Third Class Superhero (8 page)

I ask her what she is doing here in the middle of the night.

"I can't sleep," she says. "So I came here to work. I want to do a good job for this Family."

I want to say, How can you do this? What do you think you are doing? You can't state the premise. You can't just say that you are Sad, that you want to be Comforted. There are rules, and there are times and places and manners for Showing Tenderness. I want to say, don't say it. It's better if you don't say it. But she is so small and she is a stranger and all I can manage to mumble is "great job," not knowing what to do but lie.

"Thanks," she says, looking at me quickly before slipping into her room.

***

A week later, I show up on the set and the new Me is already standing there, talking to the writers. I guess I should have seen it coming. What with the new woman and her way of doing things and also the discovery of Jake and who he is and how little he cares about playing My Brother. I should have seen the direction things were going.

People in the crew look at me like they have never seen me before—makeup, grips, guys I've known for years. Just like that, I am nothing to them, now that I am no longer Me. I wander around, fingering the cheese cubes on the snack table and smoking cigarettes, trying not to watch Me, but watching Me anyway. He's about the same height, maybe a hair taller, and has a sunken look to him. They're shooting "Dinner Is Great, Ma." I see Jake standing in the corner. He waves and comes over.

"Sorry you had to find out like this, man."

"When did you know?"

"I didn't."

"I don't believe you." Film is rolling. Someone shushes us. We watch for a while. Then I see that Jake has been replaced, too. Some college guy, full in the shoulders, with the cuffs of his Oxford button-down rolled over his meaty forearms. He looks like he's straight from a catalog.

"This guy sucks at Tinged With Melancholy," I say, out of jealousy. And it's true.

"Yeah."

"I mean, he really sucks at it."

"Yeah. He sucks."

"What?"

"What?"

"You're thinking something."

"No, I'm not," he protests. I give him a look.

"It's just that, well, I mean, don't get me wrong, you're good at it, you were very good at it and when it was on it was on."

"But."

"But, well, why did it always have to be Tinged With Melancholy?"

Then I see his point. A huge pit opens up in my stomach and my cheeks get hot and the tops of my ears, too.

The way the new Me says his lines, he hits Comfort right on the head. His pronunciation of "buttery," his rich, liquid sounding of the word "beans." He is so good everyone forgets they are watching a show. It gets very quiet. Crew guys stop talking.

Already my fumbling attempts embarrass me because I can see My Mother is Happy. Already I wonder if she, if anyone watching, will ever miss my flawed puny experiments, my willingness to be Melancholy, my amateur efforts to properly Love My Mother. My search for happiness through Sadness.

The new Me can't do Melancholy, but he can do pretty much everything else. He can do Tedium. He can do Ironic. He can even do Secret Joy. The advanced stuff. But the thing is, I get the sense he doesn't even know the names. He doesn't think: Now Me should tilt his head this way and furrow his brow just so to Self-Deprecate, to Commiserate. He's past that. Where I played wobbly individual notes, he plays chords. Huge, booming, double chords, eight, nine, ten notes struck simultaneously, with differing amounts of force, all of it coming out together.

I wonder, why did I always have to tinge everything with Melancholy? Why did I think it was all about Interactions? Why did I have to capitalize every Emotion? Why didn't anyone explain that all I had to do was lean down, crouch down, and forget the script and ignore the weird smell coming from her and say, to My Mother and to the strange woman in the fat suit: I'm Sorry uppercase and I'm sorry lowercase and I Love You and I love you and I'm here, Your Son, a stranger, a guy trying to play him. We're all right here.

1
The highest score of all time was recorded on July 24, 2016.

2
On that date, Wally Kushner, age seven, of Eureka, CA, achieved a point total of 1,356,888, including all bonuses.

3
Using a modified Stupps-Kinsky approach (1973), Wally conducted a single-session game lasting more than nine thousand rounds. In total, he played for eleven days, six hours, twenty-four minutes, and three seconds.

4
Wally's mother kept time. She also fed Wally and wiped down his face and neck with a damp washcloth. She did this twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening.

At the conclusion of the game, Wally, then seated cross-legged on the floor of his bedroom, looked up at his mother. He asked her, "Are you proud of me?" Wally's mother was very proud.

5
The game begins when a player walks into a room and announces a statement. The statement can be a truth or a falsehood. If another player is in the vicinity and hears the announcement and if such other player has his setting switched on to Accept Truths, then the program will engage. The subroutines will be loaded. This is the beginning of a game and this is how a game always begins.

6
During his marathon effort, Wally consumed forty-three bologna-and-cheese sandwiches, seven and a half gallons of orange juice, and one hundred ninety-one Oreos. His average pulse during the game was a placid sixty-four beats per minute. Doctors monitoring Wally noted his almost total lack of perspiration.

7
The program run-time summary from Wally's record session reported that Player 1, controlled by Wally, made exactly nine thousand and forty statements. Of these, five thousand were statements about the world, four thousand were statements about other players, thirty were statements about himself, ten were statements about all of the above.

Seven thousand five hundred statements Wally made were true, one thousand five hundred were false, sixty statements were both true and false, ten statements were neither true nor false, one statement was false and beautiful, one statement was neither true nor false nor beautiful, but it was funny and sad and sweet and, on top of it all, grammatically correct.

8
The basic tool in the game is the eye-looking vector. Each player has one. The eye-looking vector starts from the center of the player's head and extends forward, parallel to the sagittal plane and orthogonally to the coronal plane of the player's body. Players can point their eye-looking vectors in a ninety-degree peripheral field of vision from their line of forward orientation.

9
Another important tool in the game is the vector-accepting eye. A vector-accepting eye is the same as an eye-looking vector. They are two names for the same thing, but they are described with different terms, depending on the current polarization of the players.

10
A general rule of thumb is this: When a player is announcing the truth, he looks with an eye-looking vector. When a player is accepting the truth, he accepts with a vector-accepting eye.

11
The average eye-looking vector is three yards long. Within the range of the eye-looking vector, a player can absorb data and make true statements about the world. The length and spatial orientation of the eye-looking vector determine the statements about the world that can be made. The longer the eye-looking vector, the more statements a player can make about the world. These might be true or false, beautiful or not beautiful, but these are the only statements that can be made.

Note, however, that even a very long eye-looking vector cannot help a player make statements about other players. More about this later.

12
Wally began his game by choosing Player 1.

13
Each player must assume certain things about himself.

14
Wally chose the Husband-Wife module.

He assumed the following:

"I am thirty-seven years old."

"I make more than I deserve."

"I have a beautiful wife. I know this because everyone tells me so."

"As far as I can tell, I have no attachments to anyone or anything in the entire world."

15
Other modules include Brother-Brother, Father-Son, and Total Strangers.

16
Mirrors are an interesting feature of the game. A mirror will turn a vector in a different direction. Mirrors can confuse the difference between eye-looking vectors and vector-accepting eyes. Another feature is the black box. Not much is known about the black box.

The Sorry Feature has been updated for more realistic game play, especially between lovers or strangers.

18
Another updated feature of the game is Common Knowledge. Common Knowledge is activated in the following situation. If Player 1 walks into a room and makes a true statement and Player 2 is within range and hears the truth of the statement, Common Knowledge may be attained. What has to happen is that Player 1 must utter the true statement while pointing his eye-looking vector in the direction of Player 2's vector-accepting eye. Player 2 hears the truth and knows it. Because Player 1 is eye-looking, Player 1 knows that Player 2 knows the truth. Because Player 2 is eye-looking, Player 2 knows that Player 1 knows that Player 2 knows the truth. Likewise, Player 1 knows that Player 2 knows that Player 1 knows that Player 2 knows the truth. An infinite hierarchy of knowledge is created. This can be depicted as a spiral between the players, each one knowing an infinite number of truths about the other.

19
Wally writes:

A lot of people spend too much time deciding between Player 1 versus Player 2. This is the first mistake, in my estimation. Everyone I talk to wants to know how I got my high score, but when I tell them, they refuse to believe. Most readers of your magazine will not believe it either, I'm afraid, but I'll say it again anyway, in case anyone out there is open-minded.

20
Wally also notes:

Sorry is not what it seems to be. This is the main thing that makes me different from your average player.

Your average weekend player thinks Sorry is used as a defensive measure, to block eye-looking vectors.

The professional uses Sorry as a neutral move.

21
Wally concludes:

When the amateur says Sorry, he means: I wish that had not happened, but the world is what the world is.

When the player of strength says Sorry, he means: That happened.

***

Neat Trick: Also, thanks to Wayne Garza of Grand Rapids, MI, for the Trick of the Month.

Wayne writes:

Common Knowledge works in the mirror, too. To use it, go into Player l's house. This is at the very beginning of the game. The program will place you in the town square. Walk two units south and one unit west. Find the white house with a blue roof. Go in. (The door will be locked. The key is under the mat.)

Our staffers have verified that Wayne's tip works. To try it for yourself, follow these directions:

A. From the entrance, go down the main hall to the second door on the right. This is the guest bathroom. Turn on the shower. Make sure the water is very hot. Close the door and let the bathroom fill with steam.

B. When the mirror is cloudy and opaque with the condensation from water vapor, stand in front of the mirror, about a foot to eighteen inches away. This is the optimal length for all eye-looking vectors. At this length, an eye-looking vector has unique properties. Use your hand to wipe off a small area—maybe six inches by three inches—from the glass so that the mirror can reflect your eye-looking vector. Now look at yourself. Keep looking. Do not look away. Stand still. Do not look away. The game will ask you over and over again if you want to look away. Resist the temptation. Note what is happening. Your eye-looking vector will begin bouncing off the mirror and into your reflection's vector-accepting eye, and then back out again. The vector will keep bouncing, back and forth, into the mirror and then out, into your own head, and back.

C. After a while, small windows will pop up and the game will ask you over and over again: Are you sure Are you sure Are you sure Are you sure? Click away all of these little boxes. New windows will spring forth, asking if you want to terminate the subroutine. The game will assume there has been some kind of error. Keep clicking these closed, too. Stand still and whatever you do, do not look away.

D. If you wait long enough, the game will give up and override the defaults. It will recognize your reflection in the mirror as a different player, Player 2. Now you are Player 1 and your reflection is Player 2.

Now, say you are sorry. Say a true thing. You will know it and you will know you know it and you will know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know it. You will know an infinite number of things about yourself, an infinite regress, telescoping up to a vanishing point, a hierarchy of statements, longer and longer, more and more abstract, receding into the distance, farther and farther from the world, none of them beautiful, all of them true.

MY MOTHER IS READING A BOOK
called
Realism
.

It is a collection of stories, arranged like a museum. She bought it for herself. For her birthday. She is hoping it will help her understand her life better.

"Why do they call it realism?" she asks.

"It's not really realism," I explain. "Realism is just another way of choosing facts about the world."

"That's confusing," she says.

I say to her: You take a person and list some of her physical attributes. Make them seem significant.

I say: You accumulate details, where that person lives, what she likes to eat, what she sees from her kitchen window every morning.

I say: You make time flow evenly, in a straight line, one instant to the next. Events occur in some logical order.