Captain Down’s smile dropped once again, though not so severely this time. “That’s an interesting envelope, Dr. Fountain. Might I ask where you acquired it?”
I looked at the purple envelope and, remembering Tynee’s warning, tucked it into my inside breast pocket. “I’m not sure why you’re curious, but, without going into much detail, it’s from President Tynee.”
Captain Down grinned with all of his teeth and pulled open the top left drawer of his desk, out of which he pulled an identical envelope. “Well, well, Dr. Fountain.” He waved his own purple envelope enticingly from side to side. “Perhaps we can do something about your friend after all.”
THE BOOK O’ BILLETS-DOUX
Rosehips: Who are you, anyway?
Sweetlick: Who am I? Who the hell are you? I’ll say this: One thing I am certain of is that I don’t know who the hell you are. I know who the hell I think you are, but I don’t know who the hell you think you are.
Rosehips: Are you the hell talking to me?
Sweetlick: Listen. You’re a diamond, but I can only see one facet on your side. What is more, when I look closely, I only see myself reflected back at me. I see what I project, vice versa, et cetera.
Rosehips: Yes, yes. But my question is who the hell are you?
Sweetlick: I don’t know! How the hell am I supposed to know who the hell I think I am? I only know what the hell I want to know.
Rosehips: So what the hell do you want to know?
Sweetlick: What the hell do you think I want to know?
Rosehips: I think you know I love you, whoever the hell you think you are.
Sweetlick: Fair enough. I think you know I love you too, whoever the hell you think you are.
9 Sophia had arrived during my meeting with Captain Down, and I found her entangled in the same brainless argument with Officer Wilt that I had been in earlier. She looked weary, but her smile was nonetheless genuine when she spotted me. This set a swagger to my gait as I guiltlessly imagined that she was my wife. (I’ve had the silliest crush on her since the first time we met some ten years ago. It is a harmless infatuation, and not at all a covetous lust.) I informed her that Captain Down was straightening things out.
“We’re terribly sorry about the trouble we’ve put you through, Mrs. Korterly.” Captain Down shook her hand gently, wearing a face of strained compassion that would rival the best politician touring a disaster area.
“My name is Dr. Carthorse,” she politely corrected him.
“Of course,” he replied. “Officer Wilt,” his tone turned commanding, “prepare the paperwork for Dr. Korterly’s release immediately. And have him escorted up here straightaway!” He turned to me, smiling and cool once again, a swashbuckling sugarshit. “I’m certain we’ll be in touch, Dr. Fountain.” He winked and gave a conspiratorial salute with his purple envelope before returning to his office.
“How did you get him released?” Sophia asked me, relieved. “I’ve been arguing with this guy for ten minutes.” Wilt pretended not to hear us, engrossed once again in his paperwork.
“I’m not really sure.” I led Sophia to the wire chairs, which looked to be recycled from old prison fencing. “I think it was this envelope. He had one just like it. This one contains a special assignment Tynee gave me about an hour ago. I didn’t know what was going on, but I just played along.”
“That’s strange.” She looked at me quizzically. “What’s the assignment?”
“Haven’t had time to look it over yet.” I put it back in my breast pocket. “Besides, I’m not supposed to talk about it to anyone.”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, I sympathize with you. He gave me my first ‘special assignment’ last month. Good luck.”
“Right, Tynee mentioned that. He said you’re writing a paper exploring the ethics of genetic research. You never told me about that.”
Sophia laughed in my face. “You already know how I feel. We shouldn’t be tinkering with the process of life until we understand the purpose, and that’s a long way off in this society. Nothing personal, but without a spiritual conception of nature, biotechnology is just one more iteration of foolishness. My mind was made up as soon as you told me about the genetically modified corn whose insecticidal traits were spreading to milkweed and killing monarch butterflies.”
“I told you that was a fluke,” I interrupted her. “It hasn’t been replicated.”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t trust anything that might hurt a butterfly. Simple as that. Philosophy and ethics don’t enter into it. And as far as that paper is concerned, it’s perfect garbage, my worst work ever, filled with assumptions and fallacies. I only began writing it because it’s what he wanted, and I didn’t want to lose my job, too.”
“What did you write?”
“In defense of sacrificing values for self-interest,” she spoke cryptically, shaking her head and scolding herself, “while doing the same. Any rationalization implies that the action doesn’t flow from your values. It’s like kicking your faith in the teeth and still expecting it to comfort you.” She sighed. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I burned it and deleted it. I’m not about to cry over spilled ideals.”
Thinking that I might change the subject from something that was obviously distressing, I tried to ask how other things were. Sophia shrugged. “We’re fine, but Blip thinks creditors are plotting to lay siege to our castle.”
“Oh. Are you two okay financially?”
“We’re really fine. We barely have any debt, but that doesn’t seem to matter to Blip. He can’t use a condom without whining about what it costs.” She spoke with characteristic frankness and fell silent.
The image took me by surprise, and I cleared my throat, feeling suddenly guilty. “Umm, I think I read in The Torch that they distribute free condoms at the student union . . .” My voice trailed off into awkwardness. Sophia did not appear to be listening anyway.
“I am worried,” she abruptly confided, despair tightening her voice like a broken wing oppressing a bird’s song. “Normally, we keep up with each other. But he’s been getting pretty far out lately.” She locked eyes with me for an instant, and in that moment revealed to me the depths of her despair. Her lower lip trembled, and my heart nearly broke.
“He’ll be fine.” I tried to comfort her, but I found that I could not meet her gaze. Our conversation was interrupted by a commotion in the corridor anyway.
Blip entered the room momentarily, handcuffed, with a guard on each side of him. Upon seeing us he yelled, “Why the hell am I being released? No one’s supposed to be released! I need to stay here! I need to stay in prison!”
10 My sincerest apologies, but I must interrupt the forward flow of events at this point. Fear not, I will come back around to the purple envelopes and reveal their tale of secret weapons and corrupt conspiracies in due time. But for now, please forgive me. It is only right that I digress and provide a short history of these people who quite possibly have forever changed the world. It is their daughter, after all, who answered the question Why aren’t apples called reds? Hence, what follows is a tangent. It will not be the only one, I am certain. My current confinement makes it difficult for me not to dream of happier times.
I have known Blip and Sophia for all of a decade, ever since Blip strode into my office one gray December morning and introduced himself. Grinning like he had just gotten off a roller coaster, he said he had a few questions related to genetics that needed immediate answers, and which, although they were elementary, I could not immediately answer. But I liked him at once. He had a sagacity and a wit to match, a rarity in the straight and narrow hallways of academia. And besides, I had about as many friends as used Scotch tape, and so I clung to anyone who showed me the least bit of attention. Blip and Sophia found me and my work fascinating, and thus very quickly became my closest friends. And though they were the ones always asking questions, I have lately come to recognize that they were also my greatest teachers.
When Blip blew into my office t
en years ago, he was interested in the idea that genetic traits recede and disappear if they are maladaptive. If a trait threatens survival, it recedes and is succeeded by more adaptive traits in the long run. For example, a polar bear with black fur is less likely to hunt successfully. The uncamouflaged polar bear thus will not survive to pass on his maladaptive trait. I suggested to Blip that he might be better served by a biological anthropologist, as I studied molecular, and not population, genetics. If he heard me, he made no indication, but only continued more furiously, tapping his foot all the while.
“But is a parallel between society and genetics appropriate? Because if it is, then all this shit,” Blip stood, gesturing broadly, “is just a flush in the toilet, a temporary turd in the whirlpool of the double helix. We will evolve, because greed is not adaptive. Am I right?”
At the time, I only nodded stupidly. Like most academicians, I was pusillanimous and proud, and timid of looking for big-picture connections. I had my head stuck either in the ground or up my ass, or more often, kissing someone else’s.
The very next day Blip called on me again, this time to discuss the concept of genetic drift. Genetic drift describes how random genetic traits, such as eye color, meander through a population almost purely by chance, eventually differentiating that population from others. He likened this to mannerisms and slang, explaining that he was beginning to see more and more people in town tap their feet when they argue. “But the thing is, I never see it when I travel. And,” he pointed to his tapping foot, “I’ve been tapping my feet when I’m making a point for years, and I picked it up from Sophia.”
“Who’s Sophia?” I asked.
Blip ceased his tapping, and, smiling with simple-hearted sexuality, he answered without hesitation. “She’s my lover.”
11 Sophia embodies everything wonderful about wildflowers and hillsides and waterfalls and sunshine. Slender and curvy is her form, and her hair, harvest brown with a few strands of silver she refuses to pluck, tumbles with abandon around the spurs of her emphatic cheekbones, flows freely down her neck, and sunders at her shoulders to scatter into locks, chasing one another down past the small of her back, past the parabola of her waist, tickling the backs of her knees like goose down in the springtime. Her limbs are lithe and strong, and her breasts are eclipsed only by her emerald eyes in their generosity and freedom.
She knows her body like a bird knows its wings. Space moves swiftly and smoothly around her aerodynamic form, and her clothing is more colorful than a lepidopterist’s field guide. It’s no wonder Blip sometimes walks like he has shoe boxes on his feet. The poor chap has gotten his wish, and can do nothing but fall all over himself in her presence.
Sophia has her flaws, certainly. For instance, her frequent laughter is brightly colored by a tendency to snort if she laughs too hard. But she does so unabashedly and repeatedly, for how could such a silly thing as embarrassment muzzle her glee? Besides, it only makes others laugh all the harder. Also, she confesses to an unhealthy love of sugar, and never hesitates to reach for a plate of cookies.
If I gush, forgive me once again. As I have already admitted, I developed a powerful crush at once, though I have never communicated it to anyone until now. Such secret longings are now no longer noteworthy. Perhaps they are even impossible. In any case, Blip and Sophia are the proverbially perfect couple, and as such, they are both thrilling and incomprehensible to me. There is no envy on my part, only vicarious delight. If they have any failings as a pair, I simply choose not to notice. I idealize them like any workaholic romanticizing his childhood. Childhood isn’t perfect, nor are Sophia and Blip. Nevertheless, they represent an easiness and a playfulness far too absent from my own life. You may think me sappy, but as far as I am concerned, Blip and Sophia are meant to go together like strawberries and bananas, and I consider myself lucky to be permitted to enjoy the delicious treat of their company.
12 Sophia greeted me at the door the first time I was invited to their geodesic dome home for a dinner party. She wore an oversized T-shirt with the words argue naked silk-screened across the front of it. After introducing myself, I found I had nothing to say and nowhere to look for fear that I would make transparent my immediate and inappropriate lust for her by attempting to instigate a disagreement. Blip, meanwhile, was busy crashing around the kitchen like a rhinoceros working on a deadline. Despite all his noise, I could hardly bear the silence and was desperate to break it.
“You have long hair.” I stated the obvious, establishing myself as a creep for certain. But she smiled, her eyes as bright as her hair was long.
“It won’t grow any longer,” she stated matter-of-factly, ponderously pluming the hair that fell across her shoulders. “How do you suppose it works? What limits the length of hair?” She began tapping her foot, and Blip became suddenly quiet in the kitchen. “Is it the length or the life of the follicle? Does my hair have a predetermined length, such that when it reaches that point it ceases to grow? Or is it the rate at which you lose your hair that determines its ultimate length? Because we’re losing hair all the time, but we’re also growing new hair all the time.”
I nodded, then shrugged prosaically, not really sure what sort of a response was expected.
“Homeostasis.” Blip strode into the room, drying his hands on a dish towel and nodding a greeting in my direction. “It’s the average life span of your hair. The maximum length of your hair reflects the perfect balance between life and death. An equinox of locks.”
Sophia nodded taplessly, the point having been made. “Of course.”
13 I had arrived before any of the other guests, so I joined Blip and Sophia in the kitchen and watched them dodge and duck around each other as they dashed about preparing the meal. Eventually I could stand it no longer and I asked what “Argue naked” was supposed to mean.
“Exactly what it says,” Blip responded. “Argue naked. We’ve printed up T-shirts and bumper stickers to sell at music festivals next summer.”
“Argue naked?”
“We argue naked,” Sophia explained.
“Oh.”
“It works very well,” Blip elaborated. “It’s hard to be naked and take yourself too seriously. Think about Adam and Eve. As the story goes, they were naked in the Garden of Eden. There was no bickering in paradise.”
“You think everyone should argue naked?”
They nodded, grinning like naughty teenagers.
“Even politicians?”
“Especially politicians,” Sophia proclaimed with a slinky lick of her lips. “C-SPAN in the buff. Of course, Congress would never agree to it.”
“They certainly wouldn’t,” Blip added. “And besides, the way men are these days, can you imagine how hostile a naked Congress would be? A room full of naked men is only likely to increase insecurity and aggression, like a locker room. We’d have senators snapping towels at each other, making rude jokes. No, that would never work.”
Sophia nodded. “But only because our leaders are interested in victory and defeat, rather than reconciliation and compromise.” She shrugged. “Arguing naked is only possible among friends and lovers.”
14 As it happened, I was the hit of the dinner party that evening, owing to Blip and Sophia’s unbridled fascination with what I was able to explain about genetics. Their questions turned cartwheels around the table, and everyone soon caught the enthusiasm. Such exuberant conversation, I discovered, was not at all uncommon at their gatherings. Indeed, Blip’s favorite toast and blessing over the meal was “To excellence in human communication.”
I should mention that I wasn’t particularly interested in what I was talking about that night. The topic of genetics only arose out of academic small talk about current research projects, and I would have been perfectly content to let it die a dullish death. Sophia and Blip, however, were determined not only to keep it alive, but also to convince it that life was all wind chimes and butterflies. They pumped me with questions as if they were the Heimlich cousins, and before I k
new it I was spitting pabulum all over the table and coughing every boring detail across the room.
Sophia asked me if it was true that humans share 99 percent of their DNA with chimpanzees. I replied that it was actually 98.4 percent.
“Fascinating. So what percentage do we share with dogs?”
“I don’t know offhand,” I said. “But I do more than just compare genotypes. For instance, I’m currently working on mapping the genetic sequence that causes velvet worms to grow appendages.”
“Velvet worms?”
“They’re little worms that walk around the forest floor. Worms with legs.”
“Worms with legs. Wow,” Blip remarked sincerely. “So what are you finding?”
“Well, I don’t want to bore everyone. It’s just boring, technical . . .”
“Not at all.” Sophia dismissed my attempt to pass the fat and continued to gaze at me with uninhibited curiosity. “Come on, tell us more about these velvet worms.”
She was joined in her request by everyone else present, and I acquiesced. “There’s a gene which organizes the cells of the velvet worm into legs. If that gene were to be switched off, so to speak, the velvet worm wouldn’t grow legs.”
“Switched off?” Sophia immediately asked. “Why on Earth would you want to switch it off?”
“Well, it’s interesting because a nearly identical gene is found in vertebrates, including humans. It’s even more interesting because our legs are completely different from invertebrate legs, but the growth of both seems to be stimulated by the same gene. In fact, every animal that’s been examined has an almost identical genetic sequence stimulating limbed growth.” I paused. “It indicates that we have a common ancestor.”
Blip nodded. “I’ve suspected as much.”
“It’s the same story with eyes. The genetic sequences that produce eyes are all but the same across flies, humans, squid, velvet worms, you name it. In fact, it’s pretty much a given in my field that all life shares a common ancestor.”
Just a Couple of Days Page 4
