Despair is normally seen as an internal matter, but its effects can be far-reaching. And when one individual's despair threatens to engulf the entire universe, then it's time for the reality-maintenance crew to go into action... "I am the hair stylist of all the children raised by wolves. I tie the Iceman's shoes before he goes out to play. I am all the little people you have to look up to. I am everything no one else could ever be. I am all that is not. I replace the giant elastic bands that make jet airliners fly. I repaint the moon every spring. I keep all the superstrings in tune. I am the transcendent awareness in New Age whales. I am the disease that kills off the sun every night. I am behind you right now with an ax raised to kill. I am the insurance salesman hiring hitmen. I nail the Easter Bunny up on a cross every year. My image cannot be seen reflected in really clean dishes. I am not concerned with efficiency. I weed your neighbor's lawn while you sleep. I am background noise. I manipulate armed conflict worldwide because if I don't someone else will. I am completely invisible to radar when in close proximity to cheesecake. I can name all the bodies in the N Body Problem. In fact, they're my close personal friends. I am without hope, and without cable. I am not overloaded by sound bites, and I have not been properly desensitized to violence. I am uncivilized and unfit for human consumption. I do not supply the US RDA of plutonium. I train killer llamas and disguise them as pit bulls. I am the apathetic fanatic. He who is without scarves is truly without virtue. I am beyond all this. I am content to fall from this airplane, this window, this degrading elliptical orbit. I over-generalize, but I always end up unnoticed after the dust clears. Heads you win, tails I lose. I am the least important card in the deck. I am the holes in your socks. I am the fleas on your cat. I am the young lamprey sucking its thumb. All things must grind to inconclusion. I am the antithesis of understanding. I was your teacher's teacher, but you're stuck with the grade. I am not loss, but I am the child crushed beneath what you carelessly dropped. I am the unintended destruction caused by your every reckless move. I believe all commercials. Brand Y soda will not merely make me socially acceptable and even popular, but it will cure these horrific sores that cover my arms and keep me awake at night with their constant screaming. I am anaerobic respiration. I am pathological recursion. I swapped the swapper. I am bright pink but that's only the paint. I grow new appendages every day, and I donate the defective ones to charity. I understand why we have disease and suffering in this perfect universe. I am madly optimistic. I am omniscient regarding failure and suffering, and blind to success and happiness, yet I still sing the praises of our world. I am the tone police that drag me away for singing out of key. I am executed and I watch down the sights of my rifle as my head jerks back and I crumple into dust. I am alone and calm. The storm has passed and I am a single mind at last. I am a child making mud-pies beneath the wall where I fell, though that memory fades as a cloud passes and a bright bream of light washes my former life clean away." "Yeah well, that position is already filled, but we'll keep your resume on file in case anything related comes up, OK?" "OK. There's an answering machine on that line, so call anytime." "Right." I watch as he turns and picks his way carefully back down our treacherous front-entrance cliff path. The statistical probabilities of death that people will endure just to put in a job application these days are amazing. I resolve to remove the camouflage from the entrance to the elevator. It's silly not to use it. We follow the mulchpile filing methodology here at headquarters, so I throw the papers he gave me into the corner. 0x1B will enjoy them, even if we never call him back for anything. (Perhaps 1B will find something relevant before we do. Our cat's budget allocation is small, but he's surprisingly frugal.) For the moment he seems content to bat them around and do battle with the imaginary creatures hiding behind them. "Hey Glump - someone just applied for your job." "I miss one day of work and Yordie over there puts a help wanted ad out!" he grunts, gesturing to the bristling half-visible occupant of the corner bean-bag. "You should tell us if you're not coming in, you knew in advance you were going to be out that day, and don't call me Yordie." "Well, it was job-related-" "Get a life! You're not a rock critic, and narcotics trafficking wasn't a part of your job description last time I checked." "Yeah yeah. It was therapeutic. That reminds me - did you get the tax forms for declaring illicit drugs a business expense as a freelance artist?" "Nope, still don't exist. Our last IRS mole android had some minor technical glitch and exploded." "Major minor, dude." "The glitch was minor - nothing more than a slight deviation in the slope of a wave edge on the thing's main memory bus, and it was within operating specs. Some marginal chip couldn't cope though. The results were major, the glitch was minor." Yordie's always defensive about his designs. We can be staring a complete core meltdown face to face and he'll be arguing the distinction between the theoretical design of the system and the deviations in this implementation. Good thing his subconscious is so good at survival - he never pays attention, even when you shoot at him. "We gotta avoid cheap parts in our androids." "Can we-" "No, you can't take the difference out of my pay, asshole." Yordie just grinned and sunk back into his former full-sloth position. I work with lunatics. Luckily, they're inspired lunatics, and our work is our art. I had numerous sub-pleasant employment situations prior to coming here and if I had to go back to functioning within that economic context, I think I'd end up homeless. Reality maintenance is simply the most interdisciplinary pursuit possible within the context of a given universe, and our team is only responsible for a certain range of tuning and prodding that manages to completely avoid the grind side of things. The Gravity division for example, was a semi-miserable place to work before they automated the worst of it. What's left is interesting, if not invigorating. Well, I wouldn't get off on it, but apparently they do. (I suppose that's why they do what they do and I don't.) The paperwork was bad until we got the fireplace installed. Noticing that Yordie and Glump have restarted their debate about large-scale standing wave phenomena in economic systems, I grab the nearest set of headphones (we installed them at three foot intervals along all walls, but most have become "temporarily" detached for one reason or another. I say it's because our secretary is growing new heads in the basement, but I've never actually caught more than one or two sets down there.) the nearest bag of junk food (we only keep food labeled with "NOT FOOD" price stickers on hand) and aim for a sofa. Laze is short-lived as normal - some moron in the next room actually answered the telephone. Rookie. The voice on the line brings me back to the situation at hand, but the situation is too involved to be worth trying to fully explain over the phone, so I get their lat/long and tell them to sit tight. A few words to our secretary to cancel my scheduled meetings, and I grab the relevant case info hot off the printer, open up the front window and jump through. A few seconds of rushing wind and gyrating visions of cliff walls, blue sky, and black canyon, followed by a sickening splat as I am smeared across a section of rock protruding from the cliff wall, and I roll out of bed. Slowly reorienting from the shift in inertial context, I open up my bag and skim through my notebook for background information. Time, technology, culture, politics, target individuals, and primary goals. I must act quickly to intercept a growing despair of dangerous potential. Normal human despair is a purely internal matter for each individual, but this particular case regards the nature of the universe, not simple human matters. Placing our entire universe within a perspective of triviality poses a serious threat to all creatures living therein. It could be worse though. At least he wasn't bitching about pi or e. I can't deal with that. A sudden knock on the door brings my concerns back to the immediate. I am just preparing myself to bluff the unknown, when the door is flung wide open and two huge men stand threateningly in full view. One stares at me with a grin of pure evil on his face as the other calmly runs his hand over the frame of the door. "Shall we take this one then?" "Damn straight. We're lookin at a good ten dollars just beggin to be hauled off." They grin furiously. "You keep him from screaming, I'll get the tools." The bulkier of the two steps into the room and shows me his fists. "You don't wanna be makin any noise now, right?" I manage to break my paralysis of horror just enough to creak "OK" and nod my head slightly. A second later his companion returns holding a crowbar and a small assortment of other tools of destruction. They lose no time. My guard moves a bit closer, and his fists seem to grow a few inches in my transfixed gaze. The other drops everything but the crowbar, and in a few short, precise jerks, has ripped the door and half the door frame off the wall. A look of complete victory appears on my guard's face, and my body sags into a completely limp collapse of terror-stricken relief. As I pass out, I hear them dragging the wood away, singing some victory song about Sumerian might... When I wake again, it's dark and cold from the breeze coming in through the ex-door. As a general rule, I try not to let external events have any effect on me, so I get up, grab my bag, and leave. I finally find him lying in the middle of a field. (Gotta talk to our secretary about the bio sheets - "Four limbs, attached peripherally around the torso, with sensory pods growing from two opposite ends, one high-priority/low-resolution, the other low- priority/high-resolution." I do not - I repeat I do not - want to know who we bought our database from. Nevertheless, I find "J---" with relative ease.) I break into his meditations: "Apathy's not all it's cracked up to be." He grins but keeps his eyes closed. "Perhaps. We don't always have much of a choice in these matters though." He looks up. "Oh, I thought you were from the cafe - who are you?" "I am he who walks unseen when no one is looking." He laughs. "OK. Anyone with that title is probably going to be entertaining company." He falls back to the dirt and darkness behind closed eyes. "What's up?" "Despair creates far-reaching ripples. You should consider the effects your state of mind has on the world around you." "No." He ponders a moment. "That's an unreasonable demand. My mind is the one thing that is mine and mine alone. The outside world can make no demands on my mind." "Your mind is the basis for all of your actions (including communication as action) with the outside world. You are responsible for this influence." He frowns at this. "You mix the worst of determinism with the worst of free choice." He considers this analysis for a moment, eyes staring into empty sky. "Bastard", he laughs. "Grow up. Denying the trail of influence you leave behind you is childish." At this he appears to wonder if I'm laughing with him or at him. "Who the fuck are you anyway?" "I've been sent to deal with your despair." "What do you know about me, and who sent you?" He seems a little touchy today. "That doesn't matter!" For once I raise my voice, and all pretension and demand is gone from his face. "You have something to learn through this conversation. Can't that be enough? Why fight what is worthwhile? You have enough obstacles to overcome as it is!" His face clearly shows that I've broken through. He can't even articulate an answer, merely nods. He thinks he's still tripping I suppose. "Listen. If a dog was born as an adult-sized head, which gradually grew a body, would you regard the lone head as a puppy?" I had hoped for at least a smile, but he looks like he's wondering if he could outrun me if he were to make a break for it. I laugh. "There are more ways of viewing the trivial details of the world at your feet than you can possibly imagine, yet you feel despair over some delusional concept of a boxed-in space?" He frowns, feeling both challenged, yet simultaneously returned to conceptual ground where he feels some degree of familiarity and reflex. "No, there are simple theoretical problems..." he trails off. I glance up, and see that he's staring in astonishment, mouth silently open, at a disembodied dog's head that just came scurrying up from behind me. The dog's head's movements provoke a chuckle from me - I just made up the idea, and hadn't realized how difficult locomotion for such a beast would be. A glance back at J--- is disappointing again - no smile, he seems to be slipping back towards terror. "You're nervous. I can understand that. I can almost sympathize. You are lost on the large scale, but fine on the small scale. I think you follow everything I say, sentence by sentence, but you're at a complete loss to understand the overall situation - motives, origins, et cetera. Yes?" "Isn't that how 'understanding' always works?" A hint of a smile cracks through his self-control and gives him away. I grin like a maniac. Humor always represents progress. "True, true - and promoting the illusion of understanding is one of this world's greatest skills." He smiles apprehensively at this. I wonder how many levels of irony he's parsing. Surely not enough. "I realize it's difficult ground I'm asking you to tread - forgoing basic understanding of the situation, and trying to work within that context. It's logically OK, but hairy emotionally. You'll get used to it." I am interrupted by a sudden thud and whining. Turning around, I see that the dog's head has run straight into a pole, and is limping away. Very faintly, I can hear the familiar voice of Yordie slipping between the folds of space - "...ported the code from the CRUISE MISSILE! You idiot! You knew perfectly well....". Ah... I don't think J--- heard it, so I make an offhand remark about the common problem puppies have running into poles. From J---'s expression, I don't think he buys it. Whatever. "What are the chances that when you die and face judgment before God, he's going to start babbling away about set theory, and your entire trial will take place mathematically over your head? Better start studying, eh?" Finally, he laughs. I am considering my next angle of attack, when an insane-looking dreadlocked freak somewhat reminiscent of a cross between Animal from the Muppets and Jesus Christ, leaps down from an overhanging sycamore branch. "Help fight ambient light! Climb trees, eat bugs! You are humans, act like it! Set your digital watch to precise local apparent time! Don't bow down to authoritarian high-granularity time zones! Does the Earth click 24 times with each rotation? No! And neither should you! Demand weather reports in Kelvin! Air conditioners are devices which modify the condition of the air in some way - heaters and humidifiers are air conditioners just as much as coolers are - do not be deceived!" He stops suddenly, smiles at each of us, glances down, says something under his breath, laughs, and casually leaps back up into the tree, where he quickly stretches out on a branch and falls asleep. I can see J--- awaiting an explanation of sorts from me out of the corner of my eye, but I'm as perplexed as he in this case. I look around for evidence of Yordie or Glump, to no avail. Did they invoke this as a lead-in, and I'm just not catching the references, or... A slight humming sound distracts me from my train of confusion, and I look up into the tree to see his entire body beginning to fade, starting from the extremities and working in towards his torso. Soon everything but his head has vanished, then his face, until nothing is left but a small herd of swaying dreadlocks, which fly off into the canopy of arching branches far overhead, with a faint chanting barely audible from the surrounding air repeating the phrase "Cat Whisker Soup, on sale now" until they simultaneously fade from eye and ear. I raise my hand to make the sky darken, and prepare the necessary theatrical scowl on my face, but nothing happens - the sky remains bright and clear. J--- obviously knows something's up, but he's so bewildered, he doesn't know if it's my problem or his, or something entirely unrelated. Good - I have no idea what's going on, and I'd rather not see my charge watch me desperately clutching at straws. "Very Wonderland. Let's go find that big caterpillar, eh?" he suggests, grinning excessively. Gee, how loudly can we proclaim our superficiality, eh dude? I don't comment. I've got real concerns. "Yordie?" I hiss under my breath. A slight crackling noise comes from the surrounding brush, and a sudden gust of wind throws dry leaves over both of us. I can dimly hear Yordie's voice in the crackling, and his form in the leaves, but there's obviously no way he can get through to me reliably enough to actually communicate. Well, at least he knows something's up... Another gust covers us with leaves, and as we're brushing them off our clothes, I notice that a piece of birch bark is covered in printing. It's from Yordie! CAN NOT TALK DIRECTLY STOP WE ARE FOLLOWING AND WATCHING AND WILL HELP WHENEVER POSSIBLE STOP GLUMP WORKING ON SOLUTION STOP THAT WAS THE KING OF THE LEMURS STOP YORD I wonder why he's sending birch-bark telegrams in fourth century uncials. His taste in lettering usually runs more towards the immediately post-Gutenburg scripts. I'll have to pursue this when we finally get out of here. I hope this historic regression in lettering isn't indicative of a withdrawal from imposing difficulty. If so, uncials don't show me promise of escape from my present dilemma. Alternatively this could indicate something of the technical limitations of the environment my support team is stuck in. My own restricted environment has made me forget that their inability to reach me indicates a restriction of action within their environment as well. Alas, what's a young girl to do? I've never heard of any Lemur King before. I wonder if this is his fault, or his appearance is another symptom of the underlying problem. Dwelling on static insurmountabilities is an extremely sublime form of futility, nevertheless, I must move on. "Let's go." J--- and I head off towards the woods past the field he was using as a bed. After a few minutes winding our way along well-traveled paths, we arrive at another field, this one filled with telephone poles of various sizes. "Harvest time's coming soon." J--- looks confused. We follow the edge of the field around to the far side (I don't want to know what kind of scavengers creepy-crawl through fields of telephone poles) and follow a short hill down to a stream. It has that northern- New-England boulder-filled-mountain-stream look that my feet find irresistible, and I'm soon bouncing from rock to rock over the boiling rapids, as enthralled as an eight year old. I stop next to a deep still pool protected from the current by a large boulder and overlooked by a steep bank covered with a thick carpet of moss and a handful of blinking neon flowers. A cunning pike can be seen in the depths. J--- is on the shore, obliviously crushing a few of the flowers. We both study the scene. "Is this art?" I ask. "No, it wasn't intended as art. There was no conscious activity behind this." "Then art is a function of intent, not perception." "Yes." "Beauty?" "Perception only. That includes perception by the artist, if any, of course." "So if this scene was actually synthetic, it would be art." "Oh. Yeah, it would." He appears a little perplexed. "Unless it was engineered for completely non-aesthetic reasons. Biological research for example." I smile. "OK. You can't call something art without knowing something of the artist." "If you found a painting of a sunset would you assume it was intended as art, with no knowledge about the creator?" "Yes. Some information about the creator is transmitted by the creation. That example would be obvious enough." "But if this scene were created synthetically by scientists doing biological research, wouldn't such an awesome accomplishment qualify this as a work of art within the scientific domain?" We babble pointlessly for a while on this subject. I probe for a bit regarding the ideals of art and the pursuit of aesthetics, then lecture for a while about how totally abstract art is the highest form, as it does not rely on any comprehensible message to invoke a reaction in the viewer. He disagrees, arguing the stock utilitarian function of art in a dynamic society, la la la. I grow bored. A sudden splash between us takes us both by surprise, and I almost slip off my rock perch. As the ripples fade we can see the cunning pike at the bottom of the pool engaged in mortal combat with a writhing and wounded extended metaphor. An unexpected twist givesthe metaphor a moment's freedom from the deadly pike jaws, and it flashes to the surface. With one last flip of its tail, the metaphor arches through the air and lands safely in the inflation rate of J---'s trendy new sneakers. The pike is close behind and makes a desperate swipe at the disappearing tail, but only succeeds in gouging a chunk of flesh out of J---'s ankle. The metaphor has safely escaped to a new level of abstraction. Cries of surprise and pain are offset by the Christmas-like look of fresh blood on lush moss. I start humming something about Rudolf as I bandage the wound. "The excessive price you paid for fashion saved another from a horrible pike death. You have to consider whether or not the high degree of good that came of this is more valuable than the low degree of physical damage you received." My intended slide into an economics lecture is cut short by the reappearance of the Lemurian Loon crouched on a tree branch a few feet overhead: "Fashion over function! Fashion before dishonor! We fashion fashion to suit our suitors, yet death's grim jaws are fled instead. Is this intent, my furry friend? Do noble gains from greedy games bring passion's goal to end in flames?" He tilts his head, leans down to get a closer look, opens his eyes wide, and whistles softly. "You bleed so pretty!" He turns, and leaps into a nearby Owl, which yawns and returns to its dreams. J--- is still obviously in pain, so I rummage through my bag for a light analgesic. I find a little bottle of acetaminophen, but it has an expiration date of six years ago. Oops. I wonder why I never noticed that before. I guess I just don't get headaches. I take two anyway. At least Lemurman isn't being confrontational. Some vague idea about his motives would be useful, but I can function without it. I hope he's acting of his own volition, though. If it's art, it's good art. If it's strategy, I'm screwed. I accidentally step on J---'s bandaged ankle as I start out down the path. I'd forgotten about him, in my whirling internal dialogue. "Get up get up get up!" I give him a hand to his surprise. "Where are we going?" he whimpers. Odd that he hadn't asked that before. I mutter to myself as I quickly proceed down the forest path. Debate and arguments flourish and disappear within my mind and I forget that it's all in my head. As I walk, I converse at length and effortlessly leap from context to context. My subconscious handles navigation and I successfully follow the twisting path without even knowing where I am. J--- might hear my muttering, but he doesn't know that I'm not really here. My forward march is suddenly brought up short by a strange sight that reaches through my peripheral vision and grabs my attention. A low triangular door sits nestled between two gigantic roots. I assume it leads into some small hollow carved out beneath the roots of the giant tree, perhaps home to dwarves or hippies, until I see the flashing neon "OPEN" sign a few feet to the side, and "Yog-Sothoth's Used Books" carved into a huge piece of brain coral sitting just beneath it. (Funny, I've never seen live coral out of water before. Even the barnacles scattered over the surface seem to be happily feeding in the light breeze. (Change of diet, certainly.) "Yow. A used bookstore I don't know! This is most unusual." J--- seems to share my curiosity, and perhaps a little of my excitement. The name is familiar, but I can't immediately place it. Perhaps I've dealt with this Yog person via mail order at some point? Not unlikely. I gesture towards the store. "We go from what is real to what is illusion and abstraction. Or do we go from what is ephemeral and pass to the concrete thoughts shared in common by complete strangers who have read the same work? What has more lasting solidity - your act of physically walking down a forest path just now, or a character in a book read by millions doing the same? Which is more important and exerts more influence in the world at large? What if someone writes about this conversation? 'Smile, you're in print!' What if I'm speaking of an event from a non- existent book, and someone writes about this conversation? What level of existence does that event have? Can you possibly compete? Why do you even bother?" I leave J--- to grapple with these reassuring thoughts, and turn to enter the store. He follows silently. I'm used to people who stand up for their beliefs and ideas. An intellectual challenge is not a confrontation, it is an exploration. If he won't defend his views then they are not worth viewing. Weeding weeds out the weeds. I am harshest with those of whom I think most highly. The store seems quite open and spacious considering the location and construction. The overhead tree is evidenced in the living bark of the ceiling, but the effect is not at all claustrophobic. The floor and walls are stone, and the wood bookshelves are a random mix of boards and living roots. Oversized editions are displayed on a table opposite the front door, and various objets d'art are scattered throughout the room. A few individuals stand in front of shelves, scanning titles or examining their finds. I wander to an unoccupied section and slip into the standard book-browsing trance - authors, titles, and years forming an inaudible chant on my lips. They have a few interesting books of literary criticism: the highly regarded and oft-quoted, but extremely rare Eich and Pynchon: The Doppelganger Goal, and the monumental Psychology and Dystopia: Wilhelm Reich in 1984.. Unfortunately, both are priced at about what they're worth to collectors, which puts them way out of my range. The proprietor wanders by and I catch his attention. "Do you have Bill Knuth's Properties of the Null Set ?" Unlikely, but always worth checking. "I'm sorry - I did have one complete set of the twelve-volume edition, but a young man named Evariste bought it a while back. He traded me some unopened texts on marksmanship for it if I remember correctly." He seems to find something very ironic about this, but doesn't look as if he's going to explain himself. OK. "Any Trout other than Venus?" "Yes, we have a large Trout collection in the Sci-Fi with Irrelevant Covers section two levels down." The front room is primarily rare and collectable editions, most in glass cases, and all beyond my budget, so we head through one of the book-lined hallways leading further back. An occasional root sticking out between bookcases reminds me of the location of this building. The only burrowing mammals I see, however, are a few moles busily scanning through some atlases in the References section. I make out a few words of their agitated twittering as we pass. They seem to be looking for something referred to only as "another land" that's connected with some sort of "new machine" of unspecified function and technological basis. They appear quite unhappy. The twisting passage becomes a book-lined spiral staircase, and the selection fades into something more to my liking. I've found a few nice hardcovers I needed and decide it's time to continue on our way. J--- seems completely bewildered when I suggest leaving, then shakes his head to clear away the cobwebs and agrees. A very seductive store. We head back through the narrow aisles and crouch to go through the low doors back towards the spiral staircase, but fail to find it. All the stairs we encounter lead to further depths. We circle for a while through this maze, half book-browsing, half seeking an exit. After a while I realize how frequently I've been looking at books instead of corridors, and that we've been trying to get out for several hours. We're getting a little desperate by now. Clearly this is more than simply a case of being lost and disoriented. No matter which way we turn the floor slopes downwards and leads us to inescapable depths. I know we're not merely traveling in circles, as the passages are easily identifiable. We haven't passed any shelves containing books in a recognizable human tongue in at least ten minutes. My growing anger and agitation almost makes me ignore a little pamphlet sitting flat on an end table between two shelves. It's printed in English, and what's more, it's title is my name. It's only a few pages, but at the moment it's the most important text in the entire building. I open it. It's another message from Yordie! Having gone forth in unknown directions in strange and mysterious lands, Having become quickly lost and confused in the bewildering traps of thine unseen and hidden enemies, Having thus become lacking in spirit and joy, seeking merely an escape from thy toils and burdens, thy wanderings having taken on a certain sense of urgency, Thou art Advised herein on the Path leading thou Out of this Wasteland of Despair. Seek A Chill Breeze, for it Blows Forth from the Avenue of Your Salvation. Next Page Copyright Circuit Traces Communications 1995-1996.