The Celestial Instructi0n (9 page)

The new words and novel relationships of ideas
reminded him of a time long ago where he had been part of this kind of furious
concept incubator: designing new software and products at Mooneye. Being part
of the driving wedge of a technology, hardware and software never seen before
needed new names and re-application—overloading—of old ones. Convex sets, noisy
data, fitness landscape, unsharping, attack surfaces: all euonyms in a world
where the 16-year-old kid next to you is the world’s foremost expert.

Now, the Games Machine was questioning him about power
sets and aleph sub one and non-deterministic Turing machines. Again with the
powersets. He barely recalled this material from his algorithm design classes
in college. When he paused at a question to reflect upon his memory of the
presentation content (It was so long ago. Another lifetime.) the presentation
changed to some simple verbal analogies, then abruptly changed once again to
elementary music theory with examples. Morphed and sped up, then slowed down
and to match some unnatural rhythm, then something new, not quite related to
what came before. If he thought about it too long, he got it wrong.

In the fraction of a second between each new
particle of the Games Machine, he realized that the fear in his gut of impending
disaster had disappeared. It was like a bolus of heroin to a bone cancer
patient. He felt more engaged and alive than he had in years. There was warmth
in his groin. In the middle of the textures and timbre of Schnittke, Serena
interrupted him. At that instant, the Games Machine fell completely and utterly
dead.

“You are doing very well, Jim.” She slowed down and
deliberately enunciated the words “very well” for emphasis.

Joex realized his hand was shaking and that he was
hungry. And needed to use the toilet again. Through a kind of transparent
lintel block around the perimeter of the ceiling in the scriptorium, he noticed
the day had passed into night. He should be feeling fear, but he felt tired and
exhilarated. He also noticed Serena’s scent, a balm of Gilead. She gripped his
hands in hers. He couldn’t help himself, he was conscious of his erection. He
looked back at the Games Machine. Dead.

“Hold on there partner,” Serena put a hand gently
on his shoulder. “Do you want more?” Joex could feel her warmth.

He breathed out, trying to relax. “Yes.” He was
almost whimpering.

“It is late; let me give you a snack. Come back
tomorrow. I think we will have a place for you.”

Behind Serena’s desk behind closet doors was a
minimalist kitchen enclave: small refrigerator, two stainless steel sinks,
running water, cabinets of drinks and crackers, a microwave. Joex selected a
ramen package and an individual packet of freeze-dried vegetables; Serena
prepared it for him and a similar snack for herself. Serena and he broke the
silence only once. She simply repeated, “You did very well.” Joex had to catch
himself pausing too long looking at a particular feature of his host.

“I do want more,” Joex said directly to her blue
and gold-flecked eyes.

She restored the kitchen niche to its original
state and shuttered its entrance. She then simply and abruptly said to Joex,
“Goodnight Jim. See you tomorrow. ” She turned and walked into the scriptorium.
That was it.

Joex thought of nothing to say so he walked out the
stone arcade the way he had come in; it was surprisingly warm outside in the
Portland air. He walked windward on a street lit with only two working yellow
sodium-vapor lamps several blocks apart. From there it took about forty minutes
for him to reach the bus station. Paradoxically as Joex receded from the Church
of the Crux, Serena and the Games Machine, he felt the anxiety return to his
stomach and shoulders. At the station, a very bored and tired security guard
casually examined him. Joex chose the cleanest of the rows of red molded seats,
the ones with the drainage holes in the center. The fixed armrests prevented
him from stretching out.

From paralyzing fear to exultation in taking the
church introductory program. How could such a system of evil and control
possibly have such intoxicating beauty? As he fell into a disturbed sleep
dreaming of men sharing the back of an old cathode ray tube as if it were a
nipple, Joex awoke in confusion whether he was thinking about the Games Machine
or Serena with the bifurcated eyes. Again, the erection.

The weather off the East river was not yet what
could be called hot, but it was humid and gusty. The young gentleman sat for a
moment on the bench to watch the water taxi plow through the whitecaps and
listen to the chugging of the helicopters landing at the heliport. He dressed
in a way that he deemed modest, an off-the-rack suit: a ten-thousand dollar
Brioni. This
was
modest for the chief executive officer and chair of the
board of one of the worlds’ greatest credit ratings agency. “Qu,” as he was
known to the Triax, was attending an angelic conclave at a secure Church of the
Crux meeting chapter-room in downtown Manhattan. Now 666 E 34th St. was not its
actual address; in reality it was the most central office between the three full
floors leased by the Church, but that was how Qu marked it in his calendar. In
a few minutes, he would be meeting “Wu” and “Xi” for a presentation by a person
introduced by the Dominion Cassandra Jones of the New York parich.

Qu felt that the business of business was an
ideology unto itself; what the business schools taught in leadership,
marketing, finance analytics, law, and laughably, ethics, was the window
dressing, the shroud of respectability covering the stench of the guts of
perjury, grand theft, conspiracy, wire and mail fraud, money laundering, and,
perhaps now if his intimations were correct, treason.

It wasn’t just the money; that—like the Wharton or
Sloan curriculum—was just the numbers that appeared on the scoreboard so the
crowds would know who to cheer. Rather, it was the exercise of power in such a
way as it fed back unto itself, amplifying, a musical oscillation that eventually
shook the world. For the musician, the world itself would shed, over time, what
was inessential from the expression of pure power. Despite what crimes or evil
he might do, his daughters would rise gilded with the accrued wealth and
influence, but retaining nothing of the stink of the work necessary for their
father to accumulate it. The world would remember his power, but forget his
sins. Carnegie library. Frick museum. Stanford University. Rhodes scholarship.
Nobel Prize.

For him? Perhaps a wildlife preserve. Yes. That
would be perfect. From the wilderness springs life; green, natural; biodiversity
is really another name for a bonobo raping and eating its own young. He rose,
brushed his top coat lightly and turned from the river to his meeting.

Dominion Jones, Esq. introduced her two foreign visitors
she simply referred to singularly as the “Angel” to the members of the Triax. Dominion
Jones was tall and was wearing her customary costume: a tailored dark grey
suit, almost charcoal. Despite the weather and working within the heart of the
Church offices,  long black leather gloves, which seemed almost gauntlets, Qu
thought. Her black hair was straight and long. It usually hung loose over her
shoulders. Her appearance was striking, which probably explained why she didn’t
speak more than the minimum she needed to accomplish what she wanted. Although
the three men of the Triax—world’s most influential credit rating agencies—knew
each other well in the external world of Aaa to D, investment grades, watches, warnings,
events, downgrades, and worthless default junk, they persisted in substituting
their Triax names when thinking about themselves and each other, as if this
were a fairy tale that was walled off from the world, deniable to both authorities
and to themselves at, night, fearing the instant penetration of pure reflection
just before falling asleep. In the meeting as if a cosplay, they were changed over
from their suits: they also wore reflective robes of pure silk over their
nakedness. The Church ceremonial robes had adornments of golden thread devices
and cartouches and symbols of the crux representing the intersecting dimensions
of the mind.

“Angel 1” had travelled a long way from Beijing
with his assistant, a quiet man, also with military-length jet black hair. An
early middle-aged man not quite finished with youth, Angel 1 spoke with a
Chinese-accent in otherwise beautiful English. Its cadence suggested a military
background, while its contents suggested a man sentimental in love, or dying: “The
five agents are in dance, from a distance it may be a martial exercise, but it
may also be a motion of love, or the predicate movements of an impending
surgery. They have labored for thousands of years and now are ready to meet
their successors. The Wood feeds Fire. Will you be consumed or will you create
the Earth?”

Angel 1 paused for a moment and looked at each of
the puzzled three as a reflective uncle, kindly, but a moment too long for
simple affection.

“I am sorry to wax poetical. A weakness, an
affectation. I have many. Let me plainly speak rather as a tradesman. “In a few
days, or weeks, the event will happen. I cannot tell you what it is because-as
in the self-fulfilling prophecies of your own assessments—its swiftness and secrecy
is a crucial source of its power. He glanced at the Dominion, who seemed motionless,
watching and listening. “You will know when it happens. It will be a shock,
seemingly a devastation that will affect all affairs in the United States and
the world.

“But that is only its appearance. The truth is that
it will mark the shēng of the new cycle of which you will be a part.”

“Simply, you must trumpet the disaster which will
help it to reach the energy needed to reach ignition. The brightness of the
match unites the sun and the air in the dry reed. Keeping a bundle of reeds
warm, no matter how long, is worthless to build a fire. Let me be even plainer:
each of you will rate the United States debt as D, in default, simultaneously
to this cataclysm. You will use your personal judgment, you will not hesitate,
you will not wait for each other, and you will not await direction or counsel. You
will act separately but in unison. You will publish this rating as widely and
as quickly as it is possible to do so.” “And your assessment will be accurate;
the default event will automatically trigger a cascade of further defaults and
credit events from state to county to city, to the smallest district and
village.”

Angel paused. He took from the breast pocket of a
new cheap suit a handful of chopsticks. His right hand was twisted into a claw,
which the three bankers stared at as if a dragon’s mouth. The sticks themselves
were intricately carved of a dark wood, six sticks. “These are your yarrow
sticks; this is your fortune. Each choose a matching pair and keep them safe.”
Angel threw them down on the parquetry of the table.

Parichoner Qu randomly chose two matching sticks
and looked at them closely. Parichoner Wu and Xi each took a pair of the
remaining, alternating one at a time as if they were playing a game of pick up
sticks. They carefully did not move any but their chosen stick.

Between the cosmological emblazons, what appeared
to be a long sequence of roman numbers and letters were carved as if twining foliage
into the circumference of the dark cherry wood cylinders.

“At the International Bank of Beijing you each have
an account. To be specific, each account contains one thousand million United
States dollars denominated in Renminbi, or if you choose, redeemable in gold,
real estate, or a lifetime position of extreme political influence within the
provinces.” They are anonymous. Whoever has the numbers on your chopsticks can
access these accounts.” He paused and waited until the three men were staring
at him in full attention. “But you may not access your account until the ash
begins to form the earth.”

Finished, the Angel visitor began to rise in
dismissal. Parichoner Qu began to speak, but was silenced with Angel’s graceful
palm forcefully interposed between them.

“I need to be clear as water in a forgotten mountain
cistern. But this is not about cisterns,” he smiled. “This is not a revolution,
this is not a war, this is not a movement, this is not a coup, this is not a
subversion or utopia, and this is not an ideology or culture. This is a new
civilization. Your accounts are nothing, they are the silk, the cocoon, but the
pupa inside is what is important. The moth discards the silk, but only seeks to
fly where the silk can never see. You are welcome to this discarded silk, this wealth.
It is trivial.”

Angel 1 finished rising. His assistant remained
seated and looked upward at his master as if for direction, from a son to his
father. With his twisted right hand, Angel dipped into his hip pocket and with
two fingers took out a suppressed Baby Browning .25 ACP with brilliant green
grips. He put it on the table and swapped it somewhat clumsily to his good left
hand. The Angel then put the pistol under his assistant’s chin and fired a
single shot into his head. The three Triax twitched involuntarily but stared
without comment at the slumping assistant.

Angel 1 then put the pistol on the table and
politely waited for Dominion Jones to undog the chapter-room door and opened it
for him quietly to leave. The first leg of his return flight to Beijing was in
less than an hour. He did not say anything further nor did he ask for
questions.