It starts with a gift.
A wonder. A miracle. No matter where I move my eyes, it follows my gaze, reacts to greet my glance. It's alive. Chewing bits of vegan sausage and imitation egg-food, I smile at the tiny Hoverman teletube following my eyes, its little face scrolling regional temperature variations across the Antarctic ice cap while it's little voice announces "fundamentalist right-wing extremist 'scientists' deny the inevitable..." Wiping my mouth, I stand. "Honey, it's the most thoughtful, loving gift a woman ever gave a man."
My wife smiles from inside her favorite tie-dyed t-shirt, middle bulging with baby and Jerry Garcia smiling right from the center of our family.
"Oh really? And what about our baby?" She pulls my hand towards Jerry's grinning face. "Say bye-bye to baby Jerr..."
I pull my hand away. "I don't think so. I'm already... 42 minutes late." I turn for the door. I only felt it once before. She said I felt the "butterfly," the flutterer, but little Jerry felt more of spiders than baby. "Don't wear down the batteries watching soaps," I call out. "There's a documentary on global warming on tonight." I kiss the wife and enter the bowels of the city, words buzzing around in my head like flies. Extremists. Fundamentalist. Right-wing. Easy, enlightened power words I will banter impressively today.
"Morning, Sigmund," I say, flipping a quarter to the old man wearing a fedora, little round spectacles and pointy goatee. He catches it in his pudgy patrimonial, white-male fingers, winking twice, for good measure.
"How's life, Mr. I--?" he asks in his thick, Viennese accent.
"Great. How about a paper?"
"You're in a fine mood, is this the 'Big Day'?"
"It sure is," I say, snapping open my paper with a smirk. "I turned thirty and the Mrs. finally sprang the new Sony 1276-D Hoverman on me just this morning."
Sigmund glances up. "No, no, no. I don't mean your birthday. I mean your son's birthday."
I sigh. "No, Sigmund, not yet. It just sits in there making me wait. Children try my patience."
"Ain't it the truth," he buffs affably. Another fly to add to my brain. Truth. Sigmund snaps furiously at my feet with his righteous shining cloth. "I wonder why it is you never talk about your son?"
"Eh," I shrug, trying to read the funnies.
He keeps shining away. "Then why are you having one?"
"I don't know. A year ago our specialist said I was sterile. Three months later, she's pregnant. It's kind of a miracle, if you believe in that sort of thing."
"Nature is funny. And now you're having a miracle baby. So why the long face?"
Laying down my paper, I give in. "I guess I feel a little guilty, Siggy. She's got this sort of a neo-libidinal minimalist organismic primal celebration of nature thing going on, like this baby will save the world or something. But how can more babies better the environment and relieve human misery? And besides," I lean down, whispering closely into Sigmund's hairy, old ear. "She's lost interest in... well, you know."
Sigmund smiles. "I see," he says, leaning on my knee. "Her celebrating is causing your celebating; the relative sensualist at the mercy of the romantic-fundamentalist--"
"Kill the fundamentalists!" a sultry, whitewomyn hisses, stiletto clicking up to our shoe-shine stand. "They're too extreme." Dressed in a black merry-widow, conical cups and fishnet stockings, she stands defiantly, feet planted wide, hips cocked as she smokes a Churchill cigar. Crossing my legs, folding my arms, I get ready.
"Louise," Sigmund rumbles testily.
"Schlomo," she sneers, turning her attention on me. "Kill them all, I--! They are the toxic slime eating away at the new sexual world order." From her points I see she is liberated.
"Are you saying I should kill my wife?" I ask, stunned by her potency.
"No, you moron. I'm telling you to kill the past. To ignore this elitist pig. His Victorian view is irrelevant. Order is illusion. Restraint is for losers. Morality is meaningless."
"Oh, you're a pistol, Madonna," Sigmund growls, shaking his head slowly. "Those who ignore the past are condemned to repeat it..."
"Whatever," she says. "Your past is what needs killing. You are the Age of One Meaning: dead-male Judeao-Christian 'Values', intellectual cowards raping 99% of the world to stroke your moral imperatives. We are the Age of Unmeaning, defining reality with true compassion and vision to create the best of all possible worlds. What matters is us, here and now, the Nietzchean Superpeople, the Egalitarian Sensualists, masters of reality teaching the first generation capable of understanding the full breadth and width of herstory's meaning--"
"You are the master," Sigmund interrupts. "As long as you define the reality."
"Your whitemale concept of the reality is based on Nineteenth Century gender elitism. None of your heroes were were womyn, therefore they are hateful and meaningless." She smiles, quite pleased with herself. "What lacks meaning is irrelevant."
I sit in wonder, staring down at them. They never make any sense, but they're fun to listen to. "But what should I do about my wife?"
She sizes me up, grinning so the little mole on her check rises and falls. "From each according to her ability," she groans. "To each according to his need."
"But she's not able, and I'm in need."
"Well," she smiles from one side of her mouth, touching to my cheek with her black-laced glove. "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?"
"From the mouths of babes!" I say.
"Hey!" she snaps. "You watch that sexist stuff, mister!" She punches me in the face, then saunters off angrily.
"She's a rocket," Sigmund mutters.
"A real canon," I agree, wondering if she meant her offer. "So the point is mute, since this is a dead-white-male-Eurocentrist-Western-imperialist neo-colonial elitist argument anyway," I say, admiring the wonderful shine of my shoes. "Thanks, Sigmund. Off to work!" I jump down from the seat and amble off towards the long subway car which worms its way into the city, all the while amassing more bugs for my brain bucket: Romantic. Orgasmic. Organismic. Sensualist. Egalitarian. Superpeople. Morality. Illusion. Compassion. Herstory. Come up and see me sometime. Buzz buzz buzz.
I stand on the platform, humming myself an old television tune, blinking at the dusty breeze from the train just now pulling in.
I enter, smiling at the white faces all around me. "It's a wonderful life!" I blurt, soothed by the smooth, rhythmic pocket-ta pocket-ta pocket-ta of the long mechanical worm pounding deeper and deeper into the bowels of the city. No one replies. Then I notice. All the people in this train look terrible! So thin and filthy, like walking skeletons. Preoccupied, I must have stepped on that train from Auschwitz again. No one speaks, no one utters a sound. They never do. They all just stare, their deep set eyes so baleful, making me feel all unhappy inside. What do they want? My stop comes. I jump from the train, glad to leave. I like to be around happy people, happy like me. Just a block away, now, I hurry to work.
"You're missing the point entirely!" A thickly German voice blurts. I turn abruptly, startled; a hot dog vender with a bushy white mustache and eyebrows, beady little eyes and fatherly paunch waves a foot-long weenie in my face.
"I won't miss it for long if you keep waving that thing around!"
"Never mind the veenie. The point is understanding. You don't have to be Albert Einstein to see that freedom rests not in the right to believe, but in the responsibility to understand. When you replace understanding with pleasure, you eliminate the meaning."
"What's so wrong with that?" I say, annoyed at the persistence of this line of reasoning following me everywhere. "Listen. I have no intention of bickering with you all the way through this fiction!" I turn away from the veenie vender and scurry up the street. I must regain composure. My office building is there, across the way.
I enter the huge, gleaming glass lobby of my building, The Workers Accident Insurance Building, and wave to the newspaper man, flipping him a quarter and nabbing a fresh paper as I cheerfully pass by. I step into the elevator, run by a huge, purple dinosaur. He's been working here since the beginning of time. We are alone, going up.
"Good morning, Barney," I say. "Wonderful day, isn't it?"
He turns to me, waving his paw hello. "Good morning, Mr. I--," he giggles. "I LOVE you."
I sigh; at least one of my acquaintances is normal this morning. My elevator stops at the top floor, I get off, flipping Barney a quarter for his good work. The door slides closed and he ceases to exist.
I step briskly into the office, re-invigorated by Barney's lack of confrontation, and move decisively down the row of desks to my own. I notice immediately my desk is covered with death and dismemberment claims which need processing. Just as I dig into the first case, my supervisor, a six-foot tall, filth covered, festering, dung beetle skittles over to my desk.
"Good morning, Mr. I--," it buzzes in its quiet, insect manner.
"Good morning, Mr. Samsa," I say. "A lovely morning for crunching numbers."
"Indeed it was, ninety-four minutes ago." Six of its legs, all wearing wrist-watches, rise before my eyes. 10:34 AM X 6 - they all agree I am late. "The President is quite concerned that you were in some way... troubled... on the way to work this morning."
"Don't worry, Mr. Samsa," I apologize. "I am not one to be... troubled."
"Oh? Tell me, I--, does it trouble you that you are late every day?"
"Well--" Oh brother. Not again.
It leans over me, stinking of rotten meat, its usual cologne. "You feel no moral responsibility to your job, to the company, to your profession?"
"How can there be morals if moralities are subjective? Besides," I smile slyly, slipping it a twenty. "I come in late because I always go home late." I add two winks, for good measure.
Samsa smiles, winking its hundred little eyes. "And it is much appreciated, Mr. I--. Being enlightened, we must boldly shape the future with the same mettle with which we reshape the past. We are, after all, gods on the temporal plain."
"I prefer Superman to god," I scoff. "'God' seems so... religious."
Mr. Samsa shudders. "Well, I prefer super-freak. 'Man' seems so... human. I have to go now. I have my usual lunch date." It moves off to pester another employee, then leaves the office altogether. I sigh. It's been leaving early everyday for the same long lunch date for over a year, just like a clockwork orange. For the briefest of moments, I wish I was management, then I come to my senses with a shiver and get down to work. Samsa is going to where it belongs, and I am where I belong. As we say in our little utopia, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
I settle in and go over several hundred claims, soothed by the smooth rhythmic pocket-ta pocket-ta pocket-ta of a thousand adding machines humming all around me. This invalid gets a million dollars, this widow gets none. This widow gets a million dollars, this invalid gets none. This goes swimmingly all morning, and just as I rise for lunch, a buzzer buzzes on my desk. I reach down and press the button. "Yes, Mr. President?"
"Mr. I--, come in here. I need you."
I pale, then hurry down the long line of desks to his door. It opens and the President is there, bleary eyed, nervous, his wrinkled face gray, huge nose, wart, black beard dripping nervous sweat.
"Yes, Mr. President?"
"Please, I--, call me Abe," he says, gripping my shoulders. "I'm afraid I have dubious news." Abe takes my arm. "Listen, you better sit down." He sits on the edge of the desk, looking at me with deep, sad eyes. "There's something I have to tell you, and as strange as it will sound, I swear it's the truth?"
"What is truth?" I say jauntily.
"Excuse me?"
"Truth? It's meaningless, right?" I am showing off my mind to the boss.
"Meaningless?"
"Or maybe merely unmeaningful, outside a multicultural context, that is?" He looks at me in dumb wonder, and I pity his 19th century Whitemale simplicity. "Unmeaning means meaning meaning everything, meaning nothing," I say cleverly.
"The arrogant persistence of opinion masquerading as knowledge, a vast dreamscape of hatred pretending enlightenment?"
I smile nervously. "Maybe. Why did you want to see me again?"
"Entropy, I--. Moral entropy."
I smile. "Morality is an illusion, so what's to entrope?"
"Relativist," he smiles sadly. "Subjectivity will make you irrelevant." He shakes his head. "Do you have a picture of your wife in your wallet?"
"Oh no, Abe, that's much too nineteen-fifties. We're Progressives!"
"And proud of it, I see." He shakes his head kindly. "Listen," he says very slowly. "When you define life as mere physical stimulation, driven by repeated orgasm, it becomes the endless pursuit of renewed physical pleasure. Pleasure is finite, but desire becomes infinite, and continued pleasure eclipses the rationality of consequence."
Suspicion glimmers in my head, somewhere down where all those words are crammed in. "Let's be honest, Abe. What has any of this got to do with me and my wife?"
"The ultimate lie is the right of pleasure; the right becomes an addiction, and you assure the addict's continued cooperation by supplying endless pleasure, which reinforces the lie of the right."
I shrug my shoulders. "Whatever, as they say."
"Seduce them. Promise the hope of pleasure over the reality of pain. Immorality over mortality. Tune in; turn on; drop out."
My jaw drops open. Suddenly, I know the consequence of this New World Order. By pursuing only pleasure, society throws off the fetters of suffering and death, leaving people free to love in a utopia of ultimate pleasure, which would replace understanding; truth would be measured by pleasure. Keep them entertained; give them an orgy of joy, even if they have to watch others in the media to keep it going. Humanity would become passive receptors of pleasure. No pain, no worries, no accidents. And me? I would lose my cushy job. My heart jumps. "Tell me, tell me. What must I do?"
The President stands firm, taking my shoulders. "Son, you must make the ultimate sacrifice."
"What?"
"You must go home and... shoot your television."
The horror! The Horror! "A--A--Abe. That would be like shooting my child. It would be... murder!"
"You must. Television is how they deliver on their promises. Pleasure. Stimulation. Gratification. Immediate and effortless, dropped in your lap. They control our way of life... from outer space. Now that you understand, it's your responsibility to end it." Tears begin streaming down my face. The President embraces me. "It's not so difficult, solider. One shot and it's all over." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a .22 caliber nine-shot revolver. "If you run out of bullets, I have more."
"But--but Mr. President! That's a gun!"
"That's right." He tucks it into my pocket.
"The death tools of angry-Whitemen!"
"The only death tool is at your house right now. Go home, son, and shoot it." He opens the door and pushes me out.
"What if I refuse?"
"Then you're fired." He shuts the door.
I sit on the subway, ignoring the witty banter of my fellow citizens as I wind through the dark bowels of the city, going home. Words buzz out of control in my head: Right. Wrong. Truth. Sensualism. Liberal. Television. Murder. Responsibility.
I am home early. The house is quiet. I don't call out. I move into the living room and kneel in front of the television. My friend. My companion. How can I part with you? You are my hope. My salvation. My window on the world. You are Truth. I rise, glance around. The Mrs. should be around here somewhere. I climb the stairs. The house is silent. I come to our bedroom door. There is a noise inside, a television playing softly. It is our newest addition to the family, the little Hoverman. Will I have to shoot that one too!? I hear heavy breathing, a smooth rhythmic pocket-ta pocket-ta pocket-ta emanating from my bedroom. Perhaps my wife is stairwalking, staying in shape for the "big day." I peek inside, but the room seems empty. There, over the bed, hovers my friend, glowing innocently, looking down. I look down. In our bed a huge round shape moves under the covers, rising, falling, rising, falling, pounding machinations rhythmically rattling our anguished bed springs. Perhaps she is giving birth? I step across the room excitedly and whip off the sheets. The Mrs. glances up, half screaming, half laughing. And there, lying on top of her, trembling with pleasure, is Samsa, the dung beetle.
"I--," it shouts. "What are you doing here? I didn't say you could come home early!"
I take the little gun out of my pocket, level it at them. It jumps in my hand, only slightly, as I squeeze off eight rounds, four for her, four for it. They slump convulsively into pools of their joined fluids, lying still in the warm blue glow of the little floating television's impartial eye.
Who's irrelevant now?
I go downstairs, the Hoverman following my movement obediently. I enter the kitchen, pour a cup of coffee, sit by the window, my window to the world. I flip through the channels, 500 of them. I stop at the children's network. I sigh. What about little Jerry? We even fixed up the guest room for him. Oh well, a son is probably out of the question now. I watch five brightly costumed Ninjas beating up some evil looking animal figures. So what will be my legacy, then? This, I suppose. I realize, watching these Ninjas work their cerebral-numbing magic, that I cannot destroy my faithful televisions, job or no job. They are my only loyal friends. They never lie. They never cheat. They never confuse me. And if we continue to pursue this course of immediate pleasure, so what? It's fun. And as long as we're all having fun, what's the cost?
Somehow the time gets away from me. It is dark. I go upstairs, I am tired, but it's a good kind of tired. Sleepily, I enter my room, stop short when I see them there, still in the same position I left them twelve hours before. Not even the sheet has moved. Odd.
I go down the hall, to the nursery. I sit on the edge of the bed, my head spinning with all the words crammed in there, far more than I ever remember cramming in before. Enough of this dreary, depressing meaning. I unlatch the top of my head and flip it open. Bending over, I turn my cranium upside down, spilling on the floor in wet sticky glops the contents of my mind. Out the words fall. Moral. Conscience. Politically Correct. Capitalism. Death. Ethnic Cleansing. Rights. Truth. Evil. White Male Privileged Class. Absolute Relativists. New World Order. Victim. Feminist. Context. Herstory. Humanity. Lies. Good. Bad. Socialism. Fascism. Marxism. Conservative. Liberal. Love. Faith. Television. Responsibility. Marriage. Father. Mother. Child. Liberty. Independence. Freedom. Revolution. Avarice. Anger. Right. Wrong. Murder. Wet and limp they plop between my feet, twitching like maggots in the last seconds of their existence before I ignore them completely. I sit back up with a smile, letting the cap of my skull flip shut with a wonderfully hollow clop! like a big, empty, happy cereal bowl.
I pull my hand away. "I don't think so. I'm already... 42 minutes late." I turn for the door. I only felt it once before. She said I felt the "butterfly," the flutterer, but little Jerry felt more of spiders than baby. "Don't wear down the batteries watching soaps," I call out. "There's a documentary on global warming on tonight." I kiss the wife and enter the bowels of the city, words buzzing around in my head like flies. Extremists. Fundamentalist. Right-wing. Easy, enlightened power words I will banter impressively today.
"Morning, Sigmund," I say, flipping a quarter to the old man wearing a fedora, little round spectacles and pointy goatee. He catches it in his pudgy patrimonial, white-male fingers, winking twice, for good measure.
"How's life, Mr. I--?" he asks in his thick, Viennese accent.
"Great. How about a paper?"
"You're in a fine mood, is this the 'Big Day'?"
"It sure is," I say, snapping open my paper with a smirk. "I turned thirty and the Mrs. finally sprang the new Sony 1276-D Hoverman on me just this morning."
Sigmund glances up. "No, no, no. I don't mean your birthday. I mean your son's birthday."
I sigh. "No, Sigmund, not yet. It just sits in there making me wait. Children try my patience."
"Ain't it the truth," he buffs affably. Another fly to add to my brain. Truth. Sigmund snaps furiously at my feet with his righteous shining cloth. "I wonder why it is you never talk about your son?"
"Eh," I shrug, trying to read the funnies.
He keeps shining away. "Then why are you having one?"
"I don't know. A year ago our specialist said I was sterile. Three months later, she's pregnant. It's kind of a miracle, if you believe in that sort of thing."
"Nature is funny. And now you're having a miracle baby. So why the long face?"
Laying down my paper, I give in. "I guess I feel a little guilty, Siggy. She's got this sort of a neo-libidinal minimalist organismic primal celebration of nature thing going on, like this baby will save the world or something. But how can more babies better the environment and relieve human misery? And besides," I lean down, whispering closely into Sigmund's hairy, old ear. "She's lost interest in... well, you know."
Sigmund smiles. "I see," he says, leaning on my knee. "Her celebrating is causing your celebating; the relative sensualist at the mercy of the romantic-fundamentalist--"
"Kill the fundamentalists!" a sultry, whitewomyn hisses, stiletto clicking up to our shoe-shine stand. "They're too extreme." Dressed in a black merry-widow, conical cups and fishnet stockings, she stands defiantly, feet planted wide, hips cocked as she smokes a Churchill cigar. Crossing my legs, folding my arms, I get ready.
"Louise," Sigmund rumbles testily.
"Schlomo," she sneers, turning her attention on me. "Kill them all, I--! They are the toxic slime eating away at the new sexual world order." From her points I see she is liberated.
"Are you saying I should kill my wife?" I ask, stunned by her potency.
"No, you moron. I'm telling you to kill the past. To ignore this elitist pig. His Victorian view is irrelevant. Order is illusion. Restraint is for losers. Morality is meaningless."
"Oh, you're a pistol, Madonna," Sigmund growls, shaking his head slowly. "Those who ignore the past are condemned to repeat it..."
"Whatever," she says. "Your past is what needs killing. You are the Age of One Meaning: dead-male Judeao-Christian 'Values', intellectual cowards raping 99% of the world to stroke your moral imperatives. We are the Age of Unmeaning, defining reality with true compassion and vision to create the best of all possible worlds. What matters is us, here and now, the Nietzchean Superpeople, the Egalitarian Sensualists, masters of reality teaching the first generation capable of understanding the full breadth and width of herstory's meaning--"
"You are the master," Sigmund interrupts. "As long as you define the reality."
"Your whitemale concept of the reality is based on Nineteenth Century gender elitism. None of your heroes were were womyn, therefore they are hateful and meaningless." She smiles, quite pleased with herself. "What lacks meaning is irrelevant."
I sit in wonder, staring down at them. They never make any sense, but they're fun to listen to. "But what should I do about my wife?"
She sizes me up, grinning so the little mole on her check rises and falls. "From each according to her ability," she groans. "To each according to his need."
"But she's not able, and I'm in need."
"Well," she smiles from one side of her mouth, touching to my cheek with her black-laced glove. "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?"
"From the mouths of babes!" I say.
"Hey!" she snaps. "You watch that sexist stuff, mister!" She punches me in the face, then saunters off angrily.
"She's a rocket," Sigmund mutters.
"A real canon," I agree, wondering if she meant her offer. "So the point is mute, since this is a dead-white-male-Eurocentrist-Western-imperialist neo-colonial elitist argument anyway," I say, admiring the wonderful shine of my shoes. "Thanks, Sigmund. Off to work!" I jump down from the seat and amble off towards the long subway car which worms its way into the city, all the while amassing more bugs for my brain bucket: Romantic. Orgasmic. Organismic. Sensualist. Egalitarian. Superpeople. Morality. Illusion. Compassion. Herstory. Come up and see me sometime. Buzz buzz buzz.
I stand on the platform, humming myself an old television tune, blinking at the dusty breeze from the train just now pulling in.
I enter, smiling at the white faces all around me. "It's a wonderful life!" I blurt, soothed by the smooth, rhythmic pocket-ta pocket-ta pocket-ta of the long mechanical worm pounding deeper and deeper into the bowels of the city. No one replies. Then I notice. All the people in this train look terrible! So thin and filthy, like walking skeletons. Preoccupied, I must have stepped on that train from Auschwitz again. No one speaks, no one utters a sound. They never do. They all just stare, their deep set eyes so baleful, making me feel all unhappy inside. What do they want? My stop comes. I jump from the train, glad to leave. I like to be around happy people, happy like me. Just a block away, now, I hurry to work.
"You're missing the point entirely!" A thickly German voice blurts. I turn abruptly, startled; a hot dog vender with a bushy white mustache and eyebrows, beady little eyes and fatherly paunch waves a foot-long weenie in my face.
"I won't miss it for long if you keep waving that thing around!"
"Never mind the veenie. The point is understanding. You don't have to be Albert Einstein to see that freedom rests not in the right to believe, but in the responsibility to understand. When you replace understanding with pleasure, you eliminate the meaning."
"What's so wrong with that?" I say, annoyed at the persistence of this line of reasoning following me everywhere. "Listen. I have no intention of bickering with you all the way through this fiction!" I turn away from the veenie vender and scurry up the street. I must regain composure. My office building is there, across the way.
I enter the huge, gleaming glass lobby of my building, The Workers Accident Insurance Building, and wave to the newspaper man, flipping him a quarter and nabbing a fresh paper as I cheerfully pass by. I step into the elevator, run by a huge, purple dinosaur. He's been working here since the beginning of time. We are alone, going up.
"Good morning, Barney," I say. "Wonderful day, isn't it?"
He turns to me, waving his paw hello. "Good morning, Mr. I--," he giggles. "I LOVE you."
I sigh; at least one of my acquaintances is normal this morning. My elevator stops at the top floor, I get off, flipping Barney a quarter for his good work. The door slides closed and he ceases to exist.
I step briskly into the office, re-invigorated by Barney's lack of confrontation, and move decisively down the row of desks to my own. I notice immediately my desk is covered with death and dismemberment claims which need processing. Just as I dig into the first case, my supervisor, a six-foot tall, filth covered, festering, dung beetle skittles over to my desk.
"Good morning, Mr. I--," it buzzes in its quiet, insect manner.
"Good morning, Mr. Samsa," I say. "A lovely morning for crunching numbers."
"Indeed it was, ninety-four minutes ago." Six of its legs, all wearing wrist-watches, rise before my eyes. 10:34 AM X 6 - they all agree I am late. "The President is quite concerned that you were in some way... troubled... on the way to work this morning."
"Don't worry, Mr. Samsa," I apologize. "I am not one to be... troubled."
"Oh? Tell me, I--, does it trouble you that you are late every day?"
"Well--" Oh brother. Not again.
It leans over me, stinking of rotten meat, its usual cologne. "You feel no moral responsibility to your job, to the company, to your profession?"
"How can there be morals if moralities are subjective? Besides," I smile slyly, slipping it a twenty. "I come in late because I always go home late." I add two winks, for good measure.
Samsa smiles, winking its hundred little eyes. "And it is much appreciated, Mr. I--. Being enlightened, we must boldly shape the future with the same mettle with which we reshape the past. We are, after all, gods on the temporal plain."
"I prefer Superman to god," I scoff. "'God' seems so... religious."
Mr. Samsa shudders. "Well, I prefer super-freak. 'Man' seems so... human. I have to go now. I have my usual lunch date." It moves off to pester another employee, then leaves the office altogether. I sigh. It's been leaving early everyday for the same long lunch date for over a year, just like a clockwork orange. For the briefest of moments, I wish I was management, then I come to my senses with a shiver and get down to work. Samsa is going to where it belongs, and I am where I belong. As we say in our little utopia, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
I settle in and go over several hundred claims, soothed by the smooth rhythmic pocket-ta pocket-ta pocket-ta of a thousand adding machines humming all around me. This invalid gets a million dollars, this widow gets none. This widow gets a million dollars, this invalid gets none. This goes swimmingly all morning, and just as I rise for lunch, a buzzer buzzes on my desk. I reach down and press the button. "Yes, Mr. President?"
"Mr. I--, come in here. I need you."
I pale, then hurry down the long line of desks to his door. It opens and the President is there, bleary eyed, nervous, his wrinkled face gray, huge nose, wart, black beard dripping nervous sweat.
"Yes, Mr. President?"
"Please, I--, call me Abe," he says, gripping my shoulders. "I'm afraid I have dubious news." Abe takes my arm. "Listen, you better sit down." He sits on the edge of the desk, looking at me with deep, sad eyes. "There's something I have to tell you, and as strange as it will sound, I swear it's the truth?"
"What is truth?" I say jauntily.
"Excuse me?"
"Truth? It's meaningless, right?" I am showing off my mind to the boss.
"Meaningless?"
"Or maybe merely unmeaningful, outside a multicultural context, that is?" He looks at me in dumb wonder, and I pity his 19th century Whitemale simplicity. "Unmeaning means meaning meaning everything, meaning nothing," I say cleverly.
"The arrogant persistence of opinion masquerading as knowledge, a vast dreamscape of hatred pretending enlightenment?"
I smile nervously. "Maybe. Why did you want to see me again?"
"Entropy, I--. Moral entropy."
I smile. "Morality is an illusion, so what's to entrope?"
"Relativist," he smiles sadly. "Subjectivity will make you irrelevant." He shakes his head. "Do you have a picture of your wife in your wallet?"
"Oh no, Abe, that's much too nineteen-fifties. We're Progressives!"
"And proud of it, I see." He shakes his head kindly. "Listen," he says very slowly. "When you define life as mere physical stimulation, driven by repeated orgasm, it becomes the endless pursuit of renewed physical pleasure. Pleasure is finite, but desire becomes infinite, and continued pleasure eclipses the rationality of consequence."
Suspicion glimmers in my head, somewhere down where all those words are crammed in. "Let's be honest, Abe. What has any of this got to do with me and my wife?"
"The ultimate lie is the right of pleasure; the right becomes an addiction, and you assure the addict's continued cooperation by supplying endless pleasure, which reinforces the lie of the right."
I shrug my shoulders. "Whatever, as they say."
"Seduce them. Promise the hope of pleasure over the reality of pain. Immorality over mortality. Tune in; turn on; drop out."
My jaw drops open. Suddenly, I know the consequence of this New World Order. By pursuing only pleasure, society throws off the fetters of suffering and death, leaving people free to love in a utopia of ultimate pleasure, which would replace understanding; truth would be measured by pleasure. Keep them entertained; give them an orgy of joy, even if they have to watch others in the media to keep it going. Humanity would become passive receptors of pleasure. No pain, no worries, no accidents. And me? I would lose my cushy job. My heart jumps. "Tell me, tell me. What must I do?"
The President stands firm, taking my shoulders. "Son, you must make the ultimate sacrifice."
"What?"
"You must go home and... shoot your television."
The horror! The Horror! "A--A--Abe. That would be like shooting my child. It would be... murder!"
"You must. Television is how they deliver on their promises. Pleasure. Stimulation. Gratification. Immediate and effortless, dropped in your lap. They control our way of life... from outer space. Now that you understand, it's your responsibility to end it." Tears begin streaming down my face. The President embraces me. "It's not so difficult, solider. One shot and it's all over." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a .22 caliber nine-shot revolver. "If you run out of bullets, I have more."
"But--but Mr. President! That's a gun!"
"That's right." He tucks it into my pocket.
"The death tools of angry-Whitemen!"
"The only death tool is at your house right now. Go home, son, and shoot it." He opens the door and pushes me out.
"What if I refuse?"
"Then you're fired." He shuts the door.
I sit on the subway, ignoring the witty banter of my fellow citizens as I wind through the dark bowels of the city, going home. Words buzz out of control in my head: Right. Wrong. Truth. Sensualism. Liberal. Television. Murder. Responsibility.
I am home early. The house is quiet. I don't call out. I move into the living room and kneel in front of the television. My friend. My companion. How can I part with you? You are my hope. My salvation. My window on the world. You are Truth. I rise, glance around. The Mrs. should be around here somewhere. I climb the stairs. The house is silent. I come to our bedroom door. There is a noise inside, a television playing softly. It is our newest addition to the family, the little Hoverman. Will I have to shoot that one too!? I hear heavy breathing, a smooth rhythmic pocket-ta pocket-ta pocket-ta emanating from my bedroom. Perhaps my wife is stairwalking, staying in shape for the "big day." I peek inside, but the room seems empty. There, over the bed, hovers my friend, glowing innocently, looking down. I look down. In our bed a huge round shape moves under the covers, rising, falling, rising, falling, pounding machinations rhythmically rattling our anguished bed springs. Perhaps she is giving birth? I step across the room excitedly and whip off the sheets. The Mrs. glances up, half screaming, half laughing. And there, lying on top of her, trembling with pleasure, is Samsa, the dung beetle.
"I--," it shouts. "What are you doing here? I didn't say you could come home early!"
I take the little gun out of my pocket, level it at them. It jumps in my hand, only slightly, as I squeeze off eight rounds, four for her, four for it. They slump convulsively into pools of their joined fluids, lying still in the warm blue glow of the little floating television's impartial eye.
Who's irrelevant now?
I go downstairs, the Hoverman following my movement obediently. I enter the kitchen, pour a cup of coffee, sit by the window, my window to the world. I flip through the channels, 500 of them. I stop at the children's network. I sigh. What about little Jerry? We even fixed up the guest room for him. Oh well, a son is probably out of the question now. I watch five brightly costumed Ninjas beating up some evil looking animal figures. So what will be my legacy, then? This, I suppose. I realize, watching these Ninjas work their cerebral-numbing magic, that I cannot destroy my faithful televisions, job or no job. They are my only loyal friends. They never lie. They never cheat. They never confuse me. And if we continue to pursue this course of immediate pleasure, so what? It's fun. And as long as we're all having fun, what's the cost?
Somehow the time gets away from me. It is dark. I go upstairs, I am tired, but it's a good kind of tired. Sleepily, I enter my room, stop short when I see them there, still in the same position I left them twelve hours before. Not even the sheet has moved. Odd.
I go down the hall, to the nursery. I sit on the edge of the bed, my head spinning with all the words crammed in there, far more than I ever remember cramming in before. Enough of this dreary, depressing meaning. I unlatch the top of my head and flip it open. Bending over, I turn my cranium upside down, spilling on the floor in wet sticky glops the contents of my mind. Out the words fall. Moral. Conscience. Politically Correct. Capitalism. Death. Ethnic Cleansing. Rights. Truth. Evil. White Male Privileged Class. Absolute Relativists. New World Order. Victim. Feminist. Context. Herstory. Humanity. Lies. Good. Bad. Socialism. Fascism. Marxism. Conservative. Liberal. Love. Faith. Television. Responsibility. Marriage. Father. Mother. Child. Liberty. Independence. Freedom. Revolution. Avarice. Anger. Right. Wrong. Murder. Wet and limp they plop between my feet, twitching like maggots in the last seconds of their existence before I ignore them completely. I sit back up with a smile, letting the cap of my skull flip shut with a wonderfully hollow clop! like a big, empty, happy cereal bowl.
I lie back on the narrow little day crib my wife picked out of the send-away catalog, slipping under the cool, clean Speed Racer sheets. Will I sleep well in this cramped little race car bed tonight, after all that's happened today, all that lies cold and stiff down the hall, all that waits looming ahead in the dim, threatening future? I sure hope so. My tee time is seven AM. As I slip into blissful sleep, I begin collecting words for tomorrow.
Fore!
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