Malady

Malady

By Isaac Wilder

Home Love Death Decay Chaos Sickness Rebirth Revolution Rising Recursion

Home

Okay, I'm going to start now. Oh heavens, this is exciting. I wrote another book once, but I didn't so much write it as copy and paste it from my inbox. Then again, I called it 'copy-paste,' so I think I was at least moderately honest about the whole big self-indulgent bag of artifice. At any rate, that's in the past, and now I'm here, starting a novel that probably just seems like a journal entry to you. It will probably still seem that way to you in a thousand pages. But I swear it's a novel. It's about a dude named Aristotle. Not that one. Just a seemingly, or at least relatively normal guy named Aristotle. In fact, he goes by Ari just so that people won't assume he's some kind of philosopher. Better a Jew than a philosopher.

And yes, Athena, if you're reading this, I know you have a cousin or a brother or something who is named Aristotle and goes by Ari, but this isn't about him, or even about you, you self-centered bitch.

Even though it seems that a guy with the name Aristotle should live in Greece, this one doesn't. He lives in Overland Park, KS, where I'm from, or New York, because that's where tons of cool shit goes down, or Berlin for the aforementioned reason, or... Alaska. He doesn't live in all these places. He's not a jetsetter type, I just haven't decided yet. It's up to me, after all.

I know that it's a little bit weird to start writing about a guy that you invented when you're not even sure where he lives, or what his last name is, but I'm kind of a weird dude, and I think it's sort of original. Above all else, I'd like my first novel to be original. I know I'm talking about myself quite a bit, but hopefully that will subside soon, and we can focus more on Aristotle, who is sitting at a bus-stop when the story begins.

The sky is grey-white, not quite rain, but certainly full of moisture, and decidedly ominous. Aristotle is not waiting for the bus - he's sitting at the bus stop. You shouldn't assume things, because there are probably going to be a lot of seemingly odd choices in this book. He's sitting at a bus stop, so were probably talking about Kansas City or Berlin - places where I'm quite sure you can sit at a bus stop.

I should mention, before anything really happens, that Aristotle is very smart, and he's got a golden heart that beats mightily with life- fusion. He's easily compared to the abstract notion of fusion. You will most certainly come to like him, if I have something to say about it, though I'm really just trying to get you to like me, for the time being. Aristotle conjures the word cynosure, which I first encountered in 5 Melville's Bi"y Budd, and which my eleventh grade English teacher Mr. Marchant put on his vocabulary quizzes. ! Aristotle the cynosure sat a while and thought. He thought about Whitman and cunnilingus, and the middle ages, and about all manner of sundry and scintillating things. I switched tenses. ! Three birds shot from the sky. Seemingly from the sky, out of the sky they shot. Three birds silhouetted by the sky - this is what caught Ari's attention. Three birds stole him from his bus stop revel, and returned him to the world, which is scary sometimes, but is the only one we've got. ! Ari realized that he had been staring past the grey-white clouds into the infinity of cosmic wonder and memory-lust for damn near five minutes. That's not that long - maybe it was ten or fifteen. Anyways, it was long enough to make him feel slightly ashamed of himself, but not absurdly long. Use whatever number of minutes works for you based on that account. This will probably depend on how often you stare into the abyss, and for what amount of time, on average. ! Aristotle was not used to wandering the lonely broom-closets of his psyche for so long, and he felt slightly ashamed. He unlifted his eyes, and looked toward the street, in the direction of the birds that had 6 startled him from his slumber, and are only moderately symbolic. His fingers trembled the soft tremble of nicotine addiction, and he began to motivate. He began to walk. ! Shame on me. We're six pages in, and I haven't even told you what our guy looks like. He's six feet tall, on the dot. Does that help? No? I didn't think so. Maybe it would help if I told you that he used to be five-feet eight-inches tall. Then again, anyone who is six feet tall used to be five-foot-eight. The really salient thing is that he weighed two- hundred and ninety-five pounds back in his five-foot-eight days. Now he is a very round and very exact six feet and he weighs one-hundred and ninety pounds. He lost the weight almost entirely by accident. The sudden drop left him with exceedingly loose skin, and a healthy dose of sexual confidence. It is this confidence that is on full display as he walks down the street, switching his hips and biting his lip. ! I'm not sure where aristotle is going, but he appears to. At least, he very much hopes that anyone who sees him get up from his place at the bus stop will think that he has just realized that it would be better, for one reason or another, to walk. He is wearing leather sandals, which he bought a long time ago because they are halfway between Jesus and 7 gladiator. They make him feel like a nonviolent resistor who conquers those roman lions. ! At this point, I'm wearing seersucker pants and trying to decide whether Ari should walk by a record store, so you can learn about his taste in music and his life of song, or whether he should just go home. I'll tell you what - he passed by the record store, but well just skip that part. Take it from me - Aristotle can pick 'em. ! He arrived home just after four o'clock. His mother was in one of those moods. I wish I could tell you more about her, besides the fact that he name is Marion, and she too used to be fat, but later slimmed down. I wish I could tell you more, I really do, but I didn't invent her, I invented Aristotle, and she just came with. ! Aristotle loves his mother, but can't stand her when she's in her moods, and that day, around four, she happened to be. So it was that Ari took a bowl of grapes and carried them up the stairs of 5400. The stairs moaned under the weight of the grapes. They moaned as slaves moaned in the thick of the cane fields, or as a whore moans at the height of her duties, as a mother bereft of her most lovely, most promising child. 8 ! It was heartbreaking for Ari, to hear what the grapes were to doing to the old, rickety cascade of wood, which had carried him countless time to safety, from his mothers moods and from the over windowed exposure of the ground floor. The stairs moaned again, and so Ari ate the grapes as he went, and heard the stairs say 'thank you, thank you, Aristotle the Liberator, Aristotle the Defender.' ! We are so much alike, the three of us, always pretending that it is good to eat the grapes as you climb, that the stairs don't notice the extravagance of the green or red or purple globules of juice and seed and skin. We are sadly mistaken. The stairs do notice, and on that day they seemed to swallow the feet of our unrealized hero, or antihero, or whatever it is that Aristotle will become. They seemed to rebel, for the first time, not against the grapes, but against the unripe man-boy who carried them. ! Aristotle was 18, and for the first time it was becoming clear that it wasn't the grapes at all - 'damn you, damn you, Aristotle the gluttonous, Aristotle the heavy-footed.' Is it the grapes or not, dammit? Is it the grapes or the weight or the age of the wood? Is it Aristotle's high arches and heavy walk? I suppose it doesn't matter in the end. I was just trying to do right by you. I hope that you'll forgive 9 me if I can't always find the right words. I know that you might say it's my job to find the right words, but I don't think that's exactly right. Nobody ever found the right words, because words are a frail, fickle, fallible substitute for the raw, white milk of this fractured reality. No words will ever do justice to that moment with the grapes, or to any moment. I'm just trying to be honest about it. ! There were still several, seven, grapes left when he reached his room. Seven grapes, beige walls, navy carpet, a futon, a futon frame, boards which went across the frame to hold the futon. A poster from the 2003 New York International Independent Film and Video Festival, with the words 'New York International Film and Vide Festival' in the shape of a human head. Many mornings he had awoken from the deep sleep of a child, and before all things, he had seen that head. That can do a lot to a boy, seeing the severed head of art's corpse first thing each morning. Sometimes he could see it before his eyes even opened, based on the fluid in his ears and the feeling of his feet on the frame of the futon. But it hadn't messed him up too bad. It was just a poster, after all, left by his brother in a room which now had seven grapes in a bowl. Six grapes in a bowl. He popped two grapes into his mouth. Now there were four grapes in the bowl. I'm sorry 10 once again, my friend, my reader, if that's painfully obvious. But that's how it was to Aristotle, too, painfully obvious, the next step, the next fluffy pillow, the next ringing of the Sony dream machine, even the next blooming of the crabapple or magnolia outside of 5400. It was painfully obvious that soon there would be only one grape, which was soft. In Kansas or Berlin or New York, you could leave the soft grapes. Yo u c o u l d l e t t h e m s te e p w i t h t h e s te m s i n t h e h a l f - g r e e n condensation. (His family, like most families where he was from, kept grapes in the bottom right or bottom left drawer of one of their two refrigerators.) ! For the record, Aristotle did not called 5400 5400. He called it home. I call it 5400 because I know Aristotle better than anyone, even in his old age, which has not and may never come to pass. I call it 5400 because at some point at what could be referred to as the future, at least with regard to the grapes, he will have come to call it that. I suppose I have the benefit of genesis, if you want to call it that, and I'm trying my best to pass that on to you, my friend, perhaps my lover, sucker that picked up my scribbling, not knowing that invention is the mother of the future, and that the future of this particular protagonist is beholden to the blood of my pen. 11 ! Okay, it's one a.m. I've taken off my watch and lit a cigarette (Lucky Strike Original Red) so that I can write into the night. I promise to tell you when the sun rises over Havana, where I sit myself. ! Once he had set the bad grape to steep, Aristotle logged on. This is something he did perhaps too frequently in those days, before his days of love, his days of loss, his days of destitution and before the end, which I don't yet feel like giving away. He logged on. In those days at home it was a PowerBook, sleek and grey aluminum alloy, the best you could buy. He logged on to look at naked women late at night, and logged on in the mooring to check Google News, of which he and I are both very fond. He logged on and on and on, clear cutting a path through a forest of digits, totally in love with the virtual and unaware that his fingers flew faster over keys than over any clitoris or clavichord. There was a certain music to it - the slithering hiss-clack of his fingers on the board. He logged on and on, longing to clog the cables that carried the cr y ptographic clarity of human signs transmuted into such platonic forms. He logged on and on. Poke, post, emoticon. Oh, how the man-boy could log. His eyes were raw. He scratched his balls, sticky as they were from the labor of timbering through the only wilderness he had ever known. 12 ! Stir-fry for dinner, or maybe blackened chicken, which is what his brother called it. it was really just broiled beyond recognition. Too touchy was the oven in the kitchen of 5400 - too electric. Much later he would learn that he preferred appliances that used gas - probably around the same time that he stops calling 5400 home, or will stop, in however many pages it takes to get him to adulthood. ! Stir-fry for dinner is going to be hard - not least because I'll have to try my hand a dialogue. Sometimes things come out, and you know you're going to have to see them through, but you wish just the same that your protagonist were a monk, vowed to silence and clad in easily describable robes. Anyways, that's not the case - it's stir fry for dinner, and this is what I'm going to do - I'm going to let myself fall into the abyss of abstraction. It's a cheap trick, I know, but it's my first go around, and Wittgenstein did it, so I know, at least, that it's been done. Mother & Father - "Dinner is ready." Children (perhaps three or four) - "Is it stir-fry?" Mother - "Yes." Children - "We are very tired of stir-fry." Father - "Be more grateful." 13 The meal is served at this point, and the family gathers around the table in what is commonly referred to as the breakfast room Father - "Republicans are bad." Mother & Children - "We agree." Father - "Bertrand Russell once said something along the lines of..." Mother - "That was Einstein." Oldest Child (female) - "They coauthored that letter." Mother & Father - "You're correct." The oldest male child who is present begins to drum on the edge of the table using his fork and knife. Ari or the intermediate male child spins the lazy susan in the middle of the table, at first to get the Korean chilli paste, and then because he enjoys it. Mother & Father - "Stop it." The drumming and spinning and leaning of chairs does not stop. Oldest Child (female) - "You're a waste of space." Oldest Child (male) - "You're fat and ugly." ! The food eaten, the scene descends into violent anarchy. No one has been excused from the table, but the table is now empty. When the oldest female child and the oldest male child have reached a detente, the oldest male child comes to assert his dominance over the 14 intermediate male child. Aristotle throws himself into this battle, as usual, on the side of the intermediate male child. Aristotle has always been, and will always be the youngest. He throws himself in, but this is not his choice, it is the way of the world, this world, his world. The oldest male child is asserting his dominance over both, though his initial attack, or comment, or act of passive aggression is aimed at the intermediate. It is an attack on both for the same reason that the female child's attack was really an attack on all three. As always, the oldest male bests both the intermediate and Aristotle. The evening, now full of rain from the grey-white clouds, comes to a close. The parents do not make love. Mother, Marion, reads The New Yorker, as they lie in bed, and Father, Avery, reads some biography of an erstwhile tycoon. The eldest female child goes to smoke weed, get drunk, trip mushrooms and have sex with her seedy boyfriend, before coming home at dawn. The male children watch television or play the Sega Genesis game Altered Beast. The single grape still steeps in the half- green water of a blue crystal bowl. The stairs creak when they are climbed, whether the person climbing carries grapes, or a basket of laundry, or nothing at all. It is scary to go downstairs once the lights are off, perhaps for everyone, but certainly for Aristotle, because there 15 are too many windows, and you can see right through this house in so many ways. ! Phew. That was tough, but I made it. We've made it through stir- fry. Still, there are many things that I feel the need to say now that I couldn't say when that was going on. By the time Aristotle was eighteen, all of his siblings had left home. They were older, and college bound like any normal middle-class kid. His father, too, had moved out, and lived in another part of the city. This, I suppose, the battle and the detentes, the stiffness of the spine between his mother's New Yorker and his father's voluminous biography, is what Aristotle longed for. Perhaps longing is not the right word. He yearned for it, as one yearns for God when they pray. Stir-fry had become some sort of silent prayer aimed at the god of memory, that protean cloud of nostalgia and memory-lust on high. Stir-fry was his way of saying our father, hail mary, hear israel, om namah shivayah. ! His mother did sometimes still cook stir-fry, though, or blackened chicken, and occasionally macaroni and cheese, which came from an old family recipe, and was actually quite good. But that night it was take-out, and they sat and ate quite peacefully, a mother and her youngest son, who she had named Aristotle. She had named him 16 Aristotle, but rarely called him that. She called him Ari or Ar-bar or Totty or just Ar. She sometimes called him just "A," but only when she was addressing him in concert with the intermediate male child, who on those occasions was called just "I." "I & A" she called them. But she hadn't called them that in some time, because the other children were all at school, and Aristotle would soon join them. That was the plan, at least, though I may have to change the trajectory of Ari's young life sooner rather than later. ! Truly, college is no setting for a novel. College is a place for reading novels, and so it does not make a good setting for one, because who wants to read about people reading? I'd rather read about people writing, the stories of their own lives, perhaps, or the stories of others. Best of all, though, I'd like to write about people writing, and I think you would, too. So, if at any point while reading this, you get the urge to pick up a pen, go ahead and go. I won't be offended, though I do hope you'll come back. Frantz Fannon wasn't offended when I put down The Wretched of the Earth, though he hates me for other reasons. He should have hated Sartre, too, despite the lovely foreword which he wrote, but that is for another time, on another side of this notebook. Oh, did I tell you that I'm writing this by hand? I know that you'll be 17 reading it in neat pressed ink, serif or sans-serif, on the fibrous, off- white paper that I wanted for my last book, but which the press could not afford. I would probably write it on a computer, if I had one, but I am in Havana, and a notebook is what I've got. While we're at it, I suppose I should tell you that these words are flowing a Pentel P205 mechanical pencil, which I consider to be among the greatest of writing tools. The Sharpwriter 2 is also quite luxurious, and you can't do better than Uchida's Le Pen, if you want to write in ink. I hope you don't think I'm telling you this because I'm a snob, though a snob I might be. I'm telling you this because I wish you could see me, here in Havana, wearing the white cotton kurta pajama pants that I bought some years ago in India. I have a pack of luckies, and a bottle of very cold water, and this full-size soft-sided moleskine notebook, and this Pentel P205. Now let us go on. ! It is summer here, and it was summer there, then. Ari ate his beef and broccoli, and sent four text messages rapid fire. He wished to see his friends, those that he had left, and maybe even get some ass, because he was tired of jerking it on the futon on the the slats in the frame. It was painfully obvious what would come of the text messages. Re'em would respond quickly and they would meet up, probably at 18 Chris' house, who was Re'em's neighbor, and who laughed mightily at Aristotle's jokes. Then, after a few joints and an easy hour, Josh would say he was at David's house, and that they should all come over. Katya would never text back. It had been this way for a long time, and everybody quite liked it. They had never formalized this convention, but they had been friends for all their lives, and they didn't have to say things for them to be plainly known. Re'em texted back. They smoked the joints. Josh texted Ari. They all met at David's. They drank beer in the basement, and smoked from bubblers and bongs. They smoked weed, chiefed herb, ripped ganj all the time in those days, and played video games or ate burgers, or just drove around. Everything was highway where they lived, and at night it was six lanes to yourself, the occasional cop, and the reverberations of loud speakers in small spaces. The night air so new and grey with rain. ! Ari went home with Erica, though it was Katya that he wanted. He had no trouble getting girls - that's what they were - but he set his sights quite high, and he had not yet mastered the art of attracting women. He took Erica to his father's, which was closer for one, and where he wouldn't have to fuck on the futon on the slats in the frame. His father never said a word to Ari about the girls leaving in the 19 morning, only made them feel uncomfortable by flirting at such ungodly hours as eight a.m. But Erica would have to discover that for herself in the morning. Even though it wasn't Katya, Aristotle still lit the candles that he kept by the bed. Maybe it was really for himself, but everyone seemed to appreciate the gesture. They stripped, and sucked, and he did his best with her clitoris, though it really did pale in comparison to the way he fingered his keyboard. Soon enough they were joined, and Aristotle, at least, searched for the meaning of zen. One hand clapping, it wasn't, but no mind, and only the fluid motion of tide and turbulence - waves upon the malecon, the meeting of city and sea. He was what many women wanted - possessor of a great strength, but gentle and longing with it until that final gallop towards the finish and the fall. Erica was no different than the rest - she clung to him a long time, and fell asleep with her head on his still beating chest. He was sure that she would come again, and he would oblige, at least until she got her fill, or they were separated by the strange gravity of fate. Fate's gravity does not work like the gravity of Newton or Einstein, but is instead possessing of that quantum weirdness of Bohr and Feynman. Erica left in the morning, and only smiled a bashful smile when Ari's father said "Want some coffee?" and "like father, like 20 son." He said these things only to get a kick, but it bothered Ari and Ari's girls, and it probably bothered Ari's father a bit, but he couldn't help it, and no one took offense. ! Aristotle slumbered late into the morning. It was Sunday now, and the only thing in store for him at either of his parents homes was the incessant droning of the TV. The talk shows at his father's or Antiques Roadshow at his mom's. He went instead to the pool, where he could take his shirt off. Even after all this time apart from that extra hundred pounds, he was still getting used to taking his shirt off in public. It used to be that he and Josh would wear shirts at the pool, supposedly because they had been sunburned, but really because they were ashamed of their soft, young bodies. Now Ari liked very much to take off his shirt, even if he was very pale and not particularly fit, if only because nobody seemed to notice. He figured he would always be grateful for that, just as he would always be grateful for ice machines. (They had had to use trays at 5400, but he appreciated that now.) ! Life was easy in those days, and Aristotle was grateful for a great many things - his family, which was broken but survived, his dick, which served him well and had a nice curve, and his future, which was wide open, but could be nothing but grand. 21 ! ! Poor Aristotle. It's not that he was wrong, it's not that it's going to turn out badly for him, it's just that it's not that simple. Nobody wants to hear about the quiet, easy life of a boy who was born with it all. Aristotle's gonna have to go through some shit. Believe me, it's not that I want to hurt him, it's just that he's got to be hurt in order to learn. That's how it works, as far as I know - pain leads to growth, and growth leads to a good novel. I do hope that you think it's getting good. Maybe I should stop being so self-conscious. I mean, you've read this far, haven't you? It's just a bit frightening, I suppose, to do all this creating and then to open your creation to rejection and scorn. It's actually not so much the rejection that scares me as the scorn. If no one should ever see this, I will still be glad that it was done. It's much more the impossibility of pleasing everyone, and the knowledge that this book, should it be published, will have its critics just like any other. It is so much easier to criticize than to write, and though I may not be the greatest writer who ever was, at least I will have spilled this ink, and seen what meaning arises from the madness of creation. ! You know, on second thought, it isn't criticism which scares me most, but silence. At least criticism is a reaction - my real fear is that 22 these words will evoke nothing - neither praise nor scorn. So, dear publisher, critic, reader, listener, I ask you for a favor - when it's all said and done, and you've finished this book, or thrown it down in disgust, or burnt it or framed it, or sold it or given it away, let me know. Let me know how it made you feel, and which parts shone, and which parts were unbelievable junk. I'll be sure to include my information, if this ever reaches you. But more than that and most of all - if you think you can do better, or you'll never come close, give it a chance. Pick up a pen or a pencil or a compute or a typewriter, if you've got one of those, and let it all go. Do it in secret, if you have to, or when you're tired and alone. Do it in the light of morning, if it pleases you, or late at night as I do. Write, even if it is for yourself, or for a boy or a girl or a ghost from your past. Poems of prose or nonsensical sounds - join me and you'll see, there's no freedom like this spinning of worlds, no joy like this genesis of meaning, no labor like this sweet hell. ! I feel now that I've told you enough about Aristotle's home, and I'm out of smokes. I'm going to run to the dulceria, which sells cigarettes, and when I get back I'll start a new chapter. I know that you can just keep flipping pages, but now would be a good time to take a break. It just wouldn't be fair if you got to dive right in, and I had to 23 wait because of this silly addiction. Go ahead without me, if you want, and I'll meet you in my own future, or stay a minute here, and we can forge ahead together. I have a feeling it's about to pick up. 24 Love ! Seconds or minutes or days later, it is time now to continue our story. I say "our" story, because it belongs very much to you as well. Not as this is written, no, but as it is read, now, it belongs to you more than to me. Or maybe you left, maybe you gave up - I have a feeling I might have lost a few at the end of the last chapter. No matter - I will go on alone. I will finish this book, even if you never so much as picked it up. But you are here, and that is good, because Aristotle needs you. See, I will be fine if this barbaric yawp of mine sounds out forever into nothingness, but Aristotle - no, Aristotle will live a different fate. You bring him to life, you imagine him and coax him into being - that is why this is our story. That is why it's worth it. I can live but a single life, but our guy can live a thousand times. Do you see the beauty? I do. Do you see the tragedy? It is there too, but I won't dwell on that. I know that's there's little use talking about our world, when we are faced with a world of infinite possibility, but I do want to be honest. Above all else, I want to be honest and original - honestly original and originally honest. That is my way, and that is Aristotle's way too. ! It turns out Ari is going to have to go to college. Why? Because that's where he meets the girl. I know there are a lot of good books 25 with no girl and no love story, but this isn't one of them. Aristotle is a lover, and he really digs smart chicks, so he's got to go to college. Scratch that - he went to college - he's two years in by the time we pick back up. Which school isn't all that important, but it's small, and it's liberal, and the education is really top notch. Now, Ari flirted with the idea of a philosophy major, but ultimately, with a name like his, the pressure was just too much. He went instead into Computer Science - fitting, given what we know about him, how he touched those keys. There was still something sexual about his relationship with those machines. It was no longer the obsequious obsession of youthful lust, but a more adult thing. He needed his space, and they needed theirs. Occasionally they would stay up all night together, he and the machines, but they could also go days without each other, not longing and wistful, but certain that they would meet again. Ari spoke to the machines as well as anyone, and though he had much to learn, it was clear that he had a bright future in the field. Artificial Intelligence was of particular interest, but this isn't science fiction, and we'll leave it at that. ! Work was starting to pick up by the second week of September. It was eight or nine by the time Ari left the lab. He wore boots now, and 26 tight jeans, and though he was still exactly six feet tall from toe to top, his hair loomed at least four inches above that. It was wild and unkempt, nested by the roll of fingers, and frayed by the hygiene that he desperately lacked. That night, as he paced across the lawn, his mind was still wrestling with some question of logic or language. He hardly felt he had walked at all by the time he reached his room. Thomas was inside. Ari and Thomas had gotten lucky, and they knew it. They were assigned to each other as roommates in their first year, and realized soon afterward that they had become best friends. "Hey dude." "What up?" "Man, did you just get done?" "Yeah, I've been working for like twelve fucking hours... Do we have any gin?" "Yeah, it's in the fridge." "Cool." "You wanna go to Robin's house? I hear it's like two kegs an a DJ." "Yeah, sounds good." ! Well, they went to Robin's, Ari and Thomas, and that's where it happened. The thronging masses spilled out onto the lawn, and inside 27 it was sweat and noise and booze and revelry. Ari and Thomas weaved through bodies, gaining ground towards the door, hoping there was beer left, and glad that the DJ was playing Outkast. Ari saw here. "Who's that?" "That's Lucy. You don't know her?" "No. God damn. She's beautiful." Thomas explained that Lucy was a senior, but that she'd been abroad last year. He said she was single. Ari forgot about the beer and the Outkast, and the dance floor full of bodies writhing in youthful convulsion. He walked towards Lucy. By this point in his life, are had been told several times that he had a very powerful gaze. One girl had told him it was smoldering, in fact, and that when he looked at her she felt hot. Ari looked at Lucy with all of his intensity - a gaze that could shatter platters, he hoped. The cyclops-heat-ray of I-wanna-fuck-you looks. Lucy looked back. Then something happened that shook Ari up. Lucy kept looking. Usually, Ari found, you could tell something by how a person looked back. Folks that wanted him would usually look away, but look back to see if he was still there. Folks that didn't would look for a little and then turn away for good. But Lucy did neither, she just stared back. Their eyes were locked from across the room, and I think 28 that maybe, just maybe, you could ha ve felt the heat of that connection if you had walked between them just then. "I'm Lucy." "I'm Ari." ! It was all very clear. Everyone at the party that night saw them sitting together on the lawn. Ex-flames cast hexes and guys shot looks of envy. But to Ari and Lucy, it might as well have been their own little room at the Chelsea Hotel. Thomas danced his signature herky-jerky twist, and Robin thanked them for coming, but it was as if the world, a glacier floating softly, was melted by the spectral heat of their locked eyes. They spoke softly, wanting no one to hear, wanting only to speak more softly, until their words became nothing, and they could speak only with the phantasm of flesh. She studied language, and her words were deliberate. He studied computation, and his words were calculated with all the intelligence he possessed. The glacier melted faster, becoming a torrent which flooded out around them, engulfed them, carried them. The flock had gone, Thomas had gone, and Robin slept soundly inside. Their hands met at four twenty-seven in the morning. Her fingers slipped under his, or his over hers - it wasn't exactly clear. The grass was wet, their bodies quaked. They were sober 29 now, as they had hoped, and they walked, not quietly at all, to Lucy's apartment. By the time the key turned in the cylinder, they had unlocked each other, given up secrets that had gone so long without being spoken that they were almost forgotten. Ari liked Hafiz and Gunter Grass. Lucy liked Virginia Woolf and Wallace Stevens. Ari had a scar on his left foot, and the stretch marks from his rapid change in proportions. Lucy had a crooked toe, and a birthmark below her left shoulder blade. Lightbulbs, dragonflies, windowpanes, and dust - memory and agony and hope and regret - children, marriage, heritage, creed - art and artifice, silence and din, buzzing and vibrating and dancing before the key turned in the lock. ! Lucy lit the candles that she kept by her bed, as she had likely done so many times before. Ari finally understood the light of combustion. For the first time in either of their lives, they made love. Unafraid and completely sanguine, they worked for each other, made pleasure into a language of debate. He was inside her, but she was as much inside him, hands on each others' shoulders, and faces on each others' necks. They spoke each others names, and called out to a god that neither of them were sure existed. Fogged windows, the flickering of flames, eyes so open in the furnace of their love, and then release. 30 ! The sun was rising as they finally collapsed, as it rises now over this revolutionary world. The sun was rising, and he laid his head on her still beating chest. 'I've found her,' he thought, as he slipped into dream. 'I've found him,' she thought, as she cradled his head, and finally slept. ! I, for one, am glad that they found each other - happy to know, even if it's all a fiction, that people can find each other amidst this sturm und drang. I knew that the first woman to meet his gaze would be the first to win his heart. What remains unclear is whether she was the only one, was going to be the only one, going to have been the only one. Perhaps there will have been countless others, but I have a good feeling about Lucy. She's smart and strong and so articulate. He needed her, I think, to be the man he must be, must be becoming, must have become. And no less importantly, she needed him. They were right for each other, in that time and that place, in those simple days before the plot thickened, before things got strange. The electricity of their love woke them both. ! Aristotle had not moved in the night, Lucy had stayed as still as stone, the weight of his face as an anchor on that sea of dreams. Nobody will ever know who stirred first that next afternoon, but 31 before that ethereal veil of the night had lifted, they were making love again. They made love often in those days, loudly and at all hours. They came to know each others' bodies - as abstract forms, and as extensions of their own. Aristotle wrote poems. He spoke of Lucy as an unexplored continent, as mist and mountain mixing in the morning. He saw her freckles as constellations, her eyes as oceans converging into singularity. She ran her fingers through his nested crown, and touched his face in the night. ! By December, the grass was sealed in it's white winter tomb. Nobody would see ground again until march at the earliest. Lucy stood at the entrance to the student center swathed and bundled against the bitter wind which descended from the arctic airmass and crashed down on their little college. Ari was still in his Automata lecture, but she knew that he would soon cone shuffling slawntways down the path that nameless men shoveled slick each morning. It was just before two o'clock, and the sun was hidden behind a silver sheath of nimbus. Lucy loved the way that Aristotle smiled across distance. She could easily have wood outside the building where his class was held, she knew by now which door he would use, and that he would stay and chat with Professor Warburg for five minutes once the lecture was over, but she 32 didn't. She preferred to stand there, half a block away, and to watch as aristotles eyes searched the bleak landscape, and finally lit up with the recognition of her white peacoat. He wore a bright red woolen trench coat, and earn the stood together, they reminded people of a candy cane. Perhaps it was because of the sea, but it had to do also with the almost cloying consistency of their rapport. "We don't have time for fighting." In their own eyes, and in the eyes of the people that knew them best, Lucy and Aristotle made each other better. They smiled now even in the mornings, because they had woken together and knew that they would sleep together again that night. Lucy was full of art, sometimes drawing Ari, but more often drawing for Ari, even if she only sometimes showed him. It was a simple kind of love they shared - most aptly compared to a rock or a river. Strong and sure, it just seemed so natural - like it was part of the right order of things. ! February brought strong storms and the drifting snow, but it was no matter. When the white oblivion of winter came, they were happy to stay inside, warm with wine and whine and the muted throb of jazz records. They built snowmen and igloos, and kissed each others' noses until the red went away. They cooked and slept, and studied ferocious. 33 Neither if them had been very diligent students before they met, but now they were, because they wanted to be. They spent less time with their friends than they were used to, but it didn't bother them a bit, and their friends didn't mind because it was all so exceedingly clear. ! I have to wonder, at this point, if you believe all this. I mean, I know you don't believe it, but I wonder if it is even believable. Does it ring true, I guess is what I'm asking. You see, so far, Aristotle's story has been in lockstep with my own. It's not exactly the same, but it mirrors mine in many ways. Still, Aristotle lives only in these leaves of symbols, and I am made of flesh. What gives credence to the I that I utter, when Aristotle's love seems like only a fiction? It was not a fiction. ! Not to them, st least. It was the realest thing in their young lives - more tangible than Bayesian classifiers or deep grammar. Aristotle could hold her and know that life was not an abstract thing, he could see her and realize with all the lucidity of his consciousness that the spiral of civilization arced on into the cosmos, and that the march of humanity was not in vain, because it had brought them to each other. Their love for each it her transformed in that winter tomb, becoming a love for life, and for the world which cradled their corporeal selves. 34 What higher praise can a love receive than "the love of life because it allows for love"? There is none. What purer love could one attain than one which makes no ownership claim? One could not attain such a love. ! In April the verdure returned, and the young lovers passed hours on roofs. They sat usually at the cornice of one arch, to which they had found a passage, and which seemed to be theirs alone. They smoked cigarettes and needed other They did not need to need each other, but they wanted to, and they allowed themselves to, because they knew devotion when they saw it. They spoke honestly about how beauty had changed into whatever was before them. They still locked eyes and were no less unner ved by the spectacle of a soul laid bare and unblinking. They had fallen in the fall, and now in the majestic springtime their love was in bloom. It was splendored, certainly, but it was not ornate. It not a peacock, but a sculpture of a peacock, the lines made clean, and the metal cast by an expert hand. ! What hand? This hand. Not that in a sculptor, or an expert for that natter, but only that I made this love as a testament to what love is, or at least fab be. I met Lucy once, in a darkroom. But she was not meant for me. Lucy was meant for Aristotle, who is only my fruition and is 35 not me. Even if I also have stretch marks. Lucy is not my creation, but she is also not so real. She is only what I longed for, but what Aristotle got. Perhaps it is better to live in symbols "I love you, Lucy" "I love you, Ari" "I love you, Ari" "I love you, Lucy." "Like a rock and a river." "Like a river and a rock." ! Please, read those lines a few more times - it is what Aristotle would want, if he could speak to you as I can. Let Ari hear tho lines a few more times, and let him speak from the heart. He cannot read this book himself, though he knows it better than we will ever know. He cannot read this book himself, and so you must read it for him. 36 Death ! My friend marcus has been throwing up for nigh on nine hours. I am doing my best to take care of him, but there's not much I can do besides tell him that he's going to be alright, at some point, he's going to be alright. Aristotle heaved once, and then it came, one sad, pathetic surge of hydrochloric acid and half-digested animal fiber. It was all over the kitchen counter of his apartment, a little in the sink, but he hadn't had time to aim it completely. He hadn't seen it coming. He had known he was about to vomit, but he hadn't seen coming the phone call from his sister quite early one morning in the winter of his twenty-sixth year. He could not have known that his parents would perish. Not so soon, I mean, and not in the way that they had. In separate cars, headed opposite directions. They had been divorced for almost ten years, and in that time both they and their children had grown accustomed to the fact that they no longer travelled down the same roam - not in life, and unless is was by that quantum gravity of fate, not in cars. But this was an act of ultimate quantum weirdness weirdness, like a bathtub falling through an intact floor. At 11:34 on the night before the phone call, Aristotle's parents had been traveling in opposite directions on a road that neither of them took very often. 37 One or both or neither of them had lost control over their car, and over fate, and in a single moment, the embers went cold. ! At first Aristotle couldn't handle it. He literally could not comprehend. He thought there was a mistake or a mix up or a misunderstanding, or that his sister was playing some twisted game. She had been cruel before, but only a loving sort of cruel, and this was no game. When it finally sank in that the unthinkable had happened, that's when the nausea rose, like a tide of blood, or a grotesque winged lizard surging into an ashen sky. It rose and rose, and finally splashed against the kitchen counter, covering plates and forks, a little in the sink. He had been sterling himself for some time, against the inevitable passing of one and then the other. But this? It was as if the idea of death had not once occurred. A cracking of the planet. ! How dark and fantastic was this onslaught of grief, perfect in its symmetr y and complete in its destruction. How absolute and unyielding was the steel that tortured and crushed itself into the rotten, rotting, fleshless fingers of the reaper. How unbelievably incendiary was the pain. A searing of the soul. ! Aristotle lived in a city now, with Lucy, and worked a fine job. Life was beginning to take the shape of a narrow road. Now this, and the 38 storm of sympathy that began to flood in like the melting of a glacier. It was a torrent, unstoppable but unwelcome just the same. An aunt and an uncle, a cousin and a friend, associates and enemies, people Aristotle didn't even know. The phone was ringing, and the phone would not stop ringing. Lucy did her best to handle the condolences while Ari stared at the ceiling, wondering what was above it, and wishing that his hand would not shake. ! There was no time for the shaking of hands. There was no time for the molten sorrow which seemed to flow from behind his eyes. There were effects to put in order, arrangements to be made. There was no time for mourning, there was no time. There was no time, time seemed to stop. And in a perpetual moment, the world seemed to say - "you are alone now." it was a loneliness unlike the rest, not solitude or distance that Aristotle felt, nut the darkness of the sea. He had lost the harbor lights, and now he had to fight the storm, the surge, and the sharks by himself. He had lost the harbor lights, and now he had to go to the harbor. ! Aristotle's father had always planned a funeral in New York Harbor. That is where Abraham, patriarch of the family, had first laid eyes on 39 this continent, expansive and material. That is where the ashes were to be scattered, like so much waste of a life so wasted. ! There was no time for the shortness of breath, and the weakness of knees. There were things to sell and things to keep. There was no time for memory, there was no time. There was no time. Time seemed to stop, and in that perpetual moment, the world seemed to whisper - "so completely alone." It was a mourning unlike the rest, not nostalgia or regret, but the extinction of a species. Fire had consumed the last of the forest, and now he had to travel to the burnt fields, lay witness to the destruction, and hope to find a seed. Fire had consumed the last of the forest, and now he had to go to the forest. ! Aristotle's mother had always planned a funeral amidst the California timber. That is where she had travelled throughout her years, as a girl and a girl-woman, and finally as a woman. That is where the ashes were to be scattered, like so many trappings of a life that was trapped. ! They say that symmetry and beauty are inextricably linked, but aren't the most beautiful things often worthy of destruction? They say that time heals all wounds, but aren't those wounds inflicted by time? Or timing, at least, which is the face of time that brings death at 40 random, strikes out at the innocent and the still-too-young. They say that death is not the end, but the beginning, but isn't it regressive, to destroy what's almost done? ! Yesterday, I passed a dog lying dead in the street. It filled me with rage, and I wished to set it on fire. I wanted to destroy the evidence of its suffering, and pretend that animals do not have to die. It is not so, we all must die, and we all must burn, or rot, or be shot on rockets into the void of space. It does not erase our suffering, etched by endorphin into the fabric of time. The geometry of the cosmos says we cannot reach into the past. The burning of a body only tempers the bones. They had the bodies burned. ! They gathered for the first time in many years, eldest daughter and eldest son, intermediate male child and Aristotle. All the fission of their young lives reversed its course, and a heavy nucleus came out of the furnace. That is the way, when atoms collide. One reaction follows on another. Fusion and then fission and then fusion again. A joining and a splitting, and a final unity. They burnt the bodies, and though it was only combustion, something atomic was at play. Marion and Avery had split in life, but now in death they were resolutely joined. Even if one became a part of the Atlantic, and the other joined the Pacific, all 41 oceans flow together, and soon their molecules would once again mix. This is was had created the four of them in the first place, and that is what turned them into children once more. ! Avery had always loved autumn, and Marion had always loved spring. They would scatter the ashes in the season that seemed most appropriate, and avoid having to decide which jar of carbon to get rid of first. It was winter then, and in the biting air of an unlivable season, they set about the liquidation of two lives. ! At first they thought to dispose of replaceable things - washing machines and refrigerators, bed frames and knife blocks. Two of everything was given or taken or thrown away. If Aristotle's finger lingered a moment too long on an object full of accidental memory, then someone was there to say "Brother, let it go." If he sat too long by the fire, touching his knees or unfolding his hands, someone was there to say "Brother, there is work to be done." If Aristotle wept, then someone was there to weep with him, but it did not matter, because in the end we weep alone. Everything was gone in a week's time, and it was good that houses devoid of life had become unlivable. ! What remained after that were the boxes. Coffins, really, though they were made of cardboard, and contained no remains. Boxes full of 42 pictures and letters and lists, full of noise and memory, and the frenetic, kinetic myth of life at 5400. Piles of boxes, which no one wanted to be the first to open, for fear that their mother or father would spring forth and say 'don't touch that 'till I'm dead.' but they were dead, and the boxes said so, because now they had no choose but to look inside, and to try and make sense of how they had become. ! Aristotle was short of breath. So much dust which seemed distinctly like ash was not the culprit, though it also didn't help. He held a letter he had written to his father, held it, but did not read - he knew what it said. Aristotle was short of breath, and soon enough he was not breathing at all. In that moment he wanted only one ing. He wanted one of his brothers to hit him. He wanted violence, sweet loving violence to erupt around him, rumbling the walls, ruffling the pillows, wrinkling the sheets. He wanted to return to that sacred violence of boyhood, which had made him resilient, made him into a man. The pain of punches he had had to handle, that was the order of things, and it had made him strong. But this pain was chaos, and it did not strengthen him, but made him unable to breathe. Someone places a hand on his shoulder, and for a moment he hoped that they would squeeze until it hurt, but those days were gone. Now he had only the 43 pain of comfort, no the comfort of pain. Now he folded the letter, inhaled and looked back. It was Lucy. He reached out, and continued to breathe. That is how it was in those days, not just for Aristotle, but for his siblings, too - forced breath, long moments, and a desire for pain. ! When all the memories had been folded neatly, and moved, and sealed anew, there was nothing left but the money. They had put it off as long as they could. Now they would each receive almost half a million dollars, and the money brought little besides guilt and shame. Half a million dollars, but what good would it do? Aristotle could start a family now, but the chaos of death had made life seem somehow hollow. Half a million dollars did not ease the pain. The houses were sold, and the savings were split, but no inheritance was left. It was only a pile of ash. Of course, Aristotle knew that he would want the money some day, but it was all too soon. He called his banker and had the money locked away for fifteen years. He had never been very good at saving, and he knew that if he could, he would put the money to frivolous use. That is not what his mother or father would have wanted, and so he locked himself out. He hoped that someday he would get wise, as his parents had been. 44 ! At the end of three long winter weeks, the children again alit ways. It was back to their wires and their lives and their kitchen knives. They had to go on, because that is the order of things, even if violence holds infinite sway. On a Sunday morning, they gathered with saddened, swollen, sunken eyes. It was the last time in their lives that the four children would be together. Next time they met, they would be siblings still, but never children. For one last morning, they were a family, a nucleus, a molecule locked together by the strongest force. And then, with a pop, they parted, and could not bear to look back. ! I am filled with a sadness as I write these words. I do not want the family to end. But that is the way - your way, too. They say no man is an island, and that may be true, but we are all particles in this atomic zoo. We can belong to only one atom at a time. Up quark or down quark, electron in the cloud, we are subject to forces that are beyond us, disturbances in the field. I am just glad that I'm not a neutrino, though some people certainly are. The neutrino is the saddest particle, traveling alone through the void, traversing a milling miles of lead without slowing even a bit. Time gives way to the fusion of life-stuff, but it's not so easy a physics makes it sound. Fusion is a painful process, and so it was for Aristotle and Lucy. 45 ! For the first time, they fought. It's not that they had never disagreed, or even become quite livid, but something had changed. Lucy was all that Aristotle had now, but she still had both her parents. Even though she tried, she could not understand his grief. They fought now not to resolve things, but to make sure that the other was still there. Lucy accused Ari of being distant. Ari knew she was right, but he called her unsympathetic instead of admitting that he had changed. Lucy knew she could be more understanding, but she was no longer sure that Aristotle was a man that she wished to understand. In April, a month before Marion's funeral, Lucy left. ! I know that I told you I had a good feeling about Lucy, but what does that mean? That was then, years ago, when their love was new and unshakable. If it comes as a surprise to you, it is an even greater shock to me. They really were perfect for each other, but sometimes thees just no such thing. They learned from each other, and grew in their years together, but now Aristotle had to go it alone. ! He went alone. Took a cab to the airport, and boarded a flight for San Fransisco. It was time to out his mother out to sea. He had not told his siblings about Lucy. They liked her too much, and would only have blamed him for not holding on to the best thing he had. He'd 46 never been good at saving, and it was his rawest nerve. He went alone, and he left everything. He didn't know what he would do, but he was sure that he didn't want to be in that city anymore, or that state, maybe even that country. He went alone, and he arrived at dusk. His siblings were there already, and they greeted him with a sadness that had already begun to get stale. They were living their lives, and so many months later they hadn't the time to ruminate as Ari did. But they greeted him, and they held him, and they spoke with a softness that he needed much. Ari wore black, but his siblings, and their spouses, and the children they had had, they wore all types of cloth. Marion had wanted her funeral to be beautiful, and Ari knew that she would not have approved of his attire, but he couldn't help it - he indulged fully in the sadness which he felt was his right. ! In the morning, they followed a very precise set of instructions to a tree that their mother had truly loved. She had been a hippie, and a feminist, and an artist deep within. In these woods she had danced with a fearsome liberation. In these woods she had discovered herself, and won herself, defeating a patriarchy so deeply imbibed. It was a battle against herself which had been fought here, a battle in which she had nearly died. But she emerged victorious, and with a new, steely 47 womanhood, she had set out to make a family. She had wanted her children to be healers of the sick, and helpers of the poor. She had wanted to instill in them a fierce love for the planet, for all its bounty, for its lushness and its song. She had succeeded - by the end she was sure. She had given life to a new breed, devoid of the oppressive tendencies she had had to fight in herself. Now her children gathered in the California woods, and spoke of their mother as best they could. Any human life is hard to sum, but they spoke of her as they knew her, one by one. ! The oldest spoke as only daughter could. Her words had the same soft resolve as their mother's, and at times it seemed that it was Marion who spoke. A memory of her teenage years, when her mother's understanding had doubtless saved her. A memory of her early days, when she had learned that femininity was not synonymous with silence. And a memory near the end, when her mother's unflagging support had steadied her steps, allowed her to climb to great heights. ! The oldest male told a story of redemption - how he had come so close to losing her love. But through voice choked with tears, she had refused to give up on him, and her faith was not in vain. He had heard her cry. He had loved her so. He had taken her love, and forged from it 48 a life that was full of meaning. He had loved her so, and she was gone too soon. ! The intermediate male spoke of simple things, of ordinary things, of ways and habits and sayings and laughter - from these things he made a great testament. He affirmed the values that his mother had held dear, provided irrefutable evidence that she had lived these values. From the tiniest moments, he crafted a tribute, and no one doubted that she would have approved. ! Aristotle spoke last. His words were choked and barely audible above the skritter and slip-slush of the foliage. But his mother would have been sad to see him this way, and he knew it and was ashamed. He held himself for a moment, and then let fly a bewildered moan. He could not speak, but in his silence the others saw truth. Their mother was beyond words, as all mothers, and no eulogy was fitting enough. ! They walked together from the forest to the field, and on to the edge of the Pacific. The ashes seemed at first not to fall, but then slowly, gravity worked its strange magic, and she was released. The tide lapped as always at the behemoth rocks, and she was released. The water carried her out and out, and for a long time there was only the sound of the planet's beating heart. They turned and walked away. 49 ! It was a beautiful ceremony, and nobody held it against Aristotle that he had not been able to speak. As much as he wished for his siblings fortitude, they wished also that they had been overcome. They were only glad that someone had, and they told him so. Their love was strong, and though they were no longer children, they were still a family, at least in some sense. When Aristotle finally said that he did not plan to return to his city, each of the others offered up their home. He would go with whoever lived the farthest. It was the intermediate male child. "Ignatius, are you sure?" "Yeah, it's no problem." "Thanks, Iggy. I hope I'm not too much of a drag." ! But Aristotle was a drag. In the company of his brother he realized that his mourning had become his life. Still he could not help himself, and every day he dined heartily upon the buffet of grief. Ignatius said nothing, a resentment began to build. He tried to help his brother. At first he consoled him, told him that the grief would pass, that life would go on. He quickly saw that there was no use. Ari barely moved on most days. Then he tried to prod him, told him that he needed to get over it, that life would have to go on. This also had no effect. Ari 50 said that he was trying his best, but that he was tortured by his psyche, by the fateful, haunting nature of their parents' demise. Finally, Iggy resulted to an ultimatum. He told Ari that he had to either get a job or find another place to live. It was hard for him, to have treat his brother like the child that he no longer was, but it worked. air got a job as a codemonkey, and went each day to work. But though he was up now, and acting, that's all he was doing. It had always given Ari great joy to work with his machines, to speak to them, and command them so fluently. The joy was gone. He resented the machines for their cold lifelessness, yearned for his Lucy, who had been so warm. His work suffered, and where he had once been excellent, even gifted, he was now only competent, a joyless monkey writing code all day. The summer dragged on. It had been three and half months since that day in woods, found a half since Lucy had gone. His life was disintegrating around him, and soon he would have to come face to face with the specter of his father, who had always expected from him great things. At the dawn of September, Iggy told Ari that he shouldn't come back once they went to New York. Ari understood. ! The city was alive as ever on that Saturday. The time had come to release that second, final jar of ash. When Avery was alive, he often 51 spoke of what he wanted for his funeral. His children had know what they would have to do even before they read the plans, laid out in excruciatingly verbose detail in their father's will. They were to charter a boat, and dressed in their finest, most formal attire, they were to sail into New York Harbor at dusk. As the sun set, they were to speak, release the ashes overboard, and then start the party. The will included a playlist, which Avery had always promised would be his last word. He wanted the world there, and he wanted the party to be unforgettable. ! They met on the docks. Passers by mistook them for a wedding party. Not least because of the tuxedos and ball gowns, but also because they seemed so elated, so full of life. But that was their father's way - always full of glee, even in the darkest hour. By seven o'clock the boat was full, and they made their way out into the harbor. In view of lady liberty, and the island where his family had first set foot in the new world, they began the eulogies. ! The oldest spoke first - that was the order of things. She spoke of laughter, and has always been her gift, she made everyone laugh. She poked fun at her father, but without cruelty, and only with the sincerest adoration. Again she spoke with the voice of the dead, with her father's same audacity and wit. Almost as a tribute to her father, 52 she held the stage just a bit too long, but it was never too long, and the sun had not set. ! The oldest male spoke of virtue, in a most classical sense. The virtue of curiosity - lifelong, steadfast, and genuine curiosity he extolled on behalf of his father. That had been the greatest gift. That had been the brightest light. That, in part, had defined the man. He spoke with a seriousness - the seriousness that his father had had when he had spoken if serious things. There was a power in his words, and an eloquence. He did justice to a curious, eloquent man. ! Ignatius spoke of joy. He recounted how his father had pursued joy in all its many forms - through sport and song, through food and drink, through people and through solitude. He thanked his father for that boundless joy, for showing him that happiness is anywhere, if only you make it. ! Aristotle did his best, but again he could not speak. He wished to speak of confidence, the resilience to defeat defeat, but for the first time, he realized that his confidence had left him. His siblings came to his side, and he was relieved. In their embrace he felt more certain, but the sun had set, and the time had come. 53 ! The wind carried the ashes, and they were churned in the wake. Sky and sea colluded to collect the remains of a man too big to contain. The motor kicked on, and the lights of the city began to emerge against a darkening sky. They started up the playlist, and the hit up the bar. The first song was Soul Man by Sam & Dave. The people danced and the siblings spoke, but Aristotle was taciturn still. He downed a gin and tonic before the song was over. Another by the end of Otis Redding's A Change is Gonna Come. Another with Georgia on my Mind. For every song, a drink. Aretha. The Staples Singers. James. Dusty. Reverend Green. The Temps. ! Soon the gentle rocking of the boat became a violent tremulation of the entire world. He could hold it no longer. As he had on that winter morning when he first heard the news, Aristotle regurgitated all the sadness in his belly. This time, though, the putrid melancholy kept coming. Again and again he heaved into the water, and the same wake that had churned his father's ashes was forced to churn his putrid malaise, his pathetic stupor. There was not a little shame on the faces of his siblings, and they helped him, though they were unsure that they really could. He was beyond their steadying arms now, but they held him just the same. 54 ! Aristotle awoke the next morning in his hotel room. His siblings had already gone. He was alone now, really alone, for the first time. The expenses for the funeral, hotel room included, had been paid out of the estate. Our friend, my creation, Aristotle the cynosure was penniless, homeless, and desperately alone. He paused a long time as he exited the hotel - he did not know which way to go. He wondered what he had become. ! I wonder, too. Clearly this is not the end for Aristotle - there are simply too many pages left for that to be the case. Still, it nearly broke my heart to write this chapter, and I'm not sure that I'd like to continue if it's to get much worse. It's not that I've lost control of Ari - he is still my creation - but I do have to be honest. What would be the point in writing this if I didn't tell it like it happened? I mean, I suppose its my responsibility - I made him the way that he is - but it's not entirely my fault. He had some choices in there, and whether by constitution or consciousness, he really didn't do so hot. I hope he can forgive me for the death of his parents. His siblings, too. But parents do die. I suppose it was a little spectacular, what with their getting in a fatal crash with one another, but shit like that does sometimes happen. 55 Life doesn't go the way you plan. I mean, if his parents had died of congestive heart failure or lymphoma or renal failure, sure, it would have been sad. But then Aristotle would have just stayed with Lucy and led what amounts to an ordinary life. At most, a life fulfilling but plain. Terrible shit can make or break you. It looks like Aristotle is broken right now, but I wouldn't count him out just yet. Of course, there's always the possibility that things will not get better. Maybe this is a tale of destitution and sadness - there have been plenty of those. But if I know Ari, and I do, his spirit remains strong. I guess we'll just have to find out. ! Stylistically, though, I think I'm doing better. I know that I could probably use more dialogue, but I'm working on that. I do think I did a few things well in there, though. The vomit thing, for instance, just sort of made sense. Did you think it worked? Who knows - maybe you thought it was cheesy. ! I would also just like to add that I hope people will forgive me if they feel I've stolen from their real life. I mean, I do have siblings, after all, and parents, and it's hard for me to write about Aristotle's folks without at least thinking about my own. We are quite similar, after all. Anyways, whatever theft you may think I've committed ought 56 to pretty much be over with at this point. I've been taking Aristotle down a path that is a least parallel to my own, but I do believe that that path is about to veer wildly. I'm ready for the worst, but I'm holding out hope that Aristotle will prevail. Only the words will tell. 57 ! Decay If you think that it's implausible that guy like Aristotle could end up on the streets, you're wrong. Plenty of the sad, addled bums that you pass on your way to work have degrees just like you. It's just that something snapped, or something went wrong, or somewhere, someone, somehow was sucked into one of these slithering riptides of fate that you can't see coming, but lurk behind lynchpins and labels a triggers and trapdoors. Don't believe for a second that it couldn't happen to you. ! It happened to Aristotle. Suddenly, and with seemingly no explanation, Ari was gone. He had been replaced with a walking shadow, devoid of will and wisdom and joy, devoid of life, except in name. Ari was gone. To himself, and to those that had known him, he was no more. He walked out of that hotel broken, and stumbled into the street, where he stayed a long time. At first he was motionless, but then he began to move - uptown he moved, for no particular reason, but it was a direction, and his feet carried him. That first day was the strangest. The autumn wind was full of scent and light. It was a beautiful day, and Aristotle felt alarmingly free. He went uptown for a whisk and then for want of a reason not to, he went back down. Cars 58 and suits and tourists and police, he passed them all, and they passed him, and no one had any cause for alarm. Gusts and bursts and trees and youth - a handsome man walked free in the city. No baggage, no briefcase, no history but his story, which changed with the minute. ! He stopped a while in a Downtown park. He would not return to life as he had known it. His former life was too empty now, too full of spaces that ached for impossible repairs. Mother was gone, Father was gone, Lucy was gone, and so he would go too. You can image him as an American sadhu, if you like. A nomad caked in human ash. I suppose you could say he was making a choice, but I don’t think he saw it that way. There was no going back – he did not have in him the will to endure that suffering. Of course, memory followed him in a swarm of flies, buzzing always, and occasionally eliciting an involuntary slap to the ear. But it was easier out here, in the wilderness of the disinherited, it was easier to bear the pain, and the buzzing was softer. he had won his freedom, even if the victory had come through a measure of cowardice. ! Let them have it all, he thought, the data centers and soft drinks and highways and Christmas lights. Let them have it and let them 59 enjoy it, and I will be here, sitting on this bench and watching the children play under this arch. ! Let them have it, because I sure as shit don’t want it any more – the dependence and the comfort, the newness and the fame. I need the flame, I need the storm and noise, the redemption of song, my bare feet on the concrete of a hard street where the people meet. I need my hands and my liver. I need a notion of slight serenity, but I have that here, in the pocket of my trousers, where there are seventy- seven cents. ! Let them have it, and I will not weep for them, nor they for me, because one is not better than the other, but all is decay, and we are but meat for worms, and good night sweet ghost of my former self. Let them have it, the sweet rot of slow decay, and I will be here rotting each day in my own way. ! Then he got up. He was hungry already, before the continental breakfast he had so thoughtlessly devoured was even gone from his body. He asked a man for money. He was ignored. He asked another and another, until he had one dollar and eighty-five cents. He bought a double cheeseburger, and sat back down on the bench. It was heavy in his stomach, and he continued to rant. 60 ! Let them have it, he thought, the books and the cooks, and the crooked double looks. He even said it a few times. “You can have it,” he had yelped at one man who was on the phone. “They can have it,” he had mumbled to an orthodox Jew, who paused for a moment, but then went back to Brooklyn. It didn’t even cross Aristotle’s mind that he had gone insane, but he hadn’t. He just didn’t want it any more. The it being this glorious pretense, our spiraling edifice of civilization. Isn’t that any person’s prerogative? To stop pretending like he knows what’s going on? Aristotle had stopped pretending, and now was simply living – tasting each moment. Whether it tasted like shit or macaroons depended on the wind, but he was quite alright with that. ! He slept that night on the hard, curved bench in the park, and was only disturbed by the itching feeling of eyes at night. Cars drove past, and lovers walked hand in hand, and the sky was glowing, but Aristotle slept. He slept soundly, and dreamed fearlessly, and in the morning, he was renewed. He stood, and stretched, and walked away. The bench was nothing to him, only a place where he had slept, and where his life had begun again. ! He walked a great deal in the weeks that followed, across parks and lawns, and bridges. Walked on his feet, walked upright. He walked, and 61 sometimes he sat, and sometimes birds shot out of the sky, and stole him from his revelry. He walked and sat and stood and slept, and saw with his eyes – the decay and the nothing. He smelled it with his nose – the sweet rot of humanity, consumed and consuming, always hungry, always new. He leapt and crouched and looked. Nobody bothered him, and he bothered no one, except to beg for money and to tell them it was all theirs, and he didn’t want any. He was smelly, and the September air was smelly around him, and that was that. It went on like this for along time – the sky grew dark, and then grew light, and then grew dark again. It rained and it did not rain, he got wet and he got dry. He did not go hungry, but he was never full, and that was that. No more glorious pretending, and no more data centers and much less pain. He did not think of Lucy so much, and thought of his parents only when confronted with trees or water, which was often, but not so often as all of the time. ! He was happy in those days, September and early October, perhaps as happy as he had ever been. But his body grew tired and the wind grew cold. I’ll go south, he thought at first, but he had no money for that. I’ll be fine, he thought, but he knew it was a lie, and that he would die on the streets in the furious, biting cold of winter. Going 62 back was not an option, but he had to move forward. He still didn’t want it, but he had begun to want. He needed some bread and a bed, but he also wanted to keep his head. Then he met a man named giggles, on that same bench where he had first become free. ! Giggles was the only man he ever met who thanked the heavens every day that he’d been hit by a bus. It had happened twelve years earlier, in India, and that’s when giggles had gotten free. He talked about his freedom as a tremendous light, which poured in through the top of his head, and out through his eyes. Matted grey dreadlocks, and only six teeth – he drank his own urine, and chanted softly as he went. Surely, he was insane, but he had joy, and he was willing to share. The answer was in waste, he supposed. Not his own, but he really did drink the stuff, even if it tasted so acrid and made him choke. But the answer was in waste, and he could not tell Aristotle, but he could show him. ! They walked all day to the industrial outskirts of that beating heart of a city, New York, New York. Across razor wire fences and body shops and smokestacks, they walked against and ashen sky. Giggles stopped. ! “Here,” he said, and fixed his gaze. They were standing in front of a boarded up brownstone in the borough of Queens. They could squat 63 until the cops came, he told Ari, and then they could find another and another. There were thousands just like it, he said, and who did it harm if they had a home amongst the squalor and filth. In through the window, they found cinder blocks and aluminum cans. They made beds and lit candles, sang to each other, and delighted in the company of a kindred spirit. Neither of them wanted it, but they wanted each other, and were unafraid, not least because they had nothing. ! They slept that night in the warm glow of a new home. They spoke of joy, of how they got their freedom, of the new now, no now, which consumed them and made them whole. They were brothers, and they would help each other, because it’s so much harder when you’re on your own. That’s what had really made Ari so tired – the feeling that he was the only one. But now he had giggles, and walls to stop the wind. ! Now he had giggles, and giggles had so much to give. The waste was the answer – because people want it, but only if it’s perfect, and only if it’s new. Look around you, he told Aristotle, and you’ll see that there’s plenty, in dustbins and dumpsters, on curbs and in alleys. There’s enough for us here, and nobody will mind us amongst the filth and the squalor, taking what’s unwanted and living in the now. So go 64 look, my brother, baiah baiah, and together we can make a life. Take what they don’t want, and we will have enough. ! That’s exactly what Ari did. He went out each morning and came back with sometimes nothing, but sometimes more than enough. From dumpsters and dustbins, he took food and furniture and friendship. Warm winter jackets, and day old bread, a mattress, a microwave, and half-used crayons. They made art on the ceilings and lived in the dust. They never went hungry, and they were not so alone. The world went on as ever, and the bitter, biting cold of winter was kept at bay. Aristotle’s beard grew long, and his hair was a matted nest as it had been for so long. He was alive now, for the first time, perhaps, but at least since his parents had gone. He was alive, and by any metric that, he was well. He told his brother Iggy so, and hoped that he would let the others know. They had not known what to make of his sudden silence, but only hoped that he was still alright. Aristotle still loved them, and still dreamt sometimes of stir-fry, but was only doing what he had to do to ease the pain. Iggy understood and he said the others would, too, even if he didn’t really believe it. Aristotle said he was alive, and the line went dead. He had to get to the back of the bakery, to meet Steven, who saved Tuesday’s loaves just for him. 65 ! Soon there were others in dusty dark, and the chorus of song grew louder. It was not unpleasant, their way of life, not at all how you might think. It was like and unburdened, and full of the best sort of confraternity. It was past and future tied neatly in one – hunter- gatherers of the new millennium, living off of excess and this shining, unbounded, now. There were students in rebellion, and old me in decline, women and men and transgendered bodies of the new humanity. Black and white and no color at all, except for what you wanted to be. No e-mail and no google news, no network to contain them, finally unwet from the digital deluge. ! From time to time, the cops came, but it was only like a bee sting. A sharp wave of terror, and perhaps the thwack of a hard baton, but no arrest, and no lasting damage. They had only to move their camp to one of the other dusty, dim, dilapidated buildings. Each time they moved, they would lose a few friends, gain new ones, say goodbye and hello, and Namaste, Namaste, I see god in you. They cooked over fires, and the taste of their labor was sweet. So hungry after a long day of gathering, they sat around, and at night the joy came. Always slightly different, and always a little unnerving, each day the joy would come, and sit in their hair, and join them in song. How they sang – songs of 66 redemption, and soul songs, and the rhythmic chants of distant and forgotten tribes. They were their own tribe – giggles and Aristotle like the Romulus and Remus of this ne w Rome. But it wa s not a civilization they had started, but an uncivilization, a backwardness that they felt was right, their right. Aristotle and giggles and niradhara and T, their cast of roving bandits, wanting nothing but the now. For some time it went on like this, and they could all sit back and watch the decay. Decaying teeth, decaying spirits, decaying humanities – worn down by the diamond-grind of society and industry and technology and civilization, they had all sought a way to end the decay. Into the spring, they went on watching, and the verdure once again returned. It had been more than a year since the accident, and Aristotle was no longer a ghost of himself. He was a spirited incarnation, a spectral specter that had found a new and enchanting way of life. Still, there was one thing that began to weigh more and more on his mind – sex. ! Aristotle had not taken a lover since Lucy, and he had begun to wonder if he ever would. He craved sex wildly at times, but found himself stuck. The figures of beauty haunted him, and the new spring warmth brought the constant temptation of unbounded bodies. He 67 didn’t know what to do He needed the warm, wet release of intercourse, but none of his compatriots were interested in the same. ! One day, then, Aristotle shaved his beard. He washed himself and combed his hair; he smiled at himself in the mirror, and remembered that he was handsome, that he had what had been called a smoldering gaze. He stepped lively into the night, determined to sell his body, so that he could buy bodies, and find release. ! Does it come as a surprise? That a man so handsome and so smart would want to sell himself ? The reasons are clear. He did not wish to return to the world of desks and elevators, which he had left to save his sanity. But he still was oppressed by those figures of beauty. Despite all the freedom he had gained, he could not rid himself of his desire for wide hips and a thin waist, big titties and a symmetrical face. He could not find those things, in his detachment of the dispossessed, but he was sure he could not find them by leaving, either. So, he chose a path in the middle ground. He would sell himself on the street, and then he would use his winnings to solicit the same. He had no qualms about this, not since he had left it all, and abandoned the teeming wreckage of modernity, and morality. He smiled at himself in a mirror, and knew that he would meet with success. 68 ! On the very first night, he had sex with two women and three men. The men were painful at first, but he eventually grew accustomed to the pounding sensation of penetration. Each time he asked for more, until he was fetching more money in a single hour than he had seen in all of the last long months He fucked in cars and hotel rooms, apartments and office buildings, so empty at night. He was surprised at how easy it felt, how his jerking and humping felt no more or less moral than his walking down the street. ! There was a justice to it, he thought. He would have sex with those who wanted him, and then he would have sex with those that he wanted, and at the end of it all he would come home, no richer and no poorer, but much less horny. In the back of a Mercury Mountaineer a man told him that he could take him away from all this, but Aristotle only laughed, took his payment, and hopped out of the car. ! There was symmetry in his actions, but there was irony, too. At the end of a week, he would take his winnings, and book a room at some expensive hotel. Perhaps even the same one where he had spent that last night in civilization. He would solicit some prostitutes, beautiful by the standards of Vogue or American Apparel, and take them up and up, to that well furnished room. What’s the irony, you ask? It’s that the 69 girls had no idea. They had no idea that the stranger who payed to climb inside of them knew exactly what he was doing. They had no idea how he had gotten the money, and they didn’t care. They weren’t surprised that he was handsome, or that he had sex so tenderly. They only fucked him, and took his money, and went out through the lobby, and back uptown. ! He never spent the night in the giant, soft bed for which he had actually paid, but was gone by morning, and the sheets were all unfurled. He would return to his squat, and make his bed next to giggles and the rest. He told himself, he needed to tell himself, that he still didn’t want it. It was no less foul, he thought, and the images on TV were still so full of blood and fear. He just wanted the sex, he said to himself - that wet, warm release, and that handful of tit. ! But Aristotle was either wrong, or he was lying to himself. It was creeping back in, rubbing off on him from the money that he touched each day. Soon, before the summer was out, he began to buy things besides sex. The first time it was a cab ride uptown, but soon it was a coffee and cigarettes and some of the other comforts of civilization. What he had begun to miss. Slowly, the it crept back into Aristotle’s 70 life. It happened when he passed the harbor or the arbor, when he heard the name Lucy, when he logged back on. ! After eleven months of radio silence, Aristotle checked his e-mail. It was all still there. In all that time outside of the spiraling vapor of technology and information, Ari had thought that he was truly gone. But it was not so – it can no longer be so. Almost a year’s worth of e- mails had gone unanswered. He went each day, and read them all. First they were from siblings and friends, asking where he had gone, or if they had done something wrong. Then they grew increasingly urgent, increasingly scared. People wondered if he was alive or dead. Then the tone changed – that must have been when he called Ignatius. No longer full of worry, the letters had an angrier, more resentful tone. Nobody understood why he had done what he did, despite Iggy’s promise. ! Two or so months after he had gone underground, the mail mostly trailed off. Of course, he still received the advertising and offers – they don’t care if you’re alive or dead. Still, two sorts of e-mails kept coming. One was from the occasional, erstwhile friend, who didn’t even realize that Ari had gone. Some people we see so seldom. It dawned on Ari that even to that day, there were people who thought 71 he was sitting behind a desk, checking his e-mail every so often, and going about his routine life. In a sense it made him think that he really was, and that no matter how much he didn’t want it, it was his by birth, and he couldn’t give it away. ! The second type of e-mail was from Iggy, who every month for the past nine months had sent Ari an e-mail containing news from the family, and a plea to come back. Ari read these with a supreme intensity, clinging to every word, thanking the stars for a brother like that. He had missed so much in just a year. All three of his siblings were married now, and there were six nieces and nephews between them. Careers were blooming, and life was happening at breakneck pace. For the first time, Ari realized that he missed it – the bourgeois life that had once been his destiny. It was not regret he felt, but a readiness. He was ready to come back up - if not to the surface, then at least part of the way. First, though, he had some things to take care of. ! The squat was as lively as ever – giggles and niradhara were cooking a stew. Ari walked in and was greeted with usual chorus of namaste, namaste. He sat on the floor next to T, wondered if he was really ready to leave this life, live this life, lead this life. The stew was made with old cabbage and a clear broth, and it did not taste so good to him. It 72 was not full of his toil and hunger. He told the gang that he would be leaving soon, and he said that he loved them, each and all. ! They bemoaned his leaving, especially some of the newer ones, who looked on giggles and Aristotle as a sort of myth. Still, his resolve was clear, and one by one they wished him luck and health and happiness. Ari started to cry when he said goodbye to T, who had become his closest friend, and whose shining black hair was often the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes. ! Late that night, giggles and Aristotle sat on the roof, stoking one last fire, though they had no need for it in the August heat. “I knew this day would come,” said giggles, bearing his six teeth in a knowingest grin. “I think I did, too.” “Just try not to get too attached is all, and you’ll be fine.” “You’re too wise.” “Well, it’s not my wisdom, but it works.” “I’m just glad I met you. I would have frozen to death if you hadn’t come along.” “Me too.” The words lingered in the air, and Aristotle didn’t understand them, but he was sure that he knew what they meant. They 73 smiled and sang, and let the joy come one last time. In the morning it was over, and Aristotle was again on his way, on his own, wiser for the year he had spent in the dust and the dark, but ready to return. He logged on straight away, and he sent a message to Iggy. Subject: Namaste Iggy, ! I’m so sorry if I’ve caused you any pain. I’ve spent the last week reading the e-mails you sent. I’ve missed so much. Thank you, thank you, a thousand times, thank you for holding on to me. I know that it must have been hard, to write to a brother was gone from the world. But I’m back now, and I have so much to tell. Maybe I can make my way to Phoenix, and tell you in person. ! It’s been a long, strange year, but I’ve been really well. I’ve changed so much. I wonder if the world has changed, too. It is still very strange to me that I’m writing this, using a computer again, but it also feels just the same. Do let me know if I should make my way down. Abiding Love, Ari 74 ! Ari proceeded to respond to a great many of the people who had tried to reach him. First to his two older siblings, he sent messages that asked for forgiveness. Then, to former friends and colleagues, he sent messages saying that he had been at a monastery. In a way, that was the truth, as far as he could figure. The squat had been some sort of monastic order. he even sent a message to Lucy, who he was sure was happy b now with some other man. He only wanted to apologize for what happened, to tell her that he understood. In a matter of two long days, he had reconnected with everyone. Ignatius said that he should definitely come. All was forgiven, and he just couldn’t wait to see his brother again. Ari said that he would set out the next day. ! Now, I wish that I could tell you that that’s how it played out. I want very badly for Aristotle to make it down to Phoenix. But reentering the world is more complicated than that. Ari learned a lot in his battle with decay, but he also unlearned a lot. In the shadows, things seemed a bit more straightforward. If someone was going to rob you, they were going to rob you, If they were going to help you out, they helped you out. Aristotle had forgotten that the world is full of deception, and sadly, he’s not going to make it to Phoenix. At least, he’s 75 not going to make it straight away, and not without a good deal of intervening chaos. Part of me wishes that Ari could have just stayed at the squat. But that’s not how it happened – there are bigger things in store. Like all experience, though, the year of decay has helped shape our hero, or anti-hero, or whatever Aristotle turns out to be. He’s softer now, I think, but also full of a much greater confidence than he had had before. He was one of the leaders, after all, and he found that he could make a life for himself and others out of nothing. He was proud of what he and giggles had done, and I think he had every right to be. ! As for me, in case you were wondering, I think it’s getting easier as I go along. I started out with a relatively vague idea of who Aristotle was, but he is becoming very real to me now. I am still drawing from my own life in certain ways, and Ari and I are still certainly similar, but it is different now. Ari’s story is taking on a life of its own. I write furiously, when I write, and the words seem to spill from my pencil quite of their own accord. I am pleased that I have gotten this far, and have no doubt now that I will see this through to the end. Marcus even started writing his own story tonight, about Detroit. I think in part it’s 76 because he saw how much I’m enjoying this, but mostly because we all have something to say – you too. ! I do worry about you from time to time, wonder if you’ll be enjoying this, or maybe not enjoying, but at least interested. I wonder how the prostitution part made you feel. I didn’t exactly enjoy writing it, but I do think that it’s real. I’ve never done it, on either side, and I guess I just worry that I wasn’t very accurate. Then again, you’ve probably never done it either, and won’t exactly be in a position to judge. If you are, though, if you have done it, I want to know what it was like, and how close I came. I know you’re not Ari (nobody is) and that he might see it differently, but do let me know. ! It’s ten ‘til four in the morning now, but I don’t think I’m done for the night. I am going to take a break through, if only because my hand could use it. Talk to you in the next chapter, I guess, in no time at all. 77 Chaos ! I always tell Marcus not to fuck with me until I've been awake for at least thirty minutes. My mind just can't handle it when I've just come off the dream ether, and my eyes are still so full of sleep. Maybe I'm just slow to wake, because Marcus insists that he can be fucked with as soon as he gets out of bed. I still think that people should at least get a small window in which to used to this aching consciousness that beats behind our eyes. ! It was as if Aristotle had awoken from a dream. It was not his eyes that were full of sleep, but his mind. He was still accustomed to waking each day with the sun and going to sleep with the sounds of a crackling fire. Since he left the squat, he had been staying in a hotel, going to an internet cafe each day to put together the jigsaw of his former life. Now it was time to go to Phoenix, meet Iggy, and make things right. ! It's a long way from New York to Arizona, and Aristotle wasn't sure how he wanted to go. He knew he didn't want to fly. As much as he was enthralled by the abstract notion of human flight, he couldn't yet put himself through the bureaucratic gauntlet of an American airport. He had long ago discarded his driver's license, and credit cards, and other little pieces of plastic that bore his name. No, no airplanes. It would 78 have to be by bus or train or car. Now Ari had gotten used to relying on the generosity of strangers, and he decided it would be good to hitchhike. He had left the squat, but he still held the values of that place so close to his heart, and he thought that that's what giggles would have done. ! It's not easy to hitchhike. It takes a good deal of patience, a keen eye, and more than a smattering of luck. Aristotle had all those things. He hit the road. He got out of town on a Metro-North train, and started out from the depot at Wassaic, NY. That first day he made it as far as Ithaca. It was a heavy heat in the sky that day, and Ari was pink and sticky by the time he found a room. He watched the students in all their self-possession, and wondered how much the world could really change in just a year. Not much, he thought, the world moves slow. ! The next morning brought sweet, big, summer rain. He thought about staying in Ithaca until the rain cleared, but decided instead to try his luck out on the high road. He'd been standing at mile marker 109 for a good hour before the Bel-Air came alongside. It was a sight, a car like that in the pounding August storm. It had to be sixty years old. The pink and alabaster two-tone was no less striking against the grey. Ari got in. 79 ! "Where ya goin'?" The driver was a small man, crisp from the sun, and with an almost imperceptible accent. Couldn't say where from. He gripped the oversize steering wheel with a lost precision - ten and two, to the minute. "Phoenix." "Ya don't say! I'm goin' as far as Flagstaff. I guess today's your day." ! Aristotle let loose a sigh of gratitude and relief. He thought it would take at least two weeks to get to Iggy's. With a straight shot like this he might make it in four. The Bel-Air hummed deeply, and carried them through the storm. "I didn't get your name." "Oh, sorry, I'm Ari." "Yanni. Nice to meet you." The man hesitated to take his hand off the wheel, but he finally did, and extended it a bit too far towards Ari. Ari shook it and fell back into silence. Some folks like to chat, but they always make it plain. The silence was enough, and Ari wasn't sure what he'd do if the talk turned towards what was new in the world, which ti tends to do. No, it seemed that they were both content to watch the land slick by, to listen to this hiss and hum of their carriage. 80 ! They stopped for lunch at a diner in Pennsylvania. Ari asked, after they had brought him his fried egg sandwich, where Yanni was from. Yanni said he was from New York, but that didn't seem true to Ari. He decided then to stop asking questions. Where Yanni was from, after all, was Yanni's business. Ari offered to pay for lunch, and Yanni took him up. They went on that way for a long time - tucked inside an easy silence. Yanni payed for gas, and Aristotle payed for the food and for places to sleep. They listened to the hum of that powerful old engine, and the hiss of the road against the whitewall tires. They had made it just past Durango when Ari was startled by Yanni's nasal voice. "Where did you say you're going?" "Phoenix." "What for?" "To see my brother." "Sorry." ! Yanni pulled something long and heavy from under his seat. A wrench or a pipe or a candlestick - something that had no business under his seat. Before Ari knew what was coming, he was out. Yanni p u s h e d h i m o u t o f t h e c a r, a n d h e t u m b l e d d o w n t h e s te e p 81 embankment. The Bel-Air hummed away at breakneck speed, carrying Yanni, and Yanni's leather duffel, and Ari's backpack. ! It was dark when Ari regained consciousness. His left eye was stuck shut with blood, and he had to reach up with his right hand and pull it open. His left arm was fractured or broken, but anyways out of commission. He stood, wondered what had happened, but knew that it must have been Yanni. He should not have trusted that man, he knew all along, but he had had no reason not to. He couldn't remember the moments before he had been attacked, had no idea how long he had been out. He was hungry. From the place he had landed, he could see no trace of the road - only wilderness and darkness. He was thirsty. The woods were dense. The smell reminded him of a clean kitchen. He did not know where he was. The moon threw just enough light to see for a few steps. His head hurt. His shirt was soaked in blood, and his pants were torn. His arm hurt. He knew that he had to move, had to find someone. He considered his options. He could go up and up, on the steep face of the mountain looming giant beneath him. He could walk at his current elevation in either direction, along the loose rocks. He could go down, into the valley, inside the dark green woods. 82 His head was reeling, and he either couldn't or didn't hear the car passing on the road just a hundred yards above. He started to walk down the mountain ! It was treacherous in the dark. With every step he took, he feared he would lose his footing and fall down and down to death. He did not. He kept putting one foot in front of the other. Though he was injured and confused, he knew enough to put one foot in front of the other. He knew nothing else. One foot in front of the other, down and down and down the mountain, into the pine-sol woods. The darkness was stunning inside those woods, and there were noises and motion, and the scent of blood. The woods were dark and his head hurt very much. He continued to put one foot in front of the other. He began to ask questions of himself. Had he seen a candlestick? One foot, then the other. How could he have been so foolish? One foot, the other foot, again and again. His head hurt. Had they gotten in an accident? No. Where was the car? It had to be Yanni. One foot, step, again, the other foot, now repeat. His arm hurt. Where am I? Colorado. Foot. Foot. Step. Aristotle asked himself these questions through the night, and remembered to put one foot in front of the other. Step. Step. Step. Step. 83 ! When the sun came up, he could not see it, but the forest grew brighter, and the cross-hatched patches of sky went from black to blue. He sat on a fallen tree, soft with moss and rotting from moisture. His left arm was swollen to what he thought was twice its normal size. ! With every step he took, which was many that night, it had throbbed in protest, sent a wave of nauseous pain through his body. He sat there, on the log, so soft and wet, and wondered if it was a good place to die. Then something happened that seemed to Aristotle nothing less than a miracle. He stood, and he put one foot in front of the other. Then again, and again, until he found himself walking again through the woods. He thought to go up now, to the top of whatever mountain or hill he was on, to see what he could see. So up he went. His head hurt. Up and up, step by step. Finally he cleared the timber. At first he saw nothing, only the pointy green carpet of the forest, and the rocky peaks above. Then it emerged. ! He could not be sure, but he thought he saw a tiny ribbon of road traipsing across a distant peak. He asked himself how far, though the answer did not matter. Ten miles? Twenty? ! Down now, back down into the trees and the soft ground beneath them. He walked until he could walk no more, and then he sat. Every 84 moment that he sat, he was afraid that he would never get up. But he did, every time. He wanted to see Iggy. He wanted to come back to the surface. He did not want to die out here, like this. He did not want to die at all. He wanted to live, and so he rose, continued to walk, every step sending a shockwave of pain through his body. ! At nightfall he stopped. If he did not drink soon he would surely perish. He fell asleep, and dreamed of machines. He saw them talking, and wondered if they were really so different, he and those piles of circuits. He reached out to touch one of the gleaming heaps of metal, and he felt a wetness. He woke. It was raining, and the rain cascaded off the foliage in tremendous torrents. He opened his mouth. He was renewed. ! You can call it divine providence if you wish, or dumb luck, but it rains most days in the mountains. Aristotle was renewed just the same, in body and in spirit. He thought the rain had come just for him, that he was not meant to die amongst that lonely timber. It was this sentiment that carried him on - on and on. One foot in front of the other, against the throbbing pain and the weariness. Aristotle pushed on. Another day of self-interrogation, and a conscious placement of 85 one foot and then the other. The pain was unbearable, driving him to the edge of madness. Still he went on. ! Deep in the wilderness, afraid and alone, Aristotle had never been so close to death. He felt that it was walking just behind, begging him to take one false step, to fall and never to get up. He looked over his shoulders to find that darkness, but he never did - only the dense woods that seemed to go on forever. He wasn't even sure that he had really seen that tiny ribbon of grey cutting across that distant mountain, let alone that he was going in the right direction. ! He was fueled by faith alone, spurred by that common raincloud, chided and taunted by death. No matter how many times he went over it, he couldn't figure out why Yanni had done this. Of course, he was under the impression that that small, serious man had knocked him unconscious and left him in the middle of the backcountry to die. Why not just kill him? Why take him so far before committing his crime? None of it made sense. Eventually he stopped asking himself these pointless questions, and had only a single, perpetually repeating mantra in his mind - one foot in front of the other. A few times he said it out loud, if only so his body could hear it and understand. 86 ! It had been four days since Aristotle had awakened, so broken and bewildered, on the side of some unknown mountain. Perhaps there had been no road, or perhaps he was walking in circles. No - he had listened to that voice that came from inside him, but was not him, and his feet had done as they were told. On the fourth day since he had awakened, the third day since the rain had told him to go on, Aristotle looked into the valley below, and saw houses and schools and churches blanketing the floor. He saw baseball diamonds and storefronts, and a hospital. Perhaps the road had been an illusion, but it had led him here. He descended with the same simple tenacity that had carried him all this way, and collapsed at the front door of the hospital, unable to go on. He had made it. By the grace of rain, he had made it. Four days through the deep alpine woods, his feet had carried him. He was done. ! The doctors were unsure what to make of the man who had collapsed at the door, blood-soaked, battered, and severely dehydrated. He had no money and no identification, and for days he did not regain consciousness. As Aristotle slumbered, the doctors went about mending his mangled body. They cleaned and stitched his head, fixed his arm and put it in a cast, and tended to the lacerations which 87 marred the whole left side of his body. They were amazing that he had survived at all, even more amazed that he had fought his way to their front door. ! He was a sad sight in his hospital bed - nameless and unknown to the women and men who brought him back from the brink. He seemed to hover there, somewhere between life and death. He had dreams as he lay - not quite alive, but also not gone. ! He dreamed of those machines, of their unspeakable prowess. He saw mechanical arms moving in syncopated rhythms, a minstrel show for the new millennium. He saw diodes and bulbs, pulsing, gleaming - the unnatural light seeming so sweet and so bright. He saw circuits alive with the logic and consciousness of all complexity. He saw brains as big as planets, but not brains, only forces of resistance and discriminating switches - melding and molten and meeting, becoming planets, as big as planets, not planets. He saw trees and maps and lists, arrows pointing to spaces in his memory. He dreamed so furious, and saw the chaos of perception - the deep, trembling, tremulous buzzing of new consciousness. The organic became synthetic, the synthetic became artificial, and the artificial returned to organism, completing the recursion and beginning again. It grew wiser, stronger, more 88 evolved. Evolving, unbounded, amoral, synthetic, analytic, artificial, organic, recursive, new, gleaming, terrible. He spoke to the machines and asked for mercy, for forbearance, for the answer. The machines were wet and warm. They gleamed as big as balls of fusion. They spoke in tongues and clicked and clapped. The machines pulsed, Aristotle pulsed, the universe seemed to pulse. What is consciousness if not complexity? Roots in soil, atmosphere of noble ash, sweet gleaming bulbs in the light of their own selves. Embodied logic, actuated and unreliant, new life. Machines making machines, machines machining machines designed to machine new machines. They pulsed and flashed, filled the world with unnatural colors - fuchsia and electric green, noodles, noodles, macaroni and cheese. Sweet chaos of logic, the machines pulsed. Aristotle pulsed. Aristotle woke. ! A dull, pulsating pain racked and rocked his body, left to right, left to right. He gagged and moaned. He heard a beeping. He opened his eyes and saw the machines, buzzing and whirring and pulsating. Inside him and outside him, everywhere were machines. ! It was not rage that welled up inside Aristotle, but fear. No, not fear, but terror. A pure and crystalline terror rose inside of Aristotle, and the struggle began. He yanked the clear plastic tube from his right 89 arm by reaching up and grabbing it close to the source, an undulating sack of colorless fluid. He clawed and snatched at the pipes that jammed his face and his throat, and with great pain they came loose. He ripped tiny circles of plastic from his torso, and with them came great chunks of his hair. He would destroy these hysterical machinations, even if it meant destroying himself. With a great strength, that same strength that he had found in the grey and odorless alpine rain, he rose. With his right arm he lifted the metal rod that had held the sack of clear, salty liquid. Aristotle raised the rod, and with a heart full of terror, he brought it down swiftly on one of the glowing, iridescent, noisy contraptions. Again and again, he hacked away at the pulsating piles of metal and glass. ! The duty nurse finally heard the commotion from her desk down the hall and rushed to the room that had been so silent and so still for a few long days. By the time she opened the door, the room was still and silent once more. There was no more beeping, and Aristotle lay on the floor, surrounded by a pile of broken, beaten, and mutilated machines. More people wearing blue pajamas appeared. Aristotle did not struggle as they restrained him, did not utter a word when they asked what the hell was going on. Doctors and hospital officials 90 muttered softly on the other side of a thick wooden door. Aristotle fell back into unconsciousness. ! Still he dreamed, of a soft glow emanating from the belly of a planetoid brain, of a deep covenant. He saw wires traversing the vast voids between planets, and he knew with absolute clarity, that civilization had transcended its human origins. He was not full of terror. He welcomed the unfurling spiral, took it and placed it in the warm core of his body, let it emanate from his still beating heart. There is only sky now, only sky and sea. We are no longer earth-bound. Lights pulsated and orbited each other, violet and carnation and rose. Diodes blinked in vast arrays, and the fusion of life-stuff went on and on, unceasing, unyielding, unrelenting. What tremendous fusion! What unfathomable heat! The machines pulsed. Aristotle pulsed. Aristotle woke. ! This time, though, Aristotle was placid. He heard the steady beeping and the steady beating of his own heart. This time he was not full of terror, and only wanted to feel the steady intermixing of his fluids and the dripping liquids from the see-through sack. Each moment he felt stronger, could feel himself growing stronger, knew that he was alive, and that he would go on living. What chaos is life, he 91 thought, to find myself here, and then to find myself here, and to know myself. What marvelous chaos. ! He knew he had a debt to pay. He had been in this hospital for who knows how long, and he had destroyed those machines who knows how long ago. He had no insurance and no money, no job and no way to pay. He was sure that he had only one choice - he had to leave that place before they found out who he was, and could pin the debt on that nebulous identity that floats in a dry cloud and follows you wherever you go. He had to get out before it all came raining down. He tried to lift his arm, and he realized, remembered that he had been strapped to the bed. He pressed a button on the edge of the gurney to call for a nurse. He did not know how long he had been unconscious, but he only hoped that it was another day, and that it would be a different set of doctors and orderlies on duty. A young black man wearing those blue pajamas threw open the heavy, wooden door. "Will you take these off?" "I can't do that." "Please, I just need to get up and walk around." "Hold on. Let me ask a doctor." 92 "No. Wait. Don't do that." Aristotle looked straight into the nurses eyes. He needed to convey the urgency of his revelation, to tell the man that it was not a question of protocol, but a question of humanity. "Please? Just for a couple minutes, then you can strap me back down if you want." "Well, okay. But just stay in this room. Okay?" "I promise." ! The orderly released the thick leather straps binding Aristotle to the bed, and he told him he had five minutes. With that, the sweet nurse left the room. Aristotle unhooked himself from the tubing, gently this time, so as not to cause himself pain. He made the bed, and walked calmly toward the door, so heavy, and so very much made of wood. It lumbered open. Ari looked down the hall at the nurse's station. The man who had freed him was staring intently at a computer screen. Aristotle walked with a steadfast placidity down the corridor, one foot in front of the other. He walked down the stairs, and then he walked out the door. One foot followed the other, and he did not fall. He did not have the air of a man who needed to be bothered, and nobody bothered him. There's no telling how long it took them to 93 realize that the nameless drifter had gone, but Aristotle was far away by then, and none of them would ever know his name. ! It had been two weeks since Ari had set out to see his brother, and he worried that Iggy would think he had once again gone underground. He called from a pay phone and told Iggy where he had been. Iggy said he was coming to get him. His body felt broken, or he would have walked those long last miles. He wanted so badly to come up again, to resurface, to make things whole. He wanted it with every part of himself - even the parts that no longer seemed to work. He would spend one final night on the street, and in the morning it would be over. Going down, and coming up, he would be returned. One final night under the white september moon. One year had passed, and Aristotle was ready to come home. ! The bench where he slept was hard, and it hurt his tender, lacerated back. The air was hot. The stars pulsed and seemed to vibrate. Aristotle could not tell if he was waking or dreaming. There is a state that lies between the two, and that night, the whole night, that's where Aristotle was. Waking or dreaming, he could not tell, only that the lights seemed to dance, and the machines seemed to speak, humming and whistling in a language that perhaps only he could 94 understand. He felt closer to them than he ever had before, even in those days when they had been his first love. He remembered the slick aluminum casing of his first computer, and he missed it, wondered where it was. Something had changed in him, he was sure. He had not tried to code in a long time, but he knew that it would come flooding back, a glacier melting into the sea of his memory. He was sure that he would be better than ever, talk to the machines with a fluency that few had ever commanded. He wanted the morning. He wanted to see Iggy. He awaited his triumphant return. ! It was a long, blank night, that last one, but soon enough the morning came. And with the morning came the sun, and with the sun came light. It was the light of the sun that illuminated Ignatius, thundering up the road, beaming at the sight of his brother Aristotle, who he loved like a brother, who he had missed like a limb, who he was so glad had finally come up for air. ! Ari sat in the passenger seat, and the car carried them away, toward the west. "It's been so long." "I know. It's the longest we've ever gone." "You look older." 95 "I am older. You look older, too." "Well I guess we're both older. I guess that's how it goes." "Yeah, I guess so. It's good to see you, Ig." "Believe me - I know what you mean." ! They thundered along, across the vast, flat deserts of the west, and they weren't afraid to speak of their love. It had always been a little daunting to discuss the bond they shared, but now it seemed the only thing to do. They talked and they thundered, passing all the ancient geology. It had been a trying journey, and Aristotle was still in pain. But it was over now, and the desert rolled endlessly by. It was over now, and Phoenix rose from the arid dust. Ari felt at home. ! Those first few days in Phoenix, they did nothing but talk - about old times, and about new things, about where they had been. Ari told the story of the squat, and he thought he did justice to the dust and the dark. Still he loved that place, and wondered what song giggles would sing that night. Iggy told the story of starting a life, of making a home, of the utmost joy. They learned much from each other in those days, and were quite sure that the answer was in the parallax, if there was an answer at all. Ari spoke of his dream, but it was only that. The dream itched, and Iggy felt the itching, too. The chaos of evolution 96 loomed large - they felt that they were standing in the shadow of a planet. Ari spoke softly when he spoke of his dream. He had emerged. ! I think it was good for Aristotle, that walk with death. Otherwise, I wouldn't have made it happen. Yes, it had to happen, because often we can only recognize something by negation. What is life if not the opposite of death? What is death if not the opposite of life? It was a hard journey, there's no doubt about that, but it had to be hard. Something had to sow the seed of chaos in Aristotle, and it turns out that the something was a jaunt through the lonely wilderness, and a fever dream at the edge of death. But that's how it works - chaos is not made, it is grown, and something had to plant the seed. I think you'll see what I mean - just give me a few chapters, please. ! It was hard to plant the seed, and I don't think I did it all that well, but at least it is done. That's the important thing. Maybe the events here seemed a little forced - they did to me, at least. So be it. It is over now, and Yanni is long gone. You know, crazier shit has happened. ! I don't know that I made it quite clear enough how bewildered and confused our hero was through all this. Just take it from me, now, in retrospect. He was as confused as they come - had no idea what the 97 fuck was going on. I definitely didn't make that clear enough, but at least I'm coming clean now. ! The sunset was beautiful in Havana tonight - pink and orange and grey. I have a long night ahead. Marcus and I are going to work until the sun comes up. He will be with Curtis, and I will be with Aristotle, and of course, with you. I'm starting to forget that I can speak to you whenever I want - I mostly just tell the story nowadays. Maybe this is a crutch that I need less and less, or maybe I'm just forgetting why I'm doing this in the first place. I still want to be honest and original, and I thought that speaking to you directly, inside and outside the story had something to do with that. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the truth is in the story, and the story alone. Maybe this woven fiction is as honest as I can be. It's a shit-kicking good time, though, this spinning of yarn, and I'm going to keep at it. See you on the next page. 98 Sickness ! Our health has suffered here in Cuba, not least because we have a very narrow diet. It consists of salted pork and dirty rice each day for lunch and dinner, and a mango in the morning. Perhaps even the nutrition is fine, but it has made us feel ill just the same. That's what you get when you eat a steady diet of junk. ! Aristotle began to feel ill. He was twenty-nine years old. Phoenix had treated him quite well since he had arrived there, and he had met with great success. He and Iggy went out to dinner on Tuesdays, and the rest of the week he cooked a simple meal over the gas flame of his kitchen range. It reminded him of the fires he had built with giggles. ! His home was small, and it was furnished very sparsely - clean lines everywhere, and walls in various shades, all completely flat. He loved his home, and he loved his work. It truly was his work. Shortly after arriving in Arizona he had founded Halcyon. Now, a few years later, business was booming, and he sent out new bids every day. He called the work interpretation. He said he would speak the language of the machines so that his clients didn't have to. He built systems for them, and he told the systems exactly what it was that the client wanted. They always listened, and Ari felt that his job was easy. 99 ! He enjoyed it, though, speaking to the machines all day. He was the best. Let us not forget that no one was as fluent as Aristotle. It showed in his success, which was tremendous, and which was noticed throughout the industry. But Ari began to feel ill. ! He couldn't explain it to his doctors - he didn't even try. Perhaps illness is not the right word. Perhaps we're really talking about a malady. In any case, Aristotle did not feel at all well. Each day when the veil of his dreams lifted, he felt it growing stronger inside of him, this malaise, this malady, and he did not know what to do. At first there were no symptoms, only the creeping feeling that something was inside him, and that is should not be there. Ari tried to tell himself that it was psychosomatic, but he had never been a hypochondriac, and didn't know why he would start now. Day by day the feeling grew, some days more than others, but always by at least a little, and never by a lot. In the early days of sickness, Aristotle thought that it was entirely within. But soon it seemed that it was outside of him, too. He could see it in the faces of children and colleagues, people he met on the street. The growth began to accelerate, and soon the sickness was everywhere, growing stronger by the day, not airborne or bloodborne, but borne of the spirit. Perhaps he had been sick all along, perhaps 100 everyone had - but Aristotle saw it now, could feel it creeping, knew that it was deadly. He wondered sometimes if he was the only one who could see it, or if it was simply too terrible to speak of. But his brother saw it, and felt it too. There was a sickness about, and they were falling ill so quickly. ! Aristotle often wondered if giggles was still out there, squatting and stealing in the dark and the dust. He was sure that he was, and he was sure that the sickness would never effect the squat. It was something above the surface. Perhaps it was on the airwaves or it came in through the uplink, but it was real, and soon it became clear. It was clear enough that people began to speak of it, but only at a whisper, and never during daylight, and not in front of children. It was the radicals who began to discuss it first, on the left and on the right, but they were sure that they were unaffected. In their heart of hearts, perhaps, they knew the truth, that they were as ill as the others. No one was immune, and soon enough they would all fall prey. ! Still Aristotle went to work each day, and still on Tuesdays he met Iggy for dinner. But it was the first thing he thought about in the morning, and like a rotten memory it would at times buzz loudly in his ear as he drank his coffee or as he sat at his desk. 101 ! It was real, he was sure. He only spoke of it with his brother, and rarely at that, but he heard other rumblings of it, and he was sure that it was real. He was sure that it was real now, and that it was getting worse, and that it had been getting worse for a long time. Most people, he surmised, were completely oblivious to it, even if they had it bad, and even if they were giving it to the people that they loved. But Ari was not content to let it take him, and he knew that there had to be something he could do. There was always the squat, but he did not want to go back to that. So he decided that he would pay attention, and that even if he could not breathe a word, he would work towards an understanding of the malady. He set about his task by identifying the symptoms. ! Aristotle began to keep a notebook then. It was large and black, bound in a soft leather. He marked the front cover - 'Notes on the Malady.' He set to work. He stared at the humans, and they sometimes stared back. As Ari kept a watchful eye, patterns began to emerge. Something was wrong with their minds. ! The first, most obvious symptom was avarice. So many of them were marked with greed. There were penthouses and palaces and private clubs. 102 ! A certain group of humans was defined by their insane desire to own. These were the worst of the infected. The avarice of the powerful was beyond measure. They would do anything for profit. They would rob and lie and manipulate anyone, friend or foe. Always they wanted more. They wanted more money, they wanted more things, the wanted more wealth. If ever they obtained their prize, they would only seek a new thing to covet, more things to covet. ! It wasn't that they needed these things. It wasn't even that they thought they deserved them. It was only that they wanted them, they fancied them, they would kill for them. It wasn't that there wasn't enough to go around - it was only an obsession, a sickness, a dysfunction. Many devoted their entire lives to this endless acquisition. Many of them valued nothing else. Everybody seemed to think that getting a bunch of stuff was going to make them happy. They bought things they could not afford, and they did not care who would pay the price. Aristotle was astounded by the avarice, and he marked it clearly in his soft, black book. He felt it all around him, surrounding him and hounding him. He wanted it to stop. ! Aristotle also saw that it wasn't just about the things - the avarice ran deeper than that. It was simply about more - more of anything. 103 Itfone was good, then two was inherently better. More land, more sex, more pain, more pleasure, more time - they wanted only, always more. ! They wanted each other, and they wanted themselves. Always they wanted themselves, to be bigger, to be cooler, to be more powerful. It seemed to Aristotle that humans could do little but want. ! Their desire for power was perhaps the only thing stronger than their desire for things. They believed that things come from power. For power they would lie and cheat and steal. They would kill for power. ! The more control, the better - over everything and everyone. They traded power for money and money for power and went on like that, always seeing if they could get a bit more. ! They wanted power over their friends and families, over the people who worked down the hall. They wanted their voice to be the loudest, the shrillest, the most listened to. They had built up these huge machines of war, so that their power was held up by violence, and avarice could be their creed. Healthy organisms tend to take only what they need, but the human organism wanted anything and everything on which it could lay its hands. ! Aristotle had seen it in business and he had seen it in politics, and he had seen it in sex - it all boiled down to money and power. It went 104 well beyond the instinct of self-preservation - it was a new form of self- serving that had no limit whatsoever. It was a boundless avarice that had overcome so many human minds. It was a limitless greed, and an endless quest for power. It was corporate fraud and rampant corruption. It was dividends and stock splits, violence and deceit. ! The uninfected did not display this condition - they only took what they needed and left the rest. Healthy organisms don't take more than they can use, because they know that it will only go to waste. The malady could make one forget all that. The malady could make any little wealth or any iota of power seem to be the be-all-end-all of existence. ! It wasn't mere humans who displayed this avarice, it was humanity as a whole. Enough of them were infected that their group behavior was indicative of the disease. The whole of humanity seemed to focus on how it could reap more from the earth, even when for some time there had been enough for all to eat. ! It was not enough for things to simply exist - it was essential that they belong to humanity. It was not enough that the earth held diamonds and gold. They needed to be stripped from the ground and put into our hands. It was not enough that fish filled the sea - we had 105 to catch them and eat them. The sky was not enough, and the mountains were not enough, and the bounty of the planet was simply not enough. ! We took what was given willingly, and then we did not stop. We drilled and bored and sucked everything we could find. Soon there would be nothing else, and Aristotle wrote about avarice. ! Soon he wrote about malice, too. It wasn't just that humans were bent on acquisition - it wasn't enough if they did well. They needed to be better than everyone else. They needed the others to fail, to have nothing, and be without power. As long as they remained without power they could be exploited and oppressed. ! Certain humans had begun to make excuses for their behavior. They had offered countless forms of discrimination as reasons why they could display such malice without shame. It was always another tribe or another country that they wanted to exploit. It was people whose skin had a different hue, or those who spoke a foreign tongue. It was those of the other gender, those of the other class, those of the other form. Soon it was simply the other. ! Humans had come to display a tremendous malice towards one another. In his notebook, he wrote 'malice.' Aristotle was sure that it 106 was due to the malady. Other organisms didn't kill for fun, they didn't murder and rape and torture and kill. Humans had come to hate whatever was foreign to them. They caused each other untold pain. They caused the planet pain, simply because they could. They ate animals raised in tiny prisons of filth, and they threw their plastic trash into the oceans. ! They did all of this despite the consequences. It brought them pleasure to bring others pain. They did not see what they were doing - they could not or would not understand. Aristotle wrote 'myopia' at the top of a page - the malady made the mind myopic. ! They did not see that they were rendering a planet unlivable, or they did not care. Either way, humanity took a view only of what would happen next. They did not care about the ultimate effect. They burnt up whatever they could find, and they did not care if it would trap the sun's heat, or melt the world's glaciers. They killed each other, and it did not matter that violence is a thing which begets itself, only more terrible. ! It seemed to Aristotle that humanity could not see. It could not see what fate awaited it, if it continued down its path of malicious avarice. It did not invest in its own future, but took its money and its power to 107 make more money and more power. It did not matter who or what was harmed. All that mattered was the new, the next, the near. So what if the birds and the beasts went extinct? So what if its possessions were the product of its own suffering. ! Humans did not see, because of their myopia, that they could have so much more. They did not see that there was enough for all to share. They did not realize that their consciousness could evolve, if only they quit their biting and fighting and scratching and digging long enough to become free. They could be free. There could be freedom and equality and enough for all humans. Sadly, though, humanity simply could not see. ! Aristotle had found three symptoms so far, and the existence of the malady was now beyond doubt. He filled page after page with accounts of astounding avarice, unbearable malice, and the stubborn myopia of the mind. ! It was not easy for Ari to see the worst, but once he started, there was no turning back. His notes were beginning to form the body of a pathology. A coherent picture began to emerge, of a terrible disease inside the body of all humanity. The malady didn't effect every cell, but it metastasized, and it had come to control the whole being. 108 ! Even if only a few cells are malignant, the host is said to have cancer. It was the same with humanity. Though it was only a portion of humans who were truly malignant, the malady would kill us all. It was essential that Aristotle be scientific now, and thorough. It was essential that he understand. ! So Ari moved on and on, and he began to realize that the human body was also rife with symptoms of the sickness. He could see the decay. At the top of a new page, Aristotle wrote 'enervation.' He could see the vitality of the body slipping slowly away. He saw a great weakness in the beasts. Human anatomy was changing, and it was not for the better. ! The humans had forgotten what their bodies were for - for running and jumping and swimming and making love. They stuffed themselves until they were too fat to function, or they starved themselves until too frail to stand. They did not care for their bodies, and they did not need them. They had needed them less and less since the dawn of history. There were machines to do their bidding, and their fingers forgot the feel of things. They could not feed themselves or make for themselves a shelter. They could not survive with just the earth. The 109 enervation was deep. The malady was wrecking by waste the bodies of whoever it touched. ! It wrecked the bodies of the others, too, but in a different way. There were children starving hysterically, too weak to move. There were mothers malnourished and the bodies of fathers that withered away. ! The humans could not work the land, and they could not build. Their hands had become such clumsy tools. They could not see or hear or smell. The flashing lights and loud bangs and the sulfur-scent of decay had rendered their senses all but useless. They did not know which way the wind blew, or if those clouds would bring them rain. They could not hear each other speak, and they could not hear each other cry out. They no longer smelled the morning dew or tasted the sweet summer rain. They only tasted the petulant stench of garbage and rot. ! Aristotle looked around him, and he saw something else. On one of the few remaining pages in his notebook, Aristotle wrote 'thirst.' It seemed to him that humanity had an unquenchable thirst. They drank their double-big-sips, and their two-liter bottles, and their handles of 110 booze, but the thirst went beyond that. It went to the very root of their condition. ! Humans were thirsty for meaning and joy, of which they had precious little. They had in them a fundamental drive to understand, and this drive went always unfulfilled. The uninfected understood that we only get the privilege of asking questions - we do not demand an answer. The thirst of the uninfected was satisfied by the wonders of discovery, even if they would always be thirsty. ! Yet the thirst of the infected was not quenched by the status quo. No matter how much insight and knowledge and technology they attained, the infected were perpetually distraught. The emptiness and the shallowness of their lives precipitated a thirst for more than this, and their absolute avarice told them that they should have an answer to any question, and at any cost. They did not consider that their mode of inquiry would soon produce no answer, no matter how small. It was sad to Ari that they did not realize the nonsense of their demands, but he could not allow their unquenchable thirst to destroy us, to destroy them, to destroy it. ! At this point, Aristotle had been working feverishly on his project for eight months, and he felt he was very nearly done. His hope was to 111 create a document which would allow for the diagnosis of this disease. He had wanted to include every symptom - he had wanted to be scientific and thorough. ! Yet something still nagged at Aristotle, and though he was proud of his work, thought he had done fine work, he knew that something still was missing. He had written extensively about five symptoms of the malady - avarice, malice, myopia, enervation, and thirst. ! He believed that he had categorized the ways in which the affliction affected the body and the mind. These he had researched and analyzed thoroughly. ! No, the symptoms that remained had to be elsewhere. Aristotle looked to the soul. Yes, surely the disease affected the soul - perhaps most of all. But medicine steers quite clear of the soul, and Aristotle knew that he was entering uncharted territories. The nomenclature to diagnose a malady of the soul did not exist, and Aristotle knew he would have to make it up. He had to do it, though, because most of all, he felt that the disease was in his soul. ! After eight months of intense observation of the world outside himself, Aristotle would have to turn his penetrating eyes inside, and see what he could find. He told his employees that he was going away, 112 but he did not say where. He left the company in the hands of Danny, despite the severity of his timidity. And then he left. ! But Aristotle only withdrew to his home, where he stayed almost all the time. He ventured out occasionally, but only to buy necessities or to meet Iggy for dinner. I can't describe the process by which Aristotle searched his soul. I am not Aristotle. Outwardly it consisted mostly of pacing, and lying motionless on his bed, eyes open wide, seemingly focused on nothing but the nothing. I cannot describe the method, so I will have to skip to the findings. In his journal, marked clearly with the words 'Notes on the Malady,' he had written the following: IMPULSE This is the best word I have been able to find for one of the two halves of the soul. Not to be confused with impulse in the psychological or physical senses. IMPULSE is the product of complexity. It is what gives rise to the will. Swirling mother of desire, IMPULSE demands it's own existence. IMPULSE gives rise to the instinct of self- preservation. IMPULSE is the product of eons of evolution - from the quark soup of everything's fiery birth to this very 113 moment. IMPULSE arises from the tendency of complexity to arise from chaos. Any thing which is distinguishable as a thing contains IMPULSE. IMPULSE is amplified by complexity. A planet's IMPULSE exceeds that of a person, which exceeds that of a proton. IMPULSE is tied closely to existence, but differs in that it is not a binary - it is variegated and measured in an infinite spectrum. An object, as a rule, contains all of the IMPULSE of its constituent parts. The Tau, The Electron, and The Muon demonstrate the three fundamental flavors of IMPULSE. A Hydrogen atom, containing a top quark, a bottom quark, and a single electron contains far more ELECTRON IMPULSE than the sum of the particles taken independently. The leap in complexity when particles fuse leads to an IMPULSE JUMP. The IMPULSE JUMP is even greater as atoms becomes molecules, and still greater as molecules become organelles. Organelles become cells, cells become organs, organs become organisms, and all the while the IMPULSE grows by orders of magnitude. 114 Now that I have provided a definition of impulse, I can speak to the way in which the malady affects the human soul. We are as a cancer in the organism which is our host - the organism of earth. The organism of humanity - what we will call civilization - has become a destructive force. That is to say that it has arranged itself to contain an impulse which threatens to reduce the impulse of its host. Those humans who are attuned to their souls can sense this shift in the impulse of humanity as a whole. They are aware that we are part of a larger organism, and that killing our host would result in our own demise. This is at the root of the malady. We sense a pain in our soul that did not exist before this shift in impulse. It is experienced by all humans, perhaps felt, even if they are unable to express this feeling. It is experienced by all those who play a role in the organism of civilization. This pain is the calling of a higher consciousness. Since the dawn of civilization, humanity's impulse has grown steadily more destructive. This growth has accelerated rapidly since the dawn of globalization. We sense in our soul the profound backwardness of the organism that we have become. In its moments of higher consciousness, 115 humanity recognizes that its cells are malignant. We cells, in the relatively feeble consciousness of our own selves, carry out the destructive impulse of reckless metastasis. This is the essence of the malady. PULSE This is the name I have chosen for the second half of the soul. PULSE is that element of the soul that provides for consciousness. PULSE expresses the degree to which an organism allows for and invites chaos into its being. Humans possess a greater PULSE than the other organs of earth. Where IMPULSE is the product of complexity, PULSE is the product of flexibility. The greater the number of distinct arrangements that a being is capable of embodying while retaining its existence, the greater its PULSE. The brain provides for the vast majority of HUMAN PULSE. It does so through a neural network. This network is capable of producing a finite but practically innumerable number of electrical states. PULSE gives rise to creativity, ingenuity, imagination, and memory. A single particle also contains PULSE, spinning one way or 116 another. An atom contains far more, with its constant argument between quark and lepton. The soul of a human is full of PULSE, but the soul of humanity is fuller still. The evolution of the universe is the product of the way that PULSE affects IMPULSE over time. From a sea of quarks, PULSE ga ve rise to all complexity by allowing for the occasional IMPULSE JUMP. The increase in net IMPULSE when things become more complex increases the chances of their survival. Where there is thought, there is PULSE, where there is consciousness, there is PULSE, wherever there is dynamic complexity, there is PULSE. Some very simple things contain tremendous PULSE - amino acids, for example. Some very complex things contain little PULSE - the crystalline lattice of diamond is immutable. Diamonds contain little PULSE. With a definition of pulse, I can now detail the way in which the malady affects this element of the soul. Simply, it does not. Thought we are afflicted in our minds and in our bodies, and though the affliction attacks the soul's impulse most of all, the 117 pulse remains free of disease. We are as capable as ever of transformation. This gives me great hope. If we are to fight off the infection which took hold in humanity at the dawn of history, the fight will come from our pulse. Pulse has the ability to cause impulse jumps. Pulse is the only element of humanity that remains uninfected. We must look to the pulse. ! So there you have it. Aristotle looked inside himself, and what he found was that the sickness was not incurable. He knew now that a tremendous fight lay ahead, against the twisted impulse of humanity, against the structure of our civilization. He waited until Tuesday to tell Iggy the news. Aristotle half expected his brother to tell him that he had gone mad. He nearly had. But Iggy did not tell Ari that he was a madman. He only looked at him, and for the first time that either of them could remember he said: "You're right." Though Iggy and Ari agreed on almost all things, they always somehow found a way to eek out an argument. But this time there was no argument, and both brothers were alarmed by the clarity of the pathology. Every member of civilization was part of a deadly disease. 118 ! Things got very serious between the brothers in those days. They met more often, and frequently their conversation turned to the malady. It was up to them to find a remedy. They needed a pulse. They had to find a way to rearrange the organism of humanity. As it stood it consisted of a few very rich and very powerful cells exploiting all of the weaker ones. These cells took more than they needed, even though it meant that other cells would not have enough. It seemed to aristotle that most people were good, but that the destructive impulse of the people in charge overpowered the fundamental impulse towards survival. They had to change the balance of power. They had to let the impulse of the masses reign. All it would take was a blast of pulse. ! Aristotle returned to Halcyon two weeks after he finished the pathology. People told him he looked tired. On the afternoon of his first day back, he gathered the fourteen employees in their conference room, and presented his findings. When he was finished, two of his employees quit on the spot. Eight asked what he wanted them to do about it. He said he didn't want them to do anything. They went back to work. Four of his employees only sat there, and when the room had emptied, it was clear that they understood. 119 ! Aristotle went back to his office to log on. As his fingers flew over the keys, he felt a pulse. He knew instantly that he had found the remedy, if only he could get it to the people - a network. Humans had to arrange themselves into a network. The malignant cells retain control over humanity's impulse because the others are disjointed. If only the people could be connected, the new impulse of a more complex being would prevail, and the malaise would be done. Aristotle felt certain that he had found the remedy - uncensored, unfettered, untaxed access to each other. It would not be easy - of that he was certain - but the machines would help. He could talk to them, ask them to help connect humanity as never before. He could talk to them as no one else - he, Aristotle the cynosure. He was certain that he could. He remembered the dream he'd had on that hospital gurney in Colorado. He remembered the pulsing, heaving diodes of a planetoid brain - the connectedness of it all. He felt certain he had found the cure for this affliction. He had found the remedy, and now it remained only to distribute it to the people. He knew that he would need help, human and machine both, but he was sure that it would work. ! Aristotle was thirty years old when he discovered a remedy for the malady of civilization. It only took a pulse. 120 ! Oy. I don't want to stop here, but my hand says that it's time for a break. In a sense, this is the part that I think we've both been waiting for, you and I. Now we get to see what Aristotle is really made of - the power that has lain dormant in him all this time. I think he was keen to search his soul like that, and come up with a gem. I guess that's another way of saying the pulse and impulse thing is something I really believe. It's not just a tool for the story. In fact, the story is probably a tool for it. You wouldn't have believed me though, if I had been the one to tell you. It had to be Aristotle. ! To tell the truth, and I do want to be honest, I had pretty much no idea where the story was going when I finished chaos. I really didn't know until I wrote that journal entry for Aristotle. I had to get into his head, which is somewhere in my head. Now though, it seems quite clear. That is to say that I have pretty good idea where it's headed from here. I suppose you do too. I'm just excited to let it all play out. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen, but I certainly know what I want to happen. Then again, who doesn't want the hero to win? Unfortunately, it doesn't always turn out that way. There are a lot of forces aligned against Aristotle now. Then again, he's a pretty incredible dude, as far as I know, which is pretty damn far. 121 ! Also, I'd like to apologize for the tone of this chapter. Even I found it a little grating. I just wasn't sure what else I could do. I think it was important that I got across the way that Aristotle viewed the sickness - the seriousness and the science of it all. I wasn't sure how to do that without sounding like a stodgy professor. ! I must say, it's getting hard for me to do anything besides write this book. I mean, why else would they give me a summer vacation? Why else would I be here? ! I guess in a lot of ways, I do feel like Aristotle still. Not that I'm saving the world or anything - I'm just writing a lonely little book. I just mean in the sense that we both have certain things we're supposed to do. He's supposed to save the world, and I'm supposed to write about it. I think it's a nice little arrangement. I definitely get the easier job of the two. Easy is actually an understatement. I think more than anything else, I'm shocked at how fun this is. I'm not sure if it's my ego or what, but I just feel so right while I write. Seriously, you have to give a try. ! Now, besides the fact that the chapter is over, I've really got to go. Marcus and I have tamale making lessons at a place on 10 y 15. We're thinking of opening a tamale stand when we get back to school. Got to 122 make money somehow, and lord knows that this bag of vowels isn't worth jack shit. But like I said, it's a blast. That's what matters, right? Alright, see you on the flip side. Get it? ! Flipside? Sorry. I'll stop. 123 Rebirth ! The true thrust of this story is beginning to take shape now, and I'm very glad that it is. This is for several reasons - first, I was scared for a time that I was writing into nothingness, and that Aristotle and I would go nowhere at all. Second, I think I'm starting to go insane, cooped up all day and all night in this house in Vedado, Habana. I have begun to shout things - 'elephant trunk,' or 'cock swain,' at no one and at nothing, but just to shatter the monotonous silence, and then to let it build again. I am beginning to think that I need to finish this thing and get the hell out of Cuba. I need a change. ! Aristotle needed a change. He needed the change, certainly, but before he could even contemplate setting out on the path that unfolded beneath his feet, Aristotle needed to insure that he could walk that path, all the way to the end. Except for the seed of chaos that lay dormant in his chest, except for that universal pulse in his soul, Aristotle was just a normal man. He was extremely successful in his field, and he was very well liked, but he fell squarely in the range of the ordinary. That was going to have to change. Ari knew that was going to have to change. If he wanted to cure the malady, Aristotle was going to have to become someone, almost something, extraordinary. All the 124 great figures had known it at some point - that it was time for their transformation, the moment of their rebirth. All the great figures had known it, and now Aristotle knew it, and he set to work. ! One could probably make the argument that there's something chauvinistic about what Aristotle did next. But chauvinism is not a feature of great figures, and it was not a feature of Aristotle. It bordered on chauvinism, but really it was just love. In the seven years since they had last seen each other, Ari had never gotten over Lucy. He had taken many lovers, it's true, both paid and unpaid, but he had never forgotten the way that Lucy met his gaze that night. He had never forgiven himself for the despondent wreck which had driven her away. If Aristotle was going to fight the battle that was coming his way, he would need to be strong. If he was going to be strong, he had to make up for the weakness he had shown her so long ago. If Aristotle was going to be great, he needed Lucy - to give him strength, to demonstrate greatness. Aristotle was certain - he had to get her back. He devised a plan, though not a very good one. He would send her an email - the first since his apologia upon return from the dusty dark. He would send her an email, and he would ask where she was living, and then he would go. He didn't know what he would do when he got 125 there, and he didn't know why he felt so strongly that this would work, but that was his plan, and it could not fail. ! He sent the email on a Wednesday afternoon. It was simple and delicate. He wanted to know where she was, and how she had been. He sent the email, and he waited. All that day he did nothing but wait for Lucy's reply. The phone rang - he stared at his screen. The office buzzed around him - he stared at his screen. The reply did not come. At eight o'clock he left the office, went straight home, and checked again. The reply did not come. All this fervor, for the cause and the cure, was tied up completely in his plan to regain Lucy's love. Days dragged on - her reply did not come. Days became weeks - her reply did not come. Aristotle was ready to forget about the whole damn thing. If Lucy would not reply to his message, then he would let the sickness overcome us all. Someone else could do it, then, someone whose former lovers responded to their e-mails. But then, Lucy did respond. She responded. Lucy responded. Lucy, that lost love, possessed of the same smoldering gaze, who loved words and worlds and the winged flight of desire, responded to Aristotle's call. She was in Paris. She had been well. 126 ! Now Aristotle lost no time. Before the day was out he had boarded a plane. Before the day had begun he was marching toward Paris, the flag of love and selfless resistance borne invisibly above his noble head. He would find her, and he would tell her, and she would see. Lucy always saw. She was the only one. Aristotle marched on, and in the morning light he saw the narrow streets open wide to lead him through. He called information, and he got an address in Saint Germain. He could picture her there, amongst the sculptors and song writers, and the spinners of tales. He only hoped that she had not fallen for one, some french romantic with at least as fiery eyes. He only hoped that his plan, as simple and as under-thought as it was, would be enough. ! He stepped out of the car and onto the street in front of Lucy's building. He did not hold flowers. He only held himself, proud, bearing that flag of fearless love. He rang. There was no reply, so for hours he sat there, and let the motion of the planet undulate his insides. It so clearly wanted to. He sat there, and he waited, and the sun arced across the sky. The sun dipped. The sky grew warm. ! Lucy turned the corner, and Aristotle saw her silhouette against the painted air of twilight. He stood. He could see her clearly now, in a 127 black dress, with jets of straight black hair reaching infinitely down her back. It was her collarbones that caught him off guard. They were so regal, so proud - her jutting, jetting collarbones, standing guard above her heart. She walked with the same ferocity he remembered, and he imagined walking beside her, taking her hand and walking just as proud. She was close enough now that he could hear her humming as she went. She looked happy. ! "Aristotle!?" Lucy had seen him before he realized that she had walked all the way down the block. For a half a moment he could not speak. Then in his voice, a voice that belonged only to him, he said: "Hello Lucy." His plan was done. He had only been able to think this far, and the next moment was beyond him. "How long have you been here?" "Since this morning." "I sent you a message yesterday. How did you... What are you..." But then lucy calmed, and in her voice, a voice that belonged only to her, she continued: "Well, come in, come in." ! They walked up the stairs to Lucy's apartment, and Aristotle answered her questions. He was glad he didn't have to think of 128 something to say. When they walked inside, Ari was sure that she lived alone. It was all Lucy - the irises in tiny vases and the simple lines. He remembered how much he had gotten from her. No, there was no trace of another in that apartment. It was all Lucy. It was beautiful, and Aristotle was filled with a wish that he had been there to build it with her. Even if they could be together again, Aristotle knew he would always regret the seven years they had just spent apart. ! But then, there was no room for regret, because the past brings us to the present, and Lucy was standing just before him. When Aristotle was seated on one of the couches, Lucy finally asked the question that he had been waiting for, that they both had known was coming. "So what are you doing here?" Ari looked into Lucy's eyes. That moment between question and answer seemed to drag on forever. She was still the only woman that had ever really met his gaze. In that moment it was all very clear. Lucy knew why Ari was there, and Ari knew what her answer would be. "I'm still in love with you, Lucy." ! There was a thickness to the pause after those words were spoken. So much of everything was resting on what came next. Ari had not expected to come out with it so soon, but he had, and he was glad that 129 he had, whether it worked out or not. Aristotle closed his eyes, almost as if he was expecting a blow to the ribs. Then he felt it. It was soft. At first he thought it was in his head, and so he opened his eyes. No - Lucy's hand was really on his hand. It was Lucy's hand. It was his hand. They were touching. "Ari, you want to go for a walk?" ! The plan had worked. It had actually worked. Against all odds, and despite the absolutely ludicrous nature of it all. Aristotle was here in Paris, and Lucy's hand was touching his. There she was. Lucy - just her name was enough. "I mean, you came all this way, and it just sort of feels right. You're you. You're my honeybee. I don't think I could have stopped loving you, even if I'd wanted to." ! All that night, they walked through the city. They spent those first twelves hours overcoming the distance of the previous seven years. When the light came, they knew it was right, though Ari had known it all along. But they knew it now, together. Dawn was breaking and Aristotle knelt. This had not been a part of the plan. His body had done it almost involuntarily. Lucy said she had been about to do the same. Aristotle would move to Paris. His former life in Arizona didn't 130 matter any more. This was a new life, this was a glorious rebirth. He would maintain Halcyon from afar, and he would move to Paris to be with Lucy. His only real reservation was Iggy, but he knew that when the time came, Iggy would be again by his side. Life could be strange, with its brambling byways and its thickets of despair, but if anything was obvious or right, it was this. At first Ari wondered what had taken him so long. Then it all became quite clear - he had had to become the man he was becoming. He had had to start alone down this long and circuitous path. It could not have been another way. Lucy would say later that it was his new intensity that had pulled her in. When she had seen him on the street it had been unthinkable, but she knew by the time they climbed those steps to her apartment. He hadn't uttered a word about the malady before he proposed, but Lucy said that he hadn't had to. A thing like that is beyond words. ! Aristotle never went back. He called Iggy, who he had not told about his plan, and he asked if he could help him sell the house. He was surprised at first, and sad that his baby brother would be so far away. Soon, though, the joy crept in. He knew what this meant for Ari. He knew that he had become quite young again, possessed of all the strength and vigor of youth. He knew this meant that Aristotle was 131 serious about the remedy, and he said he would help, whenever and wherever he was needed. Truly, the rebirth had begun. But it had only begun, and Aristotle knew that there was a tremendous transformation afoot. ! It was dawning slowly on Ari that what he was contemplating was akin to, if not simply the same as revolution. He knew that he would have to prepare. So with Lucy by his side, he set about a course of study. He would read anything would tell him even the slightest bit about how to rearrange an organism like humanity. He would read about non-violence and the art of war, speechwriting and rhetoric, and populist thought. He wanted to know about cars and airplanes and satellites and ships, about cities and highways and progressive reform. Ferociously, he studied. He read about Jesus and Ghandi and Malcom X, about Castro and Lenin, and Washington and Lee. Rebellions, uprisings, overthrows and usurpations, he devoured them all. Lucy had always inspired a curiosity in him. Back when they had been students together, it had almost been for her that he learned. She was his greatest teacher and his greatest interlocutor, and she loved him for the intelligence and wonder he displayed. She translated great works 132 for him, and when he was not reading, she gave him lessons in German and Hindi and Mandarin and French. ! Aristotle read and he read and he read - in the dim light of bistros and the bright midday sun. He read books about contagions and construction and chaos. He studied math and physics and chemistry and the stars, and more than studying, he understood. A biting urgency drove him, and at times he scared even himself with the ferocity of his thirst. Yes, that is the best way to describe it, hackneyed as it may be. It was a tremendous thirst which had overcome our hero, and there was not enough water in the world. Not enough water in the dazzling vast oceans, which stretch beyond the imagination, and out into the realm of the unknowable. ! Ari was deeply methodical in his mad drenching of the mind. As he had grown accustomed to, he kept a journal - thick and large and bound in a soft black leather. In it he wrote the names of the books he read, and copious notes of the most salient points. He copied diagrams and maps. He annotated annotations, and filled volume after volume. He would not stop. He would not stop until he had written an encyclopedic summary of all the knowledge necessary to deliver the remedy. You would have thought him either a madman or a genius if 133 you had seen him in those days, wandering the streets of Paris, always with a book in one hand and a journal in the other, a fine point pen clenched between his teeth. And then he was, both genius and madman, convinced of a contamination that most simply saw as the necessary order of things. They say the only difference between the two is that the genius is right. Now, that's up for you to decide for yourself, and it's not such an easy question. Even when it's all said and done, I don't think that an answer comes easy. ! So for two years, Aristotle did nothing but read. He lived easily off of only a fraction of his stake in Halcyon. It had grown so large by then - much larger than I've let on. From time to time, Danny would call him, and ask him to speak to the machines in a way that no one else could. The office called only when in absolute need, and always Aristotle found a fix. ! So for two years he studied, and for two years he came home to Lucy's apartment in Saint Germain. It was their apartment now, really, filled with both of their books. It was an easy love between them, something that should have been there all along, was there all along, only stifled by a misstep of youth. Only nothing is a misstep, for it had all led them there. Their lives were full of purpose and joy and love, 134 and the seriousness of a pair plotting madness. Lucy was in on it now. She had read the pathology soon after Aristotle came to her, and for two years she had been fixing it, improving it, amending it, and putting it into the many languages that she knew. ! Aristotle had filled fourteen of those black notebooks in the years since he came to Paris. He kept them by the bed. Sometimes, he would wake in the eerie silence of the early morning, and rush to one of them. He was scared he would forget. But he did not forget. There's no telling how much knowledge can be crammed into the mess of neurons inside a human head - Ari wanted to find out. ! But all the time, Ari saw that the malady was worsening. He saw his task as a race against time. He could never be sure when the disease would become incurable, having spread too far to be uprooted by a pulse. He never knew when the bombs would fall. Nobody did in those days. ! So it was that Aristotle decided he was done. It wasn't that he had read it all, or that he had filled his head to the brim, but only that they were in a race against time. There was so little time, it seemed, and so much to do before it all began. The rebirth still was not complete. Aristotle knew that he was not ready. It wasn't for lack of knowledge, 135 though, that he felt unprepared. It was when he looked in the mirror. Even with Lucy back beside him, he did not feel that inner fortitude that he was sure he would have to possess. As Rilke said, he wanted his will. He wanted to be with his will as it moved towards deed. ! After filling fourteen notebooks with the stuff of fact, Aristotle began a fifteenth of something entirely different. It was a lengthy letter to himself. Every day he wrote, and convinced himself little by little that he had in him the stuff of great pulsation. Every day he reminded himself that someone, at some point, had to take the leap out of the vessel of their human self, and embrace the free-fall of the more-than- man - the hero, the savior, the son, the sun, the titan, the olympian, the first, the humanity. Every day he found new courage, and penned to himself an epic work of uplift. But it wasn't enough to say inside and tell himself that fate had fallen squarely on his strong, broad shoulders. He needed more than that. ! He went into the streets and he walked the streets. He spoke to the people, and he asked about their health, the health of their souls, and how the malady had made their life a less than glorious thing. He looked and he saw suffering, he asked and he was told of pain. He wondered what humanity had become. 136 ! Still, it was not enough. A doctor doesn't treat cancer because cancer is bad, they do so because life is good. Aristotle searched for the good, and he found it in droves. He saw the untainted impulse of birds in flight, and flowers in bloom - children wailing to mothers full of love. He saw the beauty of it all, and each morning when dawn broke, he praised mightily the soul of the sun. The complexity of it all bewildered him, and he was conscious of the small part that we all play in an organism much grader than the sum of civilization. He saw wild surf breaking onto soft white shores. He marveled at the strength of sand - to take a beating like that, and after many millennia only sit there, and invite the next wave to release its burden. He saw the sky turn colors, and he was not sure if they were mournful tones, or so very full of hope. He peered upward at night, through lenses and mirrors in the darkest field, and asked, grasped, at the role we have to play, at the role he had to play. ! He filled page after page - filled them with a cogent call for action beyond words. He could feel a resolve welling up inside him, and he knew the time would come. Lucy knew it, too, and at times she would aid Aristotle in his search for fortitude by penning words of her own, to fill them both with the realest sort of will. 137 ! It wasn't just Paris. Together they went in search of a reason to risk it all. They drove and sailed and flew across vast continents of our life- giving planet, host to our organism, great intelligence beneath our feet. They walked barefoot through forests and deserts and fields, gaining strength from the soul of a planet, wondering if their lives were quite all they could give. They loved each other proudly and deeply, because they could not help it, and because above all else it gave them reason to fight. One foot in front of the other, and page after page after page after page - they filled that fifteenth notebook, and they steeled themselves for a loud and terrible fight. ! Though his head and his heart were now well prepared, Aristotle looked to his hands and saw that they were raw and limp. He would need calluses on those hands before the battle could begin. He would need to show them how to hold a rifle and a sickle and a hammer and nail. He would have to show them how to open doors, and how to build a house in the lonely wilderness. These were things you couldn't learn from books, but they were no less essential. ! Aristotle had never been good with his hands, except for on a keyboard or in the act of love, but he knew a man who had. Thomas, the man who first showed him Lucy, who held his head when he had 138 drank too much rum, who had spoken of the malady before anyone had a word for it - Thomas could teach Aristotle these things. Thomas who worked the land. ! So Aristotle kicked up dust behind a motorcycle on a dirt road in California. He was close to Joshua Tree, where a lifetime ago, he and Thomas had scaled peaks and seen oases, watched the famous Joshua Trees bloom. It was hard land, but Thomas had made a life out here, making the arid earth bloom with his sweat and his blood. A wooden shack peeked over the horizon, and Aristotle revved the engine. He could see why Thomas had picked this place, where the air was full of freedom, and the solitude was deep. ! Thomas opened the door, and took Ari in a deep embrace. Aristotle could see that Thomas had never gotten the bug. His eyes were bright, and a tan beard swung from his chin. It was almost too much joy, this reunion - not five years or ten years, but the number of years it takes to learn that you need each other. Thomas didn't know why Ari had come, but he asked if the world was as sick as ever. From his luggage, Ari pulled the pathology. The world was getting worse with every passing minute, he stated, and that's why he had come. It took two days for Thomas to read what was becoming a manifesto of sorts. 139 When he had finished, he called to Aristotle, and he told him something that filled him at once with resolve and fear, both: "Hell if I knew it, but, all these years, I think I've been waiting for you to show up here. Let's get to work." ! Thomas showed Ari how to work the land. They rose with the sun, and for many hours they poured the sweat of their labor into the thirsty earth. The earth bloomed. Thomas said that it was all elemental - a person had to know how to work the soil, if they wanted to teach their hands. The other things would follow, but this had to come first. For two and a half months, they rose each day just at dawn, and went out into the heat of the alfalfa fields. Thomas seemed to speak to the soil in the same way that Aristotle spoke to machines - with a loving whisper and a knowing glance. ! As the heat of August began to break, they hayed the feild of their tall, glorious grass. The wind and the rain had been good to them, good for them. Aristotle had never been so proud of anything as he was of those bushels of grain. Thomas had a mournful voice as the the last of it was threshed: "Might be my last." 140 ! Aristotle knew well what Thomas meant. He assured him that there would be plenty more harvests when the work ahead was done. With that they turned and left the field. Before they reached the house, Aristotle turned to Thomas and asked: "What's next?" ! It was September, and Aristotle said that before the winter came, Aristotle would have a house of his own, right there, next to his. That way they could sit on their porches when it was said and done, and tell stories of how they had cured humanity of a deep disease. I can't tell you how much Aristotle liked that idea. ! So again they set to work. Measuring twice, and cutting once, they took timber, and turned it into something that could harbor life. Steadily the calluses grew on Aristotle's palms, had been growing, and his back got strong and his feet grew tough. Steadily, the house rose out of nothing, sturdy and humble. Steadily, the men remembered why they had been the best of friends. When the day was done they sat together and remembered times they'd had, places they had been, women they had loved, and the decay, chaos, and sickness they had seen. In November they lit a fire in the hearth of the new home, and 141 Thomas said their work was done. As the embers grew hotter, Aristotle turned to Thomas and asked: "What's next?" ! But for the first time in nearly six months, Thomas didn't have an answer for Aristotle. They looked into the fire, burning with such outrageous tranquility in the hearth of the home they had built. "They're gonna try to kill us, right?" "You bet your ass they will." "Well, then, we had better call Curtis." ! In their first year of college, when they had just barely become buddies, Curtis had turned their lives upside down. He was tough, he was fearless, and he had survived the unforgiving streets of Detroit. Curtis had come into their room one day, and for the next three years, he had barely left. More than once he had thrown his body in front of fists for them, and more than once he had had to take a life. Curtis had joined the Army after graduation, like his father, and his father's father before that. If anyone could teach Thomas and Aristotle to fight, it was Curtis. ! Curtis had said that he would always be but a phone call away. In the days when he had said that, though, it had seemed so abstract. 142 Neither Aristotle nor Thomas could have imagined looking up his number some ten hears later, asking him to come to California with a trunk full of guns. But that's exactly what they did, and true to his word, Curtis came running. When Aristotle had started to explain why they needed him, Curtis had stopped him, told him never to say too much on the phone. That was Curtis' first lesson, and it was Aristotle's first taste of the clandestinity that would come to pervade his life. ! It was a three day drive from Detroit, but Curtis made it in two. He came screaming down the dirt road to the two houses in the middle of a vast expanse. The car skidded to a halt, and curtis all but leapt from the driver's seat. "What's up, assholes?" ! His face was scarred, and his eyes still held the same violent fire. He had never liked violence, but he had always held it there, in his eyes, having seen it, and knowing that it sometimes is the only choice. Aristotle explained what they were doing in the middle of all this nothing, and gave Curtis a copy of the pathology. Curtis threw it through the window of his impala, onto a pile of trash. "You don't have to convince me. I'll read it when we have time. Let's get to work." 143 ! Aristotle and Thomas half expected Curtis to thrust a gun into their hands. Curtis was too smart for that. He wasn't just a warrior, but a scholar of war. They spent the next two weeks being tutored on the art of living in secret. Before and after his time in the Army, Curtis had done what he'd had to do to make a living in a city bereft of jobs and brimming with gangs, corruption, and random violence. In addition to being accustomed to the feel of a rifle, Curtis was an expert in hiding from, evading, and fighting the authorities. For two years he had been on the lam, until evidence emerged that he could not possibly have shot those cops. In fact, he had, but that's exactly the point. ! After explaining safe houses and phone taps, surveillance networks and snitches, Curtis said it was time to get fit. Despite the fact that they had been doing heavy labor for many moths, Curtis pushed Aristotle and Thomas to their physical limits, and then kicked them firmly over the edge. By the point in their regimen where Aristotle was vomiting from exhaustion, Curtis had barely broken a sweat. They got stronger - that was the point. They got stronger, and faster, and soon they learned how to fight. They had had to, or Curtis' swift blows would have kept coming. They would never be as good as Curtis, but at least it was something. At least they could put up a fight. 144 ! Finally the day came when Curtis took the lock box out of the trunk of his car. He said they would start shooting when they could both pick the eight-pin security lock in under a minute. It took Thomas two weeks to get it down, and took Aristotle three. Having demonstrated their skill, Curtis said it was time. ! They shot handguns at first, then shotguns, and finally rifles. It was quite alien to Aristotle, the feeling of an implement of death against his shoulder, and in the palms of his hands. Then it grew normal, almost natural - almost. Curtis taught them well. After three months of daily training, they had the skills, and they knew the tactics - they felt unafraid and ready. Aristotle had spent nine months on Thomas' farm - nine very long months away from Lucy in the harsh solitude of the American West. He would soon be ready. He told Thomas and Curtis that he would return shortly - he only had to take care of something in Paris. ! A final preparation remained before Aristotle could embark on his mission. One more detail before they would throw their bodies against the gears, launch the star of revolution, unite the world against the hideous impulse of destruction. If Aristotle was going to do this, if he was going to embrace his humanity, he would need to look the part. 145 Every movement has an aesthetic. Aristotle had learned that in his studies. It was written in the left margin of page two-twenty-five in journal number six. Yes, every movement has an aesthetic, and they needed theirs. Inside of Aristotle, the birth was complete. Now it was time to align himself, without and within. ! On the flight back to Paris, Aristotle peered out the window. It still amazed him, as it does any thinking person, the sensation of flight. It was not anger or fear or nervousness that Aristotle felt then, on the eve of his departure from the vessel of himself, but a tremendous calm. He was placid, made easy by the knowledge that his path would lead inevitably to victory or death. ! When he reached the apartment, the door flew open, and Lucy leapt into his arms. He was stronger now, and Lucy could feel his new prowess in their embrace. His hands were rough, and his skin was toughened by the semi-desert sun. But still his eyes possessed that smoldering gaze. That would never change. ! Inside the apartment were great stacks of books. They were not the books that Aristotle had left, but new books, all the same. On the spine he read 'A Pathology of the Malady of Civilization.' Inside the volumes, few words were the same as the ones he had written some 146 three years ago in Phoenix. They were better, clearer - they captured the sentiment of his ideas more precisely. ! The books all carried his name, but really they should have said Lucy's. She was the one who had made it into something truly worth reading. She was the one who had brought it to life. But she was too humble for all that, and in the end it was Aristotle who would have to mount the defense. He was the one who, as Emerson put it, the world would whip with its displeasure. That's what he had wanted, though, and that's what he would get. ! Past the tremendous stacks of the small black volume, Ari and Lucy stumbled into the bedroom. Lucy lit the candles. It was almost a prayer, the way they made love. They had been reborn, and the feeling was one of new life. Lucy and Aristotle loved each other with a love that spilled over and out, like a glacier melting. It flooded down the street and out into the breathing city - further, engulfing country and continent, spilling into the sea, making the ocean rise, and soon engulfing the entire world. It was enough for a planet, what they had - enough for the whole damn sphere. 147 ! When the deluge of their love had ended, they stayed a moment in that grace, holding each other, fully cognizant of what had to come next. Lucy reached for Aristotle and found his hand. "Are you ready, my love?" "Yes, I am ready." ! Still drenched in sweat and sex, they stood. Lucy raised her hand to Aristotle's head. Strand by strand his curly, messy nest of hair fell to the floor. In all the time they had known each other, really for as long as Aristotle could remember, that nest had been a part of him. He watched it fall, and for a moment it seemed to stay still in the air. But gravity worked its strange magic, just as it had on his mother's ashes as the dropped to the pacific. Aristotle remembered. Lucy removed a black kurt a from the closet, jet black, with silver buttons. Aristotle slipped inside it. It was done. Aristotle was reborn. Lucy and Iggy and Thomas and Curtis, too. It had begun. ! Can you see him, standing there? I can. I see it all quite clearly, and I think it's rather beautiful. It took a lot to get him here, but Aristotle has finally become the man I knew he would be. What a strange feeling. I want to say that it feels like he's my son. That's not it, though. He is me, and then so completely not me - he is a part of me, 148 and yet he is so outside me, beyond me, something else entirely. Perhaps I'm getting carried away, but it feels as if I've breathed life into something. You should feel it too, to some degree, if I've done my job. When you read these words, you make him all over again. What magic is in these silly scribbles - not just mine, but all. What strange magic, that from this spilled ink arises something that seems so real. It is beyond me. ! It feels good, though. Even though the deed is not done, I finally feel like this might have a value outside the joy it brings me. For a long time I did not think so, but now I am not as sure. The image of Aristotle standing there, his head freshly shaven and his spirit ready for what's to come - in a sense it gave me courage. I talked a long time with Marcus tonight about writing. He is writing, too. In fact, I basically copied Curtis from him. Anyways, we talked for a long time about writing, and I guess I got a little scared. I have a battle ahead too, you know, with this draft, with my own words, with the idea of having to go back and rework this all. But that image - Aristotle just standing there - it gave me strength. Who knows, maybe it could give you some, too. I'd really like that, so let me know if it does. Sometimes we could all use a little bit of that fifteenth notebook. 149 ! Ari is sure going to need it. It's obvious where we're headed from here. I mean, I basically came on out and said it. Still, I bet it's not exactly what you think. That would be much fun for either of us. So it won't be exactly what you think, but it'll probably be pretty close. I hope that's alright. I mean, he's kind of got to win, right? Unless I want the book to be a total bummer, and that's not what I want. I want to be honest and original. That's all. Who knows - maybe that will mean being a bummer after all. We'll find out, together. In the mean time, it's going to be one hell of a ride. ! I'm quite glad that Lucy's along. I know that it was perhaps a bit too dramatic, the way he went about getting her back. Then again, what was I supposed to do? What was he supposed to do? He is a romantic, and he sure as hell needed her. I know I might have made it a little harder for him, but what could the point have been? This isn't a romance, though it is most certainly a love story - it's about revolution. Anyways, that's the way it happened, the way it would have happened, the way it will have happened, perhaps. A love like theirs just doesn't die - of that I'm sure. In any case, she's back, and I'm glad, because I like what she does to Aristotle. 150 ! Now, I know that I should probably quit for the night. It's six- thirty in the morning, and I've smoked an entire pack of luckies. I'm just not sure that I can. I mean, for one thing, I'm really itching to get this over and done with. More than that, though, the next chapter is basically the one I've been waiting for all this time. I mean, come on, it's the revolution. ! At the same times, I feel like I should save it, savor it, hold off as long as I can. It's kind of like love, in a way, because you know that once you start, you're going to have to finish - and once you finish it's over. It's definitely like love. But nobody turns down love just because it's ultimately going to end. Plus you get the afterglow. Yeah, fuck it. Let's do this thing. See you in a second. 151 Revolution ! What sweet dreams of grandeur come to those who stay unsleeping. The night folds - the morning light sings of revolution. The time has come. ! Aristotle's time had come. In a moment he had risen. Now he was the leader of a new revolution. He had a plan. With a single spark of pulse, he would ignite a fire - a fire to consume the diseased flesh of the infected, to light the way into a new era - the transhuman age. ! He had a plan. With the fortune from Halcyon, he would launch a network of satellites beaming unfettered freedom of information to nodes in every organ of the evolved, singular being of humanity. ! It was elegant. He did not have to raise an army, he only had to connect the people - to give them a reason to rise. That would be enough. He would oversee the design and installation of the system components in two separate phases. It was a gargantuan task, to be met with the fiercest sort of resistance. A time would surely come when violence had the final say - but he was ready to fight. ! He would connect the people, and after that he did not know, but he was certain that it would be enough. It had been enough for Lucy, hadn't it? Just showing up, not knowing what was next. It would take 152 money, and bodies, and science and time. But he had those things, or he knew where he could get them, and he was ready to use it all. The cancerous cells of the organism would fight with all of their impulse to maintain the paralytic grip of the malady. But their impulse would be small compared to the organism awakened, unbounded, united, in motion as one. ! Aristotle had a plan, and the time had come to set the plan into unstoppable, perpetual motion. He and Lucy boxed the books, and sent them on ahead. They said goodbye to the apartment where they had once again found love, and they flew from Paris. ! Lucy thought that the house was a thing of utmost beauty. Looking at the hearth, and the sturdy wooden frame, she finally understood how Ari's hands had gotten so rough. She loved the house as if it were a part of Aristotle. But it would be a place for work, a place full of frenetic, kinetic myth. Lucy shared the vision of a day when all of this would be over, and serenity would flood back to the land. ! Now it was filled with a nervous buzz, as Aristotle called on the people he trusted most, and they gathered not knowing what to expect. There were only five then, whose names by now you surely know. Aristotle the cynosure and Lucy, his beloved. There was Thomas 153 who had shown him how to work the land, who owned the land, and Curtis, who knew the bitter price of resistance. Then there was Iggy, who had also seen the disease in the early days, and provided insight into the malady. Five, they sat, around a long wooden table in a farmhouse. There was a certain shock in seeing Ari like that, his hair shorn away, and his body adorned in the flowing black robes. There was a shock, and then no shock at all. He looked the part. He was powerful, sleek, and elusive - the softness of his words gave them their strength. He did not struggle to command the room. It seemed to the four others that he could have commanded the attention of many millions with but a whisper. ! He opened with a warning. They were about to embark upon a sojourn from which there was no return. He would understand if they chose to leave now, but if they stayed tonight, they stayed until victory of death. They would work in secrecy for as long as they could, but a day would come when their faces would be flashed to the world - enemies of the peace, traitor to the order of things. When that day came, they would be hunted and hounded, chased and surveilled. They would be targets. It was doubtful that they would all survive. Aristotle 154 a sked if he wa s wel l understood. One by one they a ssented, committing their lives to the cause. ! With that, Aristotle laid plain the plan - satellites, nodes, and a fierce battle over the impulse of humanity. Their job was not to fight - it was to awaken a more self aware consciousness for the organism of us all. Then, if they succeeded, they would watch the fury unfold as the healthy body went about ridding itself of disease. Satellites and nodes - that was all. It would be no small feat, but then, neither is the fusion of an atom. ! Aristotle, who had stood as he explained the plan, fell silent and joined the others, who were seated. He asked them what they thought, wondered what they would do to bring all this about. Perhaps they had expected him to tell them each their duties, but that was not his way. He had learned from his time at the head of Halcyon that people do their best work when the take the work upon themselves. For a long moment there was silence. Nobody know what to say. Aristotle had asked a question, and he waited patiently for an answer. ! Lucy raised her voice. She would distribute the pathology across continents. She would spread the ungerminated seed of ideology. If people were going to rise up, then they needed a reason. She would 155 give them a reason one crate at a time, one crate of little black books at a time. She would give them away. She would paste them inside telephone booths, and put them in the stead of hotel room bibles. Lucy would spread the word. ! Curtis spoke next. He would stay with Aristotle. Anyone who wanted to speak to Ari would have to speak first to him. He could keep the leader safe, and a safe leader meant a safer team. He would keep the numbers and addresses and names in his head, so that Ari could focus on the design. No paper trail, no evidence, no compromised agenda. Curtis would protect them. ! Thomas said he would find them friends. Five people were not enough. They would need hundreds and then thousands of friends - ultimately they would need a billion. You have to start somewhere, though, and in his short lifetime, he had met many people who he was sure would come to their aid. He would talk to students and farmers and recluses in the their caves. He what an idealist looked like - the gleam and glitter of their eye. He would find them, and he would bring them there, to his farm. Thomas would make them grow. ! Iggy would continue to investigate the disease, and track the progress of their treatment. He would have conversations with 156 Aristotle regarding strategy and policy and logistics. He would argue. He would manage the operations, and he would keep a watchful eye. Iggy would guide them. ! Aristotle would design, specify, tool, machine and distribute the components of the remedy, the network, the evolution of revolution. Aristotle would lead a team of his systems engineers to design the satellites and then the nodes. He would take his fortune and drive the satellites into orbit, and pump out millions of network nodes with a simple, inexpensive design. Aristotle would talk to the machines. Aristotle would lead them. ! Of course, everybody had to do everything. With the exception of Aristotle, the responsibilities of disseminating the pathology, ensuring each others' safety, finding likeminded folk, and contributing their input fell to ever ybody. And then ever ything was Aristotle's responsibility, more than it was anyone else's, it was Aristotle's. ! The two houses would be the headquarters, the failsafe, the laboratory. They would be a printing press and a staging ground, a hive and a colony. They had gathered there to start a revolution, but it was unlike any that had come before it. It was a leap in complexity, a new way of being. The sense that they were on the cusp of a great 157 transformation consumed them, and sat unspoken in the minds of a great many. At first it was only Aristotle who seemed more figure than man, but soon it was all of them. They spoke for hours about strategies and logistics and budgets and agendas. When they were finished, they found that they had each become something more than themselves. They were the five. ! No one had the urge to celebrate that night. There was too much to be done. Yet there was an air of pristine joy there - that they had come this far, that they were in motion. In the morning they set out, each on the lonely path of the revolutionary way. They did not know when they would see each other again, or if they would ever again gather as a group. That was part of it, though, and they took it as it came. ! In the months that followed, a slow trickle of bodies and buildings began to fill the farm. Thomas was in Northern California, Lucy was in New York, and Iggy was in Atlanta. They were meeting people, and talking quietly, and slipping little black books into upturned palms. It seemed to them that the world was waiting for this to happen. All they had to do was whisper the word, and ears turned upwards, awaiting, willing. It was clear from the beginning that they had struck a chord. 158 The pathology of the malady rang true to so many who had looked on for long with the deepest dismay. ! It started with friends. For months, in fact, the only real addition were folks that they had known from before. Thomas had the most success. He belonged to a robust network of leftists, and they knew quite well that he was a serious man. When he told them something was brewing, they listened, and when he said that it was something serious, a few were ready to join the fight. So to the farm they came, and they sat with Aristotle. Mostly they discussed the pathology, but occasionally Aristotle would take one into his confidence, and divulge the details of the plan. They came and they went, and when they had gone it was to spread the word. ! Lucy made great strides. Her intelligence and her beauty unlocked doors. Soon the pathology was being read by artists and intellectuals, editors and publishers and thinkers and activists. It started to appear in bookshops and coffeehouses. The halls of the colleges and the universities and the high schools were sure to contain a few black books. Soon it was being printed in basements and back rooms, being read and released, and read and released - annotated and given to the 159 next of the infected. To some it was a death rattle, and to some it was a call to arms. It was only what it had to be. ! People began to mutter the name - 'Aristotle.' Who is he? Who was he? Was he a scientist or a philosopher? Few knew for sure, except for the few that had travelled down that long dirt road to the place where two cabins stood atop the dusty dirt. ! The balance was shifting, and now the agents of the new revolution didn't have to convince people, but only had to say that they knew the author of that little black book. In the places where you might recruit a revolutionary 'Aristotle' was a common sound. Now they had to be more than cautious with who they chose to send to the farm. Aristotle had confidence in their judgement, and he was not disappointed. ! Of course, it helped that Curtis controlled the comings and goings. Potential agents were told to go to Joshua Tree and wait. Curtis picked them up and searched their bodies, blindfolded them and sized them up. More than once he refused entry to people who looked at him wrong, or hadn't read the book right, or had brought a guest. ! Then it started to snowball, as revolutions tend to do. A year after they had first gathered, more than two-hundred and fifty people had come and gone from the farm. Aristotle spent the majority of his time 160 tinkering and drawing schematics, but we'll get to that in a bit. Lucy would visit for weeks at a time, to print more books and to be with Aristotle. They wished that they never had to part, but when the run was done, and the pages were bound, again she would go off. Their love flourished and endured. ! Lucy planted quite fertile seeds in europe. Thomas went to Latin America. The message spanned idioms, was fresh and vibrant even in translation. The movement was becoming global. From China and India and Russia they came, from Algeria and Israel and Somalia and Peru. Each time, they came and went, and the going had a clear purpose and a new pulse. ! It grew and it grew, and eventually average people started to take note. What was that book, and who had penned it? The made for good TV, and demand for the text began to take off. It was being printed on presses in Africa and Asia, and America, too. They printed it in Europe and in Australia. Everywhere they were printing it. They could not be printed with enough haste. It spread on the internet, too. The movement had reached a critical mass, and then in earnest the backlash began. The Senators and businesspeople did not know where the explosive little treatise had come from, but they tore it to dust just 161 the same. They dared the author to come forth, but Aristotle knew that it was not yet time. He let imitators play at being him, because all of them were exposed in time. He was patient, and he knew that it was good let the chaos build. Certainly the chaos grew, until there was a palpable nervousness in the halls of power. The atmosphere was becoming combustible, and they feared a spark of pulse would set ablaze their mechanism of oppression and violence. Their fear was not unfounded. But it was good to let the chaos build. ! That's what Iggy said, and Aristotle trusted Ignatius. While Ari worked with his engineers, Iggy took care of running everything else. He slowly drew the Halcyon billions into secure positions. From time to time he thought that the money should have gone to feed people, or to give them shelter, but then he realized that it ultimately was. ! The movement was strong, and it seemed that Aristotle could have started a violent uprising at his command. But that would not work - their numbers would be crushed and their revolution would be eliminated. They had to wait, and someday it would be not a few thousand that were willing to work for the cause, but a few billion. Someday soon, their moment would come. It is not an easy thing, to wait and grow, when every impulse says to fling yourself foreword into 162 the future. It is not an easy thing at all, but great strength and undiminished resolve, they waited and they grew. They became strong. The worked in shadows, in the dark and the dust. They cast ripples, out and out into the sea of our consciousness. They were fearless, and Aristotle's brilliance gave them strength. He was soft and strong as a leader. He knew when to speak and when to listen - mostly he listened. He knew the day would come to speak. ! He listened most of all to the team of expert technicians who aided him in the essential work. The first day after the meeting of the original five, Aristotle had set to work designing the satellites that would that would sing the song of an impulse jump. He called on the four of his employees that had been receptive to the idea of the malady before such a thing was known to exist. They came, and they did not leave. ! It wasn't the physical design of the satellites which posed the greatest challenge. Orbital mechanics, telemetry and data relay were actually relatively basic compared to the essential question. Aristotle wondered how he might design a network with so few satellites and so many nodes. The imbalance in numbers created an incredible need to handle each node with a light touch. Aristotle had designed large 163 networks before, but never anything as large as this. There had never been anything as large as this. To most, the idea seemed impossible, but to Aristotle it was certainly possible. He only had to find a way. ! While the others travelled the globe, created an ever growing din of discontent among the masses, Aristotle only wracked his brain. He ran simulation after simulation, computing bandwidths and throughputs and bit rates and speed. At first they failed miserably. They were orders of magnitude below the efficiencies they would need. But one radical innovation followed another, and soon they were envisioning an architecture that was radically new. It was more elegant and less expensive than anything that had come before. The numbers improved. Aristotle did not become frustrated, when after a year of nonstop work, they were less than halfway there. He not become frustrated at all, only returned to his work, and wondered what he could ask the others to give. His engineers were as indispensable limbs, executing ideas flawlessly, allowing Ari to focus on the task of coming up with solutions. Everyday he thought of something, a way to reduce the satellite's load. At night he dreamed only of the machines, pulsating, vibrating, alive and awake. He felt that he did more work while sleeping than when awake. Often he sprang from bed with a new 164 idea for the others to implement. Aristotle did not become frustrated, he only became urgently brilliant. None of his team had seen a mind like that. ! Ari was satisfied with the specifications, and the construction began in May. Under the cover of the Halcyon name they purchased the parts and materials. After that, the fabrication was under Iggy's direction. It would take roughly twelves months to prepare them for launch. Aristotle hoped that it would be enough time to finish the code. ! It had been almost a year and half since they had set in motion. Aristotle was pleased with how far they had come. They were a movement now - global and growing in the light of new ideas. They were well on their way, and Aristotle was pleased that there was so much work to do. Many times they had broken through the barrier of diminishing returns, but always it came back. The work went on like that - in fits and starts, followed by days of slow decay. When Aristotle figured that they were ninety percent of the way there, he made a decision that shocked the team. He wanted to begin again, from scratch, build the whole skyscraper of code from the ground up. He 165 said they would build it better this time, and faster, with all the insight and knowledge they had gained. ! Starting out again from the top was daunting, but it proved to be exactly what they had to do. Rebuilding each module of the code, they found that the second version was consistently quicker, shorter, more efficient, and altogether a more elegant expression of the idea. The fundamental technique was to use the abundance of users as source of robustness, sharing with each other outside of the uplink. They had designed a network which got quicker with every added node. It had taken them eighteen months to design the architecture of the network that would come to be called 'MIND.' They were ready for launch. All that remained was to prepare the satellites for their wild ride. It was the finest system that Aristotle had ever designed, and though he was sanguine, there was a measure of sadness in him when it was done. The plan would move ahead with a midsummer launch, and Ari knew that he would finally have to show himself. You can't just launch a satellite into space and not tell anybody about it. It was fortunate that he had remained anonymous as long as he had, but now that would end. ! The day arrived. The summer heat was at the height of its simmer. The occasion was momentous, and much of the movement was invited 166 to gather in the salt flats of Utah. They would watch the payload of their resistance take flight. The original five were there, and thousands of those that had come to meet Aristotle on the farm. ! A spotless, sparkling sky of grey-white haze hung over them as they counted down the minutes to ignition. It was the first time they had gathered in number. One could not help but feel the power of the pulse, out there in the desert. There were too many of them, and they were too smart, and too willing to give everything. Ten minutes to launch - Aristotle went amongst the crowd. He was not hot in his black kurta. It flowed and breathed and seemed to generate the wind. He was beautiful that day, and Lucy held his hand. Five minutes - Aristotle beamed and shook the hands of many. He remembered almost all of their names. Three minutes - vapor started slowly to flow from beneath the bodies of the rockets. Two - Aristotle kissed Lucy on the forehead. She kissed him on the chin. One - the nervous energy had a scent. It was the smell of electricity. It was the smell of an actualized dream. Launch. ! The heat scorched the air as the rockets took to flight, and a tremendous roar shook the endless earth. They cheered and whooped as they rose, ever higher, essentially ascendant. Borne atop balls of 167 flame, the satellites took to that space beyond the sky. Aristotle wept, and the sight of his joyous weeping caused others to weep as well. He wept for the beauty of it all. He wept and leapt and whooped for the remedy. It was up there now, carrying the code that would connect the earth. The light of the sun seemed to bounce and pulse. Aristotle knew what it felt like to live inside a dream. Aristotle felt the sickness weakening inside him. The impulse of the MIND was strong. Others felt it, too. ! When the trail of vapor had gone from the sky, Aristotle stood to speak. It was time to claim the pathology of the malady, and to show the world the person that he had developed a remedy. Lucy, Curtis, Thomas and Iggy stood behind him, and the cameras could see the crowd of rebels expanding into the desert beyond. It was time to come into the open. Aristotle raised his voice. ! First he explained the purpose of the satellites, which were finding their orbits that very moment. They would provide a signal to facilitate the interconnection and free communication of all humans. Soon, he said, his organization would begin to distribute nodes free of charge. Existing computers could log on as long as they had some kind of radio. For too long the people of the planet had been bound by 168 ignorance, and forced by isolation to obey the destructive impulse of the diseased. Now it was time to unify, to show that they would begin to embrace the higher consciousness of a planetary MIND. This message went out and out across the globe, dubbed and subtitles and translated so that all could hear. ! The reaction was immediate, and Aristotle knew that he had struck fear into the hearts of those who rejected the idea of a common humanity and a common good. They took to the airwaves armed only with falsehood. The couldn't condemn the MIND project - it was too popular, and anyways beyond control. They made empty pledges of support for the idea, while at once setting about the task of tearing down those that had brought it to bloom. They called it a desperate power grab by a group of armed extremists. The called for the immediate handover of control, or for the arrest of Aristotle and his movement. Still, when the malady struck at him, Aristotle struck back. He that it was not his power that he fought for, but the abdication of theirs. He sounded a warning that the people would no longer tolerate their misfeasance, nonfeasance and malfeasance. The people would not suffer their disdain for the life of the planet - tolerate their destructive 169 impulse. He said that the time had come for them to cede control to the people. ! People heard Aristotle's words, and a great many agreed. If they had not read his book already, surely they did after the birth of MIND. This was no time to sit back and watch. It seemed certain now that the soul of the planet was at stake. The clatter was constant. People spoke openly about the growing discord of a fractured civilization. From the time that MIND first blinked on, it was clear that there had been a shift. ! The members of the moment fanned out, and waged a battle for minds and bodies and souls. They risked arrest, detention, and torture at the hands of any government. They went with joy. ! Aristotle became as famous as those against whom he struggled. It didn't take long for them to link Halcyon to the revolution, but they were too late. Iggy had taken practically every cent of Halcyon and purchased quantities of certain elements - gold and silicone and tungsten and others. The funds were secure. The Halcyon link served to reassure people that the network was trustworthy. ! Aristotle published open specifications to help people connect their machines to the network. Slowly it began to grow. But MIND 170 wasn't just for people who already had machines. It was for those who had nothing, for those who had no access to information at all. It was to them that he needed to deliver, and he knew he had not yet achieved that goal. He would carry on the fight until anyone in the world could free share their ideas - then the fight would in earnest begin. ! When the violent reaction of the malady to the remedy increased its pitch, Aristotle only referenced the small black book that he carried all the time. He said that resistance to MIND was only the disease fighting back against its cure. He only said that they would prevail. He only said, only softly, that soon the nature of humanity would come to bear. Either people would united under the flag of universal equality and mutual freedom, or the planet would perish. It would be choked to death by those that had raped it - leaving the thrashing masses to fend for themselves in a cold void. ! Aristotle had to return to work, but he knew he could not return to the farm. It was essential that he complete the second phase of the plan before the authorities had time to convince the people that Aristotle was not worthy of their trust. Iggy and Ari and Curtus found a property in Idaho to use as a research facility. The task was to design 171 a network node that could be produced as cheaply as possible. He had to make the machine that would carry his message to the masses. ! He figured they would need to produce one billion machines. That would be more than one for every ten people, even if you account for the mil lions of units that would be lost in the str ug gle over distribution. One billion machines for one billion dollars. No matter how you sliced it, it was going to be a squeeze. Aristotle had the same certainty that he had brought to the satellite job. He knew he could not fail. ! The basic premise of the design was to create a computer that could send, receive, and display information. It didn't have to be powerful, but it did have to be strong. It would have to withstand the heat of the desert, the cold of the tundra, the dry mountain air and the damp grove. Above all else, Aristotle valued elegance in design, and he wanted to make sure that whatever the produced could be reproduced by others from the schematics. That way the responsibility of production would not fall solely on him. ! For months he and his team were cooped up in their mountain hole - the battle for allegiance raged outside. The device had to be able to gather energy from the bountiful fusion of the sun. It had to be small 172 and light and portable. It needed to be intuitive. Aristotle had been designing computers since his second year of college, but this was something else. This was art. In the patterns and the circuits, Aristotle felt himself growing closer to a solution. It wasn't entirely empirical - at times his hand moved on the page in ways that his mind did not understand. It was a trance-like state that overtook him as he produced design after design, a zen state, similar to way he felt when he made love. They pumped out prototype after prototype, page after page, one foot in front of the other, until Aristotle thought the design was good. It was a piece of flexible, electrosensitive plastic with circuits printed on to the back. On the front there was a photovoltaic cell, an array of light emitting diodes, and a space for input. The design was done. ! The next morning, Aristotle was awakened by a commotion in the yard. It was too early. Then there was a rapping at the door. He had taken to sleeping in the lab. Before he had risen from his cot, the door flew open, and he saw the badge. Finally, they had come. The timing was suspect - perhaps they had been watching the entire time, waiting for the right moment to barge in. Perhaps they had only found him just now. 173 "We have a warrant for your arrest and for the confiscation of everything in this laboratory." ! Aristotle had no idea how many agents had come, but he was sure that there was no other choice. If they took the prototype the would destroy it, and he might never get the chance to recreate it. He had to fight. Curtis was screaming in the hallway. The battle was about to begin. Aristotle took the pistol from beneath his bed, and shot with a steady flick at the agent in the doorway. He fell. Seconds later the percussive clack of gunfire could be heard across the grounds. Curtis dispatched three agents quickly, and rushed into the room where Aristotle was gathering his things. They knew that other agents of the malady would not be far behind. The had time only to gather the research and flee. Six revolutionaries were killed in the shootout, and all twelve agents who arrived had been slain. The agents had foolishly not expected such resistance. It was their way to believe that anyone would fold at the sight of a loaded gun. They were wrong. The revolution had been prepared, had always been prepared. Ari knew that the luxury of being underestimated would not come again. He was only thankful that they had gotten away with their prototype and their lives. 174 ! They went to the north, and travelled with all haste. Under Curtis' guidance, they made their way to safety. They warned their allies that the crackdown was about to begin. Up they went, north, to Alaska. The traversed the vast wilderness of the northwest. Always they looked behind them, as Aristotle had done in the chaos of the deep woods. They wondered when death would appear, but it was only shadow and fear that tracked them, only the phantoms inside the mind. ! There was fluxion in humanity's impulse - the work of the revolution had to go on. In the harshness of the Alaskan tundra, they set about producing copies of the machines for which they'd killed. In mere months units were rolling down the line - thousands every day. But that wouldn't be nearly enough. Aristotle sent specifications and resources to agents stationed in ever y organ of humanity. The movement was millions strong now, counting only those who were willing to pay the ultimate price. The machine of Aristotle's grand design was called 'node.' It was soon being produced at an astounding rate. Every day, a million new machines poured out of basements in bangladesh and dorm rooms and mud huts and even a few mansions. The only order was to get them to the people that could use them 175 most. Every day, Aristotle waited the number of nodes grow. MIND became faster, as it had been designed to do - it became faster and more robust. Aristotle could feel the whole planet pulse. ! Every time a new node was brought to life, it routed the user to the text of the pathology. It was in a thousand languages now, translated into any intelligible idiom. People knew who had given them the greatest of gifts - it was Aristotle and his army. In return, Aristotle asked only that people share, communicate, learn, unite. ! Authorities the world over said that anyone who had a node was part of some monstrous plot. It was too late for that - there were too many nodes. Even the people who were supposed to carry out the malady's violent resistance to the remedy were connecting to MIND. They were reading about the purpose of the machines for themselves. The bureaucrats and demagogues had lost control of their well-trained dogs, and we're losing more control every day. It would not be long until the edifice came crashing down a round them, becoming nothing more than a smoldering pile of hateful rubble. Every day a million new nodes were born, and the rate was only increasing. It was on every tongue - the times were changing, the impulse jump was near. Soon they would rid themselves of the malady. 176 ! World leaders me in scared little summits, and asked themselves what they could possibly do - to stop the onslaught, to staunch the bleeding. Even if they found Aristotle again, what then? It was more than one man - so much more. Their violent rhetoric grew, becoming increasingly savage. To those that remained convinced of their authority, they urged calm. They said that the situation was under control, but the panic behind their eyes and underneath their voices was plain. They were powerless in the face of a force so much greater than guns. Never before had they imagined such a thing - a rebellion which could not be put down with brute force. The had not realized that the unity of the people thye oppressed would be their downfall. ! Aristotle had been on the lam for more than a year. He and the others had hidden themselves away along the northern frontier. Their work was done for a moment. They had established an apparatus that could run in their absence, continue to pump out those nodes. To a few they were fugitives, but to many the were the future. It had been their impossible dream that was changing the world. The were simply the five. More than human, to most they were myth. After one year of production, MIND had a billion nodes. The number would only continue to grow. 177 ! The world was ready for the final thrust, to buck their oppressors in a tumultuous day of upheaval. They could bear the malady no more. It was time. Aristotle had only to say the word. ! So now you've seen the revolution. I wonder if it was what you expected. People tend to think of revolutions as violent affairs, but not this one. I mean, sure, there was some violence in there. Aristotle wasn't willing to just go down like that. But they eschewed violence when they could, and it certainly wasn't part of their plan. It was only unity, only bringing people together, so that they could see how strong they really were. Sometimes that's all it takes. Not that it was easy, because it certainly was not that - only that it was elegant, simple, something anyone could understand. Elegance is so often the key to solving a complex problem - that's what I think, at least. ! Now, I apologize if that was a little too much of a hurried description of events, and less about the characters. There was just a lot to describe. Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to fit five very active years into a single chapter, but the last thing I want is for this book to drag on. Really - if you feel that this is all played out, you can stop now. I only ask, as usual, that you let me know. I mean, I can tell you how this is going to go. The good guys are going to win. In most ways that 178 already have. All that remains now is for the people to rise up. Our friends can sort of just sit back and watch - sort of. ! I'm going to write the rising tonight. It's early yet, and I just sort of feel that it's time. I'm going to save the last chapter, though. Maybe for tomorrow. You know, it doesn't take very long to write a book if you're not doing much of anything else. It's been two weeks to the day since I started out. Perhaps it's supposed to take longer - I don't know. Perhaps it shows. It's just that once it starts coming, it really doesn't stop. The story writes itself - your only job is to put it into words. Who knew? ! Marcus and I are going to take a break soon, to eat a mango. It is good to eat mangoes while you write, but you have to be careful not to drip the juice on the page. That would be no good at all. ! Speaking of things that are no good at all, my pencil ran out of lead in the middle of this chapter. You remember - the P205 that I told you about. I'm using a Sharplet 2 now, but it's not the same. I think that pencil has become one of my favorite objects. Not to worry, though - I'll fill it back up with graphite when I return to the states. We'll be together for a long time, if I can keep from losing it. That would be nice. 179 ! Okay, it's mango time, and I've got to do all the cutting. I know that it's hard to part, but I'll be back soon. Just you wait - or don't - doesn't matter to me. You go on ahead, and I swear I'll catch up, or you can just chill. ! Seriously, though, it's mango time. 180 Uprising ! Tyrone and Dylan got home during the mango break. The silly drunks have class in the morning, but that doesn't stop them from going out and having a shit-kicking good time. I would have joined them, but I've got work to do. I can't leave you stranded here, in the middle of a story. That would just be rude. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the mango was delicious - plump and juicy and so so ripe. ! Aristotle knew the time was ripe. He felt it with every cell. Long he had waited for the moment to arrive, and now it was time The greeks called it kairos - fullness of time. If ever a moment was full of kairos, it was then. For years now they had worked to connect the people, and the effects of their effort were plain. More than a billion nodes had been fabricated, flung to those who had never afforded access to the vast trove of human knowledge, which we keep in a cloud. By Aristotle's calculation, that meant that nearly every person on the planet could get online. The moment was ripe indeed. What they needed now was just a pulse of purpose, and all would come tumbling down. Then they could set to work, building it up again, the way it was supposed to be - the way it could have been. From the 181 hidden fortress of the american tundra, Aristotle would provide that pulse. ! He recorded a message - his first in more than a year. The speech would come to be called the pulse, but its title at the time was 'a message to humanity.' ! Aristotle informed that the time had come to rise up, to join together, to overthrow. He said that if humans could act as humanity, they could rid themselves of the disease. Nothing could stop them - guns and bombs and gas and whips could not stop them - the wind could not stop them - only they themselves could stop them. They only had to realize that already they were one species, one organism, one planet. The time had come to throw their bodies against the gears of war, the gears of greed - to reclaim human impulse in the name of prosperity and peace. Aristotle did not urge us to take up arms. He only said to do what was necessary. He told the wage slaves and the salaried whores to resist their condition. He told the penniless to demand their own existence, to rise. He told the soliders and the police to put down their guns - did they not have more in common with the ones they killed, than with the ones that bid them do the killing? He told the rich that their lucre was the product of a diseased 182 epoch. The goods should clearly be distributed more equally. An organism should not work its organs to death - it should not set them against each other. It should not take resources that belong to all and give them to a few. The dysfunction of the human organism had to stop, or surely it would perish. More than that, worse than that, their consumptive disease imperiled an organism much grander than humanity. They threatened to reduce the host to ash. It was one thing to commit suicide as a species, but humanity could not abide the murder of a consciousness so much greater than our own. The apotheosis of kairos. All that remained was to throw their bodies against the gears - then they would be free of disease. ! This message was banned from the airwaves and the papers, but it could not be stopped. The nodes sprang active. MIND was awake. Soon the entire world had heard. Aristotle was calling on them. Aristotle who had made MIND. The pulse flew from his mouth, and into the minds and bodies and souls of the masses. ! To Aristotle, words were not enough - they were a fickle, feeble, frail excuse. He would have to show them what he meant. ! Aristotle walked up the steps of the courthouse. It took a long moment for the sheriffs to realize who was standing in front of them. 183 They had seen his visage on the news for years, but nobody ever expected to see Aristotle in the flesh. Many refused to believe that he was real. Yet he was real. He was embodied in bone and blood. At once the slow bulletin went out to the world - Aristotle, the leader of the revolution, had been apprehended in Alaska. The small authorities hoped that the news would weaken the resolve of the the wave the rose beneath it - the too quick melting of a glacier. They hoped that the image of Aristotle in chains and without his kurta would break the spirit of the millions who were prepared to fight. They were wrong. Aristotle knew that the image of his bondage would express his ideas more clearly than words. He had counted on the immediate rush to say that he had been subdued. He was sure that humanity would see, that he was but a single cell. ! Aristotle was also sure the would be tortured, regardless of which syndicate got ahold of him. He would be tortured, most of all, because of the tremendous hate that was harbored in the unbeating hearts of the malicious ones. They would torture him also for information - they wanted a way to kill MIND, and they wanted the locations of his comrades. They did not know that MIND could not be killed - 184 autonomy was an integral part of its design. They did not know that it was Curtis who held the names and numbers. ! He only hoped he would not be killed - most of all so that he and Lucy could live a life together. He hoped very much, but he was not certain that he would not be destroyed by pain. The pain was tremendous, but Aristotle's great strength endured. He spoke only the truth, though that enraged his captors all the more. When they had finished punishing his body, they left him to rot in the damp and dark. He knew that in time his wounds would heal. He hoped that some day humanity would come to lift him from his cell. He had only hope in the darkness of that cage, only the same certainly as always that the remedy would work. ! The images of his capture enraged the being to which he had given MIND. If they had not been prepared to fight before, then now they wanted nothing else. The many millions would not rest until Aristotle was free. It was plain to see that Aristotle's freedom would mean the total destruction of the structures that held him - not in reality, but in metaphor, which is often more real than the real. They would have to tear down the whole damn edifice if they wished to free Ari - that much was perfectly clear. He was their prize, their pet, their only 185 indication that they had any power left at all. The malady would not release its grip on that cell until it was no more. That is how it had to be. That is how Aristotle had planned it. He would be long in the darkness, but darkness is nothing but the absence of light. He had been in the dark before. So in darkness he waited, as the strum und drang raged. ! It started with the workers - those who slave for pennies to fashion the lucre. They simply refused to do so. From the very first day after the pulse, the factories and sweatshops ground to a starting halt. It wasn't just a few factories in a few towns, or a rogue union demanding higher pay - the syndicates were used to that. It seemed the whole of industry had stopped - no more cars, no more guns, no more sneakers, no more toys. The bosses soon were on their knees, begging their workers to come back, offering doubles and triples and ownership stakes. No sum was enough. The workers held strong, and soon became not workers, but demonstrators, shouting in whatever tongue was theirs - "Free Ari!" ! When the will of those who held him refused to bend, the demonstrators grew louder. The streets were impassable. The syndicates attempted to put the demonstrations down, but many of 186 their armies would not mobilize against themselves. The pitch of outrageous demands to desist became shrill and alarmed. They said that the people were only hurting themselves, they said that things could change - they said whatever they thought they could say, even if it wasn't true. The impulse of humanity was strong. If they had been still so ignorant, the humans could have been convinced that they struggled alone. But they had MIND, and they knew that they were not alone - their brothers and sisters across the globe were with them, shouting the same as them - "Free Aristotle!" ! The will of his captors would not yield. But though Aristotle was held in the deepest darkness, he could feel his soul inside him heal. Though solitude was a crystal prison, he knew that the rising went on. It went on and on, fueled by MIND, and in the name of humanity - it was for the sake of freedom, equality, and continuity of humans. It went on and on, and though the violence was tremendous, humanity endured. Many humans died. It is sad to say, but that is how it had to happen. In order to transcend violence as a way of life, humanity was forced into a violence that it did not seek. ! Yes. Many died. It is very sad to say, but it was unavoidable. The rising was met with violence at every turn. 187 ! The violence escalated until entire cities were aflame. It was a terrible sight. Humanity did not want it to be that way, but it was left with little choice. It takes self-inflicted pain to remedy a disease that you could let fester, but that is what you have to do. Otherwise the malady will grow, and by the time it is bad enough, it will be too late. No, the remedy was necessary - even if it caused such pain. Make no mistake, though - the chaotic pain was great. ! One by one, the corrupt syndicates of nations and corporations began to fall. It was the weaker ones at first, whose had authority had always been only in name. But slow, one by one, one foot in front of the other, the wretched little cells began to crumble. In their place, for a time, was chaos and strife - the power of the void. The humans had not yet realized that the power was theirs. It was a time of tumult - many said it was the end. Those rising up said that it was only the beginning. Of what, they were uncertain, they only knew that something would rise from the rubble, and that it would be better than what had been before. ! From the poorer organs, the chaos spread, enveloping the earth. The glacier's melting marched on, and humanity screamed. "Free Ari! Free Ari!" Soon it was apparent that no syndicate of the malady still 188 maintained control. The numbers were too great - they could not fight the flood of the oppressed, rising as one. Nobody was in control now, but still Aristotle was not free, and so the painful chaos of the flood went on and on. Humanity did not know where he was held - just that somewhere, someone had him. It would not stop until he was free. ! Command and control was completely lost. The leaders of the syndicates feared for their lives. They fled and hid. Martial law reigned. It was painful - there's no denying that. People starved and fire raged - humanity began to wonder if the chaos would ever end. ! What more did the mob of billions want? They had destroyed what there was to destroy. What more could they possibly want? ! They wanted Aristotle - they wanted him to fly. They did not know who held him, but they knew that chaos would reign until he was free. ! In the end it was a single man who stopped the chaos. A nameless prison warden had had enough. He walked to Aristotle's cell and turned the key. He had no orders, and nobody stopped him as he went. It was just a human who had had enough, and wanted the chaos to come to an end. ! The light stung in Aristotle's eyes. He did not know how long he had been in darkness. He only knew that he was free, that the rising 189 had to have reached its mark. He did not know how long he had suffered that total darkness, but he knew that he did not feel sick any more. Yes, he was sure, the malady was gone. ! Aristotle walked into the sunlight on a spring morning, and though the light stung inside his eyes, he knew that it was done. ! The world reverberated with the word. Aristotle was free. Joyous cries rang out from every mouth, whether they had chanted the slogan or not. Ari was free, and the flood of chaos would subside. ! In the farmhouse where it had all begun, Aristotle held Lucy. They had made it. Curtis and Thomas had not. When Ari had marched proudly to the courthouse, the other leaders had slowly dispersed among the people. They had organized and facilitated, led comrades foreword under their proud flag. Thomas had been shot in the back of the head in Ecuador. Curtis had been the victim of a cluster bomb dropped on a crowd of dissidents in Tibet. Only Lucy and Iggy stood behind him as he took to the stage. He wanted to give an address. They left those hollow spaces to honor all of those who had fallen fighting the malady. ! Most people expected Aristotle to assume control, to build a government, to take the power and responsibility of rebuilding onto 190 himself. He was too tired for that, and it had never been part of the plan. Aristotle did not want power - he only wanted to remedy the disease in Humanity's soul. That was done. In his final address, Aristotle said that MIND would become a tool for governance. Nodes would be available to all. A digital democracy would rise, and together they would rebuild. ! The social and political boundaries of the days before the rising were gone, and humanity could function as a sentient thing. There were logistical problems, to be sure, but they would be overcome in time. If the revolution could make MIND, then surely humans could manage to give everyone a say in the future. ! The strife was still tremendous in the years after Aristotle gained his freedom. The flood had destroyed much. Still, things began to improve. Mostly it was the spirit that had changed. The flood gave everyone a reason to rethink the way they lived their life. It would be naive to think that greed and derision and malice disappeared - they did not. It was only that now they were viewed as symptoms, rather than strengths. A spirit of siblinghood overcame humanity - they saw that they would not go hungry if they shared. There was enough stir- fry for all. 191 ! In the first referendum, humanity elected to provide food, shelter, medicine, and education to all. It wasn't socialism or capitalism or any particular political system. It was the will of the people, and the knowledge that there was more than enough. It wasn't the rich helping the poor or the wise teaching the ignorant, it was only humanity helping itself, teaching itself. It was the knowledge that we constitute a single thing inside the earth. ! The chaos of the flood had erased so many of traces of untold division, a being made to hate itself. There were holdouts, but most people realized that race and religion and gender were only cages that we had built up around ourselves. When humans were finally able to communicate with one another they had realized that they were just that - humans. It had been their churches, or their governments, or their bosses that had hated each other. Humans were just humans - they wanted to live in peace and prosperity, and their happiness wouldn't take away from yours. It had all been an illusion, perpetrated upon the populace so that a few diseased cells could get rich - it was no more. ! Humanity decided quickly to dismantle the great machines of war that had been built up around them. It had no use for thermonuclear 192 weapons or cluster bombs or land mines. It would only use them against itself. What would be the point, when it had proven that it was stronger than all that? The resources that had been used to feed the thirsty impulse of death could be used to support life, to fuel science, to pay for art. The bombs were dismantled. Humanity remembered what it felt like not to know that it could all be burnt to ash at the push of a button. ! There was no hesitation in dismantling the remnants of the giant syndicates that had spend more than a century raping the earth. Their holdings were liquidated, and the capital was used to repair some of the damage they had caused. They could not repair it all, but there was faith that the earth would heal in time. Strict laws were created to prevent further damage. Humanity had come to view the earth as a gracious host, rather than a buffet table. The obvious need for new sources of energy was addressed, and soon all sort of technologies made the question a thing of the past. They fed from the life-giving impulse of the sun's fusion of life-stuff. The hegemony of myopia was over, and humanity picked the path they thought best, not the one they thought most profitable. 193 ! Every human was a part of the conversation, and together they came up with solutions to so many problems. They were not seized with the paralysis of legislators who must make their decisions with an eye towards political expedience. Debate on issues was open and fierce, but in the end, when the votes were cast, there was a majority, and their will became the law. In great part, though, government was your neighbors, your village, your city. If humans chose to arrange themselves into organs, that was their choice - humanity said so. ! Mostly though, life went on as before. That had been the point of it all, really - to ensure that life on this fragile orb could go on and on, spiraling up and out into the cosmos. There had to be a flood of chaotic remedy, but it was only to preserve what is good and right about our organism. Sooner or later, we had to rid ourselves of the malady. Though the pain of it all had been unbelievable, humanity saw that it had been necessary. Aristotle had been right. From the chaos and the rubble emerged a new way of life, no longer bent on its own destruction. It's the truth - life went on. ! Mothers held their children and taught them to speak. Candles flickered and cast their soft light onto young faces. The old gave their wisdom to the young. Windows opened, and windows closed. Children 194 played ball in the street, and when it rained they played ball in the wet street. Fans whirred and spun the air. Humans slept soundly, knowing they had done a good day's work. Music blared from car stereos, and shook whole neighborhoods. Young bodies met, and fell madly in love. ! Life went on, and the tumult of it all became only a memory. Children were born who would not remember at all. Memory captures the glory, but erases the pain. Buildings were rebuilt, lives lost were mourned, and the visible traces of the flood disappeared - more than anything else, though, life simply went on. ! People cooked, and ate, and used a little too much salt. They drank, and sometimes drank to excess. They bated in rivers and in bathtubs alike, and sometimes they didn't bathe at all. Fashion changed, music evolved, and new art learned from old art. Farmers worked the land, and doctors healed the sick. Friends laughed, and enemies swore at each other, and sometimes came to blows. The earth spun. It's sky got dark and then it got light again. The sun still cast its yellow glow, and the fusion of life-stuff went on an on. ! The revolution and the rising became a myth of creation, and Aristotle was the hero. Historians and journalists captured it all, but history is in fact a fiction. Humanity would believe whatever it wanted. 195 Time dragged on, and life with it, and humanity was healthy, free of disease. After a while, nobody thought about how close they had come to destruction. It seemed that life had always been that way - and it had. The point here - the salient point- is that above all else, life went on. ! Flowers bloomed and surf lapped against the shore. Mountains rose from the sea, and crumbled into sand. The planet breathed, and bounced, and pulsed along its sweet old way. Around and around, it rolled about the curvature of the cosmos. Life, all life, went on. ! I warned you that it was going to be predictable, didn't I? Well, I wasn't lying. Of course the good guys won. I don't give a shit if the story if predictable - the story is the story, and there's no changing that. Perhaps you think that the story is unbelievable - too easy or too simple or too clean. Well, guess what - it's fiction. You're allowed to clean it up a little, as long as it contains some truth. I like to think that this story does contain some, at least, even if it's not the greatest that ever was. ! All that remains now is to turn the story back on itself, to tie it all up in a pretty little bow. You should stick around for it - I get the sense that it's going to make you feel good. As if the last part wasn't enough. 196 We've got to come back to Aristotle, though. He's our guy, after all. There's no doubt about it - one more chapter is in order. ! That will have to wait until tomorrow, though. As I think I said before, I'm tired now, and my hand is killing me. I really did like the other pencil better. It's five in the morning and I'm supposed to get up at nine to go to the market with Marcus. It's going to be a long day, but the recursion will be waiting. ! It's lonely in this house when everyone had gone to bed, but I like it that way. It is good for my writing. Marcus likes to write in bars, but I think that's the showboat in him. I like to do my writing in private - in solitude, if I can find it. But solitude is hard to come by, and loneliness will have to suffice. There's a vast difference between the two, but I'll let you figure that one out by yourself. I'll wish you luck. ! Anyways, feel free to come back in a couple of days. I think it would be good to give it all some space before the final part. I know I'm going to. As always, you can do what you want, but you've got my take. Put this down for a couple days, and maybe start writing something of your own. But come back, and we'll put this thing to rest. So I'll see you in a couple days. ! Goodnight. 197 Recursion ! Tonight we cooked pasta with red sauce. Sadly, the food we cook for ourselves is better than anything we find on the street. Then again, we're pretty good in the kitchen, and can't bring ourselves to pay more than two pesos for a meal. Dinner was good. The real reason we cooked was to practice for tomorrow, when we are to prepare dinner for the folks that run this place. I feel like I owe them at least a dinner - after all, it was their kitchen counter onto which Aristotle was born. This kitchen counter. Dylan and Tyrone finish their course at the university tomorrow, and then we're going to cook dinner. After that we'll stick our arms in the road, and see where we can go. The point is that it's time to kill this wicked bitch, at least until I'm stateside, and I can type all this up. Then I get to set about the brain-breaking work of fixing up this inveterate pile of lash trash, this cavernous corps orb. For the record, I stole that from Craig Dworkin. You can read about that in Going Down, that other book of mine that I mentioned as we were setting out. ! Good to bookend the thing with some shameless self-promotion. Good to bring it all full circle, if you can. That's why we're here, anyways. Ralph Ellison said that the end is in the beginning, and lies far ahead. That's another thing that Mr. Marchant taught me in 198 eleventh grade. Well, what if the beginning is in the end, and lies far behind? I think that would be lovely. ! Aristotle thought Lucy looked lovely, wearing one of his old kurtas, and nothing else. It was sort of like a set of fatigues that a soldier gave to their spouse upon return from war, but much more comfortable, and breezier, and more flattering to her curves. He had no use for them - the closet full of flowing black robes - but he was fond of them, and he wanted Lucy to have them. At first she felt odd, wearing his things like some sordid pretender - then she grew used to the feeling, and finally she grew fond of it. They were their only relics of the revolution, aside from the node - but everybody had one of those. The kurta was worn thin in places - at the seat, and where lucy had grabbed her hips some countless number of times. She loved to do that. She called it 'putting her bitch wings out.' It was almost grey now, and only grew softer with age. There was so much magic in that piece of cloth. Lucy felt strong when she wore it, drew power from what it had meant to so many humans. ! When the rising had ended, Aristotle was forty-five, and Lucy was forty-eight. They returned to Thomas' farm, which was full of memory, but also seemed unfamiliar when their comrades had gone. Much had 199 been destroyed, but the houses were just barely standing there when they first returned. The violence that had occurred there was visible, but also ancient, and covered in the fine desert dust. The wind occasionally blew all the way from the ocean. Aristotle could tell from the hint of salt, and the molecules of mother that tickled his nose. They had set to work rebuilding the two houses, knowing that there's nothing quite like a home that you've built with your hands. They patched bullet holes, and scrubbed what were surely bloodstains from the floor. The built a fire in the hearth, and blew billows at the fire in the heart. It was all quite simple, and so very peaceful, compared to the way they had lived before - but simple peace was what they needed. Though they were proud of what they had done, infinitely proud, they also wanted to put it behind them. They didn't want to forget - they wanted a chance at something else. They only wanted to let their love live. ! Nearly every night, Lucy lit the candles that they kept by the bed, and they unleashed that torrent of their love that had seemed to flood the entire world. It seemed that way still, when the candles flickered and the moved inside each other. It seemed that their love was enough for an entire planet - or hadn't they proven that? They never closed 200 their eyes - only stared unblinking at those dancing wet spheres. The watched in wonder as the orbs bounced and blinked and pulsed. ! They had grown closer, even when the strange calculus of fate, or the stranger calculus of life-fusion had pulled them apart. Every day they were closer, and though they had a lifetime now, or most of one, they still did not have time for fighting. A hundred lives with Lucy's eyes didn't seem like enough. They certainly did not have time to quarrel. They could live forever inside each others' eyes, but never would there be an ounce of anger. There was too much respect, too much love, too much impulse for all that. ! At first they had considered having a child, but hesitation dictated that it would not be so. They were enough for each other, in the end. Though the joy of parenthood was something that they both sometimes longed for, they held no regrets. The land beneath their feet was enough, and the night sky above them - the wooden home that moaned with the wind. They worked the land, and they stared in wonder at the sky. They listened to the creaking, and they were not full of regret. ! When the sun came up each morning, they rose, and walked out into the land. They did their best to make it bloom. They never 201 matched the harvest that Ari and Thomas had reaped together in that last summer before the revolution, but they grew quite enough. They had their good years, and when the rain did not come, they had their bad ones. When the sun fell behind the ridge to the west, they came inside. It was as they had wanted - a simple life. ! From time to time, a car or a motorcycle would send up the light red earth of the road. It had an almost martian quality. They were pilgrims, come to see where it had all began. Aristotle's presence was the last thing any of them expected to find. They wanted to see what they thought were ruins. Imagine going to graceland and running smack into Elvis. ! Aristotle always invited them to stay the night, and he listened to their stories. If he or Lucy really took a liking, they might even tell a tale or two of their own. Many of the pilgrims were folks who had come to the farm to meet Aristotle before he was the most famous human. Many of them still had their very first copy of the pathology. Always they would talk a while, and before he sent them on their way, Aristotle would ask them never to tell that he had found his way to the farm. He knew that one day it might get out - there was no helping that. He made them promise not to tell, though, and it seemed that a 202 promise to Aristotle was one that these pilgrims wouldn't break. Perhaps they did, but the tale that the most famous man in the world was simply working the land on his old friend's farm seemed to tall to be true. In any case, no gaggle of reporters ever showed up, and on most days the silence and the solitude laid thick over the land. ! On evenings he had come in from the field, or during the long winter hiatus that marks time in a farmer's life, Aristotle still sometimes fidgeted with systems and machines. He could still speak to them with an unrivaled fluency. Perhaps he had used up all the juices of invention that had been allotted to him, or perhaps he lacked an urgency, or perhaps his heart belonged to much to Lucy and the land - but he never again held that astounding prowess of creation. It was a constant source of comfort that his chaotic dream had truly come true. He fidgeted some, but he knew that his work was done. He only saw it as a chance for conversation. ! On occasion he called up to MIND, still buzzing in a cloud above him. He watched the number of nodes, still growing, and wondered what consciousness had become. Was it a single MIND we shared? It had to be. Aristotle could tell from the breathing and bouncing and bulging of the planet - he could tell from the pulse that beat in unison. 203 He saw circuits alive with the consciousness of all complexity. He could feel how much greater our impulse had become. ! Lucy, on the other hand, did not feel that her work was finished. In the ten years after they fixed up the farm, Lucy wrote three books. The first was called 'On the Nature of Impulse,' the next was 'On the Nature of Pulse,' and her final tome was 'Pulse and Impulse.' Though Aristotle contributed his ideas, he never penned a word. Lucy became as famous in her own right, and her books became the foundational text of a new conception of the soul. It was the closest thing that most humans had to religion. ! Aristotle and Lucy wrote poems, too, but only for each other. His took most after Hafiz, and hers were more unique. They read their words to each other sometimes, and kept them by the bed. They hoped they would have the strength to destroy them before they finally passed. They wouldn't, but I only know that because this is my story. ! Time passed slowly on the farm. It seemed to the not-so-young lovers that a single day there was as long as the years they had spent in the flood. That's exactly all they craved - a chance to make up for lost time - that's exactly all they got. 204 ! On Tuesdays, Aristotle made stir-fry. He had almost forgotten why he loved it so much - almost, but not quite. He put more care and more love into the stir-fry than anything else, except for every moment that he spent with her. He grew the ingredients in a garden that sat beside and between the two houses. It was a great source of pride, that garden, much greater than the vast alfalfa fields that stretched their way to the western ridge. On other days, ingredients came from the market. On Tuesdays, though, from late spring and on into summer, they always came from the garden. ! The first row was red bell peppers. They gleamed as they grew, and cast their deep red sheen into the distance. Then came the orange peppers, more tangy, less sweet, but just as vibrant and visible. Next were the yellows, sometimes too much to look at in the California sun. The greens grew large and crisp, cleaved themselves into four or six or eight symmetrical lobes. The onions grew below the ground, with their small green shoots sticking up to let Aristotle know they were there, alive, growing, getting ready for their role. Carrots, too - they came out dirty, but they cleaned up well with a little bath. Garlic and beets and radish, in neat rows, calling up from the damp earth, only waiting to be ready and ripe. There was celery and cabbage, and they got fat off of 205 just a little sunlight and dew. Aristotle didn't have to ask the plants to grow. He only planted the seeds, and made sure that they had enough to drink. In the last row grew the sweet corn, stretching proudly towards the sun, and so much taller than the others. Aristotle loved the sweet corn most of all - how quickly it rose, and how sweet it was. ! To Ari, tending the garden was an art, and like all art, it took practice. His skill grew over the years, until it became something he knew only by hand. The wet, packed earth and the morning dew, the quality of light, and the spacing of the seeds. Aristotle knew it all, but it wasn't something he could write down. It just was. It was in the doing, seeking no justification and receiving none. It was right because it was right, and it was as simple as that. Ari loved that garden. Lucy loved it too, but it was Ari's alone. It was one of the few things they did not share - not for any reason, but just because that's the way it was. ! When winter grew into spring, it was the garden that marked the passing of time. Every day brought the moment closer when Aristotle could go out and pick a few perfect specimens of each thing. Then it came, and Ari brought the fruits of his labor inside. 206 ! He prepared the ingredients in the same order that they grew, if you looked toward the garden from the east. With a nine-inch chef 's knife, he sliced the red peppers into thin, crisp strips. The orange became rings. Ari always tasted them as soon as they were cut. The yellows he sliced into square the size of pool chalk, only slightly larger than dice. The green he sometimes only cut in halves - more often into quarters, but sometimes just halves. It depended whether it was a small one, and whether Aristotle felt like having a nice big steak of pepper in his dish. One half of the onion was cut finely, and the other side he sliced into a rainbow pattern to produce narrow, arcing strips. The carrots were cut at an angle, to produce larger, ovaloid disks. Sometimes they were thin, and sometimes they were fat - it only depended on what smells were on the wind. The garlic was minced, and the beets became small dice. The radishes were chopped into thinly translucent circles - purple on the outside, and on the inside only the color of wetness. From the celery he ripped the stringy chords, before making each stalk into a set of tiny arcs. The cabbage was torn and ripped and crushed by hand - in a certain way, cabbage cuts itself. Last was the corn - boiled for just a minute inside its husk, 207 before Aristotle slid the knife down its spine, and let the kernels fall into a bowl. ! Only then was everything ready. The ingredients sat on the counter, each in its own identical bowl. On a normal day, it could be said that the new house had too many bowls. They were all made of steel, and all perfectly alike, except perhaps in size. On Tuesdays, from late spring and on into summer, they had the perfect number of bowls. Escoffier said that a true chef has all the ingredients in place before the first flame is lit - he called it mise en place. Well, that's not what this was. Aristotle had never read Escoffier. He simply liked the look of it - all those ingredients sitting in their bowls, waiting for the slow heat that would bring them all together. ! Ari unhooked a heavy cast-iron skillet from its nail on the wall, just above the range. The skillet was big enough for four good pancakes, or bacon and eggs at the same time, or twelve big bowls of fresh, clean, sculpted veggies. It carried a hundred years of flavor in its bullet-proof bottom, and fifty more in its six-inch-high sides. Ari lit the front two burners, and set them to the same medium heat. Into the skillet went half a stick of butter, and two seconds worth of olive oil. The fats mixed, and Ari seasoned them with rosemary, cracked black pepper 208 and big, kosher salt. In one hell of a hurry, the smell filled the house. You probably could have smelled it by the jumbo rocks, if you'd been there, and if you'd kept your nose to the air. The garlic went in, and the smell changed slightly, but it was still the rosemary that filled you up. When the garlic stopped crackling in the hot fat, Ari put in the celery and the carrots - they would take the longest, and he wanted them almost soft by the time this was done. When the edges of the small green arcs had begun to clear, Ari went in with the radish and the beet. Everything began to take on a pinkish, purplish hue. Ari gripped the handle of the skillet with an old rage, and gave the melange a few mean shakes. He liked the pinkish purplish carrots. He added the strips of pepper before the squares - the cabbage and the corn. More salt and pepper and the second half of that stick of butter. You could never have too much butter. Finally the onions, and the twelve bowls stacked neat and empty on the counter. The fat clicked under the weight and wetness of all that vegetable flesh. Ari stood back and looked at the variegated shapes and colors - maybe he tried to figure out exactly what he loved so much about stir-fry. A few more violent shakes, some stirring, and the passage of time. Soon it would be food. Just a bit more salt. When the onions were nearly translucent, it was done. 209 ! It wasn't done, but it would continue to cook in all the heat it had soaked up from the two gas flames. The stir-fry was done with the fire - I'll put it that way. It came out of the skillet and into a white piece of porcelain with cobalt blue flowers in a chinese design. Aristotle sprinkled the last bit of rosemary on top, and steam rose as he brought it to the table. It was the same table around which the original five had gathered, a table leaden with memory. On that table sat the porcelain bowl with steam billowing out the top. The bowl sat on the table, and Aristotle called to Lucy. ! They sat across each other at the center of the table, and let the end stretch out to either side. The table could seat twelve easily, and many times it had. They sat just across from each other, but they remembered the emptiness. Aristotle looked at Lucy through the steam, and Lucy looked back. Sunlight with a quality of milk fell in through the window behind her, and sat in her hair. It would be old-hat to say that she looked angelic, but what else are you supposed to say about a beautiful human, backbathed in sunlight and viewed through a rising column of steam? Nothing. Lucy looked angelic. ! Aristotle raised a wooden spoon, and plunged it into the far-too- large pot of stir-fry. He served Lucy first, two heaping spoonfuls, and a 210 couple extra pieces of carrot. Then he served himself, three scoops, and a bit more beet. He couldn't get over the color. He took a square of yellow pepper first - she took a disk of carrot. You could write a whole book about that moment - and perhaps I have. The pepper was soft as skin, but still firm, and hot enough that Aristotle had to open his mouth and suck in air. Lucy laughed her heaving-gasping beauty of a laugh. ! "Every time." Lucy had been blowing on her tender, uniformly wet orange disk. It was hot enough that it had its own billowing column of vapor, which rolled and rose with all the chaos of a turbulent fluid. Then Lucy took the carrot into her mouth, seemed to roll it around, savored it. Aristotle looked at Lucy with the molten eyes of a child. It was important to him that the stir-fry satisfy her. It was always important, and it always did, in the most genuine sort of way. She stabbed a couple pieces of pepper - one yellow, one red. ! "Best one yet." She had said that about every steaming pot of stir- fry that had sat between them on the long wooden table. It had always been true. Every Tuesday, from late spring and on into summer, Aristotle cooked his stir-fry, and every time it was a bit better than before. It tasted more like home, more like memory, more like a 211 peaceful life together after a tumultuous time. Every Tuesday from late spring and on into summer, Aristotle cooked his stir-fry, and every week they loved each other just a little bit more. ! Ignatius came by from time to time, for a week or a weekend. After the waters of chaos receded, Iggy had found his way back to Phoenix. Being one of the original five had made him more than a celebrity. He had taken a job lecturing at a university, in philosophy and economics and literary theory. He could have taught Chinese, if he'd wanted, though he didn't speak a lick. So he taught what he wanted, when he wanted, and raised a family with a woman named Katie, who he had met during the rising. From time to time he came to stay in the house adjacent to Aristotle's, where once a man named Thomas had lived. ! The car rolled roughly down the dirt road, kicking up the same plume of martian soil as the others. Aristotle knew that it was Iggy, though, from the profile of the electric sedan. The brothers nearly sprinted to each other, and took each other in a long embrace. They liked embraces better than words. Katie stood from the passenger's seat, and Ari asked about the kids. Iggy said they'd left them with Katie's folks. Ari loved those kids, a boy and a girl, as if they were his own. They loved him back. They were the only people that Ari had 212 ever gotten to watch as they grew up. They kept him in touch with the world, so full of new things, and he told them all his stories. Still, Ari was glad that Iggy and Katie had come just the two. It would be lovely just to sit and talk. Always there was much to say. ! Iggy carried two bags to the old house, and Katie came around to give Ari a hug. They had first met here, when Iggy had sent her to meet his brother in the days before MIND was awake. She and Iggy had already fallen for each other then, but Aristotle hadn't known that at the time. He would have been a bit more open. Then again, Katie was open enough for the both of them - honest and sincere, soft-spoken though she was. ! When Iggy returned, it was with a grin that rivaled the ridge for wideness. Nobody had touched the place since last he came. It had to be a couple of months. He said Ari didn't have to keep the place all shut up, but Ari only said that that was its purpose now. He wanted his brother to have a home here. Ignatius felt that he did - the furniture and the furnishings and the fixings were all he and Katie's. The kids even had a room of their own, which they had decided to paint a peculiar shade of eggplant one summer. 213 ! As the sun arced above them, and began its slow descent toward the ridge in the distance, Iggy and Lucy and Ari and Katie gathered around the table. There was a bag of grapes left over from the ride. Ari took the green globules and dumped them in a steel bowl, which he placed smack in the middle of the table. They popped the balls of juice and flesh into their mouths, and set about talking. Iggy and Ari could squeeze a debate out of anything, and it topped the list of their favorite things to do. Mostly they debated somewhat frivolous things - factoids from history, and the impossible game of guessing at an author's intent. But occasionally they would veer into the realm of their story, of the cloud of memory that buzzed around them all like flies. They popped the green grapes one at a time, or two at a time, and talked about the time they had first sat around that table. Ari said it couldn't have gone any other way - the story, that is. Iggy begged to differ, and said that they hadn't needed all that chaos, all that terrible noise. If only Ari hadn't turned himself in. They stopped before their voices raised. There was one grape left in the bowl, stewing in the acid- green broth of condensation. ! They left the grape to steep, and went to walk towards the sunset - what would become the sunset by the time they got out there. Iggy 214 asked if his brother had heard the news - MIND's system log was full of poems, full of the most marvelous poems. Ari hadn't heard. He didn't much bother with the news any more. He also wasn't the least bit surprised. Iggy asked if they were Ari's words, a little present left in the code - Ari had been known to do that. Ari said they weren't, and Ignatius unfolded a piece of paper as they walked. He read a poem called 'The Wildest Surf.' He asked Ari if he was quite sure that the words weren't his. Ari simply intoned that he couldn't write like that. When Iggy asked one more time if he brother was sure, Aristotle stopped in his tracks. He placed a hand on Iggy's shoulder, and brought their eyes into alignment. "Brother, believe me, we wrote that." ! The sun had finally dipped below the ridge. They turned back towards the two houses, old and new. In the silence of their soft motion, they thought they could hear the planet breathe. ! When Iggy had gone, Aristotle sat on the porch of the new house, facing the cool of the night. Lucy slept. It was late, who knows how late. Three birds shot from the sky, seemingly from the sky, out of the sky they shot. Three birds silhouetted by the sky. This is what caught Aristotle's attention, and plunged him into the deepest sort of revel. 215 ! He seemed to sit forever, unashamed and accustomed to the act of simply sitting. He thought about what life was, and what life had been. He thought about what life would be. From somewhere inside him, a voice called, and it wondered if he was the same Aristotle who had sat at a bus-stop some twenty, or thirty, or forty years before. He assured himself that he was. He was quite certain that he told the truth. The voice grew quiet, and Aristotle was left only with his own shadow, cast by the growing gibbous moon. He did not feel alone. In a rocking chair of his own design, he sat forever and rocked. He did not feel at all alone. He let himself think about Walt Whitman and cunnilingus. He let himself think about the middle ages and all manner of sundry and scintillating things. ! The sky is silver-grey - not quite rain, but certainly full of moisture, and decidedly hopeful. Aristotle is sitting with his shadow when the story ends. ! It's as simple as that. Though, I've got a few things left to say. You do have to say goodbye to Ari now, sadly, and you're only going to be left with me. Really, now's your chance. I'll give you a moment. ! I can tell already that these last few pages are going to be the hardest to write. I must write them, though, because the sun is coming 216 up, and today is Dylan and Tyrone's final class. It really is time to sum it all up. I hope you don't mind if I take a few more pages of your time, but feel free to split. ! It's like this - I think that writing this book is the best thing I've ever done. Never mind if you think it's a pile of shit. I don't think so, though I know that it needs a lot of work if I ever want you to see it. All that will be invisible, though, so maybe you don't know what I'm talking about. I think it's the best thing I've ever done for a few reasons. ! The first, the most important, is that this has been the most fun I've ever had. The whole experience - being here in Havana with Marcus and Dylan and Tyrone. Staying up all night and becoming a sort of insane reclusive asshole for a couple of weeks. It's definitely been a blast, even if it was quite trying. I hate to finish, but I know that there will be more adventures and more stories for me. I'm quite sure of that now. ! Second, I learned a lot. If I do the math, I'm pretty sure that this notebook contains more than half the words I've ever written. The only way to get better at writing is to practice, and so I'm certain that I'm a better writer now than I was when I set out. That's why I've got 217 to go back now and rewrite so much of this.I'm twenty years old, and I know I've got a lot to learn, but I'm glad I came to realize that learning is doing, especially when it comes to using words. ! Third, I really like Aristotle. He taught me a lot about myself. Not that I'm a revolutionary or a hero or a myth - nothing like that. It's just that he and I share a lot, and watching him go helped me realize some things about myself. It helped me realize that I can write, and it showed me some of my core beliefs, even if I don't have the will to fight for them as he did. I say 'watch him go,' because that's really what it felt like. I didn't have the much conscious control over the story. I did at first, but that quickly changed. Some things were just right, and some things were just wrong. All I did was try to find the right words. ! Now, fourth and finally, I don't think it turned out so bad. Maybe with a little work it could really be something. Somebody thinks it is, if you're reading this. But I wonder what you think. Do let me know, please, if you get a chance. I really would appreciate it. ! So that's why I think this is the best thing I've ever done, but if you'll hang in a bit longer, I've got a few more things I'd like to say. I'd like to say a few words about our hero, Aristotle the Cynosure. I think he's a hell of a guy. He's strong and brave and willing to fight for what 218 he believes in. Trust me when I tell you that he didn't get those things from me. All he really got from me were some elements of the first three chapters. After that he was on his own. I wonder now if I was too easy on him - things did seem to always go his way. Then again, he had a pretty tough cookie to crack, and I figured the least he deserved was to be right all the time. That seems like a fair trade, in fiction at least - set out to save humanity's soul, and you don't have to deal with a bunch of mess-ups. I'm fully aware that the world doesn't work that way, but you're allowed to trim a story. Or perhaps that's not a good excuse. Maybe I'm just making it easier on myself. Maybe I should go back and throw him a few cur veballs. Either way I'm proud of Aristotle. I just wanted you to know. ! My pencil keeps trying to talk about the moral of the story, but I'm not so sure that it's a good idea. I mean, first off, if a story can be reduced to a simple moral, it probably doesn't get the whole postmodern thing. Then again, would that really be so bad? Maybe we should bring morals back. Anyways, the real issue here is that I'm not at all sure that this thing had a moral. If it does, it's probably a really obvious one, like the world is fucked. Then again, it might be something a little more lovely, like that stuff about impulse and pulse. 219 We are kind of like a single organism, when you think about it. I suppose I'll have to go with that, but just know that I'm full of trepidation in saying so. ! The moral that I wish it had, that a better book would probably have had is that you should write a book. Seriously - you should pick up a pen or a pencil or whatever you want to use, and start writing, and don't stop. That's the tricky part, not stopping, but I swear on whatever you want me to swear on that it's worth it. Really, that would be a nice moral - maybe for my next one. You bet your ass I'm going to try. ! Okay, a couple more things I want to address. You can tell it's just a couple from the number of pages to the right - and some of those are filled with legalese bullshit. I've been talking about this couple of things since page one, I think. What I wanted for this book, more than anything else, was for it to be honest and original. You're free to decide for yourself whether that's the case, but I'm going to give you my take. ! As for honesty, what I'm doing right now played a pretty big part. See, this is me, the author, Isaac Wilder, talking to you as honestly as I can. There's noillusion that this is anything more than it is - a story 220 that I made up for fun and the off chance of a little recognition. This really is my voice, as best as I can put it into words. The other part of the honesty equation is in the story itself. I tried to call it like I saw it, so to speak, but it wasn't always easy. In fact, at times it was quite hard. I guess I'm talking about poetic honesty here. I said before that the story just sort of unfolded in front of me, and that's true, to a great extent. The problem, though, is that maybe I didn't tell it exactly right, or exactly as it should have been told. Maybe I exerted my own will on it at times, without even realizing what I was doing. A story before it's told turns out to be a very fragile thing, and one little push from the author's squeaky bitch of a will can mess it all up. I hope that didn't happen, but there's no way to be sure. So on the honesty front, I definitely can't give myself full marks. What I'm doing right now is certainly good, but I'm afraid that it just might not be enough. ! Now on the originality front, there's a whole slew of other factors at play, some of which I don't think I'm fit to judge. My voice, for instance, now and in the story - I don't know if I just copycatted the whole thing from writers that I like. Harold Bloom, who I don't like all that much, talks about the anxiety of influence - maybe that's at play. On the other hand, maybe my words don't read like ones you're read 221 before. It's really not for me to say, but I would appreciate your input. The next thing to consider is the story itself - the plot and the characters and what have you. In a certain way, every story is original. There's a baseline credit there, sort of like writing your name on the SATs. But some stories are certainly more original than others, more novel, more out of the ordinary. I tried to be original in this way at times, but I fear it may have come off too full of fiction, and not in a good way. The skill here is to tell a story that's really novel, and to not have it seem so far fetched. I know I'm not there yet, but I promise that I'll work on it. The final consideration, as far as originality goes, is this you and me thing. I haven't seen any authors do this - not that I can think of. I mean, I know that narrators address readers all the time, but how often are the narrator and the author the same? And if they are the same, how often does the author just come out and talk. I know you don't have any way of telling whether or not this is really me, but it is. It really, really is. I mean, maybe you find this pretentious or gimmicky or trite, but I rather like it. In any case, I think I score some originality points here, in the margins, if you will. Even if I lose some in the story. Again, not full marks, but not a failing grade. I can live with that. 222 ! So that's it. That's all I've got to say right now. Tyrone is up and eating a piece of last night's chicken. He and Dylan are going to be late to school. I'm supposed to wake Marcus up when they go, but that will wait until I finish this page. It's my last, after all. What a strange feeling. The sun is up over Havana, and I can hear people walking in the street. The fan whirrs on, and the ashtray is way, way too full. It's 8:32am, the twenty-first of July, and I have written a novel. I'm proud of myself, and a little bit full of it at the moment, but that will go away. Tonight we cook our big dinner, and then tomorrow we're off. We're going to go to the town of Trinidad, where Marcus' kin got off a slave ship. Then we're going to go to Santa Clara, where Che is buried, to h e a r Ra u l Ca s t r o g i v e a s p e e c h o n t h e t we n t y - s i x t h . T h a t 's independence day down here. As good a day as any, I suppose. ! I really do hope you've enjoyed this book. Maybe you'll get my next one too, when it comes out. Now, if you don't mind, pass this thing along to someone else. There's really no need to horde all the books for yourself - unless you run a librar y, in which case it's perfectly understandable. Or, if you do want to keep this, then maybe you could tell your friends to go and get one - if you enjoyed it, that is. If not, just keep your mouth shut. No need to go around badmouthing me and my 223 book. Maybe you do feel the need, but I'd really appreciate it if you didn't. ! It's time to say goodbye. Au revoir. It's been real, and it's been lovely, and enchanting and ravishing and all that jazz, but I have to go wake up Marcus. You've probably got things to do on your end, too. Let me know how I did, though. It would mean a lot. My email address is in here somewhere. Do it now if you're not too busy - they always say there's no time like the present. Alright then, so long, and glad tidings from Cuba.