by Dana Spiotta
He sat on the floor by the balcony, careful to blow the smoke out the open door. She noticed a small symbol affixed to the wall above his desk. Slightly to the left of the monitors. It was a small linocut print of a cat, stylized in futurist blocky black-and-white. The sabot cat, the anarchist symbol for sabotage. It looked creepy and unsettling here among the titanium laptops and infrared mouses.
She sat on the floor beside him and took a hit. The long light of the fading sun crept into the room as they smoked, making the metal grays almost rosy silver, glittering and glowing with reflected warmth.
Josh also had a tiny tattoo of the sabot cat on his chest. Miranda noticed it every time she undid the buttons on his shirt, revealing the smooth, nearly hairless chest, the white, clear skin and the small tattoo, sharp and black. It impressed her and reassured her. He had been this way for a while. He was committed. This was how Miranda measured commitment: the will to etch permanently your beliefs in skin. Here he was, in a development of three-car garages, cathedral ceilings and fifteen rooms, here he was with his two hundred e-mails and his clinically precise manipulations, already in possession of a genuine secret life. She thought of these things as she pulled him toward his bed.
Skin so milky and smooth it reminded her of marble statues, or melamine plastic plates, or ultramodern computer casings. He began some nice kissing on her stomach, just grazing her bra-clad breasts, edging around them with tantalizing restraint. His lips were coral pink and very soft. His mouth looked slightly swollen from rubbing her skin—he was almost girlish, pretty. He didn’t seem at all like her, with her sudden curves and subtle scents. She felt randomly colored, with tan lines and freckles, a bruise, a bump, a broken capillary. They tangled for hours on the bed, it seemed, with clothes loosened but not quite off, and long, deep kisses that unnerved Miranda at first but then made her want more and more. She drifted in and out in the darkening room, no music, no talk, just his generous mouth and his hands stroking her lower back, or her long hair, which even she had to admit probably felt nice to touch.
She did not yet love Josh. Not yet. But.
He was the real thing, wasn’t he? A serious person, a tactician, an expert. A certainist. He gave her his jacket and led her out on the balcony. From there they climbed on the roof, where the lone tree by the house gave a modicum of cover. It was hardly dark with all the ambient light from the streetlamps and pouring out through sliding glass “entertainment” doors. And tastefully lit pools, in the contemporary style, not seventies aqua-blue but a dark, econatural moss blue-green, with monument-style lighting. And here they lay back on the roof and smoked again. She ached and wanted to climb against him. Instead they lay shoulder to shoulder, nearly touching, staring at the sky. Josh told her of all the actions he had done, and then he laid out his future targets. And why.
She stared into the suburban night from their secret perch and listened.
Miranda messed with the radio. It had a search button on it, so it found a strong signal, stayed for a few seconds, then went on to the next strong signal.
“You’ll never get the college stations with that search button,” Josh said.
“I hate bad reception.”
“All the alternative stations have weak signals, though.”
“I have to pee.” They had taken Interstate 5 until they reached Ashland, Oregon. From there they went west to coastal Route One. Taking this detour was her idea. Miranda liked Route One. It was a highway, not a freeway, and you could see the difference in the surrounding areas. You could see redwoods and coastal views. Run-down old logger towns that seemed more a part of Oregon than California. Fields after fields of grapevines. Sad motels built with tree tourists in mind. The kitschy tunnel made in the base of an enormous ancient redwood so you can drive your car through and marvel at the size. She liked the lonely creaking of the trees when you walked under them, and their size. Not because big things impressed her per se but because she felt humbled and finally had a perspective of her own life in the history of the world. She felt a grasp of the spiritual, something hard for her to feel normally, walking along Fifteenth Avenue, or talking to her friends, or brushing her teeth. She loved knowing these trees would outlive her. And how tiny her life was, a blink of the universe. It comforted her, she didn’t feel insignificant, just part of something long and large and beyond her grasp. The world beyond her life and desires. It was then she felt a largeness of spirit and a generosity.
“There isn’t anywhere to go to the bathroom. If we took the interstate we could go to a rest stop,” Josh said and looked at his watch. Miranda switched off the radio.
“Why did you turn it off?”
“There’s a cafe. I’m hungry anyway.”
“There has to be at least one public station we can pick up.” It was Josh’s plan to drive down to Alphadelphia. She insisted on Highway One even though it added at least three hours to the trip. She was curious about Alphadelphia. She was curious about who actually lived there. When first inaugurated by its corporate underwriter, Allegecom, it was everywhere in the news. Allegecom—the massive corporate entity that contained everything from pharmaceuticals (through its offshoot Pherotek) to genetically modifying seeds with coordinated, matching pesticides (through its biotech arm, Versagro)—was taking an unprecedented foray into developing and running an entire community. Then the press attention abruptly stopped, as it always did, and no one mentioned it again. So how many years had it been?
“Five years. Population is now five thousand people.” Originally, three people applied for every open spot. She remembered hearing about what criteria were applied. How people tried to buy their way in. The stringent rules of Allegecom.
“That’s targeted capacity. The size that allows maximum diversity with minimum alienation.”
“Five thousand exactly.”
“Just enough people to keep you from going stir-crazy and inbred but not so many that you don’t feel surrounded by familiar faces. As determined by a precise social scientific program, developed by Allegecom’s team of crack human perfectionists.”
Josh had it all down. He had been turned on to the Alphadelphia kick by one of the anarchist groups he subscribed to online. It was on a list of targets. It seemed on the five-year anniversary of Alphadelphia, Allegecom had great public relations claims to make, great payoff for its hard work and considerable expense, in its social experiment, the First Self-Sustaining Techtopia in America. And they would announce plans for another, improved community on the East Coast. The perfect target for an action, but Miranda hadn’t heard what the action might be, or maybe Josh hadn’t figured it out yet.
There wasn’t, finally, much to see. Houses and cul-de-sacs. Lots of trees and consistent, intensely modern architecture. Horizontal homes of glass and metal. South-facing and integrated into the indigenous but cultivated foliage. Miranda didn’t think it looked bad at all.
“It’s not nostalgic or overly homogenized,” she said.
“It is just a gated tract development with a veneer of innovation. It is shallow and insidious and grotesque. A parody of a community,” Josh said. “Sustainable, ha.” He scrutinized the promo pamphlet he had in his hand. On the cover it said
Allegecom:
Building Communities That Tread Lightly
but Beautifully on the Earth
They didn’t come up with anything particularly subversive to do to Alphadelphia. But over the next few months Josh did concoct an elaborate parasite to hijack the recruitment page for Allegecom’s new community. At first glance the site looked exactly the same, but Josh inserted parody throughout. He changed the site subtitle from Green World to Greed World and revealed every counterpoint to the ecotopia they claimed to be creating and were heavily marketing. If users clicked on the little red wagon icon, which was where Allegecom discussed its community service projects, they were directed to a link about a lawsuit that a community of ten thousand in Central America was bringing against the biotech arm of the company. It showe
d pictures of sick animals and children, and then the company’s promotional material on the various pesticides and genetically altered seed sources to match, along with statistics of money made in third world countries by Allegecom. These sorts of hijackings and parodies weren’t illegal. Not yet. But they hovered in some middle ground, acknowledged by all concerned as soon-to-be-illegal activity.
In December Josh even made The New York Times. The Styles section did a piece on political hackers and included a description of Josh’s latest attack on Allegecom: The Corporate History Icon (a funny little anthropomorphized sprouted seed) on the Commitment & Community page took you to a Josh-hosted site describing how although Allegecom Pharmaceuticals marketed a plethora of antidepressants and antianxiety medications, it used to market dioxin to the Pentagon under its now defunct proto-pesticide division, Terrayield. It cited evidence that the research, development and marketing of dioxin continued despite the fact that their internal experiments had shown teratogenic and carcinogenic effects since the 1940s. You could then click on a little skull and crossbones icon to get the whole sad saga of Agent Orange and how hard it was to sue a now defunct, disappeared arm of the corporation. All divisions and subdivisions have separate identities, each with distinct liabilities.
After twelve days Allegecom took all of Josh’s work down. But not before a lot of people saw it and a lot of papers reported on it. The Times article not only revealed Josh as the author but even showed a picture of Josh at his computer, looking angular and cool, decidedly unhackerish. Miranda thought talking to a reporter was a little reckless. Josh was practically begging to get busted.
“Guess what?” Josh smiled and closed his eyes as he lay back on his bed. They were in the clean and perfect house. More and more they stayed there instead of at the Black House. Josh preferred it. More privacy. Fewer fleas.
“What?”
“Allegecom’s personnel department wrote me a letter.”
“Why?”
“Next month they want to fly me out to New York to meet with Leslie Winters, the project director for their new community.”
Miranda laughed and shook her head. “You’re kidding.”
“I think they want to offer me a job. New tactic—instead of prosecuting me, hire me. Sort of like promoting a union organizer to management.”
“Did you tell them to fuck off?”
“No. Are you kidding? This is a great opportunity to see Allegecom from the inside.” He sat up and squeezed her hand. “Don’t you want to come with me?”
Sure.
Visitors
HENRY WANTED to go out for a beer with Nash. They walked down the street to the salty British-style pub and sat in one of the back booths. Henry looked a little shaky. He smoked with his inhaler on the table. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
“What’s wrong? You look like you haven’t slept,” Nash said.
Henry turned his head and took a quick look over his shoulder. “Look, I need to talk to you.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, some of the shit I’m going to tell you, I don’t know.”
“It’s cool.”
“I don’t care at this point.” Henry took a long swallow of beer. “I sometimes have these dreams—but not exactly—waking nightmares.”
“Like night terrors,” Nash said.
“Yeah, but baroque, elongated, all-sense trances.”
“Like what?”
“Like really detailed hallucinations of spraying Agent Orange all over jungles and riverbanks. Spraying villages.”
“That’s horrible.”
“I’m dropping white phosphorus and napalm bombs. I can see it—smell it burning through skin. My skin, too.” Henry looked down at the table. “One nasty one I had—glass jars filled with formaldehyde and these fetal disasters. I see these faces and wake with these near smells still in my hair, and odd, off tastes in my mouth.”
Nash watched Henry stub out the cigarette. His breathing was getting heavier and shorter.
“Have you ever heard of anything like that—incongruous, inexplicable odors? Unexplained smells can be profoundly disturbing—I tried to find out about it,” Henry said.
“They’re hallucinations, just like hearing things or seeing things,” Nash said.
“The dead bodies of saints don’t smell like decay, you know. They smell like roses and perfume. They call it the odor of sanctity.”
“So what?”
“This is like the opposite of that—awful smells for evil things.”
Henry’s hand shook as he took out another cigarette and lit it. He inhaled and then started to sniff. He grabbed a bar napkin off the table and wiped his nose and forehead.
“God, that’s a hell of a thing,” Nash said. “You must have had some tour. No wonder you have this kind of trauma all these years later.”
Henry was nodding and then stopped, looking straight at Nash. “What are you talking about?”
“What happened to you. In Vietnam.”
“Nash, certainly something has been happening to me, but I was not in Vietnam.”
“Post-traumatic stress. Very common in vets—”
“I was 4-F for my hearing. I have never been to Vietnam.”
Nash watched Henry take another swig on a beer.
“What? You weren’t in combat?” he said.
Henry shook his head and swallowed.
“I wasn’t even hard of hearing. I faked out the test. It was the easiest test to fake, you just hesitate when they give you the graduated sounds, you wait a few seconds until you indicate you have heard something. The funny thing was that I ended up actually losing my hearing in one ear almost to the exact extent I faked it. You know—if you are out of sight, I don’t get much of what you say. Funny.”
“I’m stunned.”
“And I kind of feel like I deserve it. I knew all about that war, and I never did a thing to stop it. I made sure my ass was safe, and then I drank my way through those years. And I knew it was wrong. I didn’t do anything. And ever since I have paid and paid.”
“What do you mean?” Nash said.
“I mean I started getting symptoms a few years after the war ended. Of dioxin exposure, although I didn’t know what it was yet. I started researching about the war, and what we did there. I got rashes and asthma. I read everything I could. Then, about three years ago, I started in with these night and day terrors. The symptoms got much worse: insomnia, shaking, acute respiratory problems.”
“Are you getting help for this?”
“I’ve taken Nepenthex for years. And lately Blythin. They are designed specifically for combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“Henry, did you tell them you aren’t a vet?”
“They didn’t ask me. They said I have severe PTSD.”
“But it’s different, it isn’t related to experience.”
“But it is—I can’t explain, but these memories I have, these proxy memories, they are real.”
“Real memories…”
“Of things people have experienced. I’m certain. But that is not what I want to talk to you about.”
“You certainly have real physical symptoms.”
“The point is that up until now, I have only had dreams about combat. Last night was different.” Henry glanced behind him again and then leaned in toward Nash.
“It was also during the Vietnam War. But I was not a soldier, or at least not in the military. I was organizing to blow up houses. Big summer homes of some high-level corporate executives. I was working in someone’s empty home, setting explosives. The house workers had been warned to leave, I guess, because it seemed empty of humans. It did have family pictures and furniture and beds. Teacups and board games. I saw it all blown to bits. Some board member of Monsanto or General Electric or Dow Chemical. To protest against the war.”
“Really? But I guess it sort of makes sense. In a nonsense kind of way.”
“But.”
“What?”
Henry put his hand on the table and leaned toward Nash. “It wasn’t me, that’s the weird thing,” Henry said.
“That’s the weird part? That it wasn’t you?”
“It was you. In this dream, I was you. I was in your head, seeing through your eyes, but it was unmistakably you.”
Nash shook his head and then let out a short laugh. “Well, it was a dream, wasn’t it?” Nash said. “An immaterial, unreal, fantastic dream. You read about this stuff and then you dream about it. It’s a projection.”
Henry rubbed his bloodshot eyes.
“Not a memory or experience,” Nash said.
PART FIVE
1973–1980
Bellatrix
THE BUS LEFT Berry and Caroline ten miles west of Little Falls. They waited for three hours as drivers from the broken-down Erie Canal industrial towns sped past the two freak chicks hitchhiking. Caroline had asked Berry to help her dye and cut her hair. A new look for a new place, she told her. After they dyed it (a so-called auburn, an unfortunate synthetic beet tone), Caroline pulled her hair up and tied it in a topknot. Berry said cutting the topknot off would instantly give her a shag haircut, just like Jane Fonda in Klute. Caroline pulled some strands at the nape of her neck out to keep the back a little longer and then let Berry hack away at the ponytail. With some struggle it was cut through, leaving an uneven, layered, but undeniably shaggy hairdo. Berry left her hair as it was, curly and long, but let Caroline pile it up in a loose bun. Berry’s nose and upper lip were still swollen, but Caroline helped her cover the bruises with makeup.
“You want to make a good impression, don’t you?”
“I guess.”
Caroline looked in the mirror at every rest stop. Her hair looked awful, but she certainly looked different. She put on a crocheted floppy hat, large-framed sunglasses, opaque lipstick, and decided not to care too much. Eventually, walking and hitching, they made it up into Herkimer County, a swath of sparsely populated farmland hills that rose up from the Mohawk River, part nineteenth-century ghost town industrial, part bucolic country utopia, green and almost obscenely lush and dense. They stopped at the New Harmon General Store, picking up two six-packs of beer, a sack of rice and a large jar of peanut butter. Caroline took out her county map.
