Memoirs and Misinformation

by Jim Carrey

  The hyenas slowly vanished.

  Rodney’s rhino form remained, bleeding out into the grass. His breaths growing ever more shallow, great bulging eyes fighting to stay open.

  “Rodney,” said Carrey, holding a block of foam he thought of as the body of his friend.

  Through this whispering he recalled a room at UCLA hospital a decade before, when Dangerfield was in his final hours, breaths short and labored, as they were now. He’d leaned close and gifted his friend a final joke: “Don’t worry, Rodney, I’m gonna let everyone know that you’re really gay. That kind of thing isn’t frowned on anymore.” The machines had come to life, the nurses all came running. Dangerfield had started moving his lips, trying to form words, but failed.

  Rodney the Rhino’s eyelids shut.

  His body vanished into nothing.

  The sound design cut—

  No more rustling grass, just the white whir of air-conditioning.

  “I want Rodney,” said Carrey. “Bring him back.”

  “That can’t be done,” said a voice like his own voice in his ear.

  “Bring him back, or I’m off this film.”

  “He’s gone,” said the voice, coolly.

  “Bring back Rodney!”

  “That’s it,” said Lonstein. “Gorgeous loss.”

  “Noooohhhh…”

  “This is genius, Jim.”

  “I want Rodney back.”

  “He’s gone,” said the voice in his ear. “Not coming back.”

  “Then I’m out.”

  Carrey tore at the cameras on his head brace, each a hundred-thousand-dollar prototype. He ripped them and threw them to the ground, stomped them to bits, jumping up and down on the mess of plastic and wiring like a child wrecking a Lego castle. “Bring back Rodney.” He tapped on his goggles. “I wanna see him.”

  This only further excited the other cameras.

  “I’ll fuck you up, too!”

  They whirred closer.

  “I’m not your monkey,” said a voice in his earpiece, a voice closer to his own truth than ever before, and as this scared him he changed the line:

  “I’m not some puppet!”

  “Control yourself,” said a new voice, Al Spielman II.

  “I’m in control.”

  “You’re hopping around like a madman.”

  Which only deepened his rage.

  He leaped up to grab at the cameras on the rigging, a $10 million cluster of technology whose contractual protections exceeded his own.

  The chamber doors opened.

  Out came Wink and Al, Lonny and Lala, followed by Satchel LeBlanc carrying a silver tray of crystal flutes brimming with champagne.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  “We’re here to toast you.”

  “For what?”

  “Extraction,” said Lonstein. “Few people have uploaded so much, so quickly. The engineers have everything they need for Hippos. And for all the sequels.”

  “Sequels?”

  “If you agree.”

  “Why would I agree?”

  “Because quantum computers are smoookkin’!” said Lonstein, with a pathetic attempt at a Mask-evoking spin.

  “Jesus Murphy,” muttered Carrey.

  “And because we can guide you,” said Lala. “Not just through this film, but beyond it.”

  “I don’t want to be guided.”

  “Choice is an illusion, Jim,” said Wink. “Jury’s in on that one. By accepting this, though, you make, perhaps, the ultimate choice. A choice that can free you to prosper into eternity. The first artist freed from time.”

  “The AI makes better decisions than a thousand geniuses in a think tank,” said Al. “And happiness and success? They all boil down to decision-making.”

  “We at the Texas Pacific Group want to help you,” said Lala. “To guide your brand through an endless chain of profitable tomorrows.”

  The chamber now filled with visions of possible Jim Carreys vastly happier, more youthful and beautiful than the actual Jim Carrey, all fixed in an unending thirty-fifth year. He spun in wonder as the scenes appeared. He saw himself yachting off Nantucket with Oprah, Tom Hanks, and the Obamas, all equally ageless, laughing at a joke he’d just told. He saw himself playing touch football with the young Bobby and Jack Kennedy in Hyannis, scoring a goal with a bicycle kick in a World Cup final, swimming among orcas off Maui, the mightiest of them jumping up out of the water, soaring over his head, its tender belly just grazing the fingers of his outstretched hand, à la Free Willy. Then a final tableau consumed all others, transforming the chamber into Athens as seen from the terrace of a mountain villa overlooking a perfectly restored Parthenon; he saw his parallel self in a loosely tied toga, ancient sun gleaming from his eight-pack with the brilliance of a thousand Atlantean power spheres.

  “The Parthenon looks gorgeous.”

  “Jim Carrey paid for the restoration,” said Al. “Passive income, buddy.”

  “The deal is historic,” said Wink. “You’ll never stop making money. But that’s not all.”

  Then the room filled with the scene of a future Oscar ceremony. He was sitting in the audience, Daniel Day-Lewis presenting at the podium, tearing open a thick envelope, announcing that the best actor award goes to—

  You fuckers, thought Carrey.

  It felt so real.

  “Jim Carrey,” said the legendary thespian, not with surprise, no, but with satisfaction, his face registering joy and relief, as if a grave wrong had finally been righted, as if the fact of this occurrence made the world a more just and habitable place. Carrey spun to see all the joyful faces, wild applause exploding across the speakers.

  Daniel Day-Lewis was double pounding his heart with his fist.

  Sweet Christ, the bliss of this.

  The soaring validation—

  He walked toward Lewis, dopamine invigorating his every cell, and just as he was about to reach the Dolby Theatre stage—the mirage disappeared.

  “Not reality yet,” said Wink. “Still just a good dream.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “We’ve already gathered all your data. Just say the word. They can complete this film. And the next one. And you? You can get some rest. Go paint.”

  “I’m an artist,” said Carrey. “I don’t let some computer do my work.”

  “Tell it to Jeff Koons,” said Wink. “Guy hasn’t made a balloon dog in forever.”

  “They’re pulling down all the statues of Elvis in Vegas,” said Al. “Young kids don’t give a gnat-shit who he is. That’s not your fate. You’ll last forever.”

  Forever. The word had a ring to it.

  Carrey imagined his digital essence speeding across the cosmos, fists thrust ahead of it, Superman-style, zooming gallantly past Alpha Centauri, then through quasars and nebulae, finally beyond the dream-soaked edge of the thing…

  “Forever,” said Carrey, finding it the happiest of words.

  “You’ll be there for your daughter, your grandson, his children.”

  “No more struggles,” said Wink.

  “No early morning call times.”

  The Oscar scene passed to a vision more alluring than all the rest: his bedroom back on Hummingbird Lane, a still night, no construction noises. And, at the center of the composition, his bed.

  His soft, beloved bed.

  “Home,” said Wink. “No place like it.”

  “Rest, relax,” said Al. “You can still work anytime you want.”

  “But let the future take its course.”

  Now a Jim Carrey perfectly identical to his own present self appeared on the bed, wrapped in his own bathrobe, face a vision of tranquillity.

  So happy.

  Such harmony.

  So ver
y cruelly and irresistibly possible.

  He felt an eerie unity as this phantom extended its hand, beckoning him to come closer. He stepped, hesitantly, toward it, admiring the rendering work. His face, just like his face. His eyes, just like his eyes. The moonlight fell over each of them as they stood there, each form joining seamlessly with the other, the virtual and the real becoming indistinguishable, both selves whispering Okay, in unison, okay, okay, the cotton duvet just as fine as he remembered, the great mattress just as welcoming as it had always been as he fell onto it, exhausted, sighing deeply, almost prayerfully.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Fire! Fire! Fire! Please, leave immediately.”

  He was at home, or so it seemed, lying in his bed.

  Jophiel cowered in the bathroom doorway.

  “Shoov!” he called, the Hebrew command for “Come!” and they trotted reluctantly to his side as he peered through the blinds, out into a jaundiced haze.

  A burning eucalyptus tree had fallen onto the pool house, collapsing the roof into a pyre. “Threat inventory,” he said to the house.

  “The cabana is ablaze. Outdoor temperature, one hundred fifty degrees. Please leave immediately.”

  “The fires never get to Brentwood.”

  “Adjacent homes are aflame.”

  “The fires won’t leap over the canyon.”

  “We disagree.”

  The digital woman had only ever spoken in the first person singular. Why this shift into the plural? How did she know about other houses? Did these semi-sentient security systems swap celebrity secrets? He rose with cracking knees, pulled on his bathrobe, and haunched down the hallway, Rottweilers at his sides, windows flickering crimson. Looking outside he saw the burning ravine, flames reaching twenty, thirty feet skyward, blasting embers into the devil winds, up over his yard, the lawn already strewn with flames.

  He opened the door.

  The curtains writhed like tortured spirits as a thermal blast screeched inside, searing his skin as he stepped onto the patio, the whole world like a sweat lodge. He choked on the scalding air, pulled his T-shirt over his mouth and nose, then settled into a cedar lounge chair. The fires had never come this close before. The oligarch’s mansion was entirely ablaze, gulping oxygen at its base, spouting fountains of flame as the tractors and rigs that had pulverized Carrey’s mornings spewed fire from their bellies. The cell networks were all jammed, but Avi Ayalon had gotten a text through, saying he’d evacuated Jane and Jackson from Laurel Canyon, but the police and fire departments were blocking the roads into Brentwood; Avi advised him to take the Range Rover and meet them up north.

  “Tell Jane I love her,” Carrey replied, but the message kept failing to send.

  Down at the Russian compound, a fuel truck met the flames, its tires popping as prelude to the gas-tank explosion shattering the glass on the mansion’s northeast façade. How very beautiful, thought Carrey, transfixed. Let nature have her way, erase this eyesore, cleanse the land and return it to the wild things.

  A pale apricot glow to the north, greater fires there, exquisitely rendered. Music flowed from one of the burning houses, arpeggiated notes filling the night with a plaintive grandeur; it sounded like a Philip Glass score. The last he knew he was in a geodesic dome in the desert, settling down for a digital nap. Had Wink and Al dealt him into the disaster genre? Was this reality? He unlocked his iPhone and opened Twitter, where trending news headlines seemed to verify the crisis.

  Fires Beyond Control.

  Only 5% Contained.

  #FireSelfie was trending, people competing to livestream their adrenaline-flushed faces from as close to the biggest blazes as possible, daring each deathward, many vanishing into the smoke, all for the likes of total strangers.

  The eastern winds roared, fanning the central ravine fires to sixty feet, glowing embers wafting across Carrey’s lawn, over his house. He held up his arms, totally covered in ash. He saw his reflection in the glass doors, the flaky sediment covering his hair, his shoulders, too. He seemed like an elderly version of himself, grayed by time. He smiled, imagining himself blowing away, joining with the dust. He was calm, resigned, almost Buddhist in tranquillity. His Mao preparations, his deep dives into historically dubious, yet still terrifying, documentaries, had filed down death’s fangs. He’d lived through the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

  This was nothing.

  Then, leaping from the fires, shattering all calm, a mountain lion sprinted straight at him, incisors bared, gaining fifteen feet with each bound. Carrey’s inner peace dissolved in a scream. Jophiel launched to defend him, steel fangs gleaming, countercharging the great cat, all animal bodies meeting in a tangle of claws and muscle as, beyond them, a fire tornado swirled up from the hulk of the Russian house and began moving toward the Hummingbird estate.

  “Shoov!” cried Carrey, but the dogs ignored him.

  “Shoov!” he repeated, again ignored by the Rottweilers who’d clamped their teeth into the mountain lion’s neck, refusing to let go even as the great cat buckled and bled.

  Finally, despairing, Carrey gave the one command that would override their programming: “Ahava!” he said, the Hebrew word for “love.”

  It worked.

  For the animals, as for the man, the memory of a mother’s love was overriding.

  They turned from the wounded cat toward the great house as the fire tornado swirled closer to them with unexpected speed. The dogs raced but were overtaken, midstride, by the firestorm.

  Carrey ran inside, thinking first of himself, then of his exquisite art. His Picasso, one of the guitar series, a seminal cubist work unveiled at the 1915 Armory Show. His Basquiat, Flash in Naples. His gorgeous Hockney, Alliums.

  I have to save them for prosperity, he thought, then paused, shocked and appalled at the Freudian slip. Prosperity? Is that what had been running his show? He gave the thought a second take, revising it toward a more noble motivation: I have to save them for posterity.

  But he couldn’t sell the line—the first take was better.

  “Siegfried’s Funeral March” from Götterdämmerung came over the home’s audio interface, selected by the security system, which, sensing its plastic components beginning to melt, thought it time to say farewell. Against rising brass and strings, Carrey recalled a treasure more precious than all others: Charlie Chaplin’s cane, won at auction in 1995 with his payday from Batman Forever.

  It was, upon purchase, his most sacred object, affirming his arrival, fulfilling his very spirit.

  Chaplin had not merely impressed but formed him. Showed him how any gesture—a kiss, playing with some bread rolls—can be freed from the mundane, imbued with magic. Charlie Chaplin was always turning caterpillars into butterflies. He had used comedy to reveal, and not flee, the truth of the human predicament. He’d roller-skated blindfolded over the void, like a planet circling a black hole. He filmed a factory worker sucked into a machine, fed through its cogs and gears, assailing an age that turns people into things. And Charlie Chaplin had battled the bleak world with—what? Not a knife, not a gun. A cane. Gentle, gestural, the baton of a maestro. Chaplin’s cane, with no disrespect to Hockney, Picasso, or Basquiat, was, in this moment, what Jim Carrey most wanted to save.

  And intending to do just that, he walked against the broiling heat into his living room, grabbed the delicate object from its Lucite brace, clutched it to his chest, and made for the door, when with an awful crash, the tallest of his weeping willow trees fell through the roof, splitting the support beams, trapping Jim Carrey between his overturned glass dining table and a nest of burning vines.

  Still, he clung to Chaplin’s cane. Still, he hoped for escape, to crawl out to his Range Rover, parked safely on the street. As the fires soared. As his central air system, set to maintain an internal temperature of sixty-eight degrees, drew on generator power and sent a final burst of air through t
he house, whipping the shattered home into a proper inferno, Carrey began to barter with the cosmos for salvation.

  He’d repent, he swore. He’d renounce all earthly delights. If it was fun, he’d avoid it. He’d change his name to Francis, or Simon Peter. And if the cosmos wanted to throw in some special power or skill, like healing the sick or talking to birds, something to distinguish him from others in this new field of endeavor (and also maybe a small group of followers, nothing huge, but dedicated believers), well, all that would be appreciated.

  Unnecessary, but appreciated.

  “Save me,” he prayed, cowering. “Please.”

  The flames lapped higher; the roof hissed and groaned.

  The heat was baking his eyeballs.

  Another blast erupted by the front door; he assumed it was the oil tank exploding.

  I’m gone, he thought. He closed his eyes, a sailor yielding to the deeps, waiting for some final narrative-completing vision that wouldn’t come. This is it, he thought, death, slow drifting into nothing.

  Then, as happens to heroes in myth, and in cinema—he heard a saving voice. Feminine and fearless, tender yet strong as steel, a cool, wet towel on the mind, singing the sweetest of songs, his name: “Jim? Jim Carrey?”

  Was this a hallucinated angel, come to take him into the great forgetting?

  “Yeah…” He sobbed, fearfully. “I’m here…”