JPod

by Douglas Coupland

  And so we began to dig.

  . . .

  Four hours later:

  "Ethan, this digging is boring, and it's going nowhere."

  "I'll never make cruel jokes at the expense of gravediggers again."

  We were only maybe a foot down in the blend of premium-grade topsoil, rock bits and construction debris that was Kam's front garden area. All that digging, and Kam's New Zealand tree fern hadn't even begun to list.

  "Mom, we need help."

  "But who?"

  "I'll call Kaitlin."

  Mom gave me a look. "Are you sure?"

  "She's got the bone structure of a Ukrainian peasant. Her family's in the business, too. She'll understand."

  "Leave out the main details." Mom dropped her shovel. "Curse it. TV makes gravedigging look so easy."

  The phone rang. "Hi, Kaitlin."

  "Hi, Ethan. Where are you?"

  "I'm over at Kam's with Mom. I'm helping her out with some­thing."

  "With what?"

  "It's probably best not to discuss this on the phone. Can you come over?"

  "Actually, I've got this, uh, thing I have to go to at noon."

  "What thing?"

  "It's a, well—"

  "It's a Coupland meeting, right?"

  "Well, yeah. Ethan, we've been through this a thousand times. Stop taking your resentment out on me."

  "Sorry. Who else is going to be there?"

  "All the podsters."

  "Okay. See you later." I hung up.

  Mom asked what was happening, and I told her about the meeting. "The meeting! I forgot about it. Phooey." She brushed herself off frantically, as though the dirt stains were leeches. "Ethan, you carry on. I'll be back around two-ish."

  "What!"

  "Oh, calm down."

  "Can I come?"

  "No. You have to dig."

  At least if I was digging in a videogame, I might find a piece of a puzzle or treasure. A fermented dead biker? Some prize.

  . . .

  I carried on digging, and by two o'clock the hole was finally up to my waist, but there was no way I was going to be able to finish the job. I got out my PDA and was trying to locate a place where I could rent a Bobcat or some other kind of tractor when I heard jPod voices coming towards me from up the driveway.

  "Ethan?"

  "Guys?"

  "Ethan," Mom said, "your friends are going to help you dig for a while."

  This alarmed me, for obvious reasons. "What?"

  "Not the entire hole. Don't worry. I stopped by the house and got some more digging tools for everybody."

  "Uh, great."

  Kaitlin said, "It's so sweet of you to swap Kam's tree fern for a Himalayan windmill palm. You're such a good friend."

  "And digging the hole yourself" Cowboy added. "Now that's friendship, and that's commitment to being Green."

  Tim's corpse weighed heavily on my mind. "You know, I thought I might get a tractor and dig it that way. I don't think I'll need any help."

  "Nonsense, Ethan," said Mom. "We're all adults, and we all care about Kam. Digging will be fun, and you young people all need some fresh air and exercise. Poor John Doe here looks like a telethon child."

  "Thank you, Mrs. Jarlewski."

  "Well, it's true, John."

  I asked Mom if I could speak to her in private. We went to her car.

  "Mom, what are you doing getting everyone to help us? Are you insane?"

  "Don't be such a worrywart. Once we begin to smell Tim, I'll have everybody leave."

  "I'm going to rent a Bobcat."

  "Over my dead body you will. What if it accidentally cuts through Tim's body? Have some respect for the dead."

  And so the gang jumped in and digging began, but it was slow going. There were only two real shovels. Bree had a spade, Kaitlin had an edging tool and John Doe was using this pole-shaped thingy Dad had bought off the Shopping Channel during a three a.m. rum jag. Bree looked at the pole and said, "I think it also French braids your hair if you hold it upside down."

  An hour later we decided to trash the fern. The six of us (with Mom as overseer) managed to lug it out of its pit and roll it across the adjoining rockery. I wondered what Kam was going to make of this. It wasn't going to be pretty.

  Everyone was being friendly and co-operative, and despite our sad little tools, the hole came along nicely. Cowboy, for once, wasn't off in a corner, contemplating death (or brokering a quickie skankwich); John Doe was full of vim and revealed to us a heretofore unknown talent for mimicking dial tones; Bree was describing her doomed second date from the previous evening ("You think you know somebody, and then all of a sudden they start talking about crop circles. . ."). Mark, bless him, was happy simply to be doing a disproportionate share of the work.

  Mom made a snack run to Whole Foods, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd had so much fun, but then suddenly the amount of fun we were having made me suspicious—and only then did I figure out why they were being so jolly. My blood turned to Freon. I put down my wheat grass smoothie and glared at them: "You're all quitting the company—aren't you? That's why you're all being so nice to me."

  Silence.

  "It's true. Come on, now—tell me."

  Everybody lowered their tools and looked at Kaitlin.

  "Ethan, uhhh—"

  "I knew it."

  Kaitlin said, "Ethan, this has nothing to do with how any of us feel about you. Working for Doug is going to be the best gig ever. We'd be nuts not to move."

  "Doug, Doug, Doug. Could you at least tell me what that fatuous prick's idea is?"

  "Ethan, I've told you a thousand times already, we signed nondisclosure agreement forms. You know they're sacred. And let me state in public that I don't want Kam thinking I was the one who spilled the beans."

  Curse Kaitlin.

  "When are you leaving?"

  "Effective today."

  "I'm sure your friends will figure out a way to bring you along once they get settled in. Won't you?" Mom said.

  The others nodded just a bit too agreeably. I felt like the last dog remaining at the SPCA.

  "Don't be such a gloomy Gus, dear, and besides—" Mom was fishing around her brain for something, anything nice to say. "Learn to take pleasure in life's little accomplishments. Just look at how much progress you've made digging this hole!"

  Kaitlin was heading to a tap to rinse off her hands. "Ethan, we'll discuss this tonight. Bree and I have to go get facials."

  The guys bailed, too. "It's new shoe day. Some limited-edition Adidas coming in from Argentina. We have no free will here, Ethan—we have to leave. Sorry, buddy."

  It was back to Mom and me.

  "Dear, don't sulk. It gives you a second chin."

  "Mom, for the love of God, why can't you just break the stupid NDA form and tell me what this—"

  My words were cut short by a syrupy waft of decomposed flesh scent.

  "Mom, I think we've just found Tim."

  "I'll go get the Febreze."

  . . .

  Fifteen minutes and two bottles of Febreze later, we'd scraped enough dirt away to reveal a few square inches of the rolled-up carpet from Dad's den.

  "Ethan, all you have to do is yank on the carpet and we're done. It couldn't be simpler."

  "Mom, it's not going to come away in one little tug. The whole torso needs to be lifted."

  "What's your point, Ethan?"

  "Mom! I'm the one who has to do this, not you."

  "That's right, Ethan, but /was in love with him."

  I poked the carpet with the blunt end of my shovel. Mom asked why I was doing that. "I don't know—I suppose to see if he's crunchy or chewy."

  "I suspect probably more on the chewy side, dear. Bones take a long time to decompose. Those steak bones I put in the azalea garden for calcium back in the 1980s are still hard as quartz."

  I looked more closely at Tim's back. "He's not bloated, is he? It looks like the weight of all that dirt kept him quite s
lim."

  "You know, Ethan, maybe if we thought of Tim as a science project we might move along a bit faster here. I think we're being too fussy."

  Mom's purse farted. "Excuse me, dear—cellphone." She began rummaging, then checked the number of the incoming call. "It's the Vietnamese fertilizer dealer. I really have to answer this."

  I prodded a bit more at Tim's cocoon. From out of the blue above us came an extended manga-like shriek from hell.

  (Mother of God! What have you heathen pigs done to my beloved tree fern?)

  Of course it was Kam—Kam and a short fire plug of a blonde-wigged woman in white go-go boots, Jackie O sunglasses and a tasselled white leather jacket who resembled a hooker I saw in Las Vegas a few years back. She was buying twenty-four boxes of Sudafed in the Albertsons on Sahara Boulevard.

  "freedom?" I exclaimed.

  "freedom?" Mom squeaked.

  "Hello, Carol. Hello, Penis."

  Kam's language became more intelligible as his first burst of rage died down. "What the fuck have you people done to my baby?"

  Mom was taken aback by freedom's new look; she viewed Kam's temper as might a nursery school teacher a toddler's wail. "Now, Kam, don't be angry. There's a good explanation for this."

  "There'd better be, and you'd better tell me right now."

  Mom remained distracted, "freedom, I thought you were delivering a speech in Seattle today."

  "I was going to—until Kam phoned."

  "Carol! What about my goddam tree fern!"

  "Kam, cool down, I'll buy you a new one."

  "What the hell are you doing digging up my front yard?"

  Mom and I swapped glances. I wasn't going to be the one to break the news.

  "Kam," said Mom, "last year I had a fling with this biker chap I did business with. And then he refused to pay me, and push came to shove, and he was accidentally electrocuted, and so I buried him here. Except I just realized he has a safety deposit box key in his pocket, and I need it rather badly."

  There was a pause.

  "Why didn't you say so?" Kam said. "I could have had some of my, uh, travel associates come here and dig it up for free in ten minutes."

  Kam and freedom walked around to the other side of the hole. Mom said, "freedom, I barely recognize you."

  freedom actually blushed and then giggled. It was a dreadful thing to see. "Kam told me that if I wanted to be a true radical, there was no point in fogging my bourgeois inertia under a mist of stillborn and archaic dialogues from the twentieth century."

  "Did he?"

  Kam smiled as if to say, Look, fools! You thinkyou're so smart and politically correct and all of that, but the Chinese mastered the art of jargon-twisting-to-get-what-you-want back before your sweet Jesus was a holy yygote.

  freedom went on. "Oh yes. A truly radical act on my part would be to infiltrate and hyperbolize the concepts I consider to be my opposite. Hence this new look."

  What is it about lesbians and jargon?

  freedom continued. "Next week we're off to Palm Desert for a brow lift, a nose softening, an eye lift, fat removal from the cheeks, a breast augmentation, tummy tuck, removal of fat from the thighs and calves . . ."

  Kam completed the sentence: " . . . and fourteen Da Vinci porcelain veneers."

  "Isn't that rebellious, Carol?" freedom had become a thirteen-year-old girl in search of approval. "Oh, and my new name is Kimberly."

  Mom mouthed the word "Kimberly," but no noise escaped her throat.

  Kam asked, "Ethan, have you reached that guy's body yet?"

  I tamped the patch of carpet with my shovel. "Yup. I should have Mom's key within the hour."

  Kam said, "Do me a favour. Just put a little bit of dirt on top of him once you're done. I have a few things I might as well put down there while there's a hole happening."

  "What kind of things?"

  "Don't you worry about that. I'll get one of my, uh, associates to fill in the hole after that."

  "Thanks, Kam."

  "Excellent."

  Kam bowed to Kimberly/freedom, and then took her arm. "Very well, then. Kimberly, shall we go kick up our heels?"

  Kimberly tittered. Small birds in the sky witnessed this and fell to the ground, dead.

  Kam and his new girlfriend walked in the front door. Mom still stood in the hole, mute.

  "Mom?"

  No response.

  "Mom?"

  "Ethan—"

  "Yes?"

  "Ethan, I . . . I think I might be a lesbian."

  "Mom—listen to me—Mom? Mom?" I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook. "Look me in the eye. Okay?"

  She did.

  "Here's the deal. You are not a lesbian. You do not have a crush on Kimberly. You will go home right now. You will cook Dad a hot, nutritious meal, and you will watch an episode of Band of Brothers on DVD with him, and you will enjoy that episode. And life will be just like it was a few months ago, and you will feel free and happy because of that. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  Mom teetered towards her car, bits of dove-grey soil trickling down the hole's edge in her wake. After she'd driven off, I remembered that she was my ride.

  And so I toughened myself up and pretended Tim was a particularly well-designed gory website. I must agree that everything experts say about the Internet and violence and games is true—it does make you a little bit callous—the first gore makes the second gore easier. But the stench!

  I retrieved Mom's key and tossed a bit of dirt back Tim's way. And then I simply sat at the hole's bottom, wondering about life, wondering about death and wondering about curious raccoons passing through the neighbourhood on their nightly rounds, snacking on Tim's remains.

  And then I sat thinking about nothing.

  Finally I heard a car pull up, a door slam, and someone approaching.

  His face appeared above the hole, his dead eyes and his cruel mouth. Coupland. "Well, if it isn't the happy wanderer. Trying to dig your way back to China?"

  "Fuck off and die."

  "Temper." He was dressed like a 1960s TV father—glen plaid jacket and matching wool pants. He was holding, of all things, a pipe.

  I said, "Kam's inside."

  "That's nice. So, tell me, Ethan, why are you digging a hole, and why have you trashed Kam's tree fern?"

  "That's not your business."

  "Isn't it?"

  I picked up a shovel, realizing that there was a part of me that wanted to whack this guy on the skull. "Just go inside."

  "Maybeyou're the one I want to speak to."

  "Huh?"

  "Come on. Ask yourself if there's some practical reason why I might be here to see you."

  "You've lost me."

  "Why don't we go for a ride?"

  I did need a ride. "Okay."

  I got into his Jaguar XJ12 ("Take your shoes off first, and don't touch any of the knobs or dials! Jesus Christ, you've got ants crawling off you"), and we drove down the mountain. I was tired and just wanted some peace and quiet.

  "Where are we going?"

  "North Van."

  "Why?"

  "There's something there you need to see."

  Term

  Type

  Meaning

  Bsh

  Cmd

  Sound made when CD ejects from burner

  Execle

  Fct

  Discontinued Popsicle flavour

  .osc

  Cmd

  C++ (indicates that file contents have received an Academy Award)

  Diff

  Cmd

  Rhymes with piff

  PPP

  Prot

  Larger than normal urination

  Qdaemon

  Cmd

  Nomeadq spelled backwards

  Scanf

  Fct

  Misspelling of skank

  Eval

  Cmd

  Opposite of goad

  Glob

  Misc

  Biannual Windexing of monitor screen


  .i

  Ext

  Low self-esteem version of "I"

  ARP

  Prot

  Your seal needs a herring

  . . .

  We ended up at a building near the Second Narrows Bridge that, until recent currency fluctuations, had been a film studio used primarily for TV movies. The signage near the roof had been removed, leaving an off-white rectangle behind it. The offices up front had the stripped-to-the-bone feel of commercial space undergoing a total overhaul.

  "Welcome to the offices of Dglobe."

  "Dglobe? Can you spell that?"

  "Capital D, lower case g, 1, o, b, e."

  "What does the D stand for?"

  "Doug, you dumb shit. Dglobe is where your friends are coming to work."

  "Some friends they are."

  "Tsh, tsh. Nobody gets rich on software in the twenty-first century. The only money remaining is in hardware, and only hardware made offshore at that, preferably in some unregulated, uninvestigated Asian backwater where you can get a day's labour and a hand job for the cost of a bag of Skittles."

  "So, then, what happens here in Vancouver?"

  "Here is where the Dglobe gets its soul."

  "All I see is a big empty heap of a building. Show me something real."

  "With pleasure. Come this way."

  We stepped over a pile of removed drywall and a tangle of beige phone cables. The carpeting was stained and lying in piles—bright orange steak restaurant carpeting from the 1970s. The rooms smelled like a cold, dank used bookstore.

  "This way, if you will." Coupland opened up a set of double doors leading into what was once a fair-size sound stage. In the centre of the room was one small light, enough to illuminate veritable kelp beds of abandoned electrical cords on the concrete floor. Leaning against the wall across the space were dozens of pieces of scenery, stacked like toast slices.

  Coupland turned to me. "There, in the centre of the room—that's the Dglobe."

  We walked towards it: a beach-ball-sized globe lit from within. "Big deal."

  "Fair enough. But watch this."

  Coupland pulled a key fob from his pocket and clicked it at the globe. Suddenly the continents vanished, and in a blink the globe reconfigured as one big land mass. "Look closely at—"