THE NATURAL STRANGER :: BOOK 1, "THE AEON" :: CHAPTER 10, EPISODE 1

The Dogmap's a construct of Ralph and Alice, initiated in the Zone and dispersing outwards for perhaps five years before achieving a sort of stasis... trembling at the threshold of the arcades, but never crossing. Uncopyrighted, Dogs and Dominoes remains a pyrate's game - free - nestled in computers from Bombay to Brooklyn. Ralph and Alice compile and enforce protocols, approaching but never quite catching up to outside refinements, that ventricle of the present beatniks used to call "the now"...

The Dogmap's also a matrix... millions of previously contested games and their conditions roaming Kramden memory, recycled back onto new games as a consequence of constantly changing algorithms. Ultimately reactive... drawn from experiential inferences asked by players as part of their twenty allotted questions; it is a consensus of quantities, not qualities so, at an early instance, subject to Ducklization. Or... as Almond said one evening to my junk-sick husband... graffiti inexpertly justified in lost episodes of Mallorca's Romulistic plot.

Over the years, certain motifs have been made more likely to manifest than others - in the Zone "tired starlings" (whencefrom "white rooms") were likely as not, present. (A championship calibre tournament was ended, prematurely, in Malaysia last year by a doody dump over the dominoes by one of the Dogmap's winged agents of the random!) Also, quite reasonably, "dust". Such still recur but have long since been overtaken, statistically, by the detritus of history recycled as post-hypnotic suggestion... reels of Watergate tape, streakers... more recently, of course, mad Arabs, hostages and yellow ribbons.

The potential of the Dogmap's bounded only by statistical imaginations of the players.

Two years ago, a Level 8 Dogmaster lost control of his dog due to the presence of rubber cats between the second and third spiral of the dominoes and... since money apparently had been wagered, a state the Dogmap neither promotes nor prohibits... the imbecile brought legal action against Lentex and one "Jesus Manson" (birth name Jacob or Jack Moss), one of Harry Stone's prodigies and a legendary burnout, still haunting the Zone when Jeff and I went in.

The lawsuit fizzled, though Mr. 8 did get as far as discovery - meaning googaraminals of Kramden memory had to be diverted, searching itself to track down electronic evidence that somebody... sometime... had wasted one of his twenty inquiries asking ">is there a rubber cat in the room?<". Having become an issue before court which, in the interest of national security, denied the Dogmaster the access he desired, Evan Wright argued successfully for suppression of the medical and economic data compromised into the game... Polaris launch codes, bank to bank transfer protocols and even more forbidden fruits. We consented to stipulate that the construct "a rubber cat... devolved to strings of ones and zeroes, flagged for singularity, hitched to timing mechanista..." drifted, waited, and when whatever Daliesque clocking mechanism the Kramdens developed popped its top, well... a rubber cat might indeed appear to tweak the Dogmaster's game.

Angela Dreyfuss, who did most of Evan's dogwork (sorry, Egg), told me the disgruntled 8 gave up not only Dogs and Dominoes but all games and even television, vanishing with a twenty thousand dollar settlement and the charge that, from this day forward, he would only read books, newspapers and magazines. So I do not think he would have done well had the matter actually gone to trial.

T. sensed the nearness of his end in July... moved his terminal and important papers up to the 54th floor where he kept his piano; just beneath the Cloud Room, just over the office he'd vacated when I married Bud, leaving it for me to quietly move into, six months later. Bent over in pain, he still tapped out encryptions and instructions twice weekly until his final retirement at the summer's end; Max being viable, by then, a vision taking on bones, if not flesh. Quad and Omnicard were only loose talk but, at that time, there was the MX... little tooty-train routes to plot, algorithms to solve. Blood seeped from busted vessels under T's fingernails... whether he played Beethoven or machine code... the piano keys could be wiped clean but blood, dripping onto computer keyboards, inevitable jammed and shorted them out. Michael and I kept a box of spares on hand, purchased in bulk, for rapid and discreet replacement.

"The way Ralph and Alice balk sometimes, I wonder that his blood isn't backed up into the system," Korbel baited one particularly bad day... three keyboards. "He shouldn't be allowed to continue here, you know..."

T. had always controlled the two floors beneath the Cloud Room but, starting in late '77, began consolidating them into a bunker. Evan Wright was first to be heaved from his office. T. told him that corporate suites were no place for a lawyer... "too sterile, the law requires tradition's ellipse... old books and dust; and dust is incompatible with our corporate mission." To keep Evan aboard he made me go out and buy a brownstone... overpriced, but only nine blocks away and since we always knew Evan did business on the side, he didn't put up that much of a squawk about leaving.

Next, our sales manager retired and T. sent his replacement down eleven floors, giving his corner office to Robert Leonard. "Tell Will that he can use it too, any time he comes into town." Bob was grateful - he thought T. was burying the hatchet, trying to mend the rift between their fathers, though it wasn't that way at all; T. knew Bob would use the office rarely and Will even less, out of principle... so another quadrant of the 53rd floor was effectively vacated!

So... the fifty third floor was now parceled out into T's office... mine now... the empty room where Evan had been, Bob's office... which I understand he did use for several assignations and raucous gatherings in the first month, then losing interest until Aeon opened... finally the southwestern corner used by Louis Baggott. The building tapers at the 36th floor, again at the 45th... the architect Harry hired just after the war was a man of nines... no adherent of silly Modern or post-Modern cubes. Still the 53rd's a substantial floor and the 54th (all white, nothing there but T's piano now, trailing a few wires) positively spacious) is topped only by the Cloud Room, where Lentex customers and deep pocket prospects were once and will soon again be wined and dined. I've finally had T's boxes of files processed and burned... dusty clippings and scribbled phone numbers, some so old that they'd had lettered prefixes.

"People turn stale," T winced... sarcomas and gliomas wrestling for dominion... "have to replace them. Youth... kids in arcades... quite scientific, younger ones explore by trial, error, close in on truth geometrically. But after ten, eleven or so the process slows down, instinct's reinforced experientially and they set parameters, actions becoming more of a focusing... ahem!... process. Their eyes... if we studied their eyes..."

T'd lurched again; thick, purplish blood leaking from his nostrils, yellow bile curling from between his lips... both spattering keys of the piano like a fertilized egg into its pan. Another spasm drove him backwards in a putative dance of death, but he'd straightened, lifted one finger, tapped out a familiar tune. Brendan's "Man Without a Face"...

"Yes?"

He'd cleared his throat. "Harry was penetrated by Jeremiah 18 in his Roundhead years. Calamy's Four Doctrinal conclusions, which were: first... that God hath absolute dominion over all nations to pluck them up, pull them down, destroy them as He desires... the second, that God gives warning ere destruction... third, that national repentance, which is the aggregate of virtuous and evil deeds and thoughts, calls down God's judgment, or diverts it, and, fourth, that if a nation does evil in the balance, God repents the good He has performed for it, becomes deaf even to the prayers of the virtuous minority. But for a true Fifth Monarchy, I heard Harry say, there must also be a Fifth Doctrine... that God grants His Elect dominion over the execution of judgement. Christ may have been sent to show mercy but the Jews and Romans did not accept him. So, Harry? He was... and through Max still is... God's sword."

"Cromwell didn't possess hydrogen bombs," I'd answered.

"No," T. says, "nor was he deluded to the extent that he mistook himself for Christ's evil twin, like one of those on soap operas... that Guiding Light? It is a terrible thing to receive the Lord with hardware, even licensed, bulging beneath your coat. And even though Harry has left us, the silvers and Max have not; some are Calamy's believers in the Fifth Monarchy, others are nullatories who... pardon me... see virtue as impeding their own scenario for glorious destruction and Lentex as wholly sexual, adolescent agar, draining Luther and the Bad Popes to fashion the pillars of Paradise from bricks of screams."

He tried to smile, couldn't. During Zone years T. acquired an army of subsidized artists... East Village sociopaths, West Village limps whose paintings he hung in Lentex offices before the employees circulated petitions. (I found a nest of these in the cellar while clearing out space for Aeon... the paintings, not petitions... some are even valuable now!).

T. set his fingers gently on the piano's edge, he didn't even have the strength to close it. A single drop of blood spattered from the keyboard to the white floor.

"You've no idea how relieved I am that you married that man. Not for what he is... that's only genes, whiskey... almost anyone would have done. It draws you away... not all the way away, but sufficiently... out of the line of Harry's fire."

Well Bud had almost got both of us killed Friday morning after Super Sunday. He wants to be important in the Lincoln when the hostages are paraded up Broadway so, on the way in, he sees a huge line of people in the Bronx from the Expressway and tells Manny to get off so he can gawk. "It must be something to do with the hostage parade!" he's certain - as if, having been delivered from Khomeini, Americans should be marched through these slums... the people in the line we pass are pretty shabby, some of them carrying lengths of wood and pipe but they do not approach the Lincoln. Then I remember the pallbearers and hearse drivers' strike's still on, we maybe look like bad luck, or Manny looks like a man with grave business to conduct. We inch forward to the head of the line where boxes of flour and cheese and powdered milk are being handed out... the mystery's solved and Bud's satisfied, so we drive away.

"I guess the worst of winter's over," he reflects. "So that the ones who didn't freeze this year will be back to freeze next year. Sure hope we get rain or snow, though, lawn's going to need refreshment."

That's Bud. At least the car is running smoothly, Manny had just taken it into the shop for sparks and shocks. "Too bad nothing can be done about them," Bud points backwards... I feel like an admissions official at the College of Duh!

"John says they're going to take back poverty statistics and work on them." Bud's trying to wrench a mint out of its little package... it's a man's task... he's wearing gloves, though the Lincoln's heater's purring. "By the time they're finished," he says, "they won't be nearly so bad off as they are now."

"The poor?"

"The statistics! HUD's developing guidelines, I thought Ralph was in on it."

"Maybe." It's hard to keep track of everything. "That sounds like one of Kuyper's projects. I'll ask."

"Don't bother," Bud says magnanimously. He's made another point... and has succeeded in extracting his mint too! Reminds me of medallions they used to hand out in the Zone that started to glow if bad winds rose out of the bomb test areas to the north or southwest. Manny is going to pick him up at the agency so we can go downtown to throw confetti at the hostages. I'd told him that Republic Bank was opening its roof to a few friends but Bud wants to sit in the Lincoln and attract attention. I predict we're not going to see a damned thing, and we don't.

One may demand as many iterations of Dogmap questions as you wish without the penalty of counting them as further questions which leads, quite simply, to a Manichaenism of strategy... play fast and loose to beat the clock, or take your time to gain a better understanding of the variables. I prefer the latter... which enhances my standing by Alice rules, probably sets it back by Ralph's.

Cynthia tells me Eileen's waiting in the office. Also, a man got as far as the 45th floor guard station, dressed like one of those left over deranged cases. Vietnam. Only disguise, he was a process server... Security had thrown him out "making threats all the way down", Cynthia recalls. A vendor's called, having heard about Daimon... wants to know if we're going to install games and how many? And that lawyer, Brinkman! Cynthia calls his office but his girl says he's out... he'll call back. "I'm not taking that call," I say, "find out what it's about and I'll call back."

Eileen's scored "Annie" tickets. How can it be as bad as the gloomy old intellectuals writing for newspapers and magazines believe... there's a rich guy, an orphan, even a shaggy dog. Eventually someone in the Village will do a rewrite starring Mammy Warbucks but I'm not holding any breath.

Eileen hasn't heard a thing about any Aeon lawsuit but, then, she's been more or less leading the Patty Hearst life... staying in hotels, moving around, adjusting moral blindfolds. She has to go audition bodyguards, lots of them... burly dudes to fill the void in her heart, so I call Geneva, she's heard nothing either. We get around to Hard Times, Barry selling out and then whining that their severance check doesn't even clear and Geneva says "Typical, so typical...

"Bad things happen to people associated with unpopular ideas," she appends. "That's what they told Brendan."

"Who they?"

"People, you know... Mitch... Harry... it's really scary the way people go along with all this shit. Governments have the right to look after their interests like any other organism's what Mitch says."

"He was always biological, was Mitch," I allow. "He knows what Barry knows about him... Barry can fuck with his future big time but, instead of backing off, Mitch attacks. That's all he knows and it works in Barry's case. When people stand up to him he gets sly... allowing how it was really good Brendan died, otherwise he'd have been a burden on his own reputation, as if it wasn't that his decay would impact the value of Tandem, another drooling old ex-hippie with a contract. He always attributes his own thoughts to other people." I think, but do not say that, if Kazelka took the silver infection, his bleeding would attract sharks from San Clemente to Biscayne.

"Really? Well Mitch said it was all over some chick, that's the word he uses still... chicks, pad, swingin' baby..."

"Ring a ding dingin', baby!"

"Exactly. Mitch still thinks the Holy Grail's a Playboy Club key. But there's angry women in that slice of Brooklyn," Geneva adds, "black and white, Puerto Ricans too, just waiting on Mr. Kazelka to say one wrong word, then be over him like creamed beef on toast. Then back to the private sector go our boy."