THE NATURAL STRANGER :: BOOK 1, "THE AEON" :: CHAPTER 11, EPISODE 4

Lorenzo would not believe the old woman could read Spanish until they'd exchanged unpleasant words. "Mexicano," he sneered. "Jew! Hasidim - snake of all snakes! Very well," he sighed, "let us submit ourselves to Abramanic destiny."

Carlo and Lorenzo began to write. Lorenzo's hand shook with every forceful word - hand still callused from working in the lettuce fields before finding his job with the rich man. T. once told me that typewriters, as those marketed by Lentex, have been a signal factor in declining literacy... when one bends over pen and paper there's time to think, for sentences to be composed elegantly. And the computer's only made it worse! "Communication," he reflected, "has evaporated into common clouds."

Carlo wrote slowly, working over every word... his name first, then a description of his job. Gradually he started to write faster, Lorenzo following. Slack-eyed concentration spread its old black deja voodoo shadow over both scribbling men.

"Basta!" the gypsy cried, "enough!"

On they wrote, however, thunderbursts of sweat sprinkling the paper. Jaime began crying... "Stop!" Diana shrieked, striking Lorenzo's hand; both he and Carlo looked up as if rising from a trance. Wholly half of what each had penned... the last half... was unintelligible.

"Demonios!" the fortune-teller muttered.

Now if Mike Korbel had been fortunate enough to see that old woman, he would have put her into one of the game cartridges he designs and sells, I've learned, under an alias... everybody's doing it! Which raises the question... now that celebrities are licensing their likeness, does devolution into one dimensional bits and zeroes before reconstitution onto a two dimensional monitor constitute risk of soul depletion greater than that of models photographed, or actors appearing in movies and television? In those instances, actions and responses are bounded, framed... Scarlett and Rick always end up losers in love, Ralph Kramden never gets rich. But with interactive potential of the present and near future, how much personality may be reduced to ambiplasmic clouds of ones and naughts... and if real persons can be reconstituted, are there limits to the quantity (and quality!) of copies issued?

Duck told me, a decade ago, that Star Trek people should have done this episode where troopers transported once too often are shown withered, dithering in Federation hospitals. Denied Mithraic replenishment, as Cumont and other blood-baptists observed, or: "...the generation of physical life, whether from blood or from the marrow of the spinal column..."

To which Goofballs replied, predictably, "Bull!"

Baggott called slightly after noon, back on that Tuesday while the Iran hostages are busy signing book, movie and TV deals. Hippies have infested the Kramdens' Indiana substation and it's been rotten all morning... Palin wants a meeting Thursday to sell me Daimon dummies...

"Ruth and Rebekah are really wonderful people," Lou pitches, "well-intentioned, contributors to the Smile Foundation... I honestly feel they think they're doing the right thing by charity to allow Cuthbertson to speak for them."

"Go on," I say, probably uncharitably. I've secured the full page of the Storm... Der Sturm! Julian calls it... the not quite libelous article is bylined by another pseudonym "Maud Flicker". Flicker... Wagner... Flagler! So full of him-fleckin'-self!

"Perhaps," Louis ventures, "in light of this, we ought to reconsider some outside commitments. I don't think that there is any risk to Omni, but Quad has such an appetite for capital that this might seem an opportunity to slow down, conduct the necessary trials, see how this administration stands. There's plenty of safe money to be made from our defense sectors. I understand Livermore expects to be purchasing."

"Well," I say, "the other day Regan... Treasury Secretary, not the President... did say that there would be tax cuts, but no spending cuts."

"I hadn't heard that," Louis answered, sounding wounded... having Washington in his pocket these last four years, he'd really be reaching for antacid if I told him where I got this skinny.

"Well... if you're right," Baggott snarls indignantly, "but it's a damn lousy way to run a business. Or a country."

"Everything's on credit now," I say. "So we ought to begin taking steps to ensure that, when the contracts flow in, we'll have manpower... not brains, we're covered there... but bodies. I've been thinking now might be the time to acquire Corona over on the West Side. If we did, we could cut deals on its tuition that would let us skim off the best of their graduates."

Corona is a small, private vocational school that enrolls kids smart enough, but not rich enough, for Franklin, MIT, etcetera. It does so by hiring capable but damaged faculty... it leases its building so value's depressed, owners are elderly, the graduate student loan default rate in the lowest five percent bracket...

"That," Lou anticipates, "sounds rather like slavery to me."

"Don't think of it as slavery." I write a little note down to acquire a few more boxes of Cuban cigars from Brother John as peace offerings to Lou. "Call it indentured servitude."