THE NATURAL STRANGER :: BOOK 1, "THE AEON" :: CHAPTER 13, EPISODE 6

"On a superficial level..." says Mike, Korbel's favorite disclaimer... "we have the Kramdens playing one, against themselves, two, one against the other, three, both ours against theirs and the Russian interlocutor. In every case our case is made simply, clearly... on the superficial level, again, noise distracts dogs, distracted dogs tip over the dominoes."

"But," Melanie objects, "how can a game have anything to with something real as a war, which means the ending of the earth."

"Well that's how the Hudson Institute proved my contention." Michael smiles but his fingers, hovering over a bowl of peanuts and pistachios find only shells, his temper's building. "You certainly wouldn't blow up the world, but you don't know that I wouldn't and so you begin thinking that you might... in order that I don't do so first... and you're compromised. You have experienced feedback, which is when organisms compensate for existing imbalance... I've progressed towards a feed-forward stage, anticipating imbalances and pre-compensating. Instead of trying to break out of patterns, I've focused on the filling-in of empty spaces. Only stupid visionaries embrace freedom... on the Dogmap, freedom is chaos because declarative movement inevitably knocks over the dominoes, while procedural movements step around them.

"And your grandfather figured all this out?" Melanie asks me, helplessly.

"Harry would have despised video arcades," I laugh. "But the concept was hatched in Rhode Island, just after the war ended... there really is a white room in that cottage Harry used to bring dogs to."

"He was in that Japanese phase, wasn't he?" Korbel asks.

"Well, he'd gone out West after Farm Hall to debrief the Black Dragons... I'm sure his concepts of superiority took a hit. T. says he spoke less of races, more of latitudes after. Groves stopped over in Rhode Island on his way to Berlin to inspect the Nazi stockpiles of uranium oxide shipped up from the Congo... we wound up with most of that. Acheson was there, too, Harry told him dogs sense fear through perspiration. One program we're testing on Max is to back up keystroke resolution with olfactory detection. MIT's been scoring against the Kramdens specifically on the insufficiency of smell data."

"But isn't that evolutionally regressive," Melanie objects.

"On a superficial level..." and even Mike has to give the approximation of a smile, "but no... if the intent of evolution is to create superbeings, as that of the engineer is to build supermachines, programs can be developed that do not turn on the concept of scarcity. People's capacities are bounded by their skulls... theoretically, the Kramdens and their progeny should be free of spatial boundaries. Which is why Max loses his parents' omphales. Although," he allows, "my prior sentiments about the stimulative side-effects of repression hold... physical limits make for better code, whether generated autonomously or by outside agents..."

"People..." I add, since Melanie looks a little lost.

"Oh... it's like people who are afraid work harder, for a while, I suppose, but what about when there's no hope, when the new generation's taking over but the old... Kramdens or people... can still blow everything up, rather than getting out of the way?"

Mike regards me warily now. "Ahh... that's something we're having to look into," I say. "Presently there is sentiment for keeping Ralph and Alice viable as backups, maybe reprogramming them with liberal arts so they can argue with each other in a secure environment of academic and foundation fruits until their components wear out." Rusted, busted actors always end up wanting to direct. "Of course their radioactive cores will have to be removed; we'd like to house both within Max, the problem will be cooling compatibility... those innards grow unimaginable hot and toxic."

"Good luck," Melanie wishes us. "All I can say is... get ready for war if the Kramdens are anything like Grandfather Moishe. Dad got a court order to put him in a home but he attacked the marshals when they came... twice he runs off, cursing Julian's no a son of mine, so they keep him doped up. If I were older, with my own place, I'd help him hide out."

"You can't do that," Korbel laughs. "You're only a kid."

"Could too! Jason and I would get him jeans, a motorcycle jacket, take him round the clubs... Max's, Sagg, CBGB... no mental cops to recognize him there."

I think: glad I got Paul up to Columbia before she realizes he's not back at Dog School.

Dr. Ventura's confident that enough brain stuff will grow back so that Paul can be a janitor some day, or teach in public schools; he's supervised upgrades to monkeys that the squeamish Vikings were loathe to attempt, and there have even been a few human tests in quiet clinics maintained by prestigious, discreet foundations. "We found sprouting worked best with Parkinsons' cases, but most subjects had so many other complications we wound using these cases states handed over... heroin addicts, brains destroyed by a nasty synthetic called MPTP, mimics some narcotic effects but also causes many addicts to enter irreversible Parkinsonian states of bipolar motor dysfunction... going rigid, then shuddering in cycles. The rat and monkey grafts... we found fetal tissue works best... had to be boostered by outside adrenal implants, injected directly into the brain. We prefer adrenal hamburger from African green monkeys to temporarily stabilize our subjects during the study period."

"Lentex and the Foundation settled. Your people were running genetic data through that generation of computers just before the Kramdens, re-engineering DNA code into bits. What came after, you ought to be telling me..."

"What about the subjects?"

"I think there must have been fifteen or twenty survivors; we gave them money, a hundred dollars I think, and bus tickets back to New York. Probably up their veins within a week, it'd be a miracle if any are still alive. If they were, I'd have seen them around Upper Broadway... all those piers haunted by wild, stinking prophets, believe me!"

When a piece of Ventura's equipment hears another station's infrastructural hum, it waits to simply hitch a ride.

Libby never returned to the grocery, of course... by the taxman's devil paradox the Knoops would have forfeited two dollars for every dollar earned the rest of that year. Fred seemed relieved she'd lost, people at the bowling alley and the auto body repair shop were making fun of him. (In the States, as Costazul, it's impermissible for wives to overachieve their husbands!) And did I know anybody who wanted a really good deal on their old furniture?

I did not follow Carlo to Arlington, I leave the eternal flame to show the way down twisty little passages of "Chultun"... a dungeon between Earth and Hell the Uay believe can only be accessed through that door translated as "the Now".

When Max finally claws his way up to dominion across his parents' bones, I'll seize and grind down Ralph and Alice to fit round each wrist as the primates of Uayax pointed bracelets of crystal, their "solars", at devil spirits of the earth who rise as smoke... "butz", like the new Secretary of Agriculture. Impaled by four pillars of the winds, deminimalized into the "Xultun", clomping golems of gravel, condemned to roam forever with neither food nor fire.

(Maybe I'll need two of those little wheeled carts that thin young lawyers use to wheel around their briefcases.)

Monday, I'm called in before the Supervisor who, bringing up my tardiness and absences and poor attitude, put me on two weeks' suspension... I said I'd rather quit. Fine with Bumberger, they'd save on unemployment and to brighten up her day, if not mine, Mrs. Voll called all but two clerks back into the locker room to watch as I cleared out my locker under the gaze of the security guard standing over me as if I were a Japanese spy: a colored man, hired to heighten the indignity.

So we get back from Regine's... Eileen has to go uptown for physical conditioning and, floating on a sea of screwdrivers, Geneva and I buy out a balloon vendor on Lexington and haul various Disney characters up the elevators to my office. Many funny looks, no German. Cynthia gives me messages from Oz, the banks and Mitch Kazelka; Brian Palin's messenger has dropped off books of specs and boxes of models.

These we take into my office. The specs include a lot of tiny numbers my head can't process under any circumstances... I've popped two more high-velocity bug killers, washed down with cold coffee to ward off the importunities of Dr. Sleep... and we start ripping boxes open. Palin's models look like toys... the proper word these days is 'action figures'... about eight inches to a foot high, like Barbies and GI Joes Their limbs are flexible, twist them around, even pull off two spiders' legs and put them in the fashion model's armpits... and vice versa. In the specs, Brian's mentioned something about radio - it would seem I've sold myself into infamy.

"Do any of these talk?" Geneva asks.

I get a sinus-pill epiphany, call Cynthia... "have someone get out to a toystore and get a bunch of doll accessories... no, only accessories, try the 58th Street Woolworths or Alexanders... right away..."

We wait. Geneva asks if I'm going to call Oz but why?... I know what he wants... if Omni's used to activate Quad, databanks will be created he can cross-reference to compile lists of porno puddle-pushers. He'll swear it's only marketing intelligence, but I know he's going to forward it to his Temple partners... hallucinating, armed fundamentalists without plastic.

Cynthia buzzes, accessories here... gnarly plastic monsters get brassieres and high heels, waxy Mondale models equipped with flamethrowers, combat helmets...

Geneva retrieves a Tweety Bird balloon from the office ceiling and fumbles with it. "Whatchya doin'?" I ask and she holds the nozzle to her lips, takes a deep breath, says "I tawt I taw a puddy tat?"

She passes the balloon across my desk, I inhale: "I did!"

I start to march a model that bears a strong resemblance to Pat Nixon across the desk when Cynthia buzzes. "Mr. Sopher is here, he went by me, said it's urgent..."

Charles opens the door without knocking... plenty of vitamins today!

"My lawyer," I quack to Geneva and Sopher takes a step back. "I tawt you were in Bahston!"

All our hands are fumbling with little monsters and Sopher wags a forefinger in that disturbing way that he has, and says, "you really ought to be more careful, Evie. Many promising careers have been sidetracked by substance abuse."