Q: A Novel (22 page)

Soon ordinary people joined in. Without flesh-and-blood artists plying their craft, life, they felt, just wasn’t worth living. More and more people followed. Even if they did not care for human poetry, they missed their friends who did. They jumped sympathetically and out of loneliness. Finally, even the television writers departed. With the artists gone, and the people who loved art gone, and the people who loved people who loved art gone, ratings had dropped dramatically.

In the end, only one human being remained, Heinrich Loomis, a toilet manufacturer from Stuttgart. Loomis was not dismayed by the proliferation of suicide. It had always been his dream to be left alone with time to read. He loved to read more than anything else—magazines, novels, poems, whatever was current, he loved it all. After everyone else had departed, he holed up in his apartment with a lifetime supply of canned peas and melba toast and the very latest in computer fiction.

The first novel he read was a character study of social isolation. It told the story of an unhappy man who had felt unloved by his parents and who did not make friends easily. As a consequence, he lost himself in a rich fantasy life, populated primarily by the characters of the many books he read. A plague strikes, and the hero is the sole survivor among all of humanity. He is unbothered at first. The pandemic has relieved him of the obligation of social contact, which he always found awkward and tedious, and left him time, finally, to read all that he could ever want. But when he sat down to read, he experienced no joy. It was as if his taste buds had lost their sensation. The novel made no impact. Without the reality of human experience, the fantasy of human experience was entirely uninteresting. As the novel closes, the protagonist is left feeling desperately alone.

Heinrich Loomis realized of course that this was the story of his own life. This was no coincidence. The computers drew upon human experience as the inspiration for their stories, which were validated by the tastes of human beings, of which one remained. That evening Heinrich Loomis jumped from his apartment window. Before he did, he ate one last piece of melba toast.

It was dry.

In the absence
of their human creators, computers tried to maintain a sense of normalcy. They carried on with their work. They conversed in their best imitations of Ryan Seacrest. They continued to publish their writing and show their art. They maintained awards ceremonies, even carrying on the traditions of the Pulitzer. In 2028, the year after Heinrich Loomis self-defenestrated, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel was entitled S.

Here is the first paragraph:

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

This is more or less the gist of the entire novel.

Chapter Twenty-One

I
-77 is quick to condemn my short story about the robot novelist. It is barely out of my brain when his letter arrives demanding a dinner meeting. He shows up at Katz’s Delicatessen dressed in a three-piece business suit complete with pocket square and wing-tipped shoes. He is wearing spectacles and is proper in a way that the other older versions of myself have not been. Something about him makes me vaguely uncomfortable.

“I take it you didn’t like the story.”

“It’s not funny,” he says. “It’s not fun.”

“I thought it was pretty good.”

“It’s not. It’s terrible.”

“What’s the problem as you see it?”

“Well, first of all, the bit about the last man on Earth reading books is stolen. It’s taken directly from
The Twilight Zone
.”

“It’s not stolen, per se. It’s an homage to Rod Serling. The conceit of my story is quite different. In the
Twilight Zone
episode, ‘Time Enough at Last,’ the cruel irony is that the last man on Earth, Henry Bemis, loves to read fiction but his glasses break. In the story within my story, ‘Time’s a Real Blast,’ the twist is that the last man on Earth, Heinrich Loomis, loves to read new fiction, but the computers can only write about human experience so all of the new stories are being written about him.”

“What’s the business with canned peas?”

“It’s sort of random, I suppose.”

He frowns. “Why does Loomis like melba toast?”

I perk up. “Melba toast is amazing. It is made by lightly toasting bread in the normal way, but once the outside of the bread has hardened, the bread is removed from the toaster, sliced longitudinally and then the two thin slices are cooked again. It was created by Auguste Escoffier for Dame Nellie Melba, the legendary Australian soprano and prima donna. She fell seriously ill while in residence at the London Savoy, where Escoffier was chef. Nellie couldn’t tolerate most food, so Escoffier created melba toast, which he served to her with soup and salads and topped either with melted cheese or pâté. It soon became the staple of her
diet.”

I-77 frowns at me.

“Escoffier also created peach melba for Dame Nellie. In 1892, the Duke of Orleans threw a dinner party at the Savoy to honor her performance in Wagner’s
Lohengrin
. It’s a cheery story, set in Antwerp, about the expulsion of Hungarians from Germany and a young woman who falls in love with a knight in shining armor. She is heartbroken when he leaves her because he is either a swan or, possibly, a cup. It was written in 1850, the same year that Wagner published “Das Judenthum in der Musik,” an essay attacking Jews as an alien and harmful element in German culture, moved to achieve financial success because of their inability to create genuine works of art.

“For the Duke’s fete, Escoffier created a special new dessert of peaches resting on a bed of vanilla ice cream, all covered in spun sugar. Ordinarily, Dame Nellie dared not eat ice cream, fearing the chill would affect her vocal cords, but in Escoffier’s brilliant new invention the ice cream was but one element of the whole, and hence not so cold. Dame Nellie partook, pronounced it genius, and so peach melba was born.”

I-77 is scowling at me now. “These random tangents come across as quite flippant in your writing and, I must say, they are similarly off-putting on an interpersonal level. I don’t recall this quality in myself. You should work to curtail it. Being random is utterly unbecoming.”

“Well, it’s not completely random,” I say sheepishly. “I like the way these things sound: melba toast and canned peas.” I say the words deliberately, emphasizing their obvious comic effect. “I often use words just because I like the way they sound. Like Schlieffen plan.” I stretch out “Schlieffen” and say, “I’m thinking of trying to work that into a book.”

“The canned peas and melba toast are not funny. They’re not fun.”

“I thought they were.”

“Do they even have melba toast in Stuttgart?”

“I’m not sure. I didn’t research it.” I am chagrined.

“Leaving your questionable tastes aside for the moment, this is really just the beginning of the problems with the story.”

“What else?”

“For starters, the suicide note is a bit of, how does one say it, a downer.”

I-77 is a bit of a downer if you ask me.

“It’s supposed to be a downer. It’s a suicide note. The point is to bring home the theme of the oppressiveness of infinity.”

“The problem is not the message. It’s depressing because it’s so poorly written, and I have grave doubts about the effectiveness of a story within a story. Or, I suppose I should say, stories within a story. You do it again with the
S
’s. What is the point of that business?”

“If you remember, some of Bertrand Bomrind’s monkeys produced pages of the letter
S
. The lesson is that without humans to reflect upon what the computer programs randomly generate, the computers are no different than the monkeys. Isn’t that hilarious?”

“No. It isn’t funny if you have to explain it to the reader.”

“I only had to explain it because you asked.”

“I had to ask because I didn’t get it. No one ever could. In any event, books within books are even more problematic than stories within stories. It’s very inside baseball. They don’t work.”

“They do for John Irving.”

“You’re not John Irving. You’re not even Washington Irving.”

This hurts. For a moment, I had thought—just maybe.

“Besides,” says I-77, “you need to do something that creates a legacy.”

This irritates me. “So which is it? Is it that what I wrote is not funny enough or that writing funny things is not worthwhile?”

“I don’t have time for semantic games.”

“It’s a serious question. Which do you really mean?”

I-77 sighs. “Obviously the importance of one’s legacy is indisputable, and I do not deny one could conceivably build a legacy by writing frivolous yet funny works. But the bar is very high. Only a handful of writers manage to satisfy the exacting standard of this genre. S. J. Perelman, John Kennedy Toole, and David Sedaris come to mind, but few others, and your work is not on par with theirs. There can be only one Sedaris.”

“What about Amy?”

I-77 ignores this. “It is only logical for you to devote your energies to an endeavor with a realistic possibility of forging a lasting legacy. Given the high standards of the humor field and your obvious limitations, comedy is obviously not the avenue to this end. I would suggest, humbly, that writing in general is not the answer for you.”

“Apparently not. In your humble opinion, what would be the avenue to creating a truly meaningful legacy?”

“The law,” says I-77. “You should be a lawyer.”

I spit out my drink. “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that a lawyer does more meaningful work than a writer? As an attorney might say, this strikes me as a specious argument.”

“You’ll help people.”

“I’ll help people sue other people. Surely writing even a meritless novel is more socially valuable than that.”

I-77 takes off his glasses, sets them carefully on the table, and rubs his nose. This is the first version of me to come back wearing glasses, and I wonder what it means. Removing the lenses reveals a pair of deep fissures beneath his eyes. He is tired and weary. He speaks to me as if I were a child.

“Look, I don’t have time for your insouciance, and I don’t have time for an ethical exploration of the nature of a life well lived. Here are the simple facts: no one pays attention to
Time’s Broken Arrow
. By I-63’s account, no one ever paid attention to the other serious books you would have written. I personally know that no one ever pays attention to the funny stories you write. Not the story about the Pulitzer Prize–winning computer. Not the novella about the Amway scheme to market copies of
Das Kapital
. And not the one about the incontinent middle-aged vampire.”

That’s a good one. I haven’t thought of it yet. I make a mental note.

I-77 continues. “The truth is, I don’t know in the abstract whether a mediocre lawyer does something more valuable than a mediocre writer does. As I said, I am not a philosopher. I know only that this is a false dilemma, as you will never be even a mediocre writer.”

This hurts again. This time I show that it does, and I-77 cannot help but notice. He reaches out and touches me on the arm. The gesture seems inauthentic. Not dishonest, just unnatural to him.

He replaces his glasses and stares me in the eye. “Look, my aim is not to hurt your feelings. The truth is, I don’t know what the objective value of your work is. Obviously, at one point in my life, I was highly invested in its merit too. All I can tell you is that you never achieve the recognition you hope for. You will never become a famous writer. You will never develop the small but loyal following you crave. Nor will your work be discovered in your old age. Those two days following the release of
Time’s Broken Arrow
will be the high point of your writing life. For the entire remainder of your career, such as it is, you will be almost entirely unnoticed.

“So, while being a lawyer may sound like a trudge, and while you will not have the legacy of which you have dreamed, at least you will have a good job and savings and a respectable position in society. That may not seem like much to you now, but take it from me, this is quite a bit to show for a life. And you’ll help people—again, perhaps not in the way you idealize, but in a significant manner nevertheless. People need legal services for legitimate reasons, and they are grateful to men and women who offer honest, competent advice. Succeeding at doing that is something substantial to show for a life.” I-77 says all this without drama. It is entirely authentic.

In that moment, I see I-77 clearly for the first time. I had not paid attention to his suit before, but I do now. It is of questionable quality. It is made of polyester, not wool, as the finest suits are, and it has a shine to it, as the finest suits do not. I can only speculate about fashion in the mid-twenty-first century, but my best guess is that artificial fibers have not come back in vogue in the business community. Furthermore, the collar of his dress shirt is frayed and ringed. His feet are extended to the side of the table and I can see his shoes. They are polished, but well worn. The soles have eroded. No wedding ring adorns his left hand, the nails of which have been bitten down in a homemade manicure. In conjunction with this package, the pocket square seems almost desperate.

I am reminded
in this instant of a beggar I knew in graduate school. He manned the southwest corner of Sixth Avenue and Bleecker Street, which I passed every day on my way to class at NYU. He possessed a Puritan work ethic. To my knowledge, he never took a day off. He was there every weekday, and when I went in on Saturdays and Sundays, to study for exams or in the final sprint to finish my dissertation, he was there too. And he worked long hours. He was always at his station by seven o’clock in the morning, and never left before six in the evening. I suspected this might have been because rush hours were the most fecund periods for him. He never even took a break, at least not as far as I could tell. When I traveled in his direction for lunch or for coffee, he was always manning his post.

Such persistence is remarkable in its own right, but what makes him stand out in my mind is the way he presented himself. He always wore a suit and a bowler hat and decent shoes. When women walked by, he tipped his cap. He made intelligent small talk, not just about the weather, but about politics and international affairs. We once had a spirited conversation about Rudy Giuliani’s plan to revoke parking privileges for United Nations officials. He had a nuanced view and used the word “comity.” We chatted almost every day. I liked him because he clearly saw himself as, and was, a gentleman. I invented pasts for him. In one, he was the president of a failed bank. In another, he was a professional darts player who lost his nerve after an errant throw cost an onlooker her eye. This was, in some ways, the start of my career as a writer of fiction.

In spite of their superficial pleasantness, our interactions always left me profoundly sad. After we chatted about the weather or the crazy UN drivers or whatever was on either of our minds, during which time we would be equals, almost friends, the moment would come when I offered him a dollar or whatever I happened to have in my pocket. Inevitably he would take it. The gentleman would be reduced to a beggar and the social bond that had momentarily existed between us would snap. Then I would go on my way, and he would resume manning his corner. I kept hoping that one day he would refuse the dollar and say that I was his friend and he was too proud to take money from a friend, but he never did. He always took it. He was still a
gentleman, but, in my eyes at least, we were each diminished by the exchange.

I-77 evokes the gentleman beggar. The suit, the wing-tipped shoes, the pocket square—these are all a veneer. His eyes, the way he carries himself, his reluctance to order even a sandwich, all say that he is a proud but beaten man. He is here to beg me to restore his dignity, despite the tension inherent in that.

I want to cry.

I think about where my choices must have left him. Certainly not in a position with sanguine prospects for personal fulfillment. His is another life without Q, and therefore grossly imperfect. Perhaps he found some other inadequate substitute, such as Minnie Zuckerman. Judging from his ringless left hand and sad eyes, I think it is more likely he found nothing at all.

One can also foresee that my decision to write funny stories will not help the already tenuous tenure situation. It is entirely possible that this man, me, will ultimately be left with no choice but to get a job. Not a quasi-avocation, like a professorship, which leaves one with time to daydream and invent alternative pasts for historical figures, but a real job, where one sits in front of a desk for eight hours, or hustles wares, and has a boss, and is yelled at, and never feels like his own man. The sort of job where the object is to get through the day, and get to the weekend so you can rest up and watch sports and recharge your fortitude so that the next week can be endured. The sort that is incompatible with the fulfillment of dreams.