Sometime After the Year of Glad
It was on all the teleputer channels and social media. The rumor went like this: a feral hamster which was scavenging for food along the Great Concavity dug up a cartridge labeled 'Infinite Jest 8', which was wrestled from said hamster by one of the AA personnel up there. It turned out to be Himself's heretofore unheard of post-IJ quest for the penultimate entertainment, much darker and more effective even, than the one that has ruined so many lives. The difference being that this version was capable of extracting the essence of the viewer's personal interior map and inserting it into the matrix of the cartridge itself. It was so seductive an entertainment that the viewer experienced something akin to cuda fudra ( actually, coup de foudre - love at first sight) and got so blissed out that he or she could no longer interact with mere mortal beings. Everything that was desirable was not ON, but AN actual cartridge. The rest was moot....the viewer's soul was simply succubused away, never to return, and the cartridge grew more powerful with each new soul it absorbed. A very curious - possibly unintended - side-effect was that the viewer didn't die or waste away in catatonia. No, a sort of hybrid creature crept in, maybe a stray wraith looking for a bit of respite from infinite flit, one capable of assuming the viewer's identity at will. Since its effects were cumulative, everyone from President Gentle, to the Wheelchair Assasins, and even Hal Incandenza scrambled to get their hands on the most recent copy of the thing. In the case of Hal it was a long shot of course, the highly conditioned body still hale and fit, the mind as sharp and beyond-eidetic as ever, but the interface between the brain and the speech mechanism was still mightily kertwanged. Perhaps, as Hal reasoned, there was a way to modify the cartridge's parameters so as to avoid the loss of soul while reestablishing coherent vocals. If anyone could figure out a way, it would be Hal and Mario, who were the most familiar with Himself's methods. Hal could almost smell Himself at work on the problem...
But this is where my story arc really begins. I, Pandora Pox, was on assignment in the desert southwest. My plane had landed at Sky Harbor Airport and I was experiencing a bout of nostalgia, but I forced myself to drive south in the rental Jeep toward Tucson, instead of north where the memories were. This wasn't the much-needed vacation, yet; I was doing research for the blog, and my goal was to find and interview none other than Hugh/Helen Steeply herself. I had seen Steeply interview Joelle at ETA so I knew what 'she' looked like. ('She' would be easy to spot in a crowd, Steeply.) With luck I might discover how IJ-8 had come to be, where it was now, whether or not Joelle had been involved, and had anyone Steeply known seen it? I had a notebook full of questions. And I, Pox, am always determined to suss out the truth. But this, dear reader, you already know.
The topography around Tucson is rugged, harsh, mysterious, dangerous. It was unfamiliar territory. Even the cacti looked different from the squat specimens in the high desert north of Phoenix. The GPS was unhelpful. Too many mountains all around: upon which summit might I meet up with Steeply? Would luck deign to favor the bold, meaning, was Steeply still in the area, dressed as Helen sporting the askewy fake boobs, one elbow locked in a gasper's embrace as he/she contemplated the whereabouts of samizdat, or, dare I hope, IJ-8?
I drove up and down the highways for days, careened off onto every dirt road leading toward the hills, looking for telltale wheelchair tracks, for agents of international stealth. Too many days of hot heavy relentless blazing scorching sun. I hate the heat, it's oppressive. I couldn't breathe too well down there; it irritated my scorched larynx. Unfit air for any living biped! And dry heat, my ass! They should've put the Great Concavity toxic waste site next to Mexico instead of between Canada and my own verdant hometown. It would've incinerated itself and all of the rattlesnakes, scorpions and other undesirables at the same time, But I digress -- yet again.
Late one afternoon, the Jeep stalled. Steam poured from under the hood and dissipated instantly with a shrieking hiss. I jumped out of the cab, looked around in dismay. The cityscape lay far to my north, too far to walk to. I was stranded. No cell service here, of course. I had not thought to rent a sat-phone. I squatted down in the shady side of the jeep, removed the binoculars from my pack and looked around. There might be crazy tourists nearby, rock hunters, that sort of thing.
Next thing I knew, I was waking up from an unplanned nap - it was almost sunset, the clouds an arsenal of red and copper projectiles deployed across the indigo firmament. A thin crescent sacrificial moon was about to impale itself on an ocotillo cactus to the west of me, the flat largely barren area that led to unseen mountains beyond the earth's curvature. Optical illusion, mirage?...Oh God I was so thirsty. Then I spotted a tall humanoid figure sneaking stealthily along what must have been its habitual footpath. Its steps were sure and swift even as its eyes darted to and fro against possible interception. Was this...could this be...the very one I sought?
To be continued..............---------------------------------
* Note: In ancient alchemy, calcinatio is the process whereby
heat is applied to the prima materia.
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