84

The Children Visit Terry: Part Two

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Terry got up, his eyes bleary. In the throes of light, unsatisfying sleep, he had developed the habit of falling deeply asleep and then waking suddenly, at a slight noise or change in light—even a cloud passing over the sun would yank him up. It was like being shot randomly with alternating drugs.

The knocking came again. He threw on some jeans and a T-shirt. True to his current mindset, he imagined the police on some case of mistaken identity, or his superintendent coming to yell at him for a bounced check. Or is it Dave, in tears, come to let me have at him?

It was the three children. Terry stared at them stupidly, half-expecting another sound to wake him and really mess with his sense of reality.

“Hi, Terry,” said Stephen gravely. The two girls, on either side of him, nodded slowly.

Ahh, the three little fates, he thought. I don’t want the girls in here, sniffing and poking around and going all ‘euuuw’ at how a bachelor lives…

“Can we bother you for about—twenty minutes?” asked Stephen, looking at his watch.

“Sure—sure,” stammered Terry. “Not expecting—don’t you guys ever call? I thought yours was the truly wired generation.”

They came in.

“Cell phones come from dirty money,” said Sarah.

“O—kay,” frowned Terry.

“You should be happy,” said Alice, pushing some clothes off the futon and sitting down.

Terry’s apartment was a tiny bachelor; he’d been too busy to move, and mostly just slept there anyway. But now, over the past few weeks, it would have been instructive for him to read Crime and Punishment. As Raskolnikov learned, lurking in small rooms when very depressed does not generally produce the wisest decisions. Terry had lost most of his money, been unable to find work, and was sleeping by day and pacing and brooding by night.

“Okay,” said Stephen. “We owe you something.”

“Uh huh,” said Terry, opening his fridge. “You guys want anything?” Condiments, greasy things in brown paper bags, an old orange. Coffee creamers. Film. Eggs? Ooh, better not…

“We’re good,” said Alice. “Come sit down.”

That seemed odd, such an adult phrase coming from a child. Terry turned around, half-expecting to see her patting the couch beside her: come and tell me all about it…

“Terry,” said Stephen, “we didn’t want to leave anything unraveled.”

“So everything’s gone,” said Sarah. “Dad says it is.”

For him too? Terry itched to ask, but she was just a kid and all…

“How are you doing?” asked Stephen.

“How…” Terry sighed deeply. “Well, it’s a bummer, of course.”

“Uh huh,” said Stephen, nodding slowly. Terry could picture him with a tiny pipe, presiding over an analytic couch. So: perhaps Dave represents your penis…

“We’ve come to make things clearer, maybe,” said Alice, clearly impatient with all the staring and uhuh-ing.

“We are the Band-Aid brigade,” said Stephen, miming pulling one off. “A little yank, a little cry, then ‘all better.’”

“Yuh,” said Terry, thinking: okay, this younger set is just a little freaky. Children of the corny…

“What did they sell?” asked Sarah.

“Hm?” said Terry.

“That means—Dave and Sansity and the others—what did they have to sell?”

Stephen frowned. “I thought we were going to start with what he sold.”

“What—Dave?”

“No. Terry.”

“Huh?”

“Let me try,” said Alice, shifting on the couch. “Is this floss?” she asked, pointing at a thread on the couch. “Uh—that’s like, so clean and—not clean at the same time.”

“Sorry,” said Terry.

“’K. Right, so you’re not happy with the men you worked with.”

“You lost a lot of money,” added Sarah.

“Yes,” said Terry. “Yes, I did.” And I still would not be entirely surprised if I woke up again.

“You had a lot,” said Alice. “I bet more’n a million.”

“No—not quite.”

She nodded. “’K. But how did you get that million? It’s like you lose a friend, but she wasn’t really your friend, so you haven’t lost anything. You just think you have.”

“Let him answer, Alice,” said Stephen.

“Right. Sorry. So?”

“So—how did I get it? It was—on paper. Share options. Okay, like you’re going to know what that is.”

“We know,” said Stephen.

“What are you, opening the Toronto chapter of the ‘Tween Chamber of Commerce?’”

He frowned and shook his young blonde head. “No.”

“Yeah, okay. Well, it was on paper, so I know, it wasn’t really mine to lose…”

“That’s not what I mean!” interrupted Alice. “Pff! Adults!”

“Okay—so what do you mean?”

“I mean, what was being sold for people to buy your stock?”

Terry felt like explaining this a la Homer Simpson condescending to his daughter: Leeesa… “It was a software company, right?”

“Whose software?” asked Stephen. His eyes seemed suddenly piercing, and Terry felt a nauseating shudder. Wake me! Wake me!

“Well, I wrote it…” said Terry slowly.

“And you had this hotshot product, right?” asked Alice. “The ‘Database Breeder’?”

“Builder,” corrected Terry.

“So my dad used that to get investors, right? He shows it around, and everyone thinks it’s great, and they all give you money.”

“Yeah, that’s true. So?”

“So if you’re not there writing code,” asked Stephen gently, “what are they selling?”

Terry paused, then took a breath. “Well, not much. But…” He faltered again. The children watched him.

“O—kay,” he said finally. “But I already know they…that they were selling something I built. I know that.”

“Uh huh,” said Alice. “But you’re mad at them, right?”

“Do you know how many shares there were?” asked Stephen.

“What—in total? Er—ten million?”

“Thirty-three million,” said Stephen. “So at one point, your company was worth over eighty-two million dollars.”

Terry paused. “Yeah. Wow.”

“Which is all gone,” said Alice. “All gone.”

“Eighty-two million,” murmured Sarah.

“I know…” said Terry slowly. “Hadn’t thought of it quite like that, thanks a lot, but I know. I know.” His eyes widened slightly. “What, you think that’s my fault? Bullshit! ’Scuse me. I never told the investors to invest. I never lied to anyone!”

“That’s tough,” admitted Stephen. “We’ve really gone over and over that one. You didn’t lie. Sure. But here’s the thing. Without you, the lie would have been impossible.”

Terry sucked his breath in, then closed his lips with a little pop. His eyes narrowed. He stood up, then sat down again. “So you’re saying that I did it?”

“No—we don’t know,” said Alice. “But you participated.”

“Somehow,” added Stephen.

“Without knowing?” suggested Sarah.

“I…” Terry’s mind was racing.

“Think out loud,” said Alice. “Helps us.”

“Well, there was always something… I was always outvoted—not outvoted, but my opinions were less, you know, like when you’re a kid sometimes, and everyone listens and nods and then goes ahead anyway…”

“Yuh huh,” agreed Sarah.

“And towards the end—though I didn’t know it was the end—I sort of felt that things were going to get worse—later… When everything came back to—to haunt us.” He smiled. “Down the dark road. I wasn’t too confident about where we were heading. We were making a lot of promises, just—tossing them out. I guess I thought there was something I didn’t understand that was going to make it okay, something that Dave or Don or Robert or Bill or Carl or someone, like they were going to pull something out of a hat and we were all going to laugh with relief… Sorry, that’s dumb. Let’s just say I thought something was going to come along. I mean, they all had nice stuff, they’d all been in business since the dawn of time, they all seemed very confident.”

“Do you know what happened to my dad’s last business?”

“No,” murmured Terry, unconsciously pulling a pillow over his stomach. Incoming…

“Some guy on the board had a drug habit and spent all their money. They covered it up to keep their reputations.”

“Christ…” whispered Terry. “That’s what you talk about at dinner?”

“You never tried to…” started Alice, but stopped when Stephen put his hand on her forearm.

“What—discover any of this?” asked Terry, suddenly angry, waving his hands. “I don’t seem to have your little leprechaun moral genius, no. I didn’t go to private school. I must have misplaced my silver spoon!”

“S’okay, Terry,” said Alice, putting her hand on his forearm.

“What, you come in here and tell me that I, at the ripe old age of twenty-four, should have done due diligence on the first man to trust me in—in business? Oh easy for you, when your most difficult decision is whether—whether to—oh some damn easy thing! It’s my fault? Really? What about your dad? I never lied!”

“Okay, okay,” frowned Stephen, sitting back on the futon, quite at ease in the face of Terry’s tirade. This could have been insulting, but it wasn’t, and Terry calmed down a little after a few moments.

“Let me ask you something,” said Stephen finally.

“Okay. Sorry.”

“Sure. What happened when you sold your stock?”

“What do you mean, what happened?”

“What was going on at Sansity?”

“Well, the stock went up—you really want to hear all this?

“Yes, really.”

“Dave said sell, diversify. Spread out your risk. So I did, I sold some. Then…” Terry paused.

“Yeah?” prompted Stephen.

“Then there was this mess with the options. They were supposed to come out at seventy cents, but they came out at a buck ninety, and the stock was, oh shit, a dollar or something. It was really bad.”

“And then?”

“And then, what? The employees weren’t too pleased. And then…”

Stephen raised a hand. “Hang on. Tell me this.” He paused.

Terry clutched his pillow tighter. Though he had only met him twice, Terry knew that when Stephen paused, it was rarely a good thing. “What?”

“Did you sell shares after you knew the CEO of Sansity was a liar?”

Terry stared. His face winced in a twitchy ripple. “I…” Terry suddenly remembered Dave’s comment: ‘Frankly, I think he’s confused…’ “You know, I did. I really, really did.”

“Huh,” said Stephen.

“Don’t feel too bad,” said Sarah, leaning forward. “We took our allowance for years.”

Terry held up his hands. “But wait—it never crossed my mind… I thought there’d been some kind of mistake, you know, how you say you’ll meet someone at six, but you remember seven…”

“Did you call him?”

“No—no—what was I going to do? We went through Dave. He called him, I mean.”

“Do you think he lied?” asked Alice.

“Who—Dave? Don? Robert?”

“Whoever.”

“What I think is… I mean, he might have, things were pretty crazy…” The children’s faces were very still. There was a distant, tearing-paper sound of a plane passing, far overhead. Suddenly, Terry couldn’t breathe; the sun was too bright. A tear rolled down his left cheek, and his throat closed.

Sarah and Alice glanced at each other, and then they both took their notebooks from around their necks.

“S’okay,” said Sarah, leaning forward and rubbing Terry’s arm. “S’okay.”

Chapter 85

Gordon’s Answer

￼Dingbat Diamonds

When Rudy showed Gordon the video of his interview with Alder, he was quite surprised at his friend’s reaction.

Discovering Alder’s deception and theft had radicalized Rudy, suddenly and completely. It was as if he had discovered a secret continent in the midst of his room, or another dimension that could not only be proven mathematically, but also entered—if not physically, at least psychologically.

What he discovered was not that Alder was a liar, or corrupt—but that his cynicism could not banish that revelation with a shrug.

The first failure of cynicism is like the stage of a rocket, falling back to earth. The pseudo-wisdom of youth—the rejection of all values—always fails at some point, sometimes resulting in depression, followed by a slow and more careful rebuilding of belief.

For some weeks, Rudy could not understand what was happening to him. He had dreams about medieval combat, and cried when an old-loved song (Chris De Burgh’s ‘Revolution’) came on the radio. He saw people in an entirely different way now; they seemed little more than the long-term effects of their basic ideas. (This is the terror of Piggy in Lord of the Flies—and of that kid in The Sixth Sense. Rudy spent a good deal of time wandering the halls of his university, mentally whispering: ‘I see bad people…!’)

Rudy read one morning about a professor who had created a new accounting course about ethics—and felt torn about the news.

Sure, he thought, it would be great to have more ethical teaching—but really, these students are in their twenties—isn’t it a bit late to go over the basics?

But were they basics? Had society forgotten about ethics, or had society become so complicated that ethics had to be advanced, like a science? Are we trying to run a nuclear generator on the principles of medieval science, or do simple decisions just seem so complicated because we’ve forgotten the basics?

He was probably hoping that Gordon—who was a moralist through and through—could provide at least the possibility of answers, but Gordon’s reaction to Alder’s betrayal really surprised him.

Gordon sat in Rudy’s shoebox room, staring at the screen as the interview ended. Rudy’s Media Player was set to ‘auto-repeat’ (for porn, of course), and when the interview started again, Gordon shuddered.

“Shut it off, please!”

“Sure,” said Rudy, closing the program. “So…”

“I guess… Here’s…” Gordon raised his head. “Thanks are due, first and foremost. You didn’t have to do that…”

“You mean, me of all people?” smiled Rudy. “The relativist to whom duplicity should make no difference? Oh no, man—I’m deep in the heart of the undiscovered country. The unexpected part of me that puts the ‘more’ in ‘morality.’”

Gordon held up his hand. “Yeah—okay, but…” He took a deep breath. “It’s no triumph.”

“What are you saying?” Rudy cocked his finger like a pistol, blowing on his nail like a gunslinger. “Bad guy went down, dude—Baretta-style!”

“Poor guy,” murmured Gordon.

Rudy’s eyes widened. And now, Ben Kingsley accepts the award on Gordy’s behalf!

“Can you imagine?” Gordon murmured. “What kind of state you’d have to be in? I mean, his family, his son…”

Rudy frowned. “How do you know about his family?”

“He mentioned it once… Oh Lord, if he only knew what he was doing. It’s a great idea, sure, but not worth that. Nothing’s worth that.”

“What?”

“Dying that way,” said Gordon simply, and the way he said it—the inevitability of it—sent shivers down Rudy’s spine. He thought: This man is the prince of the undiscovered country…

“What do you mean?” asked Rudy.

“I mean—my father,” replied Gordon.

Rudy tried for a joke, deepening his voice a la Darth Vader: “Alder is your father, Luke?”

But Gordon only smiled faintly.

“Okay, tell me about your father,” said Rudy, thinking: Shouldn’t I be out of his line of sight or something?

“He was a broker,” said Gordon, “though Mum later said he was more like a ‘breaker.’ He was waaay up there, in the ’80s, at Solomon. Lots of money, lots of risk. Manic, you know the type. Then, poof—enter the scandal. He’d promised some client to get out if they hit more than ten percent losses, and he didn’t—you have no idea how many accounts a broker manages, there’s no chance of personal attention. Of course, he was trading to make money, which is what brokerage firms do, no matter how many clients they wipe out… Anyway, he was disciplined, and had to pay a lot of money back, but that was okay. He still made a ton…”

“And…?”

“And—the weird thing was that that had no effect on him at all. He shrugged it off. He was, you know, the modern type: no doubt, no room for questions… Finance was a game. You pushed the envelope, walked the line, played the gray—and sometimes you got caught. It’s like speeding, he said. Everyone speeds, and pays their tickets without guilt. People get to go fast, the police get to cash in. Nothing wrong with it.”

“Huh. But weren’t you raised by your mom?”

“I stayed with my dad occasionally. He lives in Vancouver.”

“So then?”

“So then there’s a great mystery, you know, the kind you always think of going back later in life to figure out. Something happened, something bad. He stopped working. Got very depressed. I went out there—he asked for me. He was very sad. Kept asking if he’d been good to me. You know, when parents want you to mother them…”

Rudy shuddered. “Yeuuuch!”

“Yah.” Gordon turned to look at Rudy. “If I ever get to the place where I have to rely on a fourteen-year-old to validate my existence, shoot to kill, no hesitations. Promise?”

Rudy nodded.

“He was on medication, going to therapy—he asked me to talk to his therapist, it was so pathetic. I went, but couldn’t go in. Sat in the waiting room, listened to the sounds. You know, that Western self-pitying snuffling. Woe is fucking me. After he came out, the therapist told me to come in. My dad waited outside.” Gordon twisted his head. “Man, my neck! The therapist had… the standard room: black and white pictures of kids, African masks. She gave me water, asked me a few questions—and then said something I have never been able to forget, something which chilled me to the bone.”

Rudy swallowed. “I can’t wait.”

“She said: ‘You realize, Gordon, that there’s nothing we can do for him now but to make him as comfortable as possible.’”

There was a pause. “Oohh,” groaned Rudy.

“You know, it had never occurred to me that it was possible to make enough mistakes—you know, soul mistakes, moral mistakes, evil—that you could damn yourself beyond repair. That you could be dead in life. That there was nothing left but medication and controlling the stink of your own death.”

“That’s cold.”

“Cold?” demanded Gordon, his cheeks flushing. “Do you mean me?”

Rudy raised his hands. “No, chief—settle! It’s cold what the therapist did. Not right. There should have been some—some kind of follow-up.”

“Yeah,” said Gordon, laying back on the pillow and clasping his hands behind his head. “Yeah—but no, too. She was right, and it really worked for me…”

“Still—risky as hell…”

“No—she knew what to say, knew the risk was okay, that I was able to take it. And that sentence has been the foundation of my ethics, you know, as an adult. So to see Alder, to see that he knows it, what he’s done… My dad knows too—knows that he lied and stole for a living…”

“Lied and stole?” interrupted Rudy. “How?”

“Oh, everyone who invests for you is lying. I’ve done the research. They manipulate stock prices to pump up their own holdings—and make money for clients they like, or fear, by screwing the others.”

“Really?”

“Sure! Brokers have no idea what’s going on in the market. It’s Brownian motion, all bullshit. It’s a tax on greed and ignorance, like lotteries. Except lotteries cost a couple of bucks. Brokers destroy billions. It pisses me off, really, how stupid people are. ‘Sure, this guy knows all about which stocks will go up, so he’ll buy for me, from the goodness of his heart, because I’m special!’”

“Huh.”

“They fuck their clients, and they fuck up the market for others.”

“But some do well, right? I mean, Warren Buffet…”

“That’s a bell curve. Some do consistently well, some consistently badly. And when someone gets a reputation for being right, everyone follows. Still random. Still nothing to do with the market, since it cannot be predicted…”

“So your dad…”

“My dad knows,” said Gordon softly. “He never admits, but he knows… And I think the hardest part is that it can’t be repaired anymore. He can’t fix what he did, so he can’t fix himself.”

“What do you mean, ‘fix’ himself?”

“It’s why moms make their kids take stolen candy bars back. My dad blew tens of millions of other people’s money. What is he going to do now? Get a real job and pay it all back? Sell his penthouse and live in a basement? Take the bus?” Gordon laughed sadly. “Even if he did—which he won’t, he can’t give up his gains—he’d never be able to pay it all back. And even if he could, would people forgive him? No, he lives in a palace of sin; it’s all around him, his house, his skin. There’s no escape.”

“But—is this why you’re sad about Alder? Alder knows, but he can’t undo it?”

“No,” said Gordon seriously. “You have to do good before you’re found out. Confess before you’re caught. He’ll never know now. Never! And so, he has died.”

There was a pause after this ghastly statement. An old Russian ghost seemed to wander through the room. Rudy shivered, thinking of his own family.

Gordon shifted on the bed. A rap bass began thrumming through the wall. “Jung has this story about a woman, a doctor, who came to him when he was just starting out. She had fallen in love with a married man who lived next door. So she murdered his wife. She was a doctor, she knew how, wasn’t caught. Then she married the man, but he died soon after, and then… She came to Jung just once. ‘I have to tell you what happened,’ she said. ‘After my husband died, my servants turned against me, my friends stopped seeing me—even my dogs and cats hiss and cower when I come near. No one knew. They didn’t even suspect, not consciously anyway. But we smell that kind of stench in our very spines. I am the loneliest person in the world,’ she said. ‘I have destroyed my life. I had to tell someone, and now I have. You will never see me again…’ And so she left, and never returned. Probably killed herself. No one knew.”

“Christ, that’s medieval…” whispered Rudy, hugging his knees.

“Do you think she could have returned to Jung? Reclaimed her soul? Come back to life?”

“You’re a fucking atheist—what are you talking about souls for?”

“I believe in the soul,” said Gordon simply. “Not as an inner ghost, but as the essence of our humanity. There’s no such organ as ‘health,’ but it’s the essence of medicine. There’s no such thing as ‘soul,’ but it’s the essence of philosophy, of happiness, of life…”

Rudy went over, opened a drawer, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

“Ethics always gives me nic-fits,” he said, in the apologetic tone of the modern smoker. He went over and opened the tiny window. A breath of wind caressed his cheek. He sighed and turned to Gordon. “All right, Savonarola. What are you going to do now? Alder’s on his way out…”

“Out?” repeated Gordon, rising on his elbows.

“Bez—Professor Tabarrok—is turfing him, yea even as we speak. The idea is yours again.”

There was a pause. Gordon’s eyes narrowed.

“Now,” said Rudy, “here’s what is not going to happen. If this were a movie, we’d need a third act. The second act was you getting the idea and Alder stealing it—and the third act is not going to be about you quitting academics out of bitterness, then getting over it to take your place among the illustrious ranks of the square-hatted. It’s a bullshit act. Everyone knows you will anyway, so let’s just skip to the credits, shall we?”

Gordon smiled sadly. “That act exists for a reason.”

“Yeah—poor story construction!”

“This is not a story.”

“Okay, of course, but damn it man—don’t make me give you the ‘you have a gift’ speech!”

Gordon paused, then shook his head. “Of course I’m going back to academics. I mean—the outside world listened. The best fights only need one ally. But that’s not important. Because the third act is not about me.”

“No?”

Gordon laughed. “No, you idiot. The third act is about you.”

Chapter 86

Alder and Stephen Go Camping

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Like most finished things, the end had been in the beginning. Joanne had used Alder to get babies. She did not love him, but had settled for him, which left her despising them both.

Their marriage had been unraveling for a long, long time. There was something slippery and self-serving about Alder, even from the beginning. He had avoided questioning Joanne’s attraction to him. He believed her out of his vanity, his faith in his specialness, not because of anything he did. We all want to be loved, he thought, but never went the next step: loved—for what?

That had never been answered, and the marriage had become like a biplane in a sandstorm, droning on without navigation, without a destination, losing fuel, flown blindly on simply for fear of crashing.

It was a gruesome decision for Joanne—mostly because it wasn’t a decision, but a change that arrived full-born within her: I cannot live with this man. Perhaps she left him for fear of his effect on Stephen—the antagonism in the house was deeper than plumbing—and if so, it was ironic, and completely predictable. She married him for the sake of the baby, and left him for the sake of the son.

For Alder, the end of his marriage opened up almost bottomless wounds. To lose career and wife and son within a week—and he did see it as a loss, not as a giving up—was an agony larger and deeper than any part of his personality that he knew consciously.

How did I get here? he thought (that stupid Talking Heads song starting up in his head every time he played with the frayed edges of the question). He sat in a bare unfurnished apartment about forty minutes by bus from his old home.

Even through his grim haze of pain, Alder knew that he had to find some way to patch things up with his son, and so decided to take him camping.

Since he had separated from Joanne, Alder had taken up strenuous exercise; tottering to bed on exhausted legs was the only way he could get any sleep. It took some time to convince Stephen to come camping—there was a lot of schoolwork, apparently.

But eventually he came, and a silent war emerged as they hiked. Alder desperately wanted to impress his son—to do anything to win his favor, in other words, except change or listen. So he set a demanding pace. Stephen was far from athletic—in that respect he was a stereotypical thinker—and when Alder heard his son panting as they climbed and climbed, he stopped and turned his head.

“Breathe steadily and easily—it will help…”

Stephen raised a pink, dizzy face to his father. “I’m thirsty.”

“We don’t have a lot of water—suck on a stone, it will help.”

So they marched on, and Alder found himself playing a game: if I walk far enough ahead, he will see how athletic his father is—but not too far, that will make me look uncaring…

Stephen was silent when they made camp. After a dinner of baked beans and silver-wrapped Salisbury steak, Alder tied the food up on a rope, and the two of them sat staring at the flat blue evening lake, listening to the loons.

Here comes the father-son chat, thought Stephen dismally.

“So how are you doing, old-matey?” asked Alder. This was an ancient nickname, from a long-gone little sailor’s outfit.

“Good,” said Stephen, rubbing his eyes painfully. What does he want?

Alder cupped his hands over his mouth and imitated the sound of a loon. “I used to camp a lot, when I was young, before I met your mother. When holidays had to be cheap.” He laughed. “Guess I’ll have to get used to that again.” There was a pause. Alder shivered. “Warm enough?”

“Uh huh.”

“So…”

“I’m tired,” said Stephen, getting up. “I’m going to bed.”

“Good Lord,” said Alder, glancing at his watch. “It’s—nine o’clock…” He was struck by an odd thought—he had a digital watch, and whenever anyone asked him the time, he translated it into ‘old time’—he would say, not ‘nine-thirteen,’ but ‘a quarter past nine’… But then another thought slammed into him, like the recoil of a silent shotgun. It’s almost too late, you idiot! Open your mouth…

“Stephen,” said Alder—and it was almost a shock. In his family, they used each other’s names so rarely—Stephen didn’t even have a sibling to separate him from.

Stephen hesitated, then sat back down. “Yeah?”

Alder took a deep breath. “I brought you out here because I thought you’d like it, you know, because I like it. And it will be harder for us to get to know each other now, now that… I don’t want to come between you and your mother—her decision to—end things—is her own, and I have to respect that. And you know, I didn’t always have the easiest time with my own parents—my father especially. That’s not surprising, given our…” He inhaled, then exhaled with a hnm. “I don’t know—life sometimes seems to come down to times like these. Everything goes by so fast… It’s like—two days ago I was learning to drive. You were born this morning. That happens when you get older. You don’t know that yet. Everyone says it, and it’s true…” Alder could feel Stephen’s attention wandering, and tried to rally his random troops of truth. “But you and I disagree about a lot of things—we always have, I think. You hated me giving you a bottle, and I could never settle you when you woke up at night—another thing your mom’s mad about, I guess…” Alder shook his head. His thoughts kept floating, skidding—it was like trying to turn a magazine page underwater. “Maybe that’s the point of family. Learning how to get along with people who are very different from you, who you wouldn’t maybe choose as friends. I mean, I know we’re not friends,” he added hastily, glancing at Stephen, knowing his dislike of ‘buddy dads,’ “but we wouldn’t—we don’t agree on a lot of things. I’ve tried to learn from you. I don’t want to talk about ideas, not tonight, not out here. They’re so—heartless—they can be heartless, they can be a way not to listen to people. I think that we’ve allowed our disagreements on ideas to color, to cloud our relationship. I mean, I don’t even know what your favorite movie is.” Stephen opened his mouth, but Alder raised his hand. “I mean—we can talk about that, after… It’s not just that, but… I know you’re a thinker—maybe the best in the family, I don’t know—and that we think different things, but that shouldn’t mean that… I mean, even Plato and Aristotle were friends, you know. It’s not—everything’s not a crusade. I don’t mean…” He floundered, desperate to stem his desire to correct his son, but… “You’re welcome to think of me what you want. I know I’m not a perfect dad. It’s not—not something I gave a lot of thought to, you know, when I was younger. It just comes, and bam. I have—what are they called now, issues? Kids are like, they just open you up and root around, and you want to tell them to be careful, but they don’t care. It’s just curiosity, I know, but it hurts. Not that it’s your fault.” Aaagh! Shut up, babble-head! “I just wanted to tell you that I really, really respect you, Stephen. You are an unbelievable kid. Any parent would be proud. And I am proud—I just wish we didn’t—rub each other the wrong way. So much. I mean, some is okay—that’s necessary. The spice of life. But there’s something more fundamental between us…”

There was a pause. An owl hooted softly. The mystery ripples of underwater life spread slowly over the perfect lake.

“What do you think?” asked Alder. His neck was tense. It felt as if his son held the power of his salvation…

“About what?” asked Stephen after a moment.

“What I’m saying…”

“I thought you were just—talking, Dad. You know, getting things off your chest.”

“Yeah—yeah I was, I guess. But still…” Alder felt slighted. His lip curled in hurt, like a poked worm. “Do you think we’ll ever be able to get along?”

“Along how? Like Christmas and birthdays? Sure—sure we can.”

“No—no I mean—get along. Respect each other.”

Stephen stared at the fire. He said something, but so softly…

“What?”

“You want me to approve of you,” repeated Stephen, just slightly louder.

“Approve?” Alder flinched visibly. “No—no I just—want to know how you feel.”

“I feel sad,” said Stephen. He picked a stick out of the fire and blew brightness on the red end.

“Sad?”

“Sad that… Just sad.”

“Are you mad as well?”

“Mad—sometimes, yeah.”

“At me?”

Stephen nodded.

“Because we fight all the time?”

“Because—because…” Some feeling seemed to crest in Stephen, then subsided, like a tent sinking over broken supports.

Alder nodded slowly. “When I—when Joanne—was going to have you, I thought of things like this, you know, teaching you about the solar system under the stars. Manly things. Hardware. Girls.” Alder’s voice broke. “But—everything went wrong somewhere, like I—we—were cursed. I said this, you said that, your mom said: go away. I wanted everything to be something—something else. Something nice and sweet…” A tear trickled down his grimy face. “Maybe I’ve done wrong, in my way, but this is too harsh, too hard… Everything was supposed to be different!” He sobbed slightly, lowering his head to his hands.

Stephen closed his eyes, and dreamed of running deep into the dark woods. This is it, he thought dully. The end of it all. My father is crying, and this is the worst thing in the world: he’s crying, and all I feel is boredom.

Chapter 87

Gordon is Summoned

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Gordon,” smiled Bez, rising from behind his desk and shaking the young man’s hand. “Thanks for coming in. I just wanted to let you know what’s happening with your—situation. Professor Alder has been fired, but he’s part of a union, so he’s appealing. He’s got a good chance. Plagiarism is hard to prove.”

Gordon thought for a moment. “Do you think he stole my idea?”

“Of course he did, Gordon…” Bez stopped as Gordon snuffled in a deep, sobbing breath. He said nothing for a moment, then pulled out a handkerchief from his breast pocket and handed it over his desk.

“Sorry,” said Gordon, exhaling. “That’s the first time someone other than my friends has said so…”

“Well, you never doubted it, did you?”

“No—no of course not. It’s not that I doubted what happened, but I doubted—it seemed invisible to everyone else, or irrelevant. Ohhh! Thanks. I should probably wash this before I give it back.”

“Don’t worry about it. So—you’re doing your master’s now, right?”

“Well, I haven’t finished it, what with all that’s been going on. There didn’t seem to be much point. And I wasn’t in the mood.”

“I think you should finish it. And teach a class.”

Gordon frowned. “A—class?”

“I can’t make you a TA at the end of term, but I think you should teach a few summer classes.”

“But…not a course?”

Bez laughed. “And—you’re welcome. Certainly a course, in time, but I have to see you teach first.”

“Thanks. No really, that means a lot. To teach…”

“And you have to finish your thesis, of course. I’ll be your advisor.”

“You—well that really means something. And I might need a lot of your help…”

“How so?”

“I’ve got a good idea for my PhD.”

“Really? Do tell—I need to get published as well.” Bez smiled. “Sorry, bad joke.”

“Well,” said Gordon, leaning forward in the praying-mantis crouch he used when talking about his ideas. “It’s a legal work…”

“What? Is this the right faculty?”

“No—wait—listen,” said Gordon, waving his hands. “Okay, we have these laws, these ‘hate-literature’ laws, right? Anything which advocates hatred against a particular person or group is illegal, right?”

“Yes, but it’s complicated…”

“No doubt—that’s why it’s a PhD thesis. So, let’s say that I found a group of documents which says that the murder of homosexuals, the beating of women and drowning of atheists are all moral actions. Would they be illegal under the hate-literature laws?”

Bez frowned. The idea slowly fell into him. There was an almost-audible whistling in the room. The impact came, and his eyed almost bugged out.

“You want to ban the Bible?”

Gordon giggled—it was not mad, but pure joy. He nodded rapidly, his eyes gleaming. “And the Koran!”

“What—what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the banning of hate literature. That guy out in BC is found guilty of saying that the holocaust was a myth—what about a book which advocates the legal separation of Jews into second-class citizens? Or the Koran, which says that unfaithful women can be stoned to death? These books have no place in a civilized society!”

“But—do you agree with the hate-literature laws?”

“No, of course not! The government has no right to control language.”

“So…?”

“So—I have a hate-on for religion the size of Mount Sinai! Those books are ghastly! So are the hate-literature laws. Let’s drag the two wriggling into the ring! Now that’s a fight I want front-row seats to!”

Bez stared at the silver light in Gordon’s eyes, and thought: I really think I shall end up as a disciple of this new age…

Chapter 88

Al and Greta and Iain and Alice

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Well, Gret,” said Al, as they stared at their spreadsheet—a spreadsheet with far too many red and bracketed numbers—“we are well and truly fucked.”

She sighed. “Fuck my ass, we are!”

They had bought a pack of cigarettes—they were ex-smokers with the enviable ability to indulge on occasion.

“Okay,” said Al, squinting at the screen. “We can keep the RRSPs. We lose the house, the cars, what’s left of the savings. The kids will have to be pulled from private school. No more riding for Sarah. Holy shit,” he grinned, in the kind of smile that comes from being so mired in horror that there’s nothing else to do. “The freakiest thing is that I don’t feel too bad.”

“Huh,” said Greta, lighting another smoke.

Al stood up. “I mean, it was all bullshit, in a way. We’re getting back to basics. Back to our roots.” He gestured around the study, taking in the house as a whole. “All this shit was getting on my nerves anyway.”

Greta scowled. “There were better ways of getting rid of it.”

“Don’t turn on me now, Gret!” warned Al. “We both agreed to back the band.”

“Yeah, I know…” She took a deep drag. “It was a gamble—but I thought the gamble was whether they would make it, not whether Justin would flip his little blonde gourd like that.”

“That was a spin, no doubt…” said Al, shaking his head. “So, when do you want to tell the kids?”

She sighed. “Now, I guess. Let me finish my smoke.”

“Yeah—and I’ll have another one.” Al lit one up and took a deep pull. He had a habit of puffing out half a mouthful of smoke before drawing the rest into his lungs. Same chance of mouth cancer, he thought, but only half of lung cancer! “I wonder if this will bring Dave & Co. down…” he wondered, in little smoky syllables.

“Probably. We can get caught up in the welfare line.”

Al grinned. “Yeah—Dave on welfare! It’s almost worth becoming poor to see that!”

“I was thinking,” said Greta, stubbing out her cigarette. “We should get out of Toronto.”

“Yeah—one step ahead of a pack of ninja creditors …”

“No, I mean—we’re fucked in the money-hole, so let’s pitch camp somewhere up north, regroup, figure out what we want to do next. Someplace cheap. Timmins…”

“It’s been quite a couple of months. Superstar band, brink of fame, bankruptcy…” He finished his cigarette. “Okay, I’m done. Let’s go get the kids.”

“Right, kids, we have some bad news,” said Al, after they all sat down. “Mom and Dad have to declare bankruptcy. Alice, that means…”

“I know, Dad,” said Alice gravely. “Sarah’n I were just talking about it.”

“Huh,” said Al, brightening a bit. “So the Bugles are in the same boat?”

“Yeah. Think so.”

“Huh. Well, be that as it may…” His family groaned. They hated that phrase. “Sorry—whatever happens, we’ve got to cut back. I’m not talking trim—this is going to be one heavy crew-cut. We’ve got a list of things—of stuff that has to go.”

Alice wrinkled up her nose. “Have you guys been smoking?”

“Give us a break, Alice,” said Greta, unfolding a piece of paper. “Okay, here comes the pain: private school…”

Iain sat up. “What?” he cried.

“Sorry, son,” said Al.

“Oh man that’s beyond bullshit! I have like two years to go! You want me to switch to a public school? With the plebes?”

“Hey!” cried Greta. “Listen—it’s not about what we want. It’s about facts! We’re all giving up what we want!”

“What are you giving up?” snarled Iain. “Days at the spa? Boo hoo!”

“Okay, son,” said Al. “Simmer down. This is how it’s going to be. We can make all these decisions with or without your input. Suits us either way. You get all bitchy, we go it alone. Got it?”

Iain thrust himself back in his armchair, averting his face. “Whatever…”

Al’s face darkened. “That’s not good enough. I’ve lost everything I’ve worked at for twenty years, you don’t see me pulling a hissy-fit.”

“Yeah?” said Iain. “Did you ask me if you should put the money into the goddamned band? That was your decision.”

“But you didn’t mind the videos, did you?” demanded his father. “You didn’t mind recording. You weren’t that concerned with money when it suited you, right?”

“Oh yeah, nothing exploitive about any of it, right, Dad? It was all for little old me. Your needs never entered into the equation right, you old Brylcreem saint you?”

“You goddamned little…”

“Al!” cried Greta, jumping up. “Alice!”

“What? Okay,” said Al, raising his hands. “We really need to turn the heat down a little here. Gret—finish the list, then we can be free to turn on each other like jackals.”

“Okay,” said Greta, taking a deep breath. “Now—we also lose the house, riding, skiing, holidays any time soon, the cars—they’re leased, not bought. Credit cards. Cell phones…”

Alice groaned despite herself.

“…the internet connection, our computers—also leased, through Al’s business.”

“Okay, that’s it,” said Al. “’Course, there may be more, but that’s all we can think of. Our creditors may disagree.”

There was a pause. Iain glared at the wall. Finally, Alice spoke.

“I think it’s okay,” she said.

“Thanks, sweetie,” sighed Greta.

“That’s—great,” said Al warily.

“I mean—your business wasn’t doing well, and Iain was going to have to get really skinny…”

Greta frowned. “What?”

“Never mind,” scowled Iain. “Christ, Alice!”

“You know…” said Al delicately. “We do have one other card to play.”

Greta glanced at him, then at Alice.

Alice’s perfect eyes widened. “No!” she said.

Al’s mouth widened. It was, he hoped, an inviting smile. His family drew back slightly. “But sweetie,” he cajoled. “You’re so beautiful! Just a couple of shots. Just to see…”

“Dad,” said Iain. “Don’t go there.”

“Yeah, well…” sighed Al. Then he brightened. “Can you sing, sweetie?”

“Dad!” cried Alice, jumping to her feet. She suddenly seemed ten feet tall. “No! That’s all about stuff. And stuff isn’t that important. I mean—look at us! We’re fighting because we’re not getting what we want, because we’re greedy for stuff. But don’t you see?” Her voice suddenly broke into an emotional depth that made everyone else in the room suddenly dizzy. Alice’s small frame was wild with passion, and she cried out: “Don’t you see that we should be greedy for each other, not for stuff!”

There was a pause. The statement hit hard. Greta blinked, suddenly feeling close to tears.

“Come here, sweetie,” she said, closing her eyes. Alice stepped forward, and fell into the enfolding harbor of her mother’s wide arms.

Chapter 89

Iain Falls

￼Dingbat Diamonds

An hour after the sun had set, Justin heard the twisting click of his door opening, and a shadowy form entered his room. He watched the gray shape for a moment or two, as it deposited something on his desk. His mind, aching with exhaustion, took its own bitter time to come up with the name.

“Iain,” said Justin softly.

The figure froze. “Yeah, what.”

“What are you doing?”

Justin imagined the figure shrugging; it was too dark to see for sure.

“Your mom bitched at me to drop off your homework. So. I thought you’d be asleep. Doesn’t matter. Good night.” The figure retreated to the dark door, towards the faint flickering strobes of downstairs TV.

“Do you ever have trouble sleeping, Iain?” asked Justin, his voice breaking a little.

“Don’t fish for sympathy, Justin,” said the shape, still moving. “We’re a little dry here, ’K slugger?”

“Nobody has come by.”

“Odd, that. Night.”

“Why?” Justin struggled up to his elbows, kicking at his tangled covers. “I mean, did you start to take it all seriously? I mean, even a little?”

The shape paused at the door, obviously wanting to both leave and unburden.

“I mean,” said Justin, “even if people came and yelled at me, that would…”

“Did you ask, did I take it seriously?”

“Sure, if that’s a question you want to answer. I mean.”

The shape loomed closer, and then there was a creak, and a small part of Justin’s bed descended slightly. Justin squinted, but the light was too faint. It was a face without features.

“I have nooo problem answering that question, but I need a smidgen of direction.”

“Uh?”

“What part, Justin, do you mean when you ask, did I take this seriously?”

“Iain,” sighed Justin. “Just skip the stagey repetitions and answer.”

“Sure,” said Iain tightly. “Happy to take your advice. I did not take the boy band seriously, no. But you know what? I really, really did take some of the potential income quite seriously indeed. You have big-daddy-CEO at your beck and call, so you can afford to turn ebony on a whim. We, the rest of us though, are a little more bound by petty bourgeois reality. We got a little more fucked by your streetwise tantrum. So yeah, I did take it seriously, and no, we can’t be best buds anymore, no matter how big and begging your eyes get in the dark. ’K? Is that what you were looking for, sunshine?” Iain stood up suddenly, and Justin bounced a little in his bed.

“Get…” he whispered.

“What?”

“Get…mad at me,” croaked Justin. “Don’t be… You know, all bitchy and verbal. Just—be mad at me. Tell me.”

Iain laughed derisively. “Oh, so now you’re telling me how to be angry. That’s fucking rich, Justin.” He leaned over in the dark, and Justin felt a little scared. “I’ll tell you what,” said Iain. “You go ask your parents pretty please to have a look at your little boy band special, and then maybe you’ll have a little fucking humility before you start lecturing people about healthy anger management, all right?”

Justin swallowed. “Just—tell me straight, Iain. It’s all—twisting around. I don’t know where…”

“Look, Justin,” said Iain, standing at the door, “you were a cool kid, once, I guess. We had some laughs. We’ll always have Paris. I don’t know where this gay little Dr. Phil act is coming from, all Bambi-eyed and reaching for a kinder, gentler world. Best of luck with it, though it wears thin for me PDQ. But if you want to know the truth, just now you look like yet another little tender, wounded, self-obsessed and self-pitying little whiner. Yeah, your parents aren’t always exactly on the up-and-up. What a shocker. Welcome to the race. My dad sort of fucks people for money, OK, it’s his choice, I can live with it. I accept that, because I’m not fucking twelve years old anymore.”

“I…don’t want to see my parents any more…” said Justin, his face averted, awaiting the blow that always follows originality.

There was a short pause. Justin could not hear Iain breathing. Canned laughter rose from downstairs.

“Yeah,” said Iain finally. “Yeah, I can see that. You just don’t get it. You are only oppressed by lift tickets because you want to go skiing. You’re going to give that up. I can see that.”

Justin shuddered, shaking his head in the dark, as if his hands were bound and spiders crawled in his hair. “Everything is—just—a posture? I can’t see anything real, when you talk.”

“You can’t give up your family,” said Iain simply. “It’s impossible. You can run away, but you can’t separate. Everyone has to deal. Your parents will follow you, everywhere you go, in your head.” Iain’s voice seemed to be emptying itself out. “There’s no escape. You’ll just miss them later, if you bolt now. After they die, you’ll regret not learning how to deal with them. You will just repeat everything.” His words grew softer and softer. “They’re not perfect. You’re not perfect. We’re all on the same rowboat, far out at sea. No one gets away…”

“I know you hate me,” said Justin, his throat seeming to close in, “but let me say something, just for a minute, and then you can go away and hate me forever.”

Iain sighed. Two pale hands spread in the dark, like faint doves flying apart. “Whatever.”

Justin paused. He tried to organize his thoughts and feelings, then gave up and just opened his mouth:

“Everyone says there’s nothing more important than family, but no family I know is close. They just—hang around each other, but no one ever says anything. It’s just gossip and nothing and ‘how’s work’ and ‘how are the kids’ and ‘seen any good movies.’ It’s just noise and…nothing. It scares me. And everyone troops back to these empty nests all the time, for Thanksgiving and anniversaries and Christmas and everything. And they sit around and talk and joke and never know anything about each other. And everyone thinks that you have to, right? That you have to go and see your family, and that nothing is more important, and say ‘what do you mean, you don’t want to come over for your mother’s birthday?’ and everyone is all shocked if you ask any important questions. I mean, what’s wrong with asking: do I like my parents? Is my sister a good person? Do I respect them? Are they—are they decent? Upright? Mo…moral? Everyone says: love your family. For who they are. No matter what. But what if they’re…bad people? Or just—just boring, or self-centered, shallow, vain, stupid people? Are we supposed to waste our lives trying to make them feel better, or hang around them, though we feel nothing, just to keep them from feeling lonely? And what if they’ve treated us badly? What do we owe our family? Are they above the law? Should I love a girl who treats me badly? Should I love a stranger who does wrong? Who is cruel, or doesn’t listen? Why is family so different? Wait—I’m almost done! Because I think I know, Iain. I think that there is only one thing that we owe our families. Or anyone. And that thing is—justice. If your parents have been good to you, then you owe them your love and respect. If they have been bad, you owe them nothing. Nothing. Less than. And the only people who say otherwise, who say that you should be good to bad people, no matter how bad they are—are people who are also bad, who are scared by being judged, because they have done wrong, and…”

Iain jumped up. “OK, shut the fuck up, that’s enough, I think we’ve heard just enough. You think I’m in league with the forces of evil because I tell you running away won’t solve your problems, fine, but I don’t have to sit and listen to all this bullshit, all right?” His voice became slow, insultingly condescending. “So, I’m going to go now, princess, and you be sure to get a good night’s sleep, like all do-gooding little princesses should, mmm’kay?”

Justin cried out in pain: “Don’t, Iain! Aren’t you curious, like a bit, about where you came from, about how to live?”

Iain laughed, leaning over the bed like a pillar of black ash. “No, Justin. The only thing I’m even mildly curious about is how you became such a pretentious, moralizing little prick.”

With that, Iain stood, turned and walked out through the black doorway. He paused on the landing, his heart pounding. He thought of Justin lying in bed, words like arrows through his organs. Then, he laughed again and strode down the stairs. And it was very odd. Even outside, under the streetlights, he felt as if he were still striding down, without sound, into the depths of the rest of his life.

Hours later, in the darkest hour of night, Sarah came in, and found Justin sitting up in his bed.

“Hey, sis,” he said softly.

“Hey, bro,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“Okay, yeah, sort of.” He smiled, and she almost didn’t recognize him. “I want to talk to you about something.”

She ducked her head. “I’ve been coming in—I never knew if you…knew. I hope that’s okay.”

“Yeah—listen I knew, sometimes. I really appreciate it.” He patted his eiderdown. “Come on up here. Are you warm enough?”

She climbed onto the bed. “Yeah—it’s like they’re trying to sweat you out.”

“Hm,” he smiled. “Now listen. I want to know what you and Stephen and Alice talk about.”

There was a pause. “O—kay. Why?”

“Because you guys have some kind of inner circle, and I want in.”

“You want—in?”

“You guys have some critique—I’m going to open the window.” Justin crawled out of bed, and instantly felt how weak his legs had become. He opened the window wide and got back into bed, panting slightly. “Just—tell me what you talk about.”

“Well,” said Sarah, her eyes lighting up. “It’s not like a clique or anything. We can talk! Stephen’s got this idea, you know, that everyone just talks about being good, but that—that it’s just talk, and no one really does it.” She hopped up, sitting on her heels. “I mean, not just because they’re bad people, but because we’ve sort of just got these words, like goodness and truth, from the past, when people really believed in these things. And that no one today would be able to invent these words if they hadn’t just come to us. Like a dumb kid with rich parents, he says.”

Justin laughed. “It’s not exactly Sweet Valley High, is it?”

“No,” said Sarah seriously. “Actually, Stephen thinks most everyone is lying. Alice’n me said: it’s not that people are lying. Like if people don’t know, are they responsible?” She paused. “So, that’s when he said: okay, let’s look at our families.”

“Why?”

“Because, he said, that’s where we’d be the kindest, just ’cause. So we were supposed to take notes about our families and see if they were good or—not.”

“Huh. Okay, so what has this done for you? This notebook.” He reached out and touched it, where it hung from her throat. “What’s in there?”

“Our family,” said Sarah simply.

“Me?”

“Not so much. Just Mum and Dad, mostly.”

“What have you—got?”

“I’ll say the why, then the what.” Sarah flipped on the bedside light, opened her notebook, and read from the third page. “‘Are people bad, mad or dumb? If they’re bad, they know what goodness is, but just pretend they don’t. If they’re mad, they can’t know what it is. If they’re dumb, they could know, just don’t yet. So first of all, find out whether our parents know what goodness is, then find out if they do it.’” She glanced up. “There’s a lot of underlining.”

“And what—did you come up with?”

Sarah eyed him shrewdly, closing her notebook. “Well, bro—you would be able to get out of bed if you really didn’t know the answer to that question.”

“Didn’t… Oh I see—you think I know it, but don’t really know it.”

“Yeah, something like…”

“So, you think—they’re bad people.”

Sarah nodded slowly.

Justin whistled softly, then scowled. “How the fuck do you come up with that at twelve? Don’t make that face—if you’re acting like some forty-year-old after five years of therapy, you can survive a swear word.”

Sarah screwed her face up, waving her hands. “It’s just—are people happy? I mean, without Stephen, Alice’n me would be where you are now—or were, since you’re talking to me now at least. And without us, Stephen’d be like you on TV. Yelling, you know. All purple.”

Justin smiled. “So are you still going to be Mom and Dad’s friend?” he asked after a moment.

“Huh?”

“I mean, when you grow up, are you going to come back for Christmas and plan their wedding anniversaries?”

Sarah frowned. Perhaps the idea had never occurred to her. “Don’t know,” she said, then sniffed and wiped an eye. “Doubt it.”

“So you’ll let them grow old alone?” It was cruel, but he couldn’t help asking; he needed guidance. “I mean, they provided for us.”

“Don’t know…” said Sarah, looking down. She suddenly froze, and took a quick breath. “I’m going to ask a creepy question. ’K?”

“Okay…”

Sarah nodded slowly, then raised her head and gazed straight into her brother’s eyes. “You know, Justin… You’re lying in bed because you’re waiting for Mom and Dad to come and listen.”

It was only about thirteen seconds before the tears came to him, but come they did. And Sarah hugged her brother and whispered: “But they never will, they never will, they never will…”

And then Justin slept—for almost seventeen hours straight—and when he woke up, the world was white with new light.

Chapter 90

Gordon’s First Lesson

￼Dingbat Diamonds

Gordon stood at the podium. A mottled sea of blank undergraduate faces rose before him, like an enormous, frozen, indifferent wave.

“All right,” he said, “hands up everyone in first year.”

Most of the hands went up.

“Good. Now let’s see, the average wage for nineteen-year-olds not in school is about twenty-five thousand dollars per year. You will be at university for four years. That’s a little over hundred and twenty thousand dollars—you’d get some raises in four years. Throw in tuition, living expenses, books—about fifteen thousand a year, even if you live in a shoebox, like I do. So all told, about a hundred and eighty thousand dollars to get your degrees. Any questions?”

The room was silent.

“Okay. I told you that because your minds are wandering. It’s okay. But here’s the thing. It’s costing you almost two hundred thousand dollars to be here.” He smiled. “I suggest you get your money’s worth.”

The room was silent. A few asses shifted. None of them had woken up, not really, but they were curious, which was not a bad start.

“This is a course on moral philosophy,” continued Gordon, “which means that I am going to teach you all about subjugation. It is my belief that the greatest challenge of the modern world is to redefine subjugation, so that we can limit ourselves without lies.”

Gordon paused.

“You may as well know right up front that I am an atheist—but that is not all that I am. I do not believe in God or the supernatural. I am also an individualist—like most of you, at least in your personal lives—in that I believe that the individual is everything, and the group nothing. Now, the individualism of the modern world has been the source of great growth—and great destruction. We have, as a whole, cast off God, rank, and patriotism, which were the three great forces limiting the will of the individual in the past. We no longer pray to God for guidance, we have no aristocracy to obey, and we rarely serve our country. And I, for one, don’t think that is a bad thing.

“However, we have also cast off ethics. We have become vain agnostics. We have not gotten rid of God—we have just replaced Him with ourselves. I believe that, in the modern world, the God of atheists is still a holy trinity: it is composed of vanity, insecurity, and greed.

“Vanity is the belief that we are above rules. Vanity is the belief that we are entitled to things regardless of how we get them. And we are vain because we no longer believe in ethics—and I don’t mean easy ethics—all the ‘don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t cheat’ you got from your Kindergarten teachers. I mean real ethics, the ethics which deny easy and destructive pleasures, and can pinpoint how lying, stealing, and cheating mask themselves in ambition, pride, and greed; ethics that predict the future and ban action in the present. Our lack of belief in ethics causes us to act on the spur of the moment, to be blind to the difficulty of acting rightly—and the result is that we act in haste, and repent at leisure.”

Gordon smiled. “I also believe in the conscience, which is the slow, steady, and unstoppable force for truth and consequence in our minds. If we act wrongly, we may get away with it in the world, but we are always condemned in our hearts. It is my belief that most people want to do the right thing, but are hampered by a lack of understanding. So we, you, I, all of us, tend to do what we think is right, or at least acceptable, and then find ourselves becoming depressed, manic, unhappy, disquieted—and then have no real idea how to solve our problems, let alone prevent them.

“The purpose of this course is to teach you how to understand ethics, so that you can live in peace when the sky is clear, and rise with arms to meet the storms.”

The room was silent. The undergrads had clearly not expected this. There was a sense of elevation in the vast room, as if they had all been raised to a great height, to a worldly heaven where only words and understanding could prevent their fall.

“All right,” smiled Gordon, jumping down from the podium. “Let’s begin.”

About the Author￼

Stefan Molyneux is the founder and host of Freedomain, the largest and most popular philosophy show in the world.Stefan has spread the cause of liberty and philosophy to millions of listeners around the world.

Mr. Molyneux holds a Masters Degree in History from the University of Toronto; his graduate thesis focused on the History of Philosophy, detailing the relationship between the metaphysical arguments and the political ethics of major Western philosophers such as Plato, Kant, Locke and Hegel.

Prior to launching Freedomain, Stefan built a thriving career as a software entrepreneur and executive. In 2007, he left his work in the tech industry to devote his efforts to spreading philosophy. Now a full-time parent and philosopher, Stefan has given speeches at liberty-themed events all over the world. His speeches cover subjects ranging from politics, philosophy, economics, relationships, bitcoin, parenting and how to achieve real freedom in your life!