He went back to the piles of balls and set to, but gradually Monsoon came to suspect that his gadget wasn’t working properly. When he found the ball he was looking for, the dial was supposed to freak out, and the microphone doohickey was supposed to make a static noise like kshshshhhshhsh, and then he was supposed to stick the ball in this crazy thingamajig that looked like a Japanese love egg.
But he had been at it for hours, and so far there was no kshshshhhshhsh. He didn’t get what it was all about—some wigged-out science bullshit—but there were only about a hundred balls left. As a lifelong hardcore gambler he knew how to figure the permutations. He had started off with about three thousand, so the odds of the right ball being the first one were about three thousand to one. Then it went down to two-nine-nine-nine, and so on and so forth in descending multiples, making the probability that the ball would be the very last one picked about the same as the chances of him putting the boots to Angelina Jolie any time soon. The odds that the machine was fucked were starting to seem better when all of a sudden the needle started flickering like a crackhead’s eyeballs, and the whatchamacallit went kshshshhhshhsh.
At fucking last, Monsoon thought. He picked the ball up and studied it. What was the big deal? It had some faint traces of red smeared on it, but apart from that it was indistinguishable from the other two thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine bastard golf balls. Monsoon shrugged. Mine not to reason why. He took the Japanese love egg deal out of his pocket, and pressed the button on the top like Hyatt had told him. A compartment slid open. Inside was a hollow glass container the same size as the golf ball. Monsoon dropped the ball into the container. The compartment closed itself. The egg suddenly became very hot, but even before Monsoon could drop it, it became very cold. Then it started to glow a weird gaseous green color, then a pale flamingo red, and back to green. Then it stopped, and the shell, which had been a kind of porcelain white, turned completely and absolutely black. It suddenly seemed to get heavier. Monsoon didn’t know what the fuck it was supposed to be, but he did know he wanted to get rid of it. Pronto.
He walked up to the glass door and booted it with his foot. “Hey, Hyatt,” he shouted, “I found the fucker. It’s done. Open the fucking door.”
Because the glass door was smoked glass, Monsoon couldn’t see that Hyatt was standing on the other side of it, staring right at him.
***
Khuy had stared at his sister, his face in constant motion as he wrestled with the thoughts and emotions that were struggling for supremacy in his agitated brain. Alyona was next to him on the back seat of the limo. She was sobbing hysterically, her face pressed against her knees. Through the darkened glass, Khuy could see Hyatt, standing next to Oleg eating an ice cream cone. Oleg had been eating an ice cream cone too, looking around with a worried self-conscious look on his face, just in case there happened to be any Russians in the park.
Khuy had looked back at his sister. She looked so different. So Americanski. Heavier, softer. Pleasant. He’d kept hearing her words.
Yermak, I thought you were dead. They told me you were dead. I would never have left you. Those others. The ones you were with. They said you were dead.
Did he believe her? Did he care anymore? Did it matter? Did it change anything? Could he resurrect any trace of love for her? Could he see that look, those loving eyes, shining by the lamplight? Were they still the same eyes? Was it too late to make a difference? Would it have made any difference even then? Would he be different? Was his course charted and his compass heading set a long time ago, or could he have altered it? Could he have become something else? And if so, what? Could he have become somebody else, and if so, who? Did he want to be someone else? And if she was telling the truth, why was she scared? What did she think he was going to do? What was he going to do?
Khuy had turned his face away and looked out of the window. Hyatt was smiling at Oleg. Khuy leaned across and opened the door on Alyona’s side. She’d looked up, her eyes puffy and red.
“Go,” he said.
“Yermak, I…”
“Go.”
Alyona had reached out her hand. She’d touched his face, the gentlest of touches. He pulled away. She turned to climb out of the car. He reached out. Toward her. His hand almost touched her hair. He hesitated. His hand stopped. He’d pulled it back. She’d climbed out and turned back to look at him.
Khuy shouted out of the open door, “Oleg. Davai.”
He turned his face away from her and waited until Oleg climbed in.
Alyona had watched as the big black car slid away from the curb and rolled down the street and around the corner under the trees. She’d never seen her brother again.
But one week later, and every month after that, on the same date, an envelope arrived, addressed to Hyatt. There was never any letter inside it. No words. Just a check. A very big check.
***
Monsoon was lying on the bed, sipping vodka and congratulating himself on the success of his ploy. Hyatt’s attitude toward him had improved dramatically since he had introduced his ace in the hole—or rather, since he had introduced Hyatt to Ace’s hole. That wasn’t to suggest Hyatt was planning on asking Monsoon to be the best man at his wedding anytime soon, but the relationship had at least thawed from frigid to temperate, and they were on conversational if not exactly best-buddy terms. It was a start.
In the bedroom the TV was on. Hyatt was upstairs, goggle-eyed, following Ace around as if her perfume held him in an actual physical embrace like some impenetrable force field of desire. Monsoon was idly flicking through back issues of Playboy and Penthouse, drinking from a bottle of Dead Python ninety-proof rum, and intermittently glancing at the TV. Suddenly he stopped. The magazines fell to the floor. He began staring intently at the TV screen, as if mesmerized, as if he were watching the most fascinating program he had ever seen. His face held an expression of puzzled bewilderment as he mentally struggled to explain to himself what he was seeing.
“Hey, Hyatt,” he shouted, finally. “You seen this?”
Hyatt’s voice was distant, disinterested, and distracted. “Yeah, yeah. Raiders of the Lost Ark. I’ve seen it a hundred fucking times. Who hasn’t?”
“But look.”
“Look what, dillwad? Leave me alone.”
“It’s not Harrison Ford. It’s George Clooney.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Look. It’s the same movie. Exactly the fucking same. Except it’s not Harrison Ford. It’s George fucking Clooney.”
“What’s the fucking difference? Quit bugging me. Ace and I are busy.”
Monsoon looked back at the screen. His bottle of Dead Python crashed to the floor and splintered against the stained wood. His jaw dropped open. It was definitely the original movie. It was definitely Raiders of the Lost Ark. The same in every detail…except Indiana Jones wasn’t Harrison Ford. Indiana Jones was George Clooney. The slot machine that was permanently installed in the back of Monsoon Parker’s brain hit the jackpot. He heard the sweet symphony of coins rattling into the tray and overflowing onto the carpet.
“Where did you get this? Is it a DVD?”
“Oh. No. That’s the R3. Have you been fucking around with it?”
Monsoon felt underneath him. The Japanese egg-looking deal was wedged behind him.
“If you mean that egg-looking whatchamacallit, I think I sat on it. Hey, kid. Get your snot nose out of her beaver for a second and come down here, will ya?”
Hyatt perched at the top of the stairwell and stuck his head into the room. “You’re starting to piss me off, cuntrocket.”
“Where did you get this fucking movie?”
“I made it.”
Monsoon had to swallow hard, to avoid being choked by his own Adam’s apple. “Come again, son?”
“I made it. Or, that is to say, I made the device that made the movie. The R3.”
“The what? What the fuck is an R3? Like an MP3, you mean?”
“No, you fucking gibbon. R3 stands for Rem
ote Role Reversal. Comparing the R3 to an MP3 is like comparing your brain to my ass. It’s like making a comparison between a laptop and an abacus, a rocket and a fucking bicycle.”
“You mean this?” Monsoon held up the elliptical device.
Hyatt assumed the facial expression that he reserved for especially insufferable cretins. “Yeah. You must have initiated the sequence when you sat on it. Hold it in both hands and squeeze it gently, like a tit.”
Monsoon did as instructed. The egg whined like a mosquito and vibrated. Monsoon would have dropped it, except he was too fascinated to be afraid. The outer shell became transparent. Inside was what appeared to be a lens at one end, and a small, illuminated electric blue button at the other. Halfway down one edge was a tiny microphone grill.
“So what does it do?”
Hyatt took a deep, exasperated breath. “Basically, it can take any movie, and substitute any one of the actors for someone else. The film stays exactly the same, but the actors change.”
“You have got to be shitting me. How does it work?”
“Point the lens at the screen, at the actor that you want to replace. Press the blue button, and hold it down. Then just say the name of the actor that you want to exchange for the one who’s in the original. The device has a database, so it has to be somebody who’s actually been in a movie or on TV before.”
Monsoon aimed the egg at George Clooney and pressed the button. George got zapped by a hair-thin green pulsating light beam. Monsoon bent his head to the microphone. “Sean Connery,” he said.
A bright red light engulfed the screen. It darkened, becoming first purple, then black. A second later, the movie started again, just where it had left off. But now, Indiana Jones was being played by Sean Connery.
Monsoon was compelled to sit down. All the strength had gone from his legs, and he felt as if he couldn’t breathe. He kept looking from the screen to Hyatt and back again, jerking his neck as if there was something wrong with it. Monsoon exhaled, a long, protracted, whistling breath. He forced himself to say, “And this will work with anyone?”
“Sure.”
“Any movie? Any actor?”
“As long as they’re in the database, yeah.”
“So, theoretically, I could watch Deep Throat, say, with Jessica Alba, for example?”
“No problem.”
Suddenly, Monsoon could not hear. He could not hear because of the roaring in his ears. It was the sound in his mind. The sound of his private Lear Jet, landing on his private island, filled with whisky and hookers.
“So, er, how many of these things did you make?”
“One.”
“Let me rephrase that. So how many are you going to make?”
“It depends on the program.”
“The TV program?”
“No, you moron. The computer program. If it wants to reproduce itself or not. If it wants to replicate or transform. It decides. All I can do is suggest. It’s a meme.”
“Meme. Who’s she?”
“Not she, idiot, it. A meme. A unit of information. A cultural sequence. A piece of intellectual property, valid in all languages, that gains meaning and significance as it grows, until it becomes an entity in itself. An idea that proliferates, a self-replicating essence that functions as a universal codex, intelligible to every human being on the planet, a mirror that reflects itself ad infinitum, that cross-pollinates until it generates a whole new school of thought, discrete and isolate and entire unto itself. Get it?”
“Er. Not really.”
“It exists only in the intellect. In our collective intellect. There it flourishes and evolves like a neuron synapse garden, sending out tendrils and shoots that themselves metamorphosize into the next generation of ideas. Understand?”
“Er. No.”
“Fuck me. Listen, dipshit. The R3 is everywhere and nowhere. It doesn’t exist and yet it is universal. It is in the ether. In space. In time. It floats and swirls in the void. That egg that you have is just a piece of fucking plastic. It’s like a magnet or a conduit. It attracts R3 and channels it.”
“Er. Right. I see.”
“You don’t fucking see, you retard. R3 evolves. It e-fucking-volves! It’s an independent algorithm. How it works today is not how it works tomorrow. Get the picture?”
“Son, not only do I not get the picture, I don’t even get the fucking camera. What the hell are you talking about?”
“I am talking about controlling the ghosts, putting the genie back in the bottle, turning back the tide and making the sun set in the East. Catching a falling star and putting it in your fucking pocket.”
“Very poetic. But how does that work in English?”
“Okay…let me put this in terms that even an evolutionary blind alley such as yourself might understand. Imagine a baseball park.”
“Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere. I know a shitload about baseball.”
“Why does that not surprise me? Okay, then. Get this. One throws to two. Two throws to three. Three throws to four, and four throws to home base. All the while, the catcher is trying to intercept, except he can’t because he doesn’t have a glove. R3 is like the ball. It’s out there—a scrambled coded signal, bouncing from one satellite to another, forever and for all eternity, or until the Big Bang becomes the Big Crunch and we all contract and disappear up our own assholes. And all the time, the catcher is trying to catch the ball, but he can’t.”
“So what are you saying?”
“What I’m saying, Einstein, is that I have the fucking glove. I know how to catch the ball.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“You need branes.”
“You’re telling me.”
“No, not brains, shitferbrains, branes. B-R-A-N-E-S. It’s string theory. Branes are objects propagate in space-time according to the theories of quantum mechanics. That’s how it works. It’s the anti-zero. It exists because it doesn’t exist. It’s the opposite of entropy, the impulse toward chaos. It’s the impulse toward organization. The unified theory. It’s the Chameleon Fallacy.
“The which fallacy now? I’m getting my fallacies a little tangled up here.”
“The Chameleon Fallacy. It’s about perception, man. Fucking perception. It’s the theory of perception. The act of observation that alters the behavior not only of the object observed but also of the observer. It’s a kind of mass hypnosis by common agreement. The chameleon never changes color—it gets us to believe it has changed color, to see it as it wants us to see it. We see what it wants us to see, because we all agree that’s what we see. It gets us all to agree that we see what we see. It’s like money. It only has value if we all agree it has value, otherwise it’s just pieces of paper. The Chameleon Fallacy is the perfect equation, divine in its purity. It’s the emperor’s new suit of clothes, expressed as an equation, but its very perfection is its fatal flaw.
“Like a diamond, you mean?”
“Something like that. Like the most perfect diamond, a sub-molecular examination will reveal a flaw. Its flaw is its perfection. It mathematically disproves its own existence. Furthermore, it denies all evidence of its ever having existed.”
“So what happens then?”
“It ceases to exist. It disappears.”
“So what you’re saying is that these gizmos stop working. That they just vanish?”
“More or less.”
“So how long does that take?”
“About a week. But by then, it’ll be someone else’s problem.”
Chapter 11
“Ya gonna drink all that yerself, ya bladdy drongo, or ya gonna go halfers with yer fucken mates?”
Bjorn Eggen froze with the bottle halfway to his lips. He turned his head toward Wally, infinitely slowly, as if afraid to discover that the voice he heard was a figment of his imagination, or that the black figure that inhabited his peripheral vision was some dark troll, arrived from its stygian lair to mock him in his age and his grief.
His still-pier
cing blue eyes opened wide when he beheld Wally, and then brimmed with tears. “Wally? Wally? That you? Haf you really come?”
“Nah, it’s Rudolph the red-nosed fucken reindeer. Course it’s me, ya nong.”
Bjorn Eggen stood and creaked toward Wally. Wally met him halfway. The two men embraced. Two old dogs at the end of their days, standing by a frozen lake at the ceiling of the world, with mist rising around them and the bare trees stark against the snow and the sun slipping to darkness and memory. Bjorn Eggen made no attempt to stem the flow of his tears, and any such attempt would have been in any case futile, because the joy he felt at the presence of his friend in that moment chased all care from his heart and forebode all restraint. He clung fiercely to the old man who had travelled half a world to be with him, and cried like a baby.
“Oh, Wally. Sank you, my friend. Sank you. You haf no the idea vat this is meaning to me.”
“Shut up, ya silly old fart, and hand over the bottle before I start fucken blubberin’ meself.”
Bjorn Eggen released Wally and handed him the bottle, and smiled as the neck disappeared between the black limpet lips, and Wally sucked back the brew and turned half away so that his face should be hidden from his friend and his own tears not revealed.
***
They argued vociferously, but finally Momo Bibbs gave in to the wishes of Fanny Lemming, and they agreed upon Penelope Cruz. Momo had to concede that she looked seriously poky with her Mohican as she replaced Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, but he didn’t think Verne Troyer was so hot in the Harvey Keitel part.
The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2) Page 20
