The Fifth Wall: A Novel

by Rachel Nagelberg

  In the five or so minutes in the recorded footage where I appear to be paralyzed in front of my mother’s house, there are two frames towards the middle of that time period that, when slowed down and examined closely, indicate a visible shift of some sort. Even from behind, my body, from the first frame to the second frame, appears wholly different—alert and clenched in a foreign way, charged differently, even from the screen.

  It’s like I turn into someone else.

  [FADE IN

  INT. SFMOMA – MORNING]

  Four days later, on Friday at 9 A.M., the Drog is reported missing; we all receive a massive text from Robby asking to report any sightings immediately, and that we should continue our work day as usual. At 10 A.M. one of the curators reports seeing it bolt out of the Fisher Room and run down the hall towards the central atrium. Following is a text from Robby confirming that the machine is apparently turned on, but that it’s nothing to freak out about—that it’s just having some sort of minor malfunction where it isn’t responding to commands. So much for that barricade.

  This morning I’ve been busy hunting down a seagull that accidentally flew into the main atrium. After hours of searching, a coworker and I found it nested in an installation by Shea Hembrey called Whirl, a makeshift black hole of straw swirling into the depths of the museum floor. We had to quickly get a hold of Whirl’s collector, who happened to be vacationing in a remote sector of Cuba, in order to get permission to step onto the intricately placed stacks. It was all a huge mess of ridiculous formalities. An elderly gentleman watched the whole rescue mission from the sidelines, laughing hysterically while repeatedly slapping his knee.

  Today is also the ninth day of the deconstruction, the day of cutting roof trusses and disassembly. Since the situation with the pickaxe—or the Lack, as I’ve been referring to it—I’ve begun to assign myself to the position of viewer, utilizing the camera as my only eyes. There is a power in the immediacy of access. The ability to see without being seen. Like looking into a crystal ball and seeing into the future.

  And I have to admit—I find it fascinating to watch myself lose control—when I bolt down the front lawn. The sharp, gleaming metal.

  It’s not an uncommon fixation these days. I read that, when American soldiers found bin Laden, he was watching himself on television. I also read that, just recently, in Spain, a government protest was held using holograms of the protesters.

  The real power exists in the images we create of ourselves.

  Though yesterday I still went to the site with Jesse, promising not to pick up any tools. I examined the rotting wooden tie beams and rafters, the smell of mildew and earth and dust. The deconstruction’s reached a level where all familiarity has left the building, reduced to a combination of woods and metals, a skeleton of materials.

  After only a few months back in the Bay, I now feel completely wrapped up in its cosmic forces—the reality of my life in Ithaca already faded into the distance, as if a whole other world, invisible, but continuous, existing simultaneously alongside of this one.

  Who am I now, in this city, without the stonewall structure of an east coast Ivy League campus, the status of Classroom Instructor, of MFA Candidate? I haven’t been making real art in months, and it’s becoming difficult to envision myself in this new role. Not that I was making a ton of installations over there. I’ve never subscribed to the idea that an artist needs to constantly produce—art is a state of mind, not a series of products.

  How quickly the world around us rearranges.

  In less than a week, Jesse and I’ve already formed a dynamic that’s become repetitive. A non-discussed etiquette of dinner involving at least two drinks, for which he always pays, before the inevitable rabbit-fucking, followed by his almost immediate passing out—the hours I then lay awake already losing their potency, their power. The lack of infatuation, of romance—what before felt like desire, but now just an innocent, routine, before-bedtime affair.

  The truth is I’m becoming bored.

  Thomas Francis Scott (b. 1979)

  The Future is Now (3 series)

  AR-15, 2012

  3D printer, iron, bronze, limestone

  Smart Bomb, 2012

  3D printer, iron, plastic, bronze

  Gas Mask, 2012

  3D printer, rubber, plastic

  At 5 P.M., the Drog is still missing, and the museum is in the process of entering into a state of panic. With a multimillion-dollar project on the loose in a multibillion-dollar establishment, damage control is the highest priority. We have emergency control for the situation of lost birds, cats, dogs, and squirrels; the problem is that we’ve never dealt with something that isn’t … living.

  I volunteer to stay late with Robby and a handful of other techs, the herd of us heading to the main atrium, where we find Michael Landy handing out headlamps and baseball bats to another handful of preparators and techs. I approach him caustically.

  “A baseball bat, really?”

  “Just a precaution. Nothing to be concerned about. My baby does have a mind of its own.”

  “You sure don’t seem to be worried.”

  He raises his eyebrows.

  “I mean, this could be the biggest moment of our lives,” I joke, “—the start of a real war against machines.”

  Michael Landy leans in close. “Isn’t that the ultimate goal?” he whispers. “Reaching the point where the machine can think and act on its own. You’re right—I’m secretly thrilled.”

  Sighing, I accept a headlamp and baseball bat and walk over to Robby, who’s pacing around the far side of the atrium.

  “He’s going all Dr. Frankenstein on us,” I say.

  Robby, with pursed lips, holds up a finger and shakes his head. He’s in the middle of a thought.

  A tech I recognize approaches me. “I heard it went into the women’s bathroom and scared the shit out of some lady,” he says.

  A girl wearing a camouflage sweatshirt turns around. “I heard it made a little boy cry.”

  I imagine myself peeing while the headless Drog peers under the stall and I shiver. I then stare at the girl’s sweatshirt, and then up at her face.

  There is something very peculiar about this whole scenario.

  Robby stops pacing and charges towards the center of the room. He quickly breaks us into groups and assigns us specific collections and areas. He then hands each group a walkie-talkie.

  “Testing, testing,” I say with an English accent into the mic. Robby gives me the look. He motions for Michael Landy, who approaches the front of the mob, smacking a baseball bat into his palm in slow, calculated movements. I roll my eyes at this ridiculous gesture. The whole evening’s becoming entirely absurd.

  “Remember folks—this is a project spent years in the making … it’s worth millions of dollars. Be cautious, be careful, be wise. It’s programmed to be able to somewhat ‘feel’ when anyone’s in its near vicinity, so be aware that you’re trying to find something that knows you’re there. It’s not like chasing a Furby or anything. This is a highly intelligent creature.”

  Robby’s eyes look like they’ve been swallowed by his face. I feel for the man—this is not something he has room to deal with right now.

  For the effect, I clasp the headlamp to my forehead with a loud snap. “Onward!” I shout, holding up the bat. My group follows behind me, laughing.

  The empty halls echo with footsteps as we search the massive building for clues and signs. We tiptoe from room to room, peering around sculptures, underneath desks, taking dares to enter first into bathrooms, storage closets, dead-ended galleries. The whole thing feels increasingly eerie, like we’re on the set of some indie horror film.

  At 5:40, the walkie-talkie spurts with a throaty, crackling voice. The Drog’s been spotted turning a corner on the fifth floor. Robby shouts directions for certain groups to take the stairwells, and others to head up directly to the floor. My group takes Stairwell B. We wait impatiently for almost an hour.

  “Y
ou think there’d be some sort of off button—an emergency abort code.”

  “This asshole might just be trying to make a statement.”

  “You mean like a performance piece?”

  “Wouldn’t he want more of an audience for that?”

  “Hi everyone—you’re on Candid Camera!”

  The walkie-talkie spurts, checking in. No sign of the Drog yet—just a sculpture tilted on its wrong axis. Robby curses through the static.

  After another hour and a half of different positions and maneuverings, and with two more potential Drog sightings, but no leads, Robby shouts that he needs a smoke, and for us to get our acts together with some fresh air—we aren’t leaving tonight without finding the damn thing.

  I sigh and descend the steps out to a side exit into the fresh, open air. The night outside is clear and crisp, the stars bright and pulsating. An automatic light turns on, partially blinding me, causing me to turn around swiftly towards the street—and smack.

  “Sheila?”

  My heart stops. I look up through the pulsating red, black, and orange blobs at the person before me—tall and overshadowing—his light brown hair now thinner, cut shorter, more kempt, ruffling in the breeze. Body a little meatier, thicker neck, a stance like a teenager unused to his size; hidden beneath the skin.

  Adam’s eyes widen, but quickly settle. He takes a drag from his cigarette; I watch smoke billow out from his pucker-pencil-lips. “Well, if it isn’t Sheila B. Ackerman.”

  He nods at me like this is a normal occurrence, like this meeting is somehow inevitably expected. After inhaling once more, he chucks his cigarette on the sidewalk.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks, stumbling a bit.

  “I work here.”

  He smiles. It kills me. It feels like I’m being stabbed.

  “I thought you were in New York?” he says.

  “I was,” I nod. “What are you doing here?”

  “Ah, I was just—,” he points in the direction behind him, “at a horrible bar with horrible people discussing horrible films. It was a fabulous time, really.”

  I immediately form an image in my brain: the two of us intertwined in complex contortions, our bodies morphing into pornographic abstraction.

  I nod, smiling.

  “Though the question really is, what are you doing here?” He points to the bat in my hand and then to the headlamp.

  I laugh at its ridiculousness. “I’m on a mission to find an escaped automaton in the form of a dog without a head.”

  “What?” Adam’s eyes widen. He starts cracking up. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

  I explain to him the situation. I’ve never seen him more excited. He says he’s teaching a make-up seminar tomorrow morning, but begs me to let him help. This is just the kind of trouble he was looking for tonight. Plus it’s about time we reconnected. I stare at him, feeling my cells dissipate, scatter, and congeal onto the sidewalk. I have a weird urge to touch him to make sure he’s really there.

  I lead him back inside and we convene into our groups. Adam pulls out a sizable flask and passes it around. I gulp the burning whiskey down like water.

  In an hour, our group is smashed. We stumble through the dark halls, bumping into edges of display cases, giggling and screeching, running and sliding in our socks on the slippery floor. On and off we hear Michael Landy’s voice through the walkie-talkie, but no one can piece together what he’s saying—each time it sounds like he’s continuing reciting some sort of script. The entire time I observe Adam closely, out of the corner of my eye, still baffled at his presence, the timing, the whole situation at hand. Soon Robby gives up and tells us all to go home. A bunch of the volunteers had fled at the break, and the Drog is still nowhere to be found. Apparently the security guard watching the cameras had, cliché-ly, fallen asleep at his desk. Perhaps it escaped through one of the Emergency Exits and is now loose in the city—who the fuck cares! Robby throws up his arms, eying Adam curiously as he departs the building with a flamboyant wave.

  But where is Michael Landy? It seems no one’s physically seen him since the start of the evening. I collect the walkie-talkies in a cardboard box in the atrium while Adam smokes outside, and wait around for a couple of minutes, but the artist never appears.

  [EXT. – ]

  Adam drives us in his truck to a bar near his apartment in the Tenderloin, a part of town I rarely visit. It’s like entering into a David Lynch film—the streets filled with ghastly, writhing bodies ready to attack at any moment. Trash and needles and excrement everywhere. An emaciated mammal will try to sell you a cell phone, and then offer you heroin instead.

  What is it with me lately, and men with trucks?

  [INT. – ]

  “You’re doing what now?” Adam chokes on a handful of Gold-fish crackers from a glass serving dish he’d snatched from the bar. This bar is dark and dusty with a Los Angeles vibe—filled with small crowded tables with white tablecloths and lit by fluorescent lights. He takes a shot of whiskey and sips a PBR.

  “I hired a contractor and we’re taking apart the house from the inside out. Well, he’s mostly doing it. I helped a little bit in the beginning.”

  Adam stares at me wide-eyed, shaking his head. “I—I don’t even know what to say.”

  “Oh, and I’m filming it, too. I have a camera set up to a software that records and archives it on my MacBook.”

  I sip my gin and tonic and we both suddenly crack up. We mimic each other’s hiccuping laughter, alcohol spurting from our lips.

  “I know you’re probably thinking I’m out of my fucking mind.”

  Adam smooths back his hair in a grand gesture and shakes his head. “No, not at all. I mean, we’re all crazy, aren’t we? But to different degrees. It’s all based on our balance between the internal and the external.”

  I consider this for a moment.

  “But no, I think you’re fucking brilliant,” he says.

  I watch his undulating mouth, the washing down of Goldfish with a slug of PBR, an Adam’s apple rise and deplete. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen him eat. He lights up a cigarette. Apparently this is one of the last bars in the city where you can smoke. He offers me one, but I decline. I’ve oddly never felt the desire.

  “So let me just get this straight.” Adam blows a gust of smoke away from me.

  “You somehow got permission to obliterate your house.”

  I nod, though technically my dad and brother have no idea, but I told them I was taking care of it.

  “And now you’re still in the process of deconstructing it, and you’re also filming it on some sort of live feed that is also being recorded.”

  I nod, squeezing more of the lime into my drink.

  He scratches his chin, contemplating, then inhales deeply.

  “My father,” he says, “died of a heart attack when I was nineteen. It was really rough. We had a lot of differences, and I’d just moved out of the house to go to college, but still I wasn’t prepared for it. Nobody was. It was a huge fucking mess. I mean, like, yeah—how are we supposed to deal with these things, really?”

  “Exactly,” I slam my hand on the table. “We’re not actually prepared for death. We live in a world that’s completely shocked by death—not the brutal deaths we see constantly in movies and on TV, but real, actual death. What happens after the fatal moment.”