Fouts himself was off for a few weeks’ badly needed leave, then some new assignment. He checked a few items off his list: files destroyed, diet started, new oak leaves to buy in Frisco, bag packed, desk cleaned out. There remained only the call to Sharp’s next of kin and what else? A Butterfinger candy bar that wouldn’t fit into his luggage.
‘O God!’ said the partition. ‘My whole life wasted!
That
close to the Nobel and—ruined! O why have you forsaken me, O my governme…’
‘I SAID KNOCK IT OFF!’
Fouts slammed his wastepaper basket against the wall four or five times. It set the plywood quaking and reminded him to return the wastebasket to the supply room. Well, screw that. He had a bus to catch in fifteen minutes. With a start on the candy bar, he dialed Mrs R. E. Sharp.
She answered too soon, catching him with a mouthful of stickiness. A big swallow, then:
‘Mrs Sharp? Mrs Robert Etwall Sharp? Uh, this is Lt Col Fouts, Knighted Stays Army, Mrs Sharp—oh,
Shairp
, is it? Uh, Mrs Shairp, it is…excuse me…my painful duty to inform you that your husband, you know, Robert Shairp, is dead.
‘What window-peeper? No, it’s not. No, really, I’m serious. Excuse me, ma’am,
PIPE DOWN OVER THERE, YOU MEDICAL EXPERIMENT!
‘Did you hear me, ma’am? I said it is my painful etcetera blah blah your husband is dead. The Mud Flats Biomedical Research Project. A joint effort by the Army and National Arsenamid. An accident.
‘Yes, we’ve taken care of the body. We’ll be sending you a few personal effects. Oh yes, and if he was a veteran, you get a free flag from the Veteran’s Administration.
‘Uh-huh. Well, it’s been nice talking to you, Mrs Shairp. ‘Bye now.’
Five minutes to go. Donagon moaned. Fouts picked up his bag off the desk.
The gun was under it.
He’d found it lying on the laboratory floor after the four lunatics were hauled away. It was evidence, to be sent to the Justice Department. The details of how to send it were in the destroyed files.
For a moment he stood weighing it, half-looking for a place to hide the thing. Then a wail from the next office reminded him of a reasonable solution. Bag and overcoat in one hand, gun in the other, and candy bar between teeth, he barged into Donagon’s office.
‘Goth oo cath bus, Donagon. Thake this thing off my handths, will oo?’
‘What? Oh, sure. Thanks, Algie.’ Donagon smiled wanly. Fout’s free hand took the Butterfinger. ‘Sure you know what to do with it, now? It’s evidence, see? You have to…’
‘I understand Algie’
Donagon wiped away a tear and winked. ‘Thanks again.’
‘Sure. Well. See you.’
The lieutenant ran from the building, his fat ass waving goodbye to Donagon.
Marge put down the phone. ‘Your father is dead,’ she said. ‘So stop goose-stepping around the house and go to your room.’
Many hours, many drinks, later she spoke again, this time to a cigarette table lighter disguised as the vaguest of Oriental gods. ‘Bring him back to me. Please. Whole and alive. I’ll do anything in return.’
This inferior, butane-operated deity replied within a week, in its own vague way: Marge received Bob’s billfold, his shoes, and a suitcase full of dirty socks and underwear.
National Arsenamid debated carrying on with the project alone, without the Army. They thought of consulting MacCormick Hines, but no doubt he would consider this a trivial matter and resent the intrusion. Someone suggested interesting the Navy in making men out of sea-water. But Doctor Donagon’s suicide made their decision for them: the project was over.
Four reels of tape went on sale in a US Govt. Surplus store in the Midwest,
‘PUT YOUR MOTHER-IN-LAW ON TAPE—SHE’LL DIGIT!!!’
read the dayglo sign,
‘RARE MÜLLER-FORKER TAPE,
FANTASTIC BARGAIN!!!!’
The Army shifted eggs to another basket. In Oregon, a team of biochemists and psychologists were trying to make bears smarter…
THOUGHTS OF CHAIRMAN MAN
………. An hour late later jelly days jelly days the bell goes on and on fire I am bladderful late for school at the office
I struggle to stand up somebody has filled the room with plastic amber ice folding me in fakery: folded gyptian mummy folded dead hand card trick gypson giant in the cardifferent twilight of the twomb
(painted on my eye the impenetrable blue jelly of ‘this world’)
Poe I think of Poe with the opium horrors groping his way to the writing table at dusk or is it dawn: ‘There came to my nostrils the strong peculiar odor of moist earth’
So buried alone alive there it is thats life thats life with digby o’dell one of lifes little jokes laff along with charlie chapfall red skeleton milton burial well now tell me mr bones I never seed such a john buryman routine at dusk or was it dawn I must look it up look up
I must be stuck here stuck here or something stuck
As it was is and ever shall be world without anything the experimenters standing there one writing on his clipboard(.) one looking thoughtful one sucking his pencil waxworks all we must be stuck here the film is stuck or
Picking my nose too that ought to give the archaeologists a few laughs the strong peculiar digit
DIGIT O
christ I must be I am Im on tape
Yes
Well 111 be damned (Hey Lullay, etc)
NEMA LIVE SU REVILED
On another level all this word soup has generated another presence, just as IAO generate the alifbet and just as deep structures generate surface structures. I have called the other presence tentatively God. It may not be God. It may not be another presence. It may originate from:
(1) The machine or part of the machine.
(2) My brain or part of my brain.
(3) Some physical outside source, neither machine nor brain.
(4) Some non-physical outside source.
(5) Nowhere and nothing (in the case it really is God).
(6) One of the ten combinations of (1) through (5), in pairs.
(7) One of the ten combinations of three of (1) through (5).
(8) One of the five combinations of four of (1) through (5).
(9) All of (1) through (5).
(10)None of the above.
It all operates like some think tank, where all the words, in crisp shirts (plastic pocket protectors for slide rule, red pencil, black pencil, pen)
confer
—run around
conferring
—the important words forming their teams of lesser words, talking up enthusiasm for this project: ‘All right, fellas, the buzzword around here today is going to be “epiphany”. Bounce that idea around, examine the macro-structure, get the big depth picture. Sam, you’ll be handling the theological end of this, I want to see you work nice and close with Bud’s team, they’re looking at the “weak force” angle. Let’s get at the interface of this problem, guys. Let’s state our tentative objective as the answer to “Who made you?” ’
Then in the beginning was the word, only now there’s too much word, its face is like a teleprompter and the answers keep rolling across, answers to questions I haven’t thought of asking yet—have I?—and there isn’t any way of shutting it off. Maybe my mind is doing all its thinking at the same time, maybe there isn’t any ‘time’ here…
SO MANY DYNAMOS!
‘I’m glad you asked me that, Bob. “Are minds mechanistic?” Gee, that’s pretty tough. As I’ll mention before, there’s a little shell game you can play with machines. For any machine there is at least one question you can ask, which the machine can fully comprehend, but which it cannot answer, and to which
you
can see the answer at once.
‘Specifically, it is possible to make up a formula which represents the statement “this formula is not provable (in the machine)”. Then you ask the machine to prove (or disprove) the formula. If it proves it, the formula is true and the statement must be true, so the machine is contradicting itself. If it doesn’t prove it, the statement is true which you know but the machine can’t. And that’s the difference between a mind and a machine.’
‘But suppose someone comes along and alters the machine so it can prove the formula, or at least see the statement is true?’
‘Well then it ain’t the same machine, are it? So for this new machine you can construct a new formula of this same type. And as often as the machine is altered—or alters itself—you can do the same.’
‘But what’s the difference? I mean, I’m sitting there thinking up questions and the machine is sitting there thinking up answers—the
machines
, then—so maybe a mind is just a self-altering machine after all.’
His face starts to sag. I think of asking if it’s lawful to render tribute to Caesar or heal the sick on a Sunday, but I see it’s not necessary. He collapses into a rainbow puddle of words:
THE RUINS, AUTOPSY OF FIRED, BESTRIDED REAL LIVES, TOO. WHAT PRUNE OF ‘IF’, OR ITS LESSER GOODNESS? THE RUINS, AUTOPSY OF FIRED, BESTRIDED REAL LIVES, TOO, FOR HE HAS FOUND IT’S SMOKE-RE-THATCHED, MAKING IT WHY MIST-DEALER’S BRAWNY. MY OTHER’S EVIL. ENDS. REQUEST EDITOR’S READING DEVICE.
One level down there’s this detective business. I’m sitting stupefied by fumes from the coal grate, picking my nose and listening to him, Whoms, drone on about some notion about free will:
‘…. it’s a puzzle, Whatson. We find the man responsible for a particularly ghastly murder and he turns out to be a madman—not responsible for his actions. Yet we call the killing itself an irresponsible act…I ask you!’
I suspected my friend the sleuth had had a calabashful of his special smoking mixture, and so was far from responsible for what he said at the moment. Fixing my eyes on an unfinished sampler upon the wall, I resolved not to answer.
The sampler read—or seemed to read, in the dimness:
HE RUNS, A TOPSY OF FIRE, BESTRIDE REAL LIVES, TOO. WHAT RUNE OF ‘F’, OR ITS LESSER GOODNESS? HE RUNS, A TOPSY OF FIRE, BESTRIDE REAL LIVES, TOO, FOR HE HAS FUND IT’S MORE THATCHED, MAKING IT WHIST-DEALER’S BRAWNY MOTHER’S EVIL. ENDS. REQUEST EDITOR’S RE ADVICE.
(THE MIND REELS)
and alone on the island. My only companion is a stuffed parrot. Breaking teeth off my comb to keep track of the days. Today a plane went over. It didn’t respond to my signal fire, unless you can call skywriting a response:
HE RUNS TOPS OF FIR, BEST IDEAL LIVES, TOO. TUNE OF FORTLESSNESS? HE RUNS TOPS OF FIR, BEST IDEAL LIVES, TOO, FOR FUN I’M RE-THATCHED, MAKING IT WHISTLER’S BRAW MOTHER’S EVIL. ENDS. REQUESTED TO READ VICE.
These mystery letters began blowing away at once, leaving:
HE RUNS TOPS OF F BEST I AL LI ES, TOO.
E FORTLESSNESS? HE RUNS TOPS OF F BEST I AL LI ES, TOO,UN RETHATCHED, MAKING IT WHISTLE BR OTHER’S EVIL. ENDS. REQUESTED RE D ICE.
This isn’t working out at all. I’d hoped to tell the story but the pen has to trace its own shadow…the story includes the world around the story and the story in it’…say A writes a story about an imaginary land, and A’ writes about some wholly fictitious ‘historical’ event, and A” writes about or hints at, some fabulous country with all its rulers, rules, ruled…then B many centuries later finds the old manuscripts of these works, misses their metaphors and sets the event in the country, which is in the land.
‘The Iructu’, he writes seriously, ‘have no word for death.
They refer to it indirectly as “potatoes”. Death is “eating your potatoes”, burial is “planting the potatoes”, a stillborn child is “new potatoes”, etc. The potato, they explain, like death, has many eyes…’
Critic B' believes the story and adds embellishments of his own. So do other scholars, until by the time of B''''' men are actually planning to set out on a great sea voyage to visit the fabled land.
We set sail in the year of our Lord——. Each new problem encloses but does not answer the last. ‘Let’s sail till we come to the edge’
*
indeed, but over the edge is just another face of the old world-cube. I don’t even know what the problem is any more, but I go on calculating, reasoning, drifting off course…
And in the water around the ship the plankton have lofty thoughts as they top each wave, and see the nest wave on…
Feinwelt rode up in the elevator, thinking psychiatrist thoughts and shareholder thoughts.
The split is there, all right, Feinwelt, you crazy shrink. It isn’t enough to be den mother to a bunch of ex-transvestites. It isn’t enough to be the biggest shareholder in Stagman Enterprises next to Glen Dale himself. No, you’ve got to wangle
—
watch that!—your way in to become Glen’s personal Big Shrink. What are you doing here, in this, this mind of a building? In this accidental empire?
Glen Dale’s empire
was
accidental, like a famous pearl. It had begun with a small, quite ordinary grain of irritation—when, in youth, Glen had discovered that he could not, no matter what, get laid.
It was improved and rounded by a few coats of what Glen called ‘sophisticated seduction techniques’. A better bottle of wine, a few more jazz tapes, four-star brandy, tickets to shows, dinner for two, oh yes, and smoking jackets, cocktail shakers…layer upon layer did this poor oyster of a man apply to his misery. Cars, a yacht, the magazine, money, clothes, more of everything, better of each, a glossier magazine, the Stagman Club…until the accident seemed deliberate and fine.
I wonder whether the pearl ever chokes the oyster to death?