The Love Machine & Other Contraptions

by Nir Yaniv

  And then I had to start taking his ability seriously.

  ~

  At first, I tried to convince him that his ability was special.

  “Not really,” he said. “It’s a part of the job description. An editor has to know stories, be familiar with story structure and with writing techniques. That’s all. Any good editor will tell you that. You can ask around.”

  “I already tried that,” I said. I had managed to locate, with some help from people in the growing science fiction community, a literary editor who worked in one of the biggest publishing houses in Israel. I showed him several story beginnings, written by myself and by other people. He had no idea what to make of them.

  “He had no idea what to make of them,” I said.

  “Who was it that you talked to?” asked Katzenberg.

  I told him.

  “Well, with all due respect, it seems to me that no one, in this particular case, could argue that he’s a good editor,” he said, and nipped my argument in the bud.

  ~

  “I had this idea,” I told him one evening, when he was looking sufficiently relaxed, “About your ability—the way you know the end of stories...”

  “Yes?” Katzenberg said. He took off his reading glasses and stretched a hand toward his pipe.

  “Maybe you can know the end of other things too?”

  “Things?”

  “Like, movies.”

  “That is indeed the case,” he said. “After all, a movie usually contains a story. Of sorts.”

  “Even if it’s a documentary film?”

  “If it’s good, yes,” he said, though his expression told me that this wasn’t at all common.

  “And what about, for instance, the ends of other things?”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as, say, the future. You can know the future.”

  “And how have you reached this startling conclusion?”

  “Quite logically,” I said, maybe somewhat recklessly. “I mean, articles in the newspaper are just little stories, and usually they don’t have an end, because they don’t know the future, so they’ll be continued tomorrow, so if you read enough articles you can know what’s going to happen in the future, can’t you?”

  “Not a bad idea,” Katzenberg said. “Alas, you’ve ignored three obstacles. The first: newspaper articles aren’t really stories—a story is a form of art, and the article pretends to represent reality. The second: most of the people who write those articles aren’t fit to write a story—in fact, most of them aren’t fit for anything—and the newspaper ‘editors,’ for lack of a better word, are even worse.”

  “But you could try reading them,” I said.

  “Which brings us to the third obstacle, which is the result of the second,” he said. “I will not, under any circumstances, stoop to reading newspapers.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Then suppose there’s someone about whom you know many facts, everything, in fact. Can’t you know, in this case, how his story will end? For instance, do you know what will happen to yourself?”

  “Of course I know how my story will end,” Katzenberg said. “Don’t you know how yours will?”

  I had no answer for that.

  ~

  For some time it seemed to me that I had gained nothing from the discussion with Katzenberg, but eventually it gave me the idea for the final breakthrough in my writing software. A story is a form of art and an article represents reality, but those two aren’t completely separate, and some would even insist that one is the other’s mirror, though it’s unclear which is which. But if that’s so, I thought, then I shouldn’t feed the software with books—I should feed it with real life. My own life, for a start.

  I started by rewriting the whole thing. My programming ability had greatly improved by that time, and I had also managed to learn the first rule of programmers (and writers) everywhere: steal as much as you can. This noble principle allowed me to finish the job in slightly less than two months; I assume that many writers owe it much more. Then I spent four months keying my life into my computerized Frankenstein’s monster. I poured my parents into it, and the public library of my childhood, and my service in the Air Force and the move to Tel Aviv, and my part time job and quite a bit of Katzenberg. I added quotes from my favorite books, some texts from Starlight and from other sources, some of my very best stories and some—to be fair—that weren’t.

  Eventually, quietly, without any fuss, a simple file was written within my hard disk, and the computer finally came to rest.

  When I opened the file I found, inside, a wonderful half-story.

  ~

  For years I’ve had to fight my desire to show the program’s output to Katzenberg. I must know what will happen at the end—but I dare not. The end of the story, of course, not my own end. I don’t want to know what my own end will be, and I’m terrified by the thought of knowing exactly when and where it’ll happen, and by the possibility of Katzenberg telling me incidentally while reading the first paragraph.

  But the end of the story, that I must know. On the other hand, Katzenberg may just get mad at me. Or maybe he’ll understand that his ability is unique, that there’s no one else like him. I’m afraid—but have to know. I don’t have any idea what will happen then, but I’m sure he does. I think—only think—that it wouldn’t surprise him. Or maybe it’ll kill him. Or me.

  I don’t know. Maybe I’m going crazy.

  I simply must know how the story ends.

  ~

  “Please don’t tell me you write science fiction,” he said, and distractedly dropped some ash from his pipe onto the big pile of manuscripts spread out on his desk. That’s how he greeted me when I came in for the job interview at the moldy and book-laden Tel-Avivian basement, in which we would later spend many days together. That was at the end of January or the beginning of February, nineteen ninety-five.

  END OF OUTPUT STREAM.

  Contraption: Town Machine

  They light up at night and darken in the daytime, floating gently on the thin crust of dirt covering the inferno below. If you look closely at one of them you can see tiny, almost insignificant parts moving around, though there’s no guessing what their roles might be. Some think they are tiny gods within the machine, computing the outcome of our loves and wars. Others claim them to be nothing but cogs and wheels, whose function we might never know. Still others dismiss all such theories and, whenever encountering such a machine, either lit up or darkened for the day, simply pick it up and eat it.

  It’s as good a use for it as any other.

  Undercity

  That day, the complacent city received three warnings. No one bothered to take notice. The city listened only to itself.

  ~

  At the seashore, just before sunrise, a teenage girl met an old man. A westerly wind played with the water and with a grey beard and with some golden curls. On the promenade, a street sweeper passed, unnoticed.

  “Child,” the old man said, his hand reaching for his worn cap, which was slightly smaller than the measure of his head. Surprisingly, this did not make him look ridiculous, only slightly older. The girl looked at him, dazzled, as if she just opened her eyes for the first time in her life, and did not answer.

  “Child,” the old man said in the pleasant tone of someone not used to any kind of pleasantry, either given or received, “is not this too early an hour?”

  The girl said, “Soon it’ll be too late.” She did not look bitter when saying this. There wasn’t even a hint of drama in her words. It was merely a statement of fact.

  “I would have liked to argue the falsehood of your words,” the old man said. “To delve into the expression ‘too late’ and prove that no matter what the circumstances, it cannot be true. To say that always, always there is something which can be done, always there is hope. But if I do so, I shall be lying.”

  The girl stared at him.

  “I shall be lying,” the old man repeated, looking eager to add some dr
ama to the conversation. “It is always too late. This way or another, no matter what you do, no matter what we do, it is always too late.”

  “Yes,” the girl said. “No.”

  “No?”

  She closed her eyes and looked away from him. “No matter what you do, no matter what we do, it’s always too late,” she said, “but there is one thing that’s going to happen just in time. Right now.”

  The sun rose. Slowly, majestically, it floated above the eastern city line, illuminating the old man and the so-called child.

  The girl smiled.

  She opened her eyes and turned her head straight to the east, and a ray of light which passed, most improbably, through all of the buildings of the city separating the sunrise from the seashore, the city’s western border, flooded her with light, made her swim in an ocean of happiness, a spring of magic, a sea of tranquility.

  “This is the last day,” the old man said, ignoring the sun.

  “Every day is the last day,” she said.

  The old man turned to look at her. “You know,” he said quietly. “I was sent here to warn you, but you already know.” He smiled at her sadly, turned around himself, and disappeared into the sand, leaving her behind, alone.

  He had no way of knowing that she was drugged out of her mind.

  ~

  Early that morning, a slight tremor passed through the city. The head of the Tel Aviv Shalom Tower, once the tallest building in the Middle East, bobbed a bit, as if bent by the sea breeze. Several trashcans overturned, and their contents spilled over sidewalks and around the legs of the early risers and those who hadn’t gone to sleep yet. Police units passed lazily in the quiet streets, the cops inside drinking their first coffee of the day and reporting that all was quiet. The sand at the seashore shivered a bit, giving rise to millions of tiny waves which were swallowed by their bigger brothers from the depths of the sea, and promptly vanished.

  ~

  The sun was at its zenith when, by the Disengoff roundabout fountain, a lady met a peddler.

  “Honorable lady,” he said, “please allow me to offer you my sincere condolences.” His clothes were very old, as if they belonged to some long-forgotten period of time that may or may not have existed at all. His too-large hat belonged there too. He did not sell anything except for the truth, and that had no price tag.

  “Excuse me?” said the lady, who up until that moment had been busy sending a message on her mobile phone.

  “Today is the last day,” the peddler said, rising to his full unimpressive height and taking his hat off in an archaic gesture, part a show of respect, part a gesture of mourning. “I share your loss, and the loss of the people.”

  The lady finally raised her head, looking at the peddler for the first time, noticing that despite the age of his clothing, he himself was quite young, much younger than she was, in fact. A teenager, almost. She gave him a menacing look. “What are you trying to sell me, you?”

  “Not a thing, my honorable lady, not a thing. Last days aren’t meant for that. We may, perhaps, indulge in memories of the past, or, if you so choose, run away from here to another place, another future, but not—”

  “Whatever it is, I’m not interested,” the lady said. Sparkles of light from the fountain’s spray shone on her face, making her seem almost angelic, an appearance that did not match her expression at all.

  “Listen to me, if only for one moment,” the peddler said and took one step toward her, eagerly. “Tell your friends, tell your acquaintances—today is the day!”

  “Leave me alone!”

  The phone chirped. The lady gave it a quick glance.

  “Only three warnings, so we were told, and one already given, and this is the second one. Pay attention! Until the dawn of tomorrow, your city—”

  “Go away! Go!”

  The peddler retreated. “It is my duty to obey,” he said.

  “Don’t you dare follow me! I’m calling the police!”

  “If only you could find it in your heart to—”

  “Don’t speak to me!”

  The peddler’s mouth shut with an audible snap in the middle of a syllable. Pain appeared in his eyes. A thin trickle of blood flowed from the corner of his mouth.

  “Go away!” the lady roared.

  He turned around, stepped into the fountain, stood in the middle of the spray cloud for a moment, then turned around himself, a little man with a big hat, a kaleidoscope of sunlight and spray, a transparent ray of water standing in the air, collapsing, and then he was gone, like a mirage, as if he was never there.

  The lady didn’t bother to look, already on her way to some other place, dialing someone, somewhere, anywhere.

  ~

  Come noon, a soft movement nudged some of the bridges crossing the busy Ayalon lanes, the main artery of the city’s traffic. The pedestrian overpass leading to the Azrielly train station, from which one could watch the cars stuck in the permanent jam on the road below, hummed to itself, as if remembering an old song, the steel support beams reverberating to some awkward rhythm. Only three people noticed this. The first, a musician who worked at a gas station for a living, felt the alien tempo rising in his legs as he walked through the passageway; he set his steps to fit it, and a rare muse came to him. That very evening he composed a new song that no one will ever hear. The second, a young and successful publicist, noticed the momentary unnatural slope of the sidewalk, but her mind was immediately distracted when her phone rang. The third was a small girl, and her mother refused to listen to her.

  ~

  It was already late in the evening when, in one of the smoky bars on the border between the fashionable center of the city and its neglected southern region, a writer met the woman of his dreams.

  “There is another city, underneath,” she explained. “A place for all the wretched and the poor which you’ve run over. We did not disappear. We did not turn to dust, blowing away never to be seen again. We are waiting, down there.”

  “That’s a great metaphor,” said the writer, who was already used to receiving story ideas from acquaintances and strangers. His usual response to any man making such a suggestion was a quick termination of the conversation. His usual response to women doing so was quite different.

  “Lower Tel Aviv,” he added, “with the foreign workers, the beggars and all that. Not bad. It can be a good background for a story.”

  “It is not a lower city,” said the woman of his dreams, and the movement of her head made her sand-colored hair flow in weird, airy waves. “It’s an Under Tel Aviv, a gray Tel Aviv without day, without night. And we, its inhabitants, do not have anything to do with the poor of your city. Their fate will be the same as yours.”

  “So you’re actually talking about a political novel,” the writer said. “The occupation, the exile of the Palestinian people and all that. Listen, it’s still an okay idea, but I think it’s gotten a little bit old. Maybe you could put a love story in the middle of it—I know they’ve already done that in several novels recently, and even in that film, whatsitsname, but let me tell you, as a professional writer,” he gave her the best of his lusty smiles, “Love stories always work.”

  The response he hoped for was an admiring smile or a well-honed wink. Or maybe even an expression of contempt, which would serve him as an excuse to continue the conversation and explain what he really meant to say, to prove that he was a sensitive person, an artist, someone with a special awareness, that he was talented, unique, or at least worthy of a roll between the sheets. But he couldn’t find any of that, anything familiar, in the black eyes of the woman in front of him.

  “No,” she said. “You are talking about matters of Above, and today is their last day. Tomorrow you will no longer be here. Tomorrow we shall come—we, the people of Under, and our city will overturn your city, and you shall be the wretched of the under-city. Or maybe you will not be at all.”

  The writer could not think of any answer to that. It occurred to him that she could
be an actress, practicing some weird play upon him. Or maybe a political activist, probably an ultra left-winger of some sort. Or maybe just a disturbed person. It’s not as if there’s a lack of any of those kinds, and many others, in Tel Aviv. So instead of answering, he kept quiet, a bit curious as to what would come next.

  “We are obligated to fulfill every whim of yours,” the woman said. “Every one of you, like a king he is among us, and we are thousands upon thousands. But no more. Tomorrow you shall all go down, and we shall rise.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “We are obligated to warn you,” she said, her gaze drilling into him, burning him with its blazing need—or maybe the beer only made him think that way? “That was the wish of one among you. Three warnings. We cannot disobey.”

  The writer understood, or thought he did, what he was being told. Courting games, weird as they may be, were his bread and butter. “All right, then,” he said and took hold of her hand. “Let’s go to my apartment.”

  She followed him. She could not disobey.

  ~

  That night, the city that never sleeps suffered from insomnia.

  A bit after midnight, a bicycle which had been tied to a tree at Nordau Avenue disappeared. Nobody took any notice of it.

  Near two in the morning, a rock band finished a show in an underground club somewhere in the south. It was a rather sudden finish: all the lights abruptly went off. Everyone in the audience pulled out their mobile phones and tried to illuminate their surroundings. The band was no longer there.

  Gradually, the sixty people in the club started noticing that their number was decreasing, and forty people shouted, and twenty people tried to break out of the club, and then nobody was left. The club’s security guard, who was standing outside smoking a cigarette, saw the whole building fold into itself like water in an emptying sink, until the darkness came and took him too.