Did you guys see the new Coetzee, The Pole?
10.6
The beauty industry was gonna be insectoid. There’d be dress up for the carapace, in painted patterns, and hairy backwards-jointed legs shaved into landing strips with miniature whetstones. As long as there were eyestalks, mascara would be made to run most fetchingly. Since everyone would molt, the rich would differentiate themselves with brand-name armor worn on soft-shell days. Mere advancement would continue to be hindered.
Our heroine had followers and they were most concerned. Circumstances found that they had crossed each other out when she lived in California. She could send a lookout anytime. She’d done it plenty for her friends. Go online, friend the guy, be overly Platonic, wait to see if he would flirt. Then report back to vested interest. Her girlfriend would then break it off when they were young, waffle more as they grew older, claim a fuzzy area the first time she went single to a wedding, then switch her major to RN and aim for residents. Divorced middle-aged men will join a Filipino church with that same victory in mind.
Much of the world walks around trying to put themselves into a predictable compliance. They want pleasure on the cheap. They stand with those for whom the scientific method played no role in having cars and cellphones. Indignance does not matter to them, they do not see themselves that way. Things are only as they see them, and they will be rewarded once they’re dead. Do not attempt to talk them out of this. The people who get rich off it will become very cross with you.
Technology has caught up with their subjugated lust. Now they have a methane pipeline to the masses. It goes right into their hands, will ring and buzz when the gang in charge shits out a new decree. It is a fine mechanism for removing moral quandary from people born with consciences. The ad-speak gives commands. Then the people are not hurting others, they’re just following commands. The people pick up on this ill communication. The assertions do not cease.
In groups some people will excel in machinations that will keep their place, their seat at court. Alliances and purges move them up. Our heroine had not asked for a seat but there was one reserved for her all the same. It was most natural for her to sit in it. A guy would be along in moments then to whisper in her ear. Then she knew she was included. The result would be new tries of everything, a reduction of boredom. That alone was worth her service to the group. Ruthlessness will sneak up on her, first in just looking off when somebody is banished, then repeating the magic phrase on someone else, then by accepting a weapon, pointing weapons at them, and helping dig their grave. She’d learn that there were no payments worth it for her otherwise. Since entropy’s unstoppable, the only way around it was for her to give herself permission to let orders be the cause.
The bug of disappointment begins crawling. Its extended eyelashes are longer than its hairs. Each of its six legs is clicking on the flooring, in long Italian heels.
10.7
The floor beneath her bed at home, her parents’ home, felt rickety. She existed in a certain time and used the common engines, those available to all. It was clear that things would go on as they had been. If climate change disrupts our environment enough, humans will evolve. Babies will be born with a mutation, maybe solar cells to photosynthesize the heat. A branch will sprout off of the sapiens even as the unmutated wither. She wanted to live to see that world. It would have to have a new society. She had high hopes for the social structures it will fix or otherwise erase. She might be a conduit, so that those who will succeed us have it easier. It was a means to wrest control from what she could not change, the overheating.
Her face that week was less still than the heatwaves off the ground. She tried on thoughts of guys she’d seen around her hometown in Nebraska. Anyone she recognized from school was out. Her new man would grind her arabica for the French press every morning. He’d save up for the thing that makes paninis. They’d juice their fruits and vegetables, including stems, because she’d read a thing online that said that stems have nutrients. She’d grow used to juicing leafy greens to where the flavor would not curl her toes. She didn’t like melon but would find true love with watermelon juice. She’d juice broccoli and sweet potato. The former yielded lots of juice, quasi-undrinkable. Sweet potato juice was strong and gritty. She drew the line at onions, but red bell peppers gave a surprising reward — not bad! She continued experimenting until she broke her vulva I mean juicer trying to juice an unopened pomegranate. It yielded nothing but dull blades and a busted overheated motor. She kept on drinking her vitamins and nutrients in bulk from the bulk stores. She put the desiccated pulp down the garbage disposal til it clogged the pipes such that it broke the seal on the U-shape underneath the sink and water leaked out everywhere, continuing to use the sink before she noticed. The rotting vegetation exposed to air gave off the putridest of odors. Water got inside the dishwasher soap powder making it unusable. Water stained the off-white paint with umber rings and more got through the hole in the back wall. Unreachable to clean it became soaked and spongy so that a finger-flick would send chunks of particleboard flying. After that degree of landlord hassle she bought small trash bags and a can no bigger than a planter to throw the juice scraps in. But she was surprised at how fast they started stinking. It wouldn’t do to change the bag and take it curbside every evening. Think about the waste of plastic, she thought, as she thought of the expense.
So she had to go back out and buy a tiny trashcan with a lid. The lid controlled the odor for a work week before it absolutely had to go. But the decomposing gave off condensation, which pooled in the bottom of the can below the bag. Not only was this rank and brown but it worked like a T-shirt transfer, transferring the writing on the bag onto the sides and bottom of the can. And, it was only experience she had to have that would teach her to buy a can that was easily washed because it got real cruddy every week. The one she chose had toothy edges on the inside and plastic blocks and cutouts that were capable of caulking their corners in detritus. The can came with a weird-shaped handle that somehow got food up underneath it. And yet she kept using it because she’d chosen it and it was too late to return it now. And there was nothing that she could not overlook. But when she moved back home, she could only see how dirty it had been, and how it smelled when she was lazy, so she tossed it for a new one that looked different and had a few of those features experience had shown her that she wanted. She did not see the parallels of extrication. She’d amputate the wishing throws before they hit the fountain.
Our hero grabbed ahold of her when she’d reciprocated, and in spite of her flight from California he was unwilling to let go. Now he’d driven all the way SomewhereFun, Nebraska, he was to act impressively. He teetered before setting himself in motion for what he could not believe could be the final time. There was much that could be adumbrated, but he was touching his fairy wand on everything he liked, believing it would turn to gol’ durn cream.
Intimacy requires sharing, but the unkempt ones were massing at the gates. They were drawing all kinds of ludicrous conclusions, without proof, and using them to foment new assertions. Things would go on differently from here into the future — he made an oath on that. All that mankind needed was the adoption of his guiding principles which he had triple-checked across the disciplines totally impartially — this in addition to his considerable wisdom which no one valued more highly than he.
There were invisible railings right across his stomach, like parking barriers he could not pass. He could feel them though, bisecting the soft and unprotected. That there was a steep drop into a gulch just off one side and cliff face on the other, that was immaterial. He was determined to pass the railing barriers, to head across them and no other. He might be, for all he knew, the most delusional.
10.8
It was a cold rain where he was standing, and where his skin was bare was shivering. He had the mind for it, though like a made-up story it was close to crumbling. Little outside logic had shown itself to be impregnable. Corrections and adjustments kept on like a mountain wind. Every body fed into a larger body. Entire lifetimes passed with zero understanding. Much that’s crated could be turned to simple tries. Oeuvres loomed with zealous affectation. There was much to be distracted from. The nouveau-input of technology had made their labor trade for wages worth it, though, in everything besides absurdity. The people trampled on their plans. There was much to be repeated.
Thousands of cloistered cheers were playing on a loop through city speakers. The men of general valor had already left their homes. He felt at one with them. The road is what sticks out more to this correctly valued group. He was staring at her parents’ home. He laid his sensible manner back out on the highway in the middle of the lane. A disguise he’d used for years was now passing ineffectual. Every jump he landed ruined what was wistful here. Now ample wishes got into his car that it would drive them back to each other again. Being Japanese, there was no reason that it shouldn’t.
The leading spectator will seek the explanation. She had not one to give. Various states were busy taking over. A bunch of hail was in the air. The recalibrations that had taken so long to effect were somehow left unused. Hard-fought gains felt like they’d been enough to have been won, not implemented. The ss-same drive would not be there, alas.
People just decide to leave. There are no warm-ups, from peeves to tragedies. Leaving has a different meaning almost every time — it is among the most subjective of acts. A slice across and guts spill out. That part should not be eaten. To the side the wrench was turning without ever seeming to get tighter. Getting here had been like wading through hallway after hallway of god-forsaken nuts.
There was a lot of evil knowledge, and all of it had spread, even as philosophers had proof that there was no such thing. Nor good either, which left our hero wondering why he kept on holding to the cliff face ledge, with crippling pain in slipping fingers, muscles torn and tearing.
It was brave of those who knew him to look down on him. It reminded them of what’s ahead. But worst was when someone he loved kneeled down and scootched right to the edge, then dangled their feet over, seeming not to hear his shouts and admonitions, and then turned their wrists white with their lifting, to swing their bottoms off, so they’re hanging by him too, and then begin to walk their fingers back til just the tips remain. This is when the cries begin, that then grow fainter with the fall. Afterward was only the continuing attempt to hold onto the feelings it had given, as a function of the hunt, more than of the finding.
Everyone inside this group-thinking land picks up a walkie-talkie and a gun. The ads have told them what to think and what to do. They have grown accustomed to that message, and even as they do not act on each commercialized command, it spreads like a patois among the group. They are special with their instinct now. They get the offer — their communicator and their weapon can become their livelihood. The one they have they do not like and this sounds so much better. Having been encouraged by anything, even this!, and having been rewarded, they move their cop-mind to the front and begin to speak in the imperative. They become the ads for those who can afford them.
10.9
For her, impulses were like different kinds of food, not all were good but all were wanted to be tried. It was like there was a lever, no one could see it, and there was no proof that it was there, but she held it all the same. She was the one to throw it and no other. And once thrown, that was it. There was no returning it to its former position. There was no evidence it even existed, much less possessed a default setting. Yet she held it all the same. She wasn’t hiding it either — she knew she had it only in her subconscious, which had it therap-deep. It took up the room in which she might have known herself.
The guys who heard she was in town spent everything on prolonging desire. Although she’d made a rule, one night she got home from being out with her girlfriends to find a guy from high school in her mother’s bed. He’d been the sort to puppy after our heroine back then. When invitations weren’t forthcoming he kept himself insinuated by becoming great friends with her mom. When her dad was working late the puppy guy would sit with her mom in the evenings. They would watch TV in bed. It was a king-size in her parents’ room. There was one lamp on, a dim one on the nightstand, and otherwise was largely dark but for the glows of TV and tabac. Her mom would prop herself up against the headboard with a bivouac of pillows and pull the duvet to her bony waist. She wore pyjamas, a wide-cut button-down with collar and matching bottoms, and the air was blue with her cylinders of exhalations. The lad was sat beside her, space between, shoes off and legs up on the bed, dressed in the clothes that come from stores with groceries. He joked with her, she laughed. Other times he opened up quite gravely. It was innocent, our heroine had made herself believe, but for the roiling subtext she could see.
Underneath the dusty lampshade were prescription pill bottles in that browny orange and a glass of water, which from the spatter of air bubbles showed that it had sat in that smudgy glass for some nights now. Perhaps this was not what she was drinking. There was also on the bed a cat and a half. The older cat was black with a creamy underbelly and some splotches on its face. Our hero never saw that one awake. The other cat had been a rescue. They thought, but were not sure, that it had been hit out on the street. It was neurologically damaged. It laid down because that’s when its life was easiest. It could not raise itself with balance. Its inner ear was permanently dizzy. It always got up in a stagger. More than half the time it fell right over. Nor could it walk a straight line. Gravity was particularly victorious over inertia in this creature, so it swayed oopsie-daisies toward its destination. Which it could not see. This dented vehicle of domesticated drive was sightless too. It chewed and swallowed, and its nose worked to find the food dish, so it could feed itself. Still, to spare its drunken staggering our heroine would open up a tin and put it right beside its lying mouth. Holding itself up and aiming at the curdled meat mush was an iron man challenge for this deficient beast. Our heroine at times would feed it with a spoon. When they wanted its attention, they went into the parents’ bedroom where it stayed and yelled its name. The thing was hard of hearing too. They were not sure it knew its name. But when a human voice separated its focus from its thunderous confusion, it would lurch up to its crooked paws and try to reach the source of the directive, unsuccessfully. It fell over. They were embarrassed when they laughed. They were reluctant to just go pick it up, wanting it to do for itself as best it could. Getting it to eat, to play, to take its medicine, most anything, the family knew the pathetic desperation of the marketer. Finally the kitty choked to death on its own grooming, after it had been unable to regurgitate.
Our heroine said hello, the guy affected a cool nod but sat up hopefully, she gave her mom a look, and went to her own bed. New provocations tried to have their way with her in that interim of life. They tried to sink her down to island depths, but folks were just so nice to her wherever she would be. One girlfriend had been catty, but our heroine knew this young woman was put out that our heroine had been away to California, and now was back, and it did not match her sense of what was proper that our heroine should just pop up here again.
The aliens had they found us would have invited our heroine to their ship as an exemplar of mankind. Her mission to report back what she had seen appealed to her. The untrained Merriwether would be our only shot at knowledge gathering. She’d return mutated with surreptitious powers using senses we have not conceived. Immediately swathes would claim she had no new abilities at all. She’d be cursed and needled til she agreed to a public demonstration, which would be filmed, a proper double-blind experiment, which would be repeated over years, along with her interrogations by militarized cops. The proof would be there sound and soundly disputed still.