Ms. Ming's Guide to Civilization

by Jan Alexander

  “No offense, but you don’t look much like a wise sage in this form.”

  “I was on the Nirvana Selection Committee, and despite my best efforts, every now and then someone with inadequate credentials would talk their way in. We geniuses were unkind. We had our own pecking order. Soren Kierkegaard could make mincemeat of my words every time I tried to offer proof there is no defining essence except what we believe it to be. Fyodor Dostoyevsky set Andrew Carnegie weeping with frustration when the rich man told the great author he related completely to Raskolnikov’s view of himself as an ubermensch and thought it was a shortcoming of the law that he had to go to Siberia….”

  “So you all waved your dicks around, like I’m so impressed. Where were the women?”

  “Oh, did I not tell you about Virginia Woolf? Zenia and I spent many a happy hour in her company. We had a bit of a ménage à trois. Everyone was in love with Virginia. There were a number of gifted women. Li Qingzhao, the ancient poet with the melancholy lyrics, like “Ten thousand songs of farewell failed to detain the loved one.” When Will Shakespeare read his sonnets a lot of us jeered and said they were just a derivative of the love poems Li had been writing in the heavens. Will admitted a Chinese woman had whispered sonnets to him in his dreams.

  “We liked to be muses to mortals who had grand aspirations, you see; those who dreamt of literature, art, and music, and who would move civilization forward. What we didn’t expect was an invasion of mortals who craved nothing except what money could buy them. They bought friends and favors on earth, and they found a similar route to paradise.

  “It was those souls who paid their way to heaven who started telling the gods about privatization. The idea that everyone would respect the place more if they had to pay for it. Some of them began experimenting, with an eye to creating discrepancies. That was the beginning, you see. They made finer wines, fancier garments. We cared little for such things, but they invited us to their clouds and we became accustomed to drinking true nectar of the gods. Another clever bastard manufactured a dirty, cold rain that poured relentlessly over our old clouds, while in their gardens the air was pure and fresh and precisely the right temperature. When Zenia and I ventured into one of their gardens, a guard stopped us and said we’d have to pay admission.

  “Oh, they were shrewd. We had no currency, of course, so one of the market-economy gurus started cranking out little plastic cards. The gardens became private property, and prices soared. The enlightened ones became obsessed with bargain-hunting; they’d fix up their clouds and sell them for profit. Confucius would have nothing of it. Then Zenia and I realized that our own dark, miserable cloud was shrinking. It was so small we kept bumping into each other, like caged animals, and we started fighting again. It was too late to buy a garden cloud. In fact, a slumlord had bought our cloud out from under us and he kept jacking up our rent. We worked at a number of jobs during the day, and spent many a sleepless night trying to figure out how we were ever going to pay our debts. We didn’t have the energy to contemplate the universe.

  “And then, just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, the privatizers started railing about us. They said we were lazy, that we’d spent so many centuries indulging in idle talk that produced nothing but more questions. They singled out poor Confucius in his rags and said he wasn’t industrious and didn’t deserve a home.

  “Those of us who’d practiced enlightenment found we could get paid for certain things, although only a pittance. The population liked books about how to invest your money, and many of our great minds started churning out books with titles like Make a Celestial Fortune, Eternal Love for Dummies, Unreal Profits from Real Estate.”

  “At least you didn’t have to pay for dentists.”

  “You’ve obviously never seen Confucius’s teeth. While everyone was beautiful in paradise, somehow, in the expensive gardens, you could see flaws you never noticed before. Oddly shaped noses, rolls of body flab, wrinkles and warts. Surgeons did a booming business in changing faces and bodies. Women with bound feet wanted them stretched out, then someone started designing shoes that cost more than the medical procedure.”

  “You had shoes in heaven?”

  “Oh, sure. You even had packaging and branding. We had arrived with nothing, and the money-grubbers declared that that was the beauty of it—a level playing field—so if you didn’t have the smarts to launch a business you had only yourself to blame. In fact, they started demanding that you come in with a business plan as the price of admission. I used to watch Jack Kerouac through the hole in my cloud. I was even tempted to enter a mortal body again just so I could get in one of those oil-burning machines and swish along the highways contemplating mortal life.”

  “My husband liked him—”

  “By then I didn’t have much time to inspire anyone, since I had to work three jobs just to keep up with my debts, but I did sneak down a time or two and whisper words to Jack while he slept. I was pleased to see that he scribbled them down when he woke up. But when he applied to come up to paradise—actually they called it Paradise Inc. by then—the bouncers at the velvet rope threw him out. Why? Because he didn’t have a business plan! They laughed at Jack because he didn’t know what a business plan even was.

  “You can’t breathe freedom until you’ve walked away from all you know, slept under the stars and followed the sun as it rises in the east and sets in the west. You’re searching for something undefined, and on your way you put it into poetry, you sing it and dance it, and you almost feel it for a fleeting moment when you’ve tasted true love in one person’s kiss… then you know what can be. It’s art itself that transfigures humanity.”

  “I won’t argue. But you left the woman you loved for this?” Ming gesticulated toward the dismal village.

  “We staged a demonstration protesting the guardians turning Jack away. We were abandoned, set adrift on an empty cloud until some guys in construction hats came along with a permit to build there. We had a scuffle but they just built right beneath our feet.

  “And then Zenia and I got an eviction notice from our slumlord. He wanted us off our cloud so he could build a luxury villa. That was when I decided enough, I’d had it. I vowed I would return to earth to destroy the source of this heavenly covetousness. Some of us had talked about how that was the only way we were ever going to get our paradise back. I didn’t know how, but I was going to discover some way to remake the world down here, so that it would be like the heavens used to be, a world where those who have the status are the artists, the benevolent leaders and statesmen, the philosophers; those who can offer reasons to live and love and think, not those who care only about making fortunes and consuming.”

  Ming, entranced, suddenly wished she could spend eternity there on the Buddha’s loin, listening to the mad hermit’s operatic voice. “A world where everyone can afford the things they need, and nobody needs to worship money,” she said, and sighed. “Would you call it evolution?”

  The hermit slid down the Buddha’s flank, then took a leap into the distant rice fields. “Where are you going?” Ming called out, and heard her voice echo across the riverbanks. In a flash, though, he had returned.

  “Do you know what they’re doing over there?” he asked, gesturing with his head toward the factory buildings in the distant haze. He had both hands closed, apparently hiding something in each palm.

  Ming opened her mouth to reply, but he answered himself. “Nothing. The factory isn’t worth a rat’s nest. The researchers spend their days watching soap operas and soccer games. They hid the TV for your visit, did you know that?”

  “How do you know?” But Ming remembered how the pig brains had disappeared so quickly, how the cricket had saved her, and shook her head with wonder, like a child walking into a fairy tale.

  He grinned. “Ah, but I’m Sun Wu Kong, the Monkey King. I can transform myself into seventy-two different forms. I can be a grasshopper or
a spider or I can become invisible. I know many, many things, dear Ming. I could be of use to you, if you let me.” He regarded her intently, then shuffled closer, opening his left hand to reveal a handful of tiny pinkish grains. “Do you know what this is?”

  “Soil?”

  “And what do they make here?”

  “My parents used to make silicon products. Tang Fei pretends they still do, is that what you mean?”

  “There’s salt in the soil,” he pontificated, “and silicon in the salt. That dimwit Tang Fei knows about soccer scores, and he knows how to make up numbers. If I were to take over this factory, I’d have to find something to keep Tang and his buddies occupied, but I’ve pretty much figured out the rest.”

  “You, a philosopher, take over the company? Now you want to become one of the capitalists who destroyed your paradise?”

  “I don’t,” he said, and stiffened. “But there are more honorable motivations. Someone who’s figured it out might manufacture a biomolecule that looks like a flat grain of rice and processes transactions at the speed of light. The biomolecule is derived from an obscure bacteria that thrives in ponds so salty that the surface is pink and foamy. Cloning the bacteria creates a superorganism that emulates human intelligence. Think of it. This is a biomolecule you can use to create eyes for the blind, or you send man-less combat planes to kill your enemy. And if you are really, truly wise and agile, you can change the very nature of humans themselves. So Ming, tell me, what is it that you really want?”

  “I want…” she stopped and looked around as if to make sure no one was laughing at her. But his eyes blazed with nothing by sympathy. “I want to be a writer. I want to wake up every morning and just write. I want to be free, you know, to get in a car and just keep going. I want to love someone who makes me feel transcendent.”

  “Anybody can make you feel transcendent for half an hour. There must be more. Your true nature lies in the scope of your dreams.”

  “No, I mean, I want to love someone who knows all about what I did and still thinks of me as his home and wherever we are, we’re at home when we’re together.”

  “Okay. A good start. Believe it or not, there are other investors that would love to be the shark that swallows this factory for a bargain, but if you’re going to do that you’d better have what I have. Take a look.”

  He opened his right hand. Over the layers of dirt on his palm was a miniscule pile of particles that looked like translucent fragments of rice grains.

  “An invisible man knows all. I figured it out about a year ago, and I grew this bacteria in their lab during the night. Don’t let its small size fool you, this powerful chip is capable of anything. It could be used to manufacture smart bombs. The Chinese government could have weapons of mass destruction like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Every empire, evil or good, would find a way to get their own. And what will become of mankind then?”

  “But you’d use it to change human nature? What do you want from me?”

  “Your instincts. My brain. And your brother’s private equity.” The ragged man grinned, his eyes filled with fiery hope. “The Taoists say heaven and earth are random, but you wandered into my path once, and now again. With one of my seventy-two transformations, I can become tiny and invisible, just a little whisper through your mind, tickling your cerebrum. I could leave behind a nano-sized protein chip in your brain, connected sub-atomically to a central command system.”

  “A command system that does what exactly?”

  “Consider the possibilities. What if a creature the size of a whisper, or a gnat, perhaps, were to plant these biomolecules in the brains of the men of big business, of the powerful and influential? I believe they’re mostly men, though there could be some messages for women too. But consider, what does your brother think when he looks at himself in the mirror in the morning? He thinks, ‘I’m a guy who’s so smart, I’m creating wealth, and if you’re half as smart as I am, you can grab a bit of it for yourself.’ Well, what if he were to wake up one morning and think something different like, ‘What is this all for? Why is the world a jungle dominated by the thirst for power and wealth? Why do I exist? What is the meaning of life?’ He’ll stand there, shivering like a dying man, but somehow, he’ll see marvelous hues—colors he can’t even begin to describe in his big important MBA head—he’ll hear cymbals clash and a symphony, followed by the sweet birdsong of civilization as it could be.”

  Ming felt dizzy. “If only. I wish you really were the Monkey King.”

  “I am a scholarly enlightened gentleman.” He held his head high. “I see what money can do if it’s finally in the hands of the truly enlightened. Do you know those wacky Taoists used to be obsessed with finding a magic formula for immortality? They made elixirs with mercury and lead and gave them to wealthy patrons willing to risk all for the promise of perpetual life. Of course, everyone who drank it died. The market economy is supposed to be a magic formula, but it operates like a chalice filled with mercury. But it doesn’t have to be.”

  The hermit started to move, stretching his limbs and flexing his knuckles until they cracked; then, he leapt up and down, and was gone—nothing there but an emerald dragonfly buzzing at Ming’s side.

  Ming, on a sudden impulse, ran into the cave, pulled the blue and green striped towel from the little shrine, and ran back out.

  Out of nowhere, the hermit Monkey King appeared at her side again.

  “Do you know what this is for?” She held up the ragged towel. It still gave off a faint whiff of peach-mango.

  “Sure. People use these to dry off after they wash in the indoor waterfall. Give it back.” His face, Ming couldn’t help but notice, was flushed beneath the grime.

  “I’ll give it back if you’ll tell me something. Why did you say, ‘Come alone’?”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  You have a crush on my friend. She was certain of it, watching how hungrily his eyes followed the towel as she flapped it around. “I have my hands on the private equity and I can say no to everything if you don’t tell me the truth.”

  He slumped down against the Buddha’s foot, looking more wounded than he had that night in the pagoda after Zoe kicked him.

  Ming decided to sit down next to him and wait a while. Then she asked, “You must miss your immortal love. Is she waiting up there or what?”

  He buried his head in his shoulders, and when he spoke, it was in a mumble. “She insisted on diving down to earth too. I told her not to. I was the one who’d cultivated conduct, I could come back here and choose my form. She was practicing enlightenment but she had a long way to go. I told her, if you dive down, it’s a black hole, and you don’t know where you’ll end up. Her immortal soul would be unconscious, maybe subconscious at times. I said what if you come back as a rabbit or a deer and you have to spend your whole short life running from wolves and hunters.”

  “Maybe she thought being prey in the forest was still better than being homeless in the heavens?”

  He leaped up again, and for a moment Ming thought he might be on his way. The clouds were beginning to turn a deep violet, a reminder that the day was not eternal.

  But he stood still, gazing at the violet sky then down at the earth, so silent he startled Ming when he spoke again. “She said, ‘I’m not as unconscious as you think.’ She said, ‘whatever fleshly form I assume, I’ll try to make it human, and female. And when I see you, I’ll have some kind of instinct, I’ll beat you with my sideways kick from behind and you’ll know it’s me.’”

  “Whaaatttt????” For a moment Ming imagined the earth had cracked in half.

  The hermit bowed his head again. “For a beginner to kickbox with Sun Wu Kong is like trying to smash a rock with eggs, but she practiced over the centuries. The first time she tackled me with her side kick, I wouldn’t speak to her for twenty years. Yeah, it was a big blow to my ego.” Then he
sank down next to Ming. “Maybe we can get together again in her next lifetime. She saw me like this.”

  “Poor monkey.” Ming ventured a hand upon his filthy shoulder.

  A gasp of sun etched itself through the purple clouds, then faded while the two of them pondered silently. Ming let emptiness and thoughts of her own screwed-up life float through her mind, along with a preposterous recollection of a book she’d read in business school called Transformation.

  “You can transform yourself into a stupid bird or a cricket. So why can’t you make yourself a handsome, debonair human?”

  He shrugged. “I’d still be a starving hermit in the pagoda.”

  I have private equity, Ming reminded herself. She wanted, more than anything, to believe everything this squalid creature claimed.

  “Maybe,” she said, “I can help. You know, my brother isn’t going to want to invest in Sunshine Village Silicon Works, but if you come to Beijing looking like a visionary who can resurrect a dead company, maybe we can get him to buy it.”

  He considered that. “When I was a Buddhist believer, we recruited followers by telling them they would get what they wanted if they follow our teachings. Then, when they become believers, they transcended mortal cravings and achieved true bliss.”

  “See, you’re a born marketer.”

  They talked about Sunshine Village, New York, the New Icarus Capital account that Ming could access, and a great many other things. Ming told him about a special soap he could get in the village. “It’ll get rid of the creatures you think are your friends just because they crawl on you. You can get into places without a key, so find a place to wash in the indoor waterfall, every day.”

  He scratched his head and pulled off a couple of the crawly things. But when he broke into a faint smile the sun beat another faint crack through in the clouds. When Ming finally ambled away, a titian sunset lit the sky. The magical afternoon had her almost dancing along the path, all the way to the courtyard of the guesthouse.