FSF, December 2008 Page 3
When I walked around the White House halls, the staffers (God knows what they did anymore) stopped drinking coffee and looked at me like I was waving a death ray in their faces. It was quite discomfiting and disquieting for me.
Anyway, after The Weddell Show, the silence was big enough that even I could hear the caca storm coming across the horizon, full bore, clouds five miles high. One could only hope that people had their drawers on tight. I did. I was getting into my mental health kit every day for a while. Here's how it went, approximately:
Starting about March 1—Hundreds of Christian leaders proclaimed the Rapture was upon us, and congregations of twenty, or two hundred, or two thousand stood outside their churches or by riversides (a popular venue), day after day, arms raised and pleaded to be taken, and they were, with big rattling blips that could be heard for a mile. No one could even guess the total number. Maybe they got raptured up or maybe they just weren't anymore, like Weddell, et al. The Catholics seemed to be a bit skeptical about this and let the Protestants offer themselves up without comment. Faber also had no comment.
March 11—Every SWAT team within a hundred miles of Washington was brought in to storm the White House. “Ha ha,” once again. About twenty seconds after they began, it was all over. The poorer kids swarmed out of the neighborhoods and ran away with a lot of black clothes and a lot of dangerous weapons. One must plan for unintended consequences, as my philosophy professor told us. No comment from Faber, but he did smile.
March 18—Several patriots from Langley Air Force Base, on their own, it was said, tried to drive a couple of F-14s over the White House and unload some devastation there. However, the planes flew uneventfully low over the back lawn, headed out to sea, and went down, pilotless. Faber's comment? “Hm."
April 12—The Serviles of Submission came to D.C. No one expected 250,000 of them to show up, utterly silent, walking very slowly through the streets about ten abreast, yet no two of them touched, which was against their beliefs. This was advertised as a way to avoid being disappeared: Wear something white, be quiet, and move slowly—the latest formula for success. Unfortunately, shortly after one p.m, when people were probably cranky about not having lunch and having to be quiet for so long, the Messiah's Maidens ran through the streets, as they do, shrieking and knocking anybody aside who got in their way. My guess is that the Maidens made sure the Serviles were in their way, because they went into them like lawnmowers, and a lot of the Serviles suddenly became not so servile and “belied their name,” as I heard someone say.
* * * *
By evening, there were still groups fighting in the outlying neighborhoods. Fires and looting were involved and a certain amount of gunfire. Nobody could say when it began to quieten, but by nine p.m. the streets were silent and the fires had been extinguished. White billowy clothes, sheets mainly, blew around the streets for a few days before they were all picked up. Need I excogitate upon this?
During this time, I spoke to Faber nearly every day. This is a composite of what we said, from my notes:
"President Faber, I cannot help but notice that a lot of people are just evaporating, if you know what I mean."
"Oh yes,” he said. Often he had to finish chewing what he was chewing before he could answer, and, as I remember, most of our conversations were held as he was eating or just starting or just finishing eating. He ate things I couldn't identify, not that that's bad, necessarily, but the man would eat anything. “You know, there go those problems everyone was complaining about,” he said. Big grin and more eating.
"But President Faber, these people are, I guess, dead! That bothers me!” I didn't exactly shout, but I felt I needed to intensify my expression.
"No, no.” He halfway stood up as he kind of hovered his hands over me, kind of like he was holding down my “aura.” “No one is dying, Quentin. Heavens, I couldn't do that! Great heavens!"
"But they're gone! They aren't here anymore! And to tell the truth, I think you yourself might be making these people disappear!"
Hold on. Here it comes:
"Well, of course I am, but they're not dying! That would be awful."
"Then,” I asked, “if they're not dead, where are they?"
He looked a little dumbfounded, I must say.
"Well...” dither, dither ... “they aren't in Philadelphia!” Faber had actually made a funny, but under the circumstances I thought it was in poor taste. “Seriously,” he said, “they aren't anywhere."
"Is this a philosophy class now? Tell me in words a C+ guy would understand."
Faber looked like he was thinking very hard. “Well, the transition is pretty quick—somewhere around thirty-seven to the minus four seconds. That's pretty quick. So as I see it, one should live a happy, carefree life and forget the next thirty-seven to the minus four seconds. You'd never know if you weren't here anymore."
I could see there was a certain hideous logic to that. I thought fast. “But you're taking away people, friends and family! They don't like that!"
"Out of sight, out of mind. They won't remember for long.” He kept his jolly face on the whole time, but he did keep eating.
"Wait a minute.” I caught an implication there. “Wait. You said they wouldn't remember for long? Why not?"
"Memories fade fairly quickly these days."
"You're going to change their memories? Like erase people out of other people's memories? You can do that?"
He leaned forward a little and lowered his voice. “That young lady you were seeing? What was her name?"
I knew it, but my mind was spinning in other directions. I was distracted.
"Do you remember?” he asked. “Take a moment. You were very close, you said."
I couldn't quite pull it together. Anna ... Anita? Anita Polenta...? Anna ... whatever. Her name wasn't there. But I kept a picture of her in my wallet, yet when I checked, oh boy, it wasn't there and it should have been there.
Then I got another implication. If he kind of meant that when somebody disappeared, the memories other people had of them were wiped away, then didn't that mean Anna-whatever had been disappeared?
"I'm sorry,” Faber said, apparently reading my mind, which I did not like. He did appear genuinely sorry. “Her friend Henry ... I regret telling you this. She took all his money, and in despair he swam out into the ocean, there at Huntington Beach, and was never seen again. She bought herself a nice car."
I couldn't believe it! Not Anna-Anita-whatever! Woman of my dreams, just six months ago!
"Her memory will fade,” he said, patting my hand across his desk. “You'll be happier."
"But Mr. Faber,” I said, “even after somebody's disappeared, people will have possessions of who they lost ... pictures, movies, mementos, so they'll grieve for those people, won't they?” I was sure I had him there.
He shook his head as he smiled a little bit. “Not for long, no. You didn't lose her picture, by the way. First, you had it, then, thirty-seven to the power of minus four seconds later, you didn't."
It was a cliché; I knew it; I said it anyway: “Who gave you the right to play God?! Where do you get off deciding who gets to be here and who remembers what?"
"Well, son, I don't know anything about ‘rights’ or if they even apply here, and I certainly don't know anything about acting like God. I wouldn't know where to begin."
I recall actually spluttering at this point. I had never spluttered before.
"Cookie?” he asked, pushing a tray toward me.
It was those white puffy cookies with coconut on the outside so they look like a big gobs of mold. I probably just stared at them like they were poison.
"Quentin, this is what I do. It's what I'm good at. There are a few that are better, but...."
"You're treating us like lab rats, aren't you, like we did in psychology class!"
"It's insightful to take the rat's point of view. Quentin, you should believe that I would never, ever hurt anyone. There are very strict rules I have to follow. But I'm not
going to tell you what they are."
Then we just looked at each other for a very long half-minute. He looked uncle-y and I imagine I looked pretty stupid because I was trying to think of something to say and I just couldn't. I guess I was “flusterated,” as my mother used to say.
"Well,” he said, “on to other business. And ask Ms. Kan to hurry along lunch."
I took that as my cue to leave, which I did, and went directly to my mental health emergency kit and got relieved, if you know approximately what I mean.
It took me a while, but it was at this point I realized that my life and involvement with Faber had gotten way, way, way out of hand. Who was I to be his main liaison to the outside? Why did I get asked all the questions? And now that here I was in the White House and we had people blipping away right and left—well, I'm sorry, but my frail brain does not register those conditions as part of my “frame of reality,” as it's called, so I was upset and alarmed, but I was not making rabid phone calls to strangers (when the phone worked) or screaming down the streets like those rude lesbian women, because a big part of my brain JUST DIDN'T GET IT. But there I was and what did I think of this unreal predicament? My brain would not think of unreal predicaments, so I called my mother.
"The TV doesn't work, Son. Can you do something about that?"
"Probably not, Mom. How are you doing? You have food, water, electricity?"
"Oh, we're just fine. You know, the funniest thing, people don't seem to use money that much these days. Even the stores, they used to take whatever money people had, but they don't even do that anymore. People just go on about their jobs as usual. Your Mr. Faber, he's done that, hasn't he? We're so proud of you."
"I think he did it, Mom. It's kind of hard to tell."
"You know that Mr. Raloff down the street, how cranky he was? Well, he's gone now. I guess he moved. Everyone's so glad about it. Remember when you were a little boy how he ran over your ... what was it he ran over? Your bicycle ... did he run over something?"
And so on. In short, Mom was having a pretty decent time of it, even if she only remembered half her life.
That gave me food for thought.
* * * *
"Sir? Mr. President?” I said to him one day over Spamwiches, which he relished but I could barely choke down, “what do you do all day?"
"I monitor issues,” he said precisely. And he gave me a quick well-fed grin, which it certainly was by now, and a little chuckle. “I believe this food is having a rejuvenating effect on me, don't you?” He held his head up a little higher over his untouched files, so I could see. He did look a little better. It wasn't dramatic, but he didn't look ready for the embalmer, as he did when we were out campaigning.
I told him he looked younger. It pleased him.
* * * *
By now, as you might have guessed, the fan was a turbofan, the excretata was the excretata of meat-eating animals, and it was being shot into said turbofan at Niagara volumes. But no, wait—there's more: There's proof positive that no one should ever say things couldn't get any worse, because they did.
Rumors filtered around that there were new rivers coming out of the mountains, going right through neighborhoods and shopping centers, sweeping them away and really messing things up. Forests replaced some of those wheat fields in the Midwest, and the mega-farmers went berserk until a few of them blipped. The changes happened in other odd ways, too, like in the night or when nobody was around, because no one could actually claim to seeing them happen. And if, for example, some apartment block was going to disappear, for some reason, all the people would just happen to be gone shopping or something. In places, new buildings appeared overnight. At least that was the rumor.
The only thing like that that I saw was a strip of apple orchard that appeared about a quarter of a mile from us. I went over and looked. They were mature trees, apple trees, with decayed leaves on the ground as though from the previous years. There are some things in life you look at and you just walk away. I looked, and I walked away.
I remember I was really calm for some reason, but it was the kind of calm I didn't much care for, because it wasn't a very deep calm.
"Mr. Faber,” I said, “what do we have going on now? Landscaping?"
He did the heh-heh and wobbled his head back and forth and said, “You could call it that.” He pushed aside a plate of steak bones and wiped his mouth with his napkin. He had lately been eating a lot of meat. “Landscaping, yes. I love the food here. You people don't appreciate what you have."
"How long is this going to go on? How much more are you going to do?"
"Till I win."
Ah ha! An answer! Till he wins. An answer which meant absolutely nothing to me.
Then I thought of a good question: “How will you know if you've won?"
"Can't tell you,” he said amiably. “Send Ms. Kan in, will you? Those were the best pork chops."
He made me really tired. He had more eating to do while the world was losing its memory. I slumped off to my kit.
* * * *
In my unprofessional observation of human nature during this series of events, I would guess that about 35 percent of the population “went guano” when pressure of an unpredictable nature was applied to their lives. People devised charms, spells, meditation chants, tattoos of prime numbers on their “chakras,” drinks, foods, and sacrifices to make them safe. They cut off body parts, little things mostly. They tried sacrificing animals, but from what I heard, that went really badly for the participants. A little pressure and we're right back in the Dark Ages. This comes as a major surprise to whom?
After a couple of uneventful days, I went to Faber and said to him, “I want to go out and look around and I want to know if I'm going to have a thirty-seven to the minus four-second experience. Am I going to disappear?"
"Well, of course not.” This day he seemed to be eating pastries with a lot of chocolate on them, and red things. Faber certainly had been filling out a good bit during his “presidency.” He didn't look skeletal anymore and his wrinkled skin wasn't very wrinkled at all. “Look around,” he told me. “Give me your personal opinion about what you see, how the people are taking the adjustment."
I had to ask. It was time. “President Faber? You aren't really human, are you?"
I got the “heh-heh” a couple of times while he looked down at his plate and seemed actually bashful. “Well, I am, yes. Everything you see is one hundred percent human. But there are—” He did the heh-heh again with a head shake, “—there are things you don't see. It's nothing to worry about. I wouldn't worry. No one should worry."
"Sir? People are out there vanishing! Their homes are vanishing, probably as we speak, and every minute they wonder when they're going to die! People are going crazy about this!"
He put on his serious look. “Well, you tell them they shouldn't. No one's dying. Tell them that they worry entirely too much."
What could anyone say to that? I said I'd tell them.
* * * *
It was a strange walk. The first thing noticeable was the lack of tourists. Two of them stared through the front fence. Everything was also very neat. No papers blowing around, no drink cups on the grass—it was exceedingly clean.
Nextly, I noticed that many of the stores were empty—not necessarily closed, but definitely empty. Some, however, were open and had a few customers. I went in a fur store and I looked around and saw they had no furs. They had jackets and coats and scarves—but no furs.
Without going into the details of this encounter, suffice it to say that the proprietor, her single staff member, and the two shoppers were extraordinarily pleasant. “Can we help you with this?” and “Can we help you with that?” They had no furs, she said, for ethical reasons. One of the customers whispered to me under her breath, “It might not be safe, you know."
Trying to seem like just another person, I asked, “So how are you holding up with all ... these changes? Any special problems come up?"
The propriet
or shrugged nonchalantly and said, “Not really, but it takes some getting used to. I never lock the doors anymore. Somebody tries to boost something, I'll find it under their empty clothes right in the doorway."
"Are there problems where you live?” a customer asked me, apparently deeply concerned.
"No,” I said. “I can't complain. But I should get out more."
"You should. It's really safe."
The farther I walked, the more I saw of the same. It was a low-key kind of happy, like quiet satisfaction. But I kept thinking about all the people who lost people. In a little restaurant, I had some coffee with two older couples.
I asked them, “Did you lose anybody in the disappearances?"
They all knitted their brows in thought.
"No,” one of the men said. “Well, just one I heard of. My wife's niece."
"No, dear, it was your niece,” the woman next to him said.
"I had a brother disappear yesterday,” the other man said. “I wanted to kill him myself, so overall, speaking only for us, it's not too bad."
So there it was. They liked it.
On a wild hare, I decided to go to the Washington Post building to see what some of the reporters thought about it. After all, their job was to observe and report, and assuredly they had observed things I hadn't seen.
To make a longish story short, I could only find six people there, and one was a luncheonette worker who only had white bread and yellow cupcakes, and one was a former bus driver sort of living in the building. I did, however, locate one reporter. This woman, Claire Kronski, a little dark-haired woman who acted like she had methedrine for blood, gave me several earfuls. Like A.) there were a lot of people gone, about half the population probably, but it was anybody's guess. For B.) the economy was practically nonexistent, but people seemed to be getting along all right, aside from the boredom, which led her to C.) there was no news, which outraged her. “With everybody being so [bad word] nice!” she said and then slapped her hands over her mouth. Then she moved her hands, smiled really nicely, and said something like “With everyone so darned nice, what's to report?"