A Naked Singularity: A Novel (10 page)

“Wouldn’t it be good to leave the house, interact with other students, discuss the lectures, ask the professor questions in person?”

“He has his own website you can ask him questions at any time during the week. That other stuff you’re saying is vastly overrated. Information is everything. Give me the information. Supply it like any other product. The method of delivery is irrelevant. I’ll
learn
, if you want to use that term, the information myself and who knows I may even use it someday. What do people have to do with it?”

“You’re a psych major right?”

“Yeah so? I watch people every day on Television and don’t say they’re not in their natural state. Being on Television is fast becoming
the
natural state. In the future all life will be televised. Our mayor was on Television tonight saying that a camera can be more effective than a gun in the war against crime. He wants to put cameras everywhere then arm you and me with even more cameras to help the state fight crime. How will people act then? Well I have a better idea than most.”

“They said it couldn’t be done!” Alyona walking towards me with the key in his hand and never had my eyes feasted on sweeter sight. I wanted out and up real bad. In my weakened state, Angus had half-convinced me that Kramden and Norton would soon be in the room and I knew enough people. My left ear hurt too, I cupped my hand to it. “You’ve got to get that ear checked out man. Here you go.” Alyona dropped the key in my other palm. I thanked him, offered brief good-byes, and headed for the door with visions of bed in head when:

“By the way who’s the worst guy you represented tonight?” asked Louis.

“Everybody was fine tonight.”

“Who was charged with the worst crime though?”

“I had a guy charged with using the subway without paying.”

“Bastard, what else?”

“Let’s see, I had another guy selling batteries in the subway without a license.”

“That’s illegal?” joined Alyona.

“Yeah, twenty-nine hours in jail and counting.”

“Dude I can’t believe you’re in favor of crime.”

“He’s not in favor of crime he just likes it.”

“He doesn’t just like it he adores it.”

“You’re both wrong, he doesn’t admire it in any way. He abhors it like the rest of us. It’s just that he recognizes it as a legitimate, albeit alternate, lifestyle.”

“I have to go,” I said.

“The other day someone stole my club, you believe that?” said Traci. “I don’t mean that someone stole my car while The Club was on it. No, someone broke into my car for the express purpose of stealing my Club which I had neglected to place on the steering wheel and which was sitting on the back seat.”

“Delicious irony actually,” said Louie. “Undone by your own protective measures.”

“Yes that from which you sought protection has instead inspired malfeasance,” said Alyona.

“What are you a fucking biblical narrator?”

Television:
With Art Carney, Audrey Meadows . . 
.

“Okay guys I need monastery-type quiet,” said Angus. “The marathon’s about to begin.”

“I’m gone, thanks for the shelter.” I was out the door and up the stairs in record time. Put key in door and it opens was my new favorite technology. Casper was on the table all right that ghostly prick. The answering machine blinked plaintively. Scattered on the floor was mail. The mailbox was broken again and Alyona must have slid it under my door. In the middle was a familiar yellow envelope with its tiresome but nonetheless fear-inducing slogan: IF YOU THINK EDUCATION IS EXPENSIVE, TRY IGNORANCE. Inside, I knew a posteriori, would be threats:
your credit rating . . . collection agency
and other ominous warnings. I read this as if about another, without alarm or true belief. More mail alleging it was sensitive to time; I sympathized. From my machine came exhortations:
Don’t forget about tomorrow . . . I can see you’re not going to return my phone calls . . . please call immediately regarding your account
.

I figured I needed to wash my brain clean if I hoped to sleep. Needed to forget that there were Glenda Deebles the world over or at least get them temporarily out of my skull and for that I would need an attractive distraction. Music was always my first choice but I liked it loud and the ear was in no mood. I had not nearly enough concentration left for reading so on went Television and its replay of the nightly news.

Angus was right. Before an array of microphones in front of City Hall stood a lanky Toad. Toad was the mayor. New York City’s electoral populace had not elected a fly-eating amphibian to run the city but they had selected someone named Toad, pronounced toe-add, to stand behind microphones in situations such as this and he now did so gladly, a slight smirk maybe building across his face. Video Vigilantes was a good idea he was saying and a grinning fat guy in a green beret was shaking his hand. Citizens needed to help the police fight crime. Citizens had greater leeway and could, in some instances, be more effective since their conduct was not governed by that obstructive Bill of Rights. Videotaping life was a step in the right direction. Those who weren’t doing anything wrong had nothing to fear and those who were, well they would be exposed by the white light of the camera—a camera that incidentally never lied. The reporter then hit the streets to see what average Joe thought. There followed near-universal praise for the vigilantes and the Toad’s stamp of approval. Crime was on the run.

But not completely because up next was
the horrifying story of the Dutch woman whose New York vacation has turned into a nightmare that just won’t end,
the face said this with a solemnity that veered towards glee. Then they sped to Cindylou or whatever who was at the scene with the full story:
Thanks Chuck. A nightmare is exactly what Dutch tourist Lana Huber is experiencing. Behind me is the TGINMONDAY’S in midtown where the twenty-three-year-old single mother stopped in for what police believe was a decaffeinated beverage. Police say Ms. Huber left her ten-month-old daughter outside on the sidewalk in a stroller while she had her coffee. When she returned (dramatic pause) the baby was gone
.

Yes it appears that the female in question was in this establishment consuming a decaffeinated beverage while the child in question was left outside for a period of time. When the female returned to the scene the child in question was gone
.

Any leads?

We’re not going to discuss a pending investigation
.

Reaction in the community was mixed
.

Serves her right! You can’t leave no baby out in the street like that. This is New York this ain’t Iowa!

My heart goes out to her as a fellow mother. She may have made a mistake but nobody deserves to have her baby abducted in that manner. I certainly hope they can find the person who did this and I hope the baby’s safe
.

It just goes to show you that nobody’s safe not even a baby
.

Chuck, police are asking anyone who might have information on this missing baby to call 1-800-BAD BABY. The BAD is not meant as any kind of value judgment Chuck, its alliterative allure is simply designed to increase consumer awareness. From outside MONDAY’S in midtown this is Cindylou or whatever reporting
.

Thank you. In Harlem a brutal slaying has shocked . . 
.

There followed grim descriptions of further mayhem and an almost heartfelt plea to stay tuned for a report on the record lows from their vaunted Weather-tis-Better-Center. I ignored this plea and flipped the channel to this hyper, ultra-white guy saying you could visit all sorts of calamities on your car but the Buffbuster would still clean it good as showroom new and I disliked this guy intensely but when I went to re-flip the bastard battery giving me remote control picked then to die and I was too spent to get up and exercise immediate control. But then the guy started engaging in these like spontaneousy demonstrations of the product in response to studio questioning and just like that I found I could tolerate him. Then he kept it up and now I felt bad for having judged him rashly because it seems all he wanted was for the autos of the world to be clean, which seemed admirable, and the studio audience must have agreed because their oohs and aahs increased until I almost reached for the phone and bought the damn device in what would have been, for me, three very difficult installments.

I was fading fast . . . Television still spoke but now without sound . . . the clock ticked insistently . . . a three and a twenty-eight . . . four minutes past my original grand introduction.

I was 24.

It is better for us both, therefore, to merge
.

I dreamt often those days and almost exclusively to ill effect.

Okay class listen and observe closely First we trip the locus coerulus alarm to ensure unfettered exploration As you can see the top of the subject’s head has been sliced open in a perfect ellipsoid Note that by purposely failing to cut entirely through the dorsal portion we can use the flesh to a hinge effect, allowing us to peel back the top of his cranium and peer inside What you see is, of course, mechanistic, intricately so but so nonetheless, nothing else and nothing more, hard wiring all of it But it’s hard wiring we have to know cold if we are to succeed because success will most likely not arrive suddenly but rather gradually, and incidentally it had better arrive whatever the means for your pathetic sake Now some are easier than others but this one looks easiest of all Here’s the cerebral cortex which we purposely dim so that only day to day affairs are of concern and it is within this very banality that we thrive See his amygdala? What he most fears threaten him with, dangle it, not as mere possibility but as overwhelming probability, a proven technique with this sort of specimen Look at the hippocampus sloshing in acetylcholine courtesy of his basal forebrain This will almost be too easy Always remember that we are here not to cure but to sicken So while normally at this point we begin to suggest the toxic, break down the healthy, and foster disorder, here an entropic chaos is already spreading virtually unchecked seeking its own heat death and this despite the fact that our own procedures are completely adiabatic and therefore blameless So why tamper? To tamper would be to excuse in a sense Closing I’ve seen enough After all, there are rules We’re not savages
.

When I awoke I put my hands to my head. The pain there and in my ear was obscene but I at least felt relief to be alone on my bed and not on an icy slab of steel surrounded by questionable medical personnel. The woman in charge wore a ptosic eyelid that almost completely shut her left eye, she lifted her chin to compensate, and when my eyes began to shut again I feared I would return to her. I sat up quickly, inviting reality and looking for a toehold. I was concentrating, concretely thinking myself into the real as if exiting a theater into midday’s bright city.

I felt disbelief at the clock’s assertion of 9:45. Impossible, I thought, because I hadn’t really slept. I had merely lowered my lids, been pried open at the skull, then raised them again. The whole thing took maybe ten minutes but those numbers claimed hours. The digital clock I stared at had an invisible seconds-hand that circled ceaselessly, accelerating. Next to it Goya’s postcard-sized Saturn had devoured the speaking part of his son, a bloody stump where the head once lay.

I was in a bad way from the night before so I tried to convince myself I had options. I could call in a comp day and stay home. But a quick look at my book revealed I had two out cases on—another Terrens-Lake-type kid and an emaciated credit card misholder serving an ersatz death sentence—neither of which could really be dumped on even a willing colleague. There was also the matter of a meeting that afternoon to discuss the death penalty appeal I had volunteered to help write; my brilliant ideas never ceased. I had to go in.

The radio came on and said the missing baby had a name. Everyone should keep an eye out for Baby Tula and all were beseeched to call the toll free number with any potential information on the bad baby.

I was almost tragically late so I took my time showering and getting dressed. Turning twenty-four was no minor disappointment. At twenty one, Edward Van Halen erupted and placed all other similarly-engaged guitarists into a group called
the rest
. At nineteen, Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter won her gothic bet decisively, giving birth in the process to a sentient seventy-thousand word monster that, more than two centuries later, still haunts readers. Then there was this kid named Wilfred. At seventeen, Wilfred Benitez embarrassed the great Colombian fighter Antonio “Pambele” Cervantes to become the scientifically gifted Junior Welterweight Champion of the World at a time when twelve different guys couldn’t simultaneously make the same claim. They and so many others mocked me.

My response was to leave. I made sure to grab friendly Casper this time before moving down the two flights and out the door. It was angry cold again. Then from the second-floor window I heard Angus screaming down at me:

“Call in sick dude! Ralph’s taking Alice roller skating, this is a great one.”

“Thanks but I better not.”

“It’s your funeral.”

“Come on Angus you can do it!” I heard Louie and Traci simultaneously exhort. “Don’t quit,” Louie added.

Angus was nuts, true, but maybe it was my funeral. After all there I was walking all slow and solemn then in a box being gradually interred and when the box hit bottom there had gathered there that day a slew of people, who if not grieving sure didn’t look thrilled, to hear atonal dirges and accusatory liturgical phrases fill the air creating a quasi commerce that I walked through to stand on yellow bumps meant to warn of danger where man-made wind screeched into and past my face until I was in another box this one moving horizontally within which I breathed on many and was breathed on in return before the box spit us all out still under Earth’s crust but this time flowing from inside a mass towards stairs that led back to life.