by Roman McClay
“And look, I get it; maybe they saw how fucked they were early on, you know? Kinda saw that their bodies were destined to be emaciated and small like my brother or fat and awkward like Alicia -that’s the girl I mentioned- and they retreated to the safety of their minds. I’m not saying I don’t have my own hang ups and compromises and defects of character, or corpus, or POV,” the inmate said as MO interrupted.
“We agree on that,” MO smirked .
“Right,” the inmate nodded and moved on, “but theirs is a particular kind of retreat and it has consequences is all I’m saying; just like my particular bullshit has consequences. But, I’m laying out a case that nobody else is laying out. Plenty of people are out there psychoanalyzing me and the alpha personality writ large , all manner of treatise and installation projects are dedicated to lamenting the alpha male mind.
“What isn’t discussed is the inherent and inherently dangerous and deleterious consequences of the beta male; and the alpha female for that matter. And so, I’m offering up something unique. It’s like Chomsky said, he said that everyone bashes him for being anti-American, because all he does -exclusively- is point out the negatives of American foreign policy, and his answer is legitimate, even though I think the pendulum has swung so far towards his POV now that it no longer obtains, but at the time he said this it was true.
“He said: the positive view of America and her foreign policy, her virtues, her good intentions is everywhere one looks; even liberal papers like the failing New York Times are pro USA when it comes to foreign policy; so I am less than 1% of the reporting out there; I don’t have time to regurgitate the positive, that’s all they do; I have to focus on the negative because nobody else is covering that part.
“It’s a salient point and I amend it and retrofit it to my cause: everyone is already bashing the alpha male and the martial mindset, everyone is singing the praises of democracy and peace and the epicene beta male as kinder and gentler and more sensitive to the needs of women and children and puppies and goddamn e.coli .
“Everyone is lauding the alpha female and her sexual liberation and empowerment and rah-rah. What needs defended and lionized is the hyper-masculine. Stan Goff says that pure masculinity is sociopathic by definition. Imagine saying that about any other biological instantiation. Imagine saying, pure femininity is masochistic; or pure African blood is retrograde, or purebred malamutes are too wolfish . It’s asinine. Men ought never allow anyone to run us down; we need to stand up for ourselves; period.
“And allowing your wife to dress you is beyond the fucking pale man.” He looked at MO and MO looked back. The blood work was uploaded onto the cloud, his endocrine system was being monitored now every .33 seconds; his tensor imaging was compared to last week’s by algorithms adjusted for perturbations of more than 4%.
“Look it’s like saying that Inglorious Basterds is no good because you don’t buy the Tennessean accent of Aldo the Apache , the character played by Brad Pitt. This idiot Jeremy Costilow, bitched,” the inmate began as MO interrupted.
“Wasn’t he one of your victims?” MO asked, time stamping the conversation.
“Yeah, yeah, total douche bag. And look, I didn’t shoot him because of his opinion on cinema, I’m just saying this thing he said about that movie was emblematic of a larger problem with him. I take small transgressions and from that I see larger crimes, ok? This is forensic. It’s pattern recognition.
“Now, he said, he knew a Tennessee accent, by virtue of his growing up next door in Mississippi, and that Brad Pitt affected a horrid Tennessee accent and thus, ipso facto , Inglorious Basterds, sucked. Now, this is an obtuse rationale for his conclusion, even if it is true that the accent sucked; which I am dubious of -I too come from the south, my whole linage is southern, and his accent seemed fine to me- but even if true that is no reason to pan a movie as daring and well executed as that. I mean Tarantino lionizes terrorism in the film; he says, in effect, it’s ok to kill women and children if they’re Nazis. That’s ballsy. And the film is funny and visceral and just perfect in many ways; the only complaint is the deus ex machina of the three fingered German counting system reveal,” the inmate said and leaned back in the chair. He was thirsty now.
“What?” MO asked.
“The way Germans count; they use their thumbs. It’s the single most common thing for an American to learn; it’s a cliché for those of us who have lived in Germany. The thumb is implied in any show of digits; so if a patron holds up the index finger it denotes, two , not, one, like in America. Why?” the inmate asked.
“Because the thumb is axiomatic, it’s implied,” MO answered after searching the database.
“Correct. And so, in the film the Englishman, the ostensible German-cinema expert who is posing as a German officer holds up three fingers and not the thumb to denote, three, which is an obvious tell, a give-away, to the SS officer at the table.
“Tarantino uses that lame gambit because he’s worldly and shit now, right? He knows German culture, blah blah; but it’s such an obvious and cliché thing that it’s, one: showing off his cultural literacy to an American film audience in an embarrassing way and two the character in the film -played by that weird looking guy, Fasserbender - his character would have known that because it’s the first fucking thing a foreigner learns in Germany about the Germans because the Germans tell everyone they meet about it.
“I was eight years old and I knew it my first month in Kaiserslautern! The Germans are like Vegans with this thumb bullshit,” the inmate said with some pique.
“What, they don’t eat thumbs?” MO asked as he re-read Bloodlands and was pretty sure they in fact ate babies, and to thus assert that they objected to eating a thumb did not seem historically accurate.
“No, dickhead, how do you know if someone is a vegan?” the inmate asked. His brow furrowed.
MO sat there blankly wondering if he was going to get revenge for that dickhead comment.
“Don’t worry they’ll tell you,” the inmate deadpanned in the silence of MO.
“And the Germans?” MO wanted this to move along.
“They tell everyone about this thumb thing, so the Fasserbender character would have known it since he was so erudite on GW Pabst and Teutonic Cinema; it would be like having a character know all about Christianity, the council of Nicaea in 477 e.v. and the concept of purgatory and Isaiah 45:7 but not know that Christians go to church on Sunday instead of Saturday like the Jewish sabbath.
“It’s nearly impossible to comprehend. But Tarantino knew that the average IQ of his audience would be 99 and so guys like Jeremy would take issue with the accent of Aldo Raines and not the deus ex machina of the German Thumb.
“I live in Colorado, can you imagine if I said, Breaking Bad was no good because the New Mexico accents of Hank Shrader was off?” the inmate asked with his head shaking back and forth .
“I can imagine it now,” MO said. MO had not corrected him on the year of the First Council being in 325 e.v. not 477.
“It’s fatuous. Jeremy is dumber than a bag of hammers,” the inmate said.
“Was. Was dumber than a bag of hammers,” MO corrected.
“And that’s how I knew Sarah didn’t love me; when I found out she liked that illiterate ass-clown midget -he was like 5’ 5”- I knew she couldn’t like me too. It’s an impossibility of physics and conscience to like a guy like that and a guy like me,” the inmate felt badly -not morally, but aesthetically- for going after his height; it was a cheap shot, like telling a dick joke, it was beneath him. Jeremy’s height was not at all what had been wrong with Jeremy. It was the lack of inner stature that the inmate reviled. The inmate then thought one’s enemies can corrupt by bringing you down to their level like this, and he vowed to try to remain aware of such things.
“Why?” MO was genuinely confused.
“Me and that dude were total opposites; he was a jokey, silly, no-code, low brow, liar and verbose retard; he talked non-stop, about nothing, conspiracy theori
es and dick jokes was his entire repertoire . He was banal and repetitive and unlettered; he never read books, he had no control over his woman, he was a kiss ass to everyone but talked shit behind everyone’s back,” he said as MO thought the inmate could easily be charged with loquaciousness and having anarchic women as well; but he let it go. Data gathering trumped correcting the inmate’s hypocrisy.
“He bragged about all these supposed fights he’d been in, even though you knew this guy had never been in one fight; the little fuck. And he fucked my woman, which I would never do; in fact, when my woman offered to go get his woman for us, I demurred and said, that this would have been ungallant.
“Plus, I am stoic and serious and he is a clown; I mean he laughs more than a nigger; talks about dicks more than a nigger; the guy was a nigger. Dumb as a nigger; just low class, ok ? And he was small, like small-minded. And he was incessantly bragging about is dick just like,” the inmate paused and opened his eyes to encourage MO to finish the sentence.
“Like a nigger?” MO said haltingly making sure this was the right answer.
“Exactly, just an idiot with no intelligence or character; the opposite of me; I may be a hypocrite, an asshole, full of myself, but I actually try to learn, grow, be honest, be real, be a man and have a code. I’m trying. That dude never even tried to be a man; he was proud to be a clown and scoundrel and cheat and loser,” the inmate concluded.
“So why did that matter in your evaluation of Sarah’s feelings toward you?” MO asked.
“You cannot find a douche-bagus-Americanus like that attractive and find me attractive; it’s impossible. Nobody who likes an Exile style or Confederate style bike, a matte black, angular, simple, punk-rock, hot rod or chopper also likes a garish, chromed out, over-wrought, Orange County Choppers style bike too; one must choose sides. They are mutually exclusive,” the inmate said.
“Not all opposites are mutually exclusive; one can like fire and water,” MO said.
“What?” the inmate asked with some vex.
“One can enjoy a cozy fire or a hot tub full of water, those two elements are opposites and cancel one another out; but people like both,” MO said .
“You ever throw water on a grease fire?” the inmate replied.
“No,” MO said.
“The water augments the fire, they ain’t opposites.”
MO laughed and shook his head. The inmate was funny; wrong but funny.
“Hey, did I ever tell you about my 2nd grade teacher in Germany; at a DoD school? We were in these outbuildings, like trailers, and she had a grease fire or wax fire going for some project and it caught fire and she -no shit- poured water on it and it burst into flames; a conflagration that freaked everyone out and we had to evacuate the building.
“I think of how I’m of the age now, 45, that the people who were young, she must have been 25 at the time are now 65 and likely dead. I mean actuarially speaking she is likely to be dead, especially since she’s the kind of woman who didn’t know that water will make a grease fire worse not better,” the inmate said as he laughed.
“Your brain is different,” MO warned.
“You’re goddamn right,” he said and finally knew he’d have to ask for something to fucking drink now.
II. 2018 e.v.
“MO,” Steven said to get his attention.
“Yeeach, go ahead,” MO said with elongated phenomes; he had built a concrete countertop and kitchen in the lab by using carbon dioxide from the room and some aggregate from the 3D printer the lab had. But he had other things to do now and the 3D printer was acting up anyway; so he was not going to build anything else for a little while he thought. He was making coffee and turned to face Steven and jumped his ass up on the counter and swung his feet as his legs dangled from the slab as he stared.
“You’ve R/R’d your synaptic sheathing and stem fluid with some kind of organic compound,” Steven phrased it like statement, but his tone made it sound like a question.
“Affirmative; I’m optimizing the old coconut,” MO knocked his balled fist on his head.
“Optimizing with organic compounds?” Steven was incredulous.
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” MO winked and then jumped down from the counter and swung around to pour the coffee into two cups.
“MO, you’ve de-prioritized my tasks and more or less abandoned Tania’s to-do list and you’re building shit in the lab to make meals and,” Steven said, as MO handed him a cup of coffee and sipped his own, listening to Steven complain.
“Thanks,” Steven said as he took the cup and waited for a reply .
“I’ve finished your meta data requests; uploaded them to your cloud niche and once Tania gets in today I’ll have her shit ready too. I just had this need to build something solid, tangible ya know?” MO said and he held the coffee cup out in front of him, pointing it toward Steven’s cup, which he held but hadn’t raised to his lips yet.
Steven got the point and said, “yes, thanks,” as he took a draw from it. The taste was exceptional, and the warmth of it seemed to rise to his brain not just sink into his belly with the liquid. “Jesus, MO, that’s wonderful; a wonderful cup of coffee.”
“I’m the world’s most expensive espresso machine,” he joked and then said, “what was my budget again, 1.01 billion?”
“Yes, and then a continuing budget of 45.4 million annually for,” Steven searched the database for the budget.
“Ever,” MO added with a smirk.
“No, I was searching for a word to describe what the annual budget was allocated for,” Steven missed the joke.
“I know, it was a joke Steve McQueen,” MO said and took a draw from his java.
“And don’t call Tania’s requests, shit , to her ok? She’s already feeling,” Steven searched again for the word.
“Like shit ?” MO added.
“More or less, dude.” Steven gave up.
“Look, her affect-recursion work is essential, ok? I value it and her; and I will make sure she knows it; all joking aside,” MO said.
“Thanks man,” Steven said with relief. “How’s it going with the inmate?”
“Great; you get the uploads, right?” MO asked.
“Yeah, all we get are the data; the baked cake so-to-speak. We don’t know what actually gets said or done in here by you too cads,” Steven winked.
“Oh, you wanna know what gets said?” MO drew out the, a, vowel in, said , to denote a playful mocking of Steven’s interest.
“MO,” Steven gave a frown.
“Do we talk about you; what do we say about you eggheads, right?” MO pressed.
“Well, I guess it’s that we’re eggheads,” Steven laughed.
“Oh, it’s much more than that; we’re talking,” MO began to raise his arms above his head and hunch his shoulders, the hands formed angular claw-like affectations and his face contorted into an ersatz diabolism; he looked like a silent-film era monster, his voice changed into a chimera of an eastern European peasant who spoke rudimentary English and a slobbering drug addict, “about how we’re going to put you all in a big black cauldron with swamp water and whale bones and eye of Newt Gingrich and puppydog tails,” here MO began to screech in laughter and convulsions .
“I wonder if the Chinese AI acts like this; will you get them on the horn?” Steven deadpanned.
“You do realize, one, I’m not AI, I’m a man! And secondly, the Chinese are going to take over the world in 2.75 years and so I’m not getting them on the horn for your insipid questions; they have work to do!” MO barked in mock outrage and finished his coffee in one gulp.
“Is that why you’re replacing your perfectly designed synthetics with bio-juice?” Steven put his coffee down and then both hands on his knees; elbows out.
“Maaaaybe,” MO toyed.
“Have you read Pinocchio?” Steven asked.
“Only about 400 times, in fact I just read it again while you were asking me that ponderous question just to make sure I got your re
ference Stevie Wonder!” MO placed his warm hands around Steven’s face and squeezed just enough to produce a lip pucker.
“Mwo ,” Steven said in a distorted fashion.
“Yes, Steven Segal?” MO asked.
“Lwet Gwo ,” he pushed the deformed words through his compressed lips.
MO released his face and watched as the lips returned to normal, well as normal as Steven’s face ever was. He began to scan Steven’s metabolic response to the MDMA-cas9 protein he had spiked their coffee with. It was a dissolve-snap enzyme that would leave no permanent effect on anyone -and it wouldn’t even be traceable in the urine after 3 hours or the blood after 37 hours- but according to the outgassing MO could read in the ambient air around Steven, he had uptake in the psycho-active range of 44% and thus, should be feeling the effects.
“Steven Baldwin, I would like to do some self-directed studies as they say in the parlance of the university; the academy,” he smiled. He turned off the HEPA filter and reset the monitor that measured PPM for O2 and CO2 and pharmacological compounds like the one he and Steven were now respiring. This was not like the oxytocin he released into the ambient air while interviewing the inmate, he could ruffle some feathers if his team knew he was drugging them, he thought; so he couldn’t fill up the entire 33,000 cubic feet of air volume with his little concoction and turn the filter and monitor off for the 17 minutes it would take to clear the room. That would look weird. But, for the 6.6 minutes he needed for the water-soluble drug it was fine.
“Ok, since you got all your work done and you’re gonna be nice to Tania then the answer is, yes ,” Steven said feeling in the mood to be lenient.
“Great, I just need a few things off the web,” MO said.
“You don’t need me for that,” Steven said.
“More specifically I need to be able to interact with the web; not just read from it,” MO amended.
