Then the room was suddenly bathed in a surreal silence and the reason for that was the people depicted on the screen. Those people appeared to not know what to do next. There seemed to be no one there who was in charge. Someone like a mayor is never really in charge in a situation like that and that was evident from the way he looked around waiting for instruction. Our silence persisted with neither of us thinking of moving or otherwise disturbing it. Then, at the exact moment that Angus’s triangle changed its numbers to 6:08, the mayor acknowledged some unseen person with his chin, rose from the row of folding chairs that had been carefully arranged on a stage to face a quiet invited audience, and walked to the podium. The podium bowed under the weight of its multi-microphone hat; each microphone clearly identified by its owner while vying to hear the mayor best. Toad spoke, haltingly at first but then with growing confidence when a Television with a built-in VCR (or was that a built-in Carousel?) was wheeled into the room and rushed to his side. The mayor spoke with what he thought was the appropriate solemnity. He pointed toward the people he had just sat with, one of whom was identified as a Video Vigilantes bigwig by the crawl at the bottom of the screen, and clapped his hands without sound. Then he held up an odd-looking tubular device as a foreign head suddenly appeared behind the microphones to inform the invisible audience that there would be no questions until the footage had been completely aired. This new guy thanked The Post and in response the camera cut back to the row of chairs. There one of the guys nodded gravely while the previously helpful crawl stood mute. The mayor was at Television now where he proceeded to insert his tube. The whole event had such a high-tech sheen to it that I was surprised by the third-rate letters that appeared on the screen to announce we would soon be viewing The Tula Kidnapping Etc. and that the so-titled footage was A Video Vigilantes Production. What next appeared on the screen in no way resembled a dispassionate frills-lacking recording though. Instead we saw an active camera zooming in and out and panning from side to side. Different angles were tried and rejected. Black and white rejected in favor of color and various filters used before settling on a slightly blue one. Those preliminary matters determined, the picture revealed a green, old-fashioned baby stroller appearing from the left of the screen as the audience gasped. Now the people on the stage seemed to bend toward their screen as across from them Angus did the same. I wished I had left.
I looked away then back again. I felt no suspense, only horror then relief when the screen emitted a ghastly pulse of yellow light before going black. I wasn’t sure at first what exactly we’d just seen. The producer had done that thing where your screen at home is the equivalent of the external screen at the location so it wasn’t until seconds later when the camera panned back to reveal a stunned but noisy group at the press conference (the mayor had literally thrown his hands up) that we understood the fault lay in our city’s hall and not in that living room. A guy there took charge and began to fiddle with the appliance and even the mayor finally got up and gave it a respectful whack to the side but it was fruitless. Then the overhead bulbs that provided the only remaining light in the press room also went out. This last failure led to a complete surrender, one that took us back to the news studio then to regularly scheduled programming.
“Well that’s quite the letdown. How’s that for timing huh?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I have to go.”
“Okay, I have a legal question before you split though.”
“Shoot.”
“Do you think The Post now gets to announce the rescheduled date for the footage? I mean is this blackout, brownout, or whatever it is, a contingency they prepared for?” I shrugged and left. I heard the door close behind me as I went down the stairs and before I could even hit the street I heard that strangely familiar voice start up again. I got back in my car and drove to the area of 410. Exactly thirty-one hours remained before the relevant 3:00 a.m. I looked around at this scene of a future crime and was struck by how absurd the whole idea was. I left my life for a few days, returned, and that made the whole thing seem impossible, almost comic. I felt intense doubt. I envied the people I saw walking around me. People who would not for a moment consider what I had considered and would never have reason to. It was important, I thought and everyone thought, when you get to a certain age and point in life, to have created a specific conception of who you were, the things you did and didn’t do. I decided that the planning with Dane had been fun and thrilling in a weird way but it never really corresponded to any potential truth. Its subject matter never concerned something I would ever actually attempt. And that realization seemed to fill the area with a bothersome defeatism.
The next day I would go to work and Dane would want to know why the ignored calls et cetera. I would tell him that as far as the caper went I was out, was never truly in. I would add that he was of course free to do as he wished with no interference from me, each man being famously the agent of his own victory or defeat. I would speak those words, the whole thing would be over, and I would enjoy a peace I had not felt in weeks.
I got out of the car. It was maybe not as cold as I remembered it pre-Alabama. People were everywhere on that street too, small clouds shooting from their mouths as they milled around flat-tire repair shops and fried chicken places with bulletproof glass. And I remember how all those people looked around and laughed in unison when a sound like a record being played backwards was suddenly heard throughout followed by the sight of every light on the street suddenly dimming rapidly until reaching complete darkness. The many stores that seconds earlier had the streets surrounded and seemed so intractable now vanished. In this sudden black it was difficult to make out any object or take a certain step. Then as abruptly as the blackness had come the lights were resurrected; creeping up in intensity until they shone even brighter than before, omnipresent and ready again to illume the way.
chapter 22
But if I were the author of my own being, I would doubt nothing, I would experience no desires, and finally I would lack no perfection.
—Rene Descartes
David Hume was his favorite Alyona once said. This was during one of our first real conversations, at the end of which I think we exchanged keys to our respective apartments although I almost immediately misplaced his. I said I guessed there was nothing wrong with Hume provided it was acknowledged that Descartes was The Man. At the end of the conversation I went home and made this list:
1. Descartes
2. Kant
3. Wittgenstein
4. Kripke
5. Lewis
6. Hume
A list with which I would now strenuously disagree but I am merely reporting what it was at the time.
Anyway it was Hume who observed that everything we say we know about what he called matters of fact (e.g. that the sun will rise and set every day) we learn through our understanding of cause and effect. We see one event always follow another and as a result come to the conclusion that the preceding event caused the other and that in the future the events will continue to share this causal relationship. We extrapolate too so that, for example, we don’t have to have ever actually seen an unsupported bowling ball to know it will fall. We know this from having seen other similar objects behave. Nor do we have to be familiar with the natural laws that cause the ball to drop as evidenced by the fact that even young unschooled children know what will happen.
This was interesting enough at a time when many philosophers occupied themselves, at least partly, with these kinds of purported classifications of different types of knowledge and mental operations: such as what is known a priori, meaning instinctually and without reliance on our senses including, for example, the fact that I exist or that 1+1 = 2, and what we know merely as a function of language (e.g. that the proposition bachelors are unmarried is always true); but the nicer part was where Hume, while acknowledging that we are of course justified in drawing conclusions like the above one about the sun, indicated that he was unable to provide any real reason why w
e should draw such conclusions. Specifically, it is certainly not necessarily true that the sun will rise each morning (contrast I exist or bachelors are single which are necessarily true) as we can imagine a contrary state of affairs without internal contradiction. Moreover, the fact that the sun will rise or that a ball in a certain state will fall cannot be demonstrably and conclusively proven for the simple reason that no matter how many times or how consistently one event follows another there is simply no proof that it will do so the next time nor by extension any good reason for claiming to know that it will. In other words, we can in some sense imagine a situation where the ten-thousandth time a bowling ball is released it does not drop. Therefore we can never conclusively prove that a ball will drop merely by repeatedly dropping one and this is true regardless of the number of times we do so. So in skeptical sum, we have this whole body of knowledge that we can directly attribute to the field of cause and effect but when closely examined it appears that the human perception of a causal relationship is a mere psychological phenomenon and as such not built on the strongest of foundations and certainly not on anything resembling indisputable knowledge.
I thought of this Hume bastard that night when I got in my car and turned the key, an action I had taken countless times and which action had not once failed to be followed by the sound and feel of the attached car starting. But this time, when it finally counted, I heard and felt nothing in response no matter how often and desperately I made the violent twisting motion. I called Dane:
“What’s up?” he said.
“Fucking car won’t start, the fuck,” I said
“Where are you?” he said.
“At a phone a block from it,” I said
“Well okay this is why we gave ourselves several extra hours. Find some other way to get there,” he said.
“Like?” I said.
“Like this is New York. Subway? Cab? Need I continue?” he said.
“Oh yeah? And when we walk out of there with hundred pound bags?” I said.
“Right. Can you get another car? Borrow one?” he said.
“Who has a car but me? This is goddamn New York remember?” I said.
“Can you get the irredeemable prick started?” he said.
“Probably but that’s beside the point,” I said.
“How’s that?” he said.
“Well if this whole thing was about removing the element of chance do you think it’s advisable to at a critical juncture rely on a car that a mere hours before failed to deliver,” I said.
“I hear you but we might have no choice. What do you think’s the problem with that piece of shit anyway?” he said.
“I think it’s bad,” I said. “The battery’s completely dead but there’s no external explanation I can point to, I didn’t leave the lights on or anything. That means probably something like the starter or the alternator, which means I can fix or re-juice the battery right now, shit I can buy a brand new one and install it in the seven hours we have, but that won’t mean that when we jump in this bastard at three-twenty it’ll definitely start and that’s a fucking frightening state of affairs because what do we do then?”
“It’s not ideal I’ll admit that, but the important thing is this: there’s nothing we could have done differently. We addressed this issue. The car had never done this before, all systems were go in that area. What could we have done differently? We didn’t have limitless time, we had to spend our time where it was most likely to be needed. I think everything to this point has still been done perfectly. Things like this just happen sometimes and are beyond the control of mere mortals. There’s a reason chance is a word, it describes an actual phenomena that’s all. Get the thing started and we’ll take our chances. We will not fail just because of this,” he said.
“What the fuck are you talking about? I know I’m not to blame for this worthless motherfucker not starting and that consoles me not a bit. The question is what do we do about it. Taking our chances as you call it is not high on my list of responses,” I said.
“So what do you want to do? You’ve thought about it,” he said.
“I think we have to at least consider canceling the whole thing,” I said.
“No this is a minor thing,” he said.
“How is it minor?” I said. “If those guys are looking for us when we get to the car and it won’t start what do you suggest we do then?”
“I’m not sure but we have several hours to decide, we can leave the bags in the locked trunk and leave by subway then return tomorrow with a new battery,” he said. “I don’t know but I do know that canceling is extreme and unwarranted.”
“Okay I have to go,” I said.
“Where?” he said.
“There’s a twenty-four-hour garage near here, I’ll call you when I’m done,” I said.
“How long?” he said.
“Hour, hour-and-a-half,” I said.
“This might fuck with the parking situation too,” he said.
“It might, I’ll call you,” I said.
I pulled the battery out, stripping my hands raw in the process. I locked each of the car’s four doors then slammed mine closed. I kicked the rear bumper of the car as I walked by and when a lady tried to look at my face I looked away. I felt the cold for the first time that night and it got inside me shaking me involuntarily. I put the battery down then pulled my arms out of their sleeves and hugged my chest. I was shaking and sweating. When I stopped I put my arms back in my sleeves grabbed the battery and went towards the subway. There was no one at the station. The guy who ran the newsstand had already pulled down the metal door. I took the elevator down by myself. It was dark and quiet.
I was the only one in the subway car. After two stops I got out. At that station there was no elevator. You had to walk. As I neared the top of the stairs I made sure to fasten every last button I had. Then I pulled my hands up into the sleeves and cradled the battery in my hands using the ends of the sleeves as makeshift gloves.
When I crossed the threshold of the garage a soft bell sounded and a guy slid out from under a car just like the cliché. He wanted to know what the problem was and I told him. He hooked the battery up to that machine they have and it barely registered. He said it would take an hour to get it fully juiced. I told him I didn’t have an hour and did he have any new batteries he could sell me.
“I do. Well I have basically new ones I could sell you,” he said. “Of course do you know it’s not your starter or your alternator? Because for a battery to be this dead.”
“Give me a new one,” I said.
He pulled one off a shelf
“I know it doesn’t look new,” he said. “But it is, it’s never been in a car.”
“Do you have any that look new in addition to being new?” I said.
“No, but look I’ll hook it up and show you.” He quickly clasped a clamp on each of the batteries terminals then pointed to the display as the needle shot up. “See?” he said.
“You have any others?” I said.
“This is the only new one,” he said.
“How much?” I said.
He looked up at the ceiling and told me.
“How much if I leave you this one?” I said.
“I’ll give you five for that one,” he said.
“No,” I said. “Charge it up I’ll get it tomorrow, and give me the other one too.”
I put my hands back into my sleeves and cradled the new battery. I walked out. When a long blue car with a miniature regal headdress on the dash approached and our eyes met I yelled at him to stop. He did and I got in. I told him where I was going and asked him how much. I knew he couldn’t answer.
“Whatever you usually pay,” he said looking at the rearview mirror.
The car took longer than the subway had. I gave him a ten and got out five feet from my car.
I popped the hood. No one was around. There was little light where I stood. I dropped the battery into place. The connecting cables were loose and wi
th some effort I was able to pop them into place with just my hands. I got in the car and put the key in the ignition. I lay my forehead on the steering wheel and tapped its sides with my hands. I looked up and turned the key forward. After a brief hesitation, the car started. I called Dane:
“Okay it started,” I said.
“They charged it?” he said.
“No,” I said.
“You got a new one,” he said.
“Sort of,” I said.
“You feel confident we can rely on the car?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“It’s getting late and we need a parking spot,” he said.
“I know,” I said
“So we’ll proceed with the plan as if this never happened?” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“See you there,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
I took the Brooklyn Bridge to the FDR. Wherever I went I hit traffic. It was almost eleven on a Tuesday night. I screamed that out.
I got off at the 96th Street exit and headed westbound. I made a right onto Second Avenue and traveled the twenty-six blocks northbound to 122nd Streetwhere I made a right. As I drove up to the spot, I saw what I thought were a lot of the same people from the night before. They would look at me as my car passed then look right back at the people they were with.
The parking spot I wanted was taken as were the ones directly in front and behind it. It was almost midnight. From the car I could see the back of 402 where we would enter.
I took a spot on the other side of the street about twenty yards back and waited for the good spot to open up. I turned on the radio and put in a CD. The Kreutzer Sonata. The presto first movement filled the car. I breathed in and the warm air entered my lungs then somehow spread out through my veins to pulsate just under my skin and raise it into bumps. I had to change discs. The twenty-four caprices of Niccolo Paganini as performed by Alexander Markov. The volume knob was as high as it could go. My heart slowed. I reached down with my left hand and pulled the lever. The seat reclined and I closed my eyes.
A Naked Singularity: A Novel Page 62
