The Epiphany Machine

by David Burr Gerrard

  The truth? The truth was that I had observed no pattern, had learned nothing.

  “They make a clear decision to change?”

  “Why are you offering your insight as though you’re asking a question? Is it because you’re DEPENDENT ON THE OPINION OF OTHERS?”

  “They make a clear decision to change.”

  “Did you ever make a clear decision to change?”

  “I think so?”

  “You ‘think so’? And have you changed?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “People who actually improve after their epiphanies are people who make a decision not to change.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You are who you are. That’s why the epiphanies are in ink.”

  This suddenly struck me as obvious.

  “Why get the epiphany tattoo?” he asked. “So that you can stop trying to change. So that you accept yourself. You accept yourself if you’re a person like me, a person of superior abilities who needs to remember not to feel guilty for accomplishing so much more and earning so much more than other people, although in my case I’ve always known that and have never needed to use the machine. You accept yourself if you’re a person like my father, a man whose extraordinary gifts were outmatched by his overwhelming need to be told what to do. As strange as I find it for my father to have given up the career of an acclaimed violinist for the career of an anonymous factory worker, I recognize that he fulfilled his specific destiny. You, too, should accept yourself as you are. You have nothing like my father’s gifts, but otherwise you’re a lot like him. You’re a guy who is decently intelligent but can’t make up his own mind and will be much happier if he fulfills his destiny by following somebody’s orders, instead of beating himself up all the time about not being the lone-wolf genius he wishes he were. You came to me because you need to follow someone’s orders, and you know that I am the person whose orders you need to follow.”

  The truth of this insight struck me immediately, so much so that it put me in a defeated and obsequious mood. But I reminded myself that I had come here because I was certain I had a mission.

  “I’m not going to sit here and take this,” I said.

  “Of course you’re not,” he said. “Because you can’t accept what the machine told you. You’re what Adam calls ‘a waste of ink.’ Adam is an extraordinary observer of human personality, and if you would simply admit to yourself that you are DEPENDENT ON THE OPINION OF OTHERS, then you could get down to the important work you should be doing.”

  “Good-bye and fuck you.”

  “Is that what you would say to a kid who’s soon going to be molested by a guy who DOES NOT UNDERSTAND BOUNDARIES? ‘Good-bye, kid, and fuck you’?”

  I had never heard anyone other than Adam talk about the DOES NOT UNDERSTAND BOUNDARIES tattoo before. I did not say anything, but I also did not leave.

  Vladimir smiled and took a bite of a dark chocolate candy bar that he apparently kept in his desk. “I have somebody who analyzes data for law enforcement who noticed that a bunch of child molesters arrested over the last few decades have had DOES NOT UNDERSTAND BOUNDARIES epiphany tattoos,” he said. “I’m guessing that Adam, whether he’s aware of it or not, has some kind of sixth sense—sick sense?—for child molesters, so this is the tattoo he’s choosing for them. He also has some kind of sense for terrorists, which is why he chooses WANTS TO BLOW THINGS UP tattoos for them.”

  Again, I did not say anything, but I also did not leave.

  “This is where the epiphany machine’s usefulness becomes a bit tricky,” Vladimir said. “We don’t want child molesters and terrorists to just accept themselves. But that doesn’t mean that the machine has no purpose for them. Child molesters and terrorists need—probably, in many ways, want—to be destroyed, and the machine can destroy them.

  “Now, let’s get to the real reason why you’re here. You’re upset about Devin Lanning, that you didn’t stop him when you had the chance, and you’re right to be upset about that, but there’s something that bothers you more. You go back and forth on your friend Ismail. Some days you’re certain that he is a terrorist and that he’s getting what is coming to him, other days you’re certain he is innocent and you’re essentially a Judas who didn’t even get thirty pieces of silver. So you want to work for an organization that is dedicated to making epiphanies public, meaning that you’ll be working against Ismail and people like him, because by making this kind of commitment you’ll be convincing yourself that Ismail is guilty. Right?”

  I knew that this was exactly why I was here. “That’s not why I’m here,” I said.

  “Venter. Of course it is. And of course it’s natural to feel conflicted about what’s being done to your friend, and to feel confused about whether he’s guilty. You’re looking for certainty that he was planning to destroy that bridge, so that you can sleep at night knowing that you did the right thing.”

  “I haven’t slept a full night in a really long time,” I said.

  “Because you haven’t found that certainty yet. September 11 raised the stakes for everyone, and your tattoo is out of date. You’re no longer DEPENDENT ON THE OPINION OF OTHERS; you’re DEPENDENT ON THE CERTAINTY OF OTHERS. Who can offer you that certainty? I can. I’m a very smart guy, Venter. All day long, I look at information and decide who’s telling the truth, who’s lying, who is a grand visionary, and who is a deluded moron. I’m so good at it that it has made me billions of dollars. Billions. I’ve looked a lot at your friend Ismail’s case, and do you know how much doubt I have that he was planning a terrorist attack? Zero. He has been arrested and has not been let go. I can list about ten million ways in which the American government is stupid and wrongheaded, but it wouldn’t keep a man in captivity without trial unless it had evidence that had to be kept secret for many reasons that we can clearly imagine.”

  “I’ve been thinking along the same lines,” I said.

  “You’ve been thinking along similar lines, but you’ve also been thinking along opposing lines. ‘What if the government messed up? What if hysteria in the wake of the attacks led the FBI to arrest a man for nothing other than a tattoo some people say is magic?’ You’ll never be able to decide which of those two sides is right, so your mind is a field on which you watch those two sides toss the ball back and forth, with no real system of scoring and no point at which the game is set to end, except for your own death.”

  “My father used a similar metaphor once about keeping score. He took me to a cemetery and . . .”

  “Your father’s a smart man, but he’s misled by what he wants to believe. He wants to believe that people are complicated enough to deserve rights. But they’re not. Each of us has a very simple role to play. My role is to use my judgment. My judgment is among the best that the world has ever seen, and I have judged your friend to be guilty. It’s good that you’re crying, because this is important. Don’t you want to share in my certainty?”

  He reached into a drawer and pulled out a box of tissues whose sole purpose appeared to be given to people whom Vladimir had just made cry. I took one and wiped my eyes and blew my nose.

  “I do,” I said.

  “Good. Remember that. There will be times when you’ll have doubts and you’ll want to leave. But never forget that if you leave, all you will have will be doubts.”

  “I won’t forget,” I said.

  “Excellent. Go see Carol in human resources; she’ll take care of you from here. Make sure to get a s’more on the way out.”

  I threw out my soaking, snotty tissue in the bathroom, started crying again, went through a few more tissues, and then headed out into the lobby to put a piece of dark chocolate between two graham crackers. I dropped a couple pieces of dark chocolate on the freshly buffed floor, but nobody who passed by seemed to mind, since this was obviously a freshly buffed floor that would soon be freshly buffed again. I stared
into the furnace and watched the flame thicken and thin and thicken again. I thought about putting my hand into the furnace and burning myself alive the way that James does in the Merdula book. I could see the flames on my arm; I could feel the terror but also perhaps the relief that that pedophile must have felt as DOES NOT UNDERSTAND BOUNDARIES was about to be consumed. Perhaps word would find its way back to Ismail that I had killed myself, and that would bring him some comfort, wherever he was.

  CHAPTER

  33

  My first day at Harrican’s nonprofit—Citizens for Knowledge and Safety—consisted of an orientation and of getting situated in my cubicle. The following two weeks consisted of me sitting in a conference room alone with the deputy director of Citizens for Knowledge and Safety, answering questions about the epiphany machine and Ismail. At the end of those two weeks, the deputy director, highly unsatisfied with the information I had given him, insisted that I sit in a cubicle and write down my experiences.

  It would be a report, he said, but it would also be a memoir. It would tell the story of the machine through the story of my life. He did not mention a deadline. That was a mistake.

  Writing has never been easy for me, and I certainly did not find it easy to type the story of my life in a cubicle, a perfect post at which to listen to my coworkers talk about the epiphany machine all day, trying with their every sentence not to give away what the machine would have written on their arms had they ever gotten tattooed.

  I kept a Microsoft Word document full of my guesses.

  –Steve, the executive director: ABANDONED HIS MOTHER WHEN SHE GOT SICK

  –Franklin, the deputy director: HAS BEEN CHEATING ON WIFE, STILL CONVINCED HE IS A VICTIM

  –Kristen, an outreach coordinator: KNOWS THAT SHE WOULD STILL HATE HERSELF EVEN IF SHE HAD PERFECT PARENTS

  –Lisa, an accountant: HOPES THAT HER JOKES ABOUT EMBEZZLING AND MOVING TO THE BAHAMAS COVER HER CONSTANT FANTASIES ABOUT EMBEZZLING AND MOVING TO THE BAHAMAS. Or maybe: TRIES TO CONVINCE SELF THAT SHE IS TOO MORALLY UPRIGHT TO EMBEZZLE, BUT KNOWS THAT SHE IS JUST TOO FEARFUL

  Every day that I showed up to work, I felt certain that I had, in fact, absorbed Vladimir Harrican’s certainty. I felt certain that I was not betraying my friend with every minute I spent in this office. I felt certain, too, that I was not jealous of Cesar Solomon. My freshman-year roommate had, unbeknownst to me, been writing fiction throughout college. Less than one year after we graduated, he published a celebrated debut novel. The Asperger Syndrome told two parallel stories: one, set in Croatia during World War II, told the story of Hans Asperger, a medical officer with the Nazi army who has not yet discovered the condition that will be named for him, and the other, set in contemporary New Jersey, told the story of a Jewish teenager with Asperger’s syndrome. The New York Times Book Review had likened Cesar to “a Steven Merdula with a taste for meticulous research and historical accuracy.” I thought that the book sounded extremely stupid, and I hated myself for not having written it. I read every blog post and review I could find about it. In most cases, I read the negative ones two or three times. Then I read the book and I thought it was excellent. I reread the negative reviews to convince myself I was wrong. I reminded myself that I wasn’t trying to write fiction and that if I ever decided to try to write fiction again, it would be better than Cesar’s, though maybe not as popular, since what I would write would be tough, unconcerned with pleasing readers and critics. But for now, I was doing something more important than making up stories.

  Of course, I didn’t really believe any of this, however much I tried to. What I actually believed was that Ismail, were he not locked up who knew where, would be a better writer than Cesar. Ismail would have written a great play by now or would be well on his way to writing one. He had been making such progress in his writing, and that progress had been halted, possibly forever, by me.

  No. He had halted his own progress. By deciding to become a terrorist.

  The Soricillo twins. The people that Ziad Jarrah had murdered. The people Ismail would have murdered had I not stopped him. I had to think of them whenever I had doubts. Certainty is a habit and a skill, and I had to practice.

  When I had been at Citizens for Knowledge and Safety for almost a year, I explained in a staff meeting—attended by Vladimir Harrican, a notable event even though he was attending only by conference call from many floors above us—that I would need another year to complete a memoir about the machine thorough enough to be used to combat the machine. Franklin, the deputy director, said that if I was truly DEPENDENT ON THE OPINION OF OTHERS I should probably speed it up so they didn’t all think I was lazy and dim. The remark hurt, and so did the general laughter it elicited, primarily because I was convinced I was lazy and dim. Everyone looked at the plastic triangle at the center of the conference table, waiting for Vladimir’s voice to waft through it. Vladimir was silent for long enough for me to wonder whether he had been paying attention, or if he would fire me, and so give me a reprieve.

  “This is why Citizens for Knowledge and Safety has yet to make progress against Adam Lyons,” Vladimir said, to murmurs of agreement. “None of you understand the importance of working and working until you’ve gotten something right. Venter is to be given all the time he needs.”

  Apologetic mumblings, shame on everyone’s faces. By the end of the day, all my coworkers had convinced themselves and were trying to convince each other that they had always supported my project and approved of the amount of time it was taking me to complete it.

  “Franklin thinks he has all the answers,” said my coworker Kristen, “but he has never appreciated your talent.” Kristen had laughed appreciatively when Franklin made his disparaging remark.

  My victory did not make me happy; nor did I find it invigorating to be surrounded by coworkers who were DEPENDENT ON THE OPINION OF OTHERS. But I had decided that I was doing quality work, and quality work takes time.

  After three months, during which I had done almost no work at all, I saw Rebecca for the first time since graduation. She was sitting at a table in Bryant Park, wearing a peach sundress and holding a highlighter above a massive textbook like an expert hunter waiting for the right moment. She was so absorbed in her work that I hesitated to call out to her, and even wondered whether it was really her, or someone who looked like her, but who was more studious, more beautiful. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that she had always been studious and beautiful, and I had only intermittently noticed it.

  “Rebecca,” I called out finally. This caught the attention of another woman, presumably named Rebecca, but it did not catch the attention of the woman I still thought of as “my Rebecca.”

  “Rebecca Hart.” As soon as I said the second word I flinched, annoyed at myself for calling attention to her full name, but the other Rebecca had returned to her scone and no one else looked up, the world having abandoned Rebecca Hart for other demons. I said “Rebecca Hart” again, and this time my Rebecca looked up. I’ll never forget the look on her face when she saw me, a look of total relief and total love that totally confused me.

  I sat down beside her, and the first thing she told me was that she loved law school, but feared becoming a corporate lawyer. She was hoping to get a job in human rights.

  “Every day I thank whatever god is responsible for the epiphany machine,” she said. “I know I can never have children, so I know where my focus needs to be.”

  “You don’t actually believe that you’re going to kill your children.”

  “I don’t actually believe that, because I’m not going to have children.”

  “Rebecca.”

  “Venter. It’s been a while since I’ve said that, that’s fun. Look, do I think it’s likely I would kill my children? No. Do I think it’s possible? I mean, it figured out our friend was a terrorist, so that’s a pretty compelling track record.”

  “Are you making fun of me?” />
  “Absolutely not. Honestly, I find it difficult to make fun of anything anymore, given all those emails from Leah.”

  “What emails from Leah?”

  “Oh, I just assumed she’s been emailing you, too. She sends me long emails two or three times a month about what a horrible monster I am for refusing to stand up for Ismail. She’s been writing a play criticizing the War on Terror, and I’ve told her that she should focus on that rather than on harassing me. I stopped responding a long time ago, because she won’t listen to reason, and she doesn’t seem to be bothered by that hateful email he sent me just before 9/11. She really doesn’t email you? Don’t you work for Vladimir Harrican now?”

  “She’s probably written me off as beyond redemption.” There was no need for me to have said “probably.” My father was in nearly constant contact with her as they both worked to free Ismail, and they met for the regular dinners one might expect of a father and adult child who live in the same city. He had let slip in a phone call once that Leah thought I was “beyond redemption.”

  “And that probably bothers you, because you’re DEPENDENT ON THE OPINION OF OTHERS. Which brings us back to the original point: the epiphany machine is real, Ismail is guilty, and I will kill any children I have.” She spread her arms wide to assert, at once mockingly and sincerely, that she had proven her point. “And now that we’ve covered that, I might as well mention something else. I’ve been thinking about getting in contact with you for a while.”

  “About what?”

  “I’ve been on a lot of dates with a lot of guys. Usually it goes terribly. But I dated two guys for a month each, and both of those guys mentioned offhand that they one day want to have kids. I told them I refuse because of the Rebecca Hart thing, and they . . . don’t get it. This has led me to believe that you’re the only guy for me. You don’t get it either, but at least you get the machine. Plus, I miss you.”