Interface

by Neal Stephenson

  Cozzano had begun to walk toward the camera, which backed away from him. It backed out of the garage door and into Cozzano’s yard. Nearby was a large garden.

  “This garden was in disgraceful shape. Hadn’t been weeded in quite some time, and the weeds were bigger than the vegetables. So I took care of that. You can see it looks a little better now.” Cozzano plucked a red ripe tomato from a vine and bit into it like an apple. Juice ran down his chin and he wiped it with the sleeve of his mechanic’s overall. “Of course, home is more than just doing chores. Home means being with your family too.”

  Cozzano had now reached a patio, which was illuminated. A picnic table had been spread with a nice tablecloth and set with fresh vegetables from the garden and a platter of hamburgers. Sitting at the table was Mary Catherine Cozzano, pouring iced tea from a pitcher into three glasses. At the end of the table, James was manning a sizzling barbecue, flipping burger patties and hot dogs.

  “This is my daughter, Mary Catherine. You may have heard of her recently, as media manipulators hired by my opponents have made strenuous efforts to assassinate her character. She has been nothing short of noble in the face of this mudslinging.” Mary Catherine smiled and nodded at the camera.

  “And this young man at the barbecue is my son, James, who has been working his tail off all year long, writing a book about this year’s presidential campaign. He has just signed a deal with a major publisher in New York, and that book is going to be published on Inauguration Day.”

  Mary Catherine stood up, threw one arm around her brother’s shoulder, and kissed him on the cheek.

  In the auditorium, the audience went, “Ahhhh.”

  Tip McLane did not. He stepped away from the lectern and began to shout at the moderator: “I demand that this be stopped! This is no announcement! This is a free campaign commercial!”

  The moderator looked at Cy Ogle, who was standing in the wings. “I have to agree. Mr. Ogle? I’m going to have to pull the plug.”

  “This ain’t no campaign commercial,” Ogle said, “because there ain’t no campaign.”

  On the giant TV screen above their heads, Cozzano was beaming delightedly at his daughter and son. He turned back toward the camera. “When I came back here a few days ago, my intention was to prepare for the debate. But the home and family that I rediscovered here delighted me so much that I could not bring myself to look at the huge briefing books and the endless position papers that my campaign staff had prepared for me. I found that I would rather dig potatoes in the garden or sit on the front porch swing reading Mark Twain.

  “Now, these are perfectly good things to do. But in a modern political campaign, it’s regarded as improper, somehow, to act like a normal human being. And this brought me to the realization that there is something evil and twisted about the campaign process: the traveling, the speechifying, the television spots. The mudslinging. Wearing makeup sixteen hours a day. And most of all, the debates, with their false and pompous trappings.”

  In the production trailer, the director could not restrain himself from punching the button that cut away to a long shot of the auditorium stage. At the moment, it consisted of a number of stuffed shirts, arguing, consulting with aides, and staring in shock at television monitors.

  “And I made up my mind,” Cozzano said, “that the entire thing was corrupt. Only a scoundrel can participate in such a campaign; only a cipher can win. I am neither. So I have decided that I am no longer interested in campaigning for president of the United States.

  “Earlier today, I drove my car down to Sterling Texaco, down on the corner. It’s a place I’ve been buying gas and tires ever since

  I bought my first car back in high school. And old Mr. Sterling came out to fill up my tank, wash my windshield, check my oil. This is kind of an old-fashioned town, and that’s still how we do things here.

  “Well, Mr. Sterling, who sold me my very first tank of gas back in the early sixties, took one look at my dipstick and he told me to get out of the car and come and have a look. I did so. And sure enough, the end of that dipstick was coated with the darkest, grimiest, sludgiest coat of oil I have ever seen. It was disgraceful, and Mr. Sterling didn’t have to say so. I knew it. I knew I’d gone too long without changing my oil. So I bought five quarts of fresh oil along with my tank of gas, and drove them home.”

  As Cozzano told this story, he was strolling back into his garage, where his car was angled up on a pair of ramps. He kneeled beside the car, reached underneath with one arm, and slid out the metal basin, which was now filled with black oil.

  “Just a few minutes ago, as I was crawling under the car to let that old sludge out of the system, I realized that there was a powerful metaphor for politics. Our political system is basically sound, but over the years it has gotten all fouled with dirt and sludge.”

  Cozzano carried the basin over to a counter, where an empty plastic milk jug sat with a funnel stuck into the top. He held the basin up and tipped it, pouring the oil down the funnel and into the plastic jug.

  “Of course, that kind of thing rubs off. It permeates everything after a while. And I realized that being a presidential candidate had fouled and stained my life in many ways, some obvious, some a little more subtle.”

  Cozzano set the basin down. He took a metal oil spout off a pegboard on the wall, then picked up a fresh can of oil. He shoved the spout into the can, piercing its top, then tilted it just a bit and spilled a few drops of clean, clear, golden oil into the palm of his hand. “Now, that’s more like it,” he said. “This is how my life used to be. And this” - he set the oil can down and slapped the milk jug full of sludge - “is how my life was after a few months of presidential politics. Of course, the President and Tip McLane have been in the same game for much longer than I have. I don’t know how they do it.”

  Cozzano pulled the rag out of his pocket and wiped his hands. “Well, I’ve got some burgers to eat. A son and daughter to get reacquainted with. Some new oil to put in the car. Then I think we’ll go for a stroll around town, maybe take in a movie. And I know that the President and Tip have got important things to do also. So I’ll let you attend to those things. Best of luck to you all, and good night.”

  The Tuscola feed cut back to the long shot of Cozzano’s house, now just a silhouette against an indigo sky, lights shining warmly from every window.

  In the press room, Zeke Zorn was standing on a table shouting. Important blood vessels were showing on his forehead, which, like the rest of his face, had turned red.

  “This is an absolute disgrace!” he screamed. Then he took a deep breath and got himself under control. “This is the most dirty, underhanded, filthy campaign trick ever devised.”

  Al Lefkowitz, the President’s chief spin doctor, was calmer, paler, seemingly almost distracted, like a man who has been hit on the head with a two-by-two and whose consciousness has with­drawn into a deeper neurological realm. He was speaking more quietly than Zorn, with the result that reporters, fleeing in fear of being struck by a loose drop of saliva ejected from Zorn’s mouth, had clustered around him. “It’s very disappointing. It’s an act of political vandalism, really. If he just wanted to withdraw from the race, that would be one thing. But he went beyond that and attacked the candidates. And more importantly, he attacked the American electoral process itself. It’s very sad that his career has to end this way.”

  Zeke Zorn suddenly grabbed the floor by howling. “THERE HE IS!” and pointing toward the entrance. Cy Ogle had just strolled into the room and was now blinking and looking around himself curiously, as if he had wandered in while searching for the men’s room, and could not understand all the commotion.

  Zorn continued, “Maybe you would like to explain how you’re going to get Cozzano’s name off the ballots in all fifty states in just four days!”

  Ogle looked perplexed. “Who said anything about ballots?”

  “Cozzano did. He claims he’s withdrawing from the race.”

  “Oh, no,�
�� Ogle said, shaking his head, and looking a little shocked. “He never said anything about withdrawing from the race. He just said he didn’t want any more campaigning.”

  Zorn was speechless.

  Lefkowitz was not. “Excuse me, Cy, but I think we have a problem here. We negotiated the terms of this debate in good faith. Then you came in with a last-minute change. You said you wanted some free time for Cozzano to speak from Tuscola. And your excuse was that he wanted to make an important announcement. Am I right!”

  “Yes, you’re right. These were my words,” Ogle said.

  “The only reason that Cozzano was granted that free time was because of this important announcement. He wouldn’t have been given that time if all he wanted was to make editorial comments.”

  “True,” Ogle said.

  “So we all construed his words to mean that he was dropping out of the race.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Ogle said, “he didn’t mean to say that.”

  “But if he wasn’t dropping out of the race,” Lefkowitz said, “then he wasn’t making any important announcement - which means that you obtained that free air time under false pretenses. You committed a fraud against the American people! And I am sure that this fraud will be covered extensively by those here in the press room, and that you and Cozzano will be judged for it by the American people, who have grown sick of dirty campaigning.”

  “But he did make an important announcement. Just as I said he would. There’s no deception here,” Ogle said. “Just a mis­understanding.

  “What are you talking about?” Zorn shouted.

  “You heard him,” Ogle said, “he announced that his son was publishing a book. Doesn’t that seem like an important announce­ment to y’all?”

  PART 4. Resurrection Symphony

  57

  Four days after Cozzano’s landslide victory, the Speaker of the House suffered a stroke during a party in a private Washington ‘ club, while sitting on the toilet in the men’s room. On the recom­mendation of the President-elect, the Speaker’s family sent him. to the Radhakrishnan Institute for therapy.

  The house across the street from the Cozzano residence in Tuscola had become vacant a couple of months previously, and the Cozzanos had bought it. Cy Ogle and some of his best people now moved into it and made it into the headquarters for the transition. If the Cozzano house was the Tuscola White House, then the place across the street was the Tuscola Executive Office building.

  Cy Ogle had a big leather La-Z-Boy set up in the living room and spent much of mid-November lying in it “like a sack of shit,” as he put it, recovering from a cold, watching TV, and enjoying his first chance to relax in the better part of a year. It was a wonderful time for him. He had devastated not only the opposition candi­dates, but also his competitors in the election business. Even the fearsome Jeremiah Freel was in jail. And besides, he was a sucker for Christmas.

  After Election Day, Ogle, as leader of the transition team, declared a three-week moratorium on all official activities for the President-elect. Eleanor Richmond likewise stuck close to home - her Alexandria apartment - attending a couple of T.C. Williams football games (Harmon, Jr., had become a star punter) and shopping for inaugural clothes with her daughter, Clarice.

  At the beginning of December, Ogle issued a press release listing the members of the Cozzano transition team. Ogle claimed, of course, that he had hand-picked these men, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Whoever had chosen them had done an excellent job: they were professional, experienced, nonpartisan, and classy in a nonintimidating way. They had impeccable credentials and were universally regarded as ethical and trust­worthy. It was claimed that these people had spent the last year behind the scenes, working on position papers for the Cozzano campaign. This was patently untrue, but Ogle had to admit that it sounded great. All the serious press agreed, and praised the skills of the Cozzano team. The rest of the media was content with photo-ops of Cozzano and his family and entourage shoveling snow in Tuscola.

  Ogle knew that the people, whose consciousness he had pummeled and abused so relentlessly for the previous year, needed a rest. They needed to concentrate on the NFL, sitcoms, and Christmas. They needed to recharge their batteries because what was to come in the Cozzano administration would be tough. A quick glance at the aforementioned position papers proved that much. The waffling and pathetic efforts of the previous administration were to be replaced by calm, cool decisiveness. No one knew what the plan was, beyond the endless evocation of the return to values, and its fiscal corollaries: cut the deficit, pay back every penny on the debt.

  Ogle knew that his role in this operation would end as of January 20. He had two major tasks left to organize, and this was the kind of thing he liked best - public displays without elections. Spectacles. On December 1 he gathered his staff together to launch the final push on the Cozzano Family Christmas Special. The buildup for the special would run until December 21. He would drop names out in the media like lures for hungry trout. Names for potential cabinet officers, names for White House staff. Names for possible judicial appointments. The idea was partly to show what fine people would be working for Cozzano, partly to build up suspense for the Christmas Special, and partly to avoid the tedious and demeaning sight of wannabes trudging back and forth between the Champaign-Urbana airport and Tuscola.

  Instead he had a parade of foreign dignitaries make the same trip. It looked more impressive, and the sight of Brazilians and Saudis making snowmen on the front lawn was great television. Ogle toyed endlessly with the sequence of their arrivals. He also found ways to make use of the soaring stock market, inspired by the Cozzano victory, the knowledge that the debt would not be forgiven, and all of the feel-good symbolism that was radiating from Tuscola like heat from an old-fashioned wood stove.

  Starting on the twenty-first he would begin to throw more logs on the fire. Mary Catherine had taken a job at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and Dad was giving her a cozy brownstone apartment to move into; while its exact location was not mentioned, Today show viewers were given a video tour of the place, complete with blazing fires, oriental rugs, and antique furniture.

  On the twenty-second an affirmation of Cozzano’s strength would be made: he would do a guest shot on a special live edition of a popular woodworking show. The pipe-smoking, suspender-wearing host would interview Cozzano working in his shop, steam coming out of his mouth, as the President-elect fixed a busted chest of drawers.

  Scheduled for the twenty-third was the official launch of James Cozzano’s new book, Kingmakers. The Inside Stories of Ogle, Zorn, and Lefkowitz and How They Created a President. The publisher was throwing a launch party at the Hay-Adams Hotel, across the park from the White House. Rich and powerful people would be present. So would TV cameras. The rave reviews had already been written.

  The twenty-fourth would feature the Cozzanos at midnight mass. And the twenty-fifth would make the country feel good. Real good.

  The seven weeks after the election were glorious for Mary Catherine. No more travel. Minimum of interviews, speeches and other campaign hassles. Maximum of time with Dad. Most of the time was strictly business, though. As she had been doing for the last six months, she spent several hours a day putting him through therapeutic exercises, mostly concentrating on the left hand.

  She had a lot of free time. Part of it she spent hanging around with her old high-school friends and driving up to Champaign or over to Decatur for Christmas shopping. She also took up a new hobby: electronics.

  She had purchased a book on the subject months ago in Boston and had been reading it in free moments, learning about all the mysterious hieroglyphs that made up a circuit diagram: resistors, capacitors, and inductors. She didn’t reckon she could design her own circuits now, but she could certainly put one together from a diagram.

  The week before Christmas she made a stop at the Tuscola Radio shack, which doubled as an Ace Hardware store. She picked up a set of gloves and some to
ols for her father, and then she went into the little nook where all of the resistors, capacitors, and inductors hung in bubble packs. Reading part numbers from a wrinkled sheet of paper she’d taken from her wallet, she selected a couple of do/en items and paid for everything in cash.

  Her father already had a soldering iron, of course; he had every tool known to the industrialized world. Mary Catherine let it be known that she was going into Dad’s workshop to assemble a secret Christmas present and that her privacy had better not be disturbed. She locked the door, pulled down the windowshades, and cranked up the cast-iron stove that Dad used to heat the place up. When it was warm enough that her fingers worked again, she plugged in the soldering iron and went to work, soldering the little bits and pieces from Radio Shack on to a breadboard - a slab of plastic with holes punched through it. When it was finished the whole thing fit into a black plastic box about the size of a paperback book. A toggle switch and a red light protruded from one end.

  President-elect Cozzano himself seemed to blossom under the period of rest and relaxation. Aside from receiving his daily CIA briefing and eyes-only presidential briefing, he was basically on vacation. He evinced no desire to have a hand in collecting names for his cabinet, being content to work with the same corps of advisers that had brought him here. Football season blended into basketball season at Tuscola High School, and periodically Cozzano would slip out to the football field or into the gym to watch the town’s young student-athletes compete.

  Cozzano had developed a new passion in the last months of the campaign: Scrabble. It had been his idea that they start playing the game, but Mary Catherine encouraged it because (as she explained to her father’s curious handlers) it was a great form of therapy. Because it was a word game, it helped to exercise the parts of Cozzano’s brain that handled verbal communication. But because no speech was involved, it bypassed the speech centers of his brain - which were now partly silicon. Mary Catherine insisted that Cozzano play it with his left hand. At first, Cozzano had found it surprisingly difficult to persuade his left hand to spell words; the necessary neural connections had been severed by the stroke.