Just a Couple of Days (19 page)

“Thanks,” I managed, just before I threw up on the bar.

 

63
General Kiljoy swore at my alimentary upheaval, handed me a bottle of ginger ale, and ordered me into a small room behind the bookcase to await Blip. He warned me that he would be watching the meeting via closed-circuit camera. The room had the same interior designer as the room in which Blip, Manny, and Brother Zebediah were hanging out. It was, however, quite a bit smaller and it had a thick glass wall in the middle. It felt much more like a confessional than I would have preferred.

I sat there, dizzy, sipping my bottle of soda, trying to wash the acidic grittiness from my teeth, and drawing profound connections between alcohol and the French language. Was it so romantic to talk like you were plotched? And if so, why weren't women helplessly attracted to slurring alcoholic vagrants? What if an alcoholic vagrant were French? Aha! Context is crucial, of course. That stream of thought was dammed with the realization that women also like chubby, bald, drooling people when they happen to be infants, but not when they are adults.

I suppose now is as good a time as any to mention that I am, or was at the time I am writing about, one of those chubby, bald, drooling men that women are so disinclined to coo over. I trust I have not seriously violated the mental image readers may have constructed of me. After all, I was basically an evil scientist cooperating with the military-industrial complex in yet another dunderheaded scheme to tighten the Gordian knot of technocratic domination.

The Gordian knot, for the uninitiated, was a knot of mythical complexity that supposedly existed in the Asian city of Gordium in 333
B.C.E.
, when Alexander the Great and his army took up winter quarters there. While there, he heard about a legend surrounding the knot, which stated that whoever could untie it would become king of Asia. Clever Alex, quite the wild turkey himself, took one look at the knot, drew his sword, and cut it in half. Asia, of course, was destined to be his.

Today, the knot is of a different sort altogether. Whoever unties the military-industrial knot won't conquer the world, but free it.

 

64
The door on the opposite side of the glass opened, and Blip entered. His face leaped into a smile when he saw me.

“Flake!” he called out, his voice tinny through the intercom.

“How are you?” I raised my bottle to him in greeting.

He shrugged exuberantly, clearly pleased with his predicament. “Chillin' like a villain. I'm right about the experiments, you know.” He grinned, then cocked his head. “So what are you doing here? You're not bailing me out again, are you? I think I'm just about to figure out what's going on.”

I shook my head. “I don't know where to begin,” I said, thinking how much easier it is to confess a wrongdoing to some priest than to the person whom you've actually done wrong. “Strange events have transpired lately.” A maudlin lump formed in my throat, and I felt like bawling. A chubby, bald, drooling, bawling man. “I didn't know what they had in mind. I didn't have any choice.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don't know what to say.” I took a swig of ginger ale, then looked him in the eyes for the first time since he'd come in the room. “You were right. Absolutely right. They are doing experiments. I'm here to find a vaccine. I didn't want to help them, but then they have you.”

“Whoa.” Blip ran his hands over his head, pulling his long white hair back. He sat confused and silent a few moments. “Who has me? Vaccine for what? What are you talking about, man? You're starting to wig me out.”

I sighed impatiently, wishing I hadn't demanded to meet with him. “The tea the three of you were drinking,” I explained, tired and resigned. “It contained a virus.” I paused, but Blip didn't respond, only looked at me with wide eyes. To my comfort, they were filled with shock and not accusation. “It won't kill you,” I continued. “It'll barely even make you sick. But it will destroy your ability to use language, your symbolic capacity.”

“Symbolic capacity,” Blip murmured.

“They just told me you've got about a half hour before it becomes apparent.”

“Who's they?”

I shrugged, pointing to the air around the room.

Blip leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, facedown and
hair every which way. “Symbolic capacity,” he repeated. He looked up, pursing his lower lip, deep in thought. His face relaxed into a realization. “That makes sense, I guess.” He looked through me, still thinking. “This is some kind of germ warfare, isn't it?”

I shrugged again. “I can't say.”

“Well, I can say that it's brilliant,” he called out loudly.

“You think it's brilliant?”

“Yeah, as a means to an end. It's just a strange end. Destroy a nation by destroying the capacity of the individuals to communicate with each other, am I on the right track?” He shook his head. “Very clever. A weapon of mass anomie.”

“Anomie?”

“Comes from the Latin
nomos
. Roughly translates as the social universe, language, society, norms, the space we share in which we interact. Anomie is the disintegration and destruction of that universe.” He pursed his lower lip again, shaking his head and pausing long. “So society collapses, but what happens to individuals?”

“They say it's not lethal.”

“But what's the subjective experience like?”

“You tell me.”

“I will,” he said eagerly. “If a person doesn't have a symbolic capacity, they have no self.”

“Why's that?”

“Because the self is social.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means that your sense of self emerges by interacting with others. It is born and raised in the process of human communication and interaction.” He gestured his hand back and
forth between us. “In order to communicate, you must be able to evaluate what you are saying from another person's perspective, to be sure you're making sense. The imaginary reflection that your mind creates is your sense of self. In recognizing that you are an object in another person's perception, you become an object in your own. That's just the way it is.

“Of course, that doesn't mean that there isn't some deeper Self with a capital
S
. But that sense of self you are most acquainted with, the phantasm of your ego, that self is social. So, as far as your symbolic capacity goes, if this fundamentally human ability is undermined, then, ipso facto, your sense of self will dissolve as well.” He sat nodding to himself in satisfaction for a few moments before continuing. “It works like this: You become self-aware, self-conscious, only after you imagine yourself from another's perspective. Think of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, they became self-conscious, right? They felt embarrassed and covered themselves. Well, the
knowledge
that particular myth is referring to is our symbolic capacity, our ability to order, categorize, and name objects in our environment, including our selves. That's what differentiates us from all other animals. Now, why were Adam and Eve embarrassed?”

“Because they were naked?”

“Right. But what I'm trying to say is that they only realized they were naked because they became self-aware. They imagined themselves from each other's perspective, and became bashful. You're the most self-conscious when you're embarrassed, see? When you're painfully aware of how others see you.
That's
the basis of society,
imagining
, not knowing, each other's perspective. Human consciousness is a big game of
make-believe. It's nothing more than mutually fanciful speculation, and the self, consequently, is nothing more than a ridiculous illusion at best and a destructive delusion at worst. We can't
know
each other's perspective, we only pretend we can. That's why people walk around so terrified of each other most of the time.” He pointed to himself. “Do you see what I'm talking about? Right now I'm trying to evaluate whether or not I'm making sense by imagining how you perceive what I'm saying. Apparently, I won't be able to do that for much longer.”

“So what's going to happen?”

“That's what I'm trying to tell you. If my symbolic capacity goes, so does my self-awareness.”

“But what does that mean?”

“It probably means a total dissolution of the ego.”

“But what will it feel like?”

Blip smirked and shrugged. “Who knows? Probably the same way death feels.” He clapped his forehead in profound amazement. “Wow! That makes perfect sense. The entire path of human history has been a death wish. As a species, we have a death wish driving us toward self-destruction. It's in every last one of us, part of our collective unconscious. We're hell-bent on Armageddon, because with Armageddon supposedly comes revelation. Then we'll know for certain if there's any meaning at all to our existence.” He tapped his head with his index finger. “That's the basic problem with being human. We're aware that we exist, but we're also aware that we'll die someday. That's too much to handle, so we force God's hand. If the ultimate ground of being, the spirit of the universe, Brahma, Allah, Yahweh, or whatever, won't let us in on why we're here, we'll just fucking try to destroy ourselves and see how It likes that. We figure It'll have
to step in at the last minute and tell us the point of all this unhappy horseshit.” Blip leaned back again in his chair, considering. “Or . . . !” The front legs of his chair slammed down as he sprung up. “We've had this death wish since we were cast out of Eden. See! The devil is only a drive in our mind, greed and selfishness driving us toward destruction and death. Why? Because at the end comes unity, oneness with Creation.” He sat down, tapping both feet and drumming on his kneecaps with his palms. “I should tell Brother Zebediah that.” He felt around the pockets of his clothing. “Do you have anything to write with?”

“I have a pen.” I pulled it out of my pocket and held it up. “But I don't have any paper.”

“Can you remember all that and write it down letter?” Blip asked, then looked confused. “Letter? Later, I meant to say. Can you write it down
later
.” He shook his head. “Do you suppose it's starting?”

“I'll write it down,” I promised. After a moment's hesitation, I meekly added, “Do you understand the situation I'm in?”

“Don't worry.” Blip waved me off. “I got myself into this.”

“I appreciate that.” I paused, feeling like crying again. “I guess the road to hell is paved with good intentions, huh?”

“I suppose. But then the road to heaven must be paved with bad intentions.”

He could not have been more correct.

 

 

 

 

PART TWO:

 

 

 

 

65
What responsibility awaits, fellow human, upon your deathbed! Consider: Out of all the phrases you have ever uttered, the one remark those close to you will remember with verbatim precision is your last words. Be prepared! Lest you get caught with nothing to say, or worse, with some knuckleheaded assertion echoing in your wake, have your words of wisdom or witticism at hand. Think it through. It is your final oration, your ultimate declaration. The Buddha, for instance, left his disciples with the following phrase to mull over: “That which causes life, causes also decay and death.” Certainly a more impressive note to end on than that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose dying insight was “I have a terrific headache.”

On the other hand, perhaps all social obligation becomes incredibly dumb when death decides to tap you out of this marathon round of Duck Duck Goose. Indeed, the very notion of language may seem bizarre and old-fashioned at that point. For example, when Karl Marx's housekeeper pressed him for his
last words, he reportedly muttered, just before expiring, “Last words are for fools who haven't said enough.”

Dr. Blip Korterly did not feel he had said enough, although I do not wish to give the impression that he was therefore a fool. Blip was not dying, but having been recently informed that he was soon approaching the end of his ability to communicate, he was understandably anxious to say something meaningful, if not clever.

“Last words, man.” Blip was pacing around his chair. “I have to come up with something good.”

“What were you saying about the collective death wish?” I asked, trying to be helpful.

He stopped a moment, considering. “No, doesn't count. It's not my . . .” He paused, confused. “What? What's the word? It's right on the tip of my tongue.” He licked his lips and turned to me. “What was I just saying?”

“You were talking about society,” I lied, trying to redirect his thoughts in a more productive direction. “Something about a collective death wish.”