John von Neumann was like a household divinity in my father's house so I could never escape his influence. When suggesting to Claude Shannon a name for his new uncertainty function, von Neumann said:
You should call it entropy, for two reasons.
In the first place, your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name.
In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.
The process of disintegration continued. Late for another meeting. Disjointed in progress. Pitman was doing all the talking as usual, regaling the salivating Carnivores with his illimitable and immeasurable marketing metrics.
"We may eventually incorporate Genesis into the new games... between the more lucrative engagements. Presently, Faustus has four major contracts. That's about a quarter of a million in the first half. We are resoundingly solvent."
This raised a few eyebrows. Relegated to Greta's desk and reeking of her perfume, I summoned the nerve to speak up.
"Jimmy's going to help me with Babylonia. This could be our lucky number in Arcadia."
"You're talking to yourself again," Pitman snapped. "I didn't want to mention it at this crucial juncture, but your unprofessional conduct is becoming painfully obvious to the board of directors... and we all know why. John?"
"I'm afraid it's a failed experiment."
Now he tells me.
"You've been monitored. Look what's happened to you. You look like hell!"
"They're still asking for me when they write their articles-"
"That will change," Pitman announced. "Other arrangements have been made in that regard. No more interviews for you, Marleau."
"The world will never get plugged... and that deal is closed."
Herder's smug smile infuriated me. I wanted to throw him out the window. I smiled back at him instead.
I looked around the room for friendlier faces. "We're not done with Jerusalem yet, fellas. There's a deadline-"
"The format of the game has been revamped for the arcades to make a quick sale," Pitman said. "There must be a blood and guts confrontation between Romans and Zealots. The players demand more butchery."
"Do I detect the stench of decomposition in the slaughterhouse?"
"I doubt it," Herder replied. "Your olfactory nerve is shot to hell. To put it in terms that even you will understand, your entire sensory apparatus has been compromised."
"I can still smell a rat. Your emasculated figurehead must turn you down flat! I own Jerusalem... up to and including the Pool of Kedron!"
"What a pitiful display of decrepitude," Pitman said. "You're an embarrassment to Faustus... and we're running low on cash because of your incompetence. Pretty soon we'll be taking in dirty laundry to pay the rent."
Roger Frye quietly exploded: "I don't particularly enjoy working on these commercials. It's humiliating-"
"Yet honest exertion," I said. "My intentions are righteous enough. I must decode the message before we go public with this. Don't you think I waited long enough before speaking out? How can anyone with the gift of foresight ignore that garish scrawl on the wall?"
"The erstwhile iconoclast. We'll have to paint around you... for now. Let's see how resilient you are when we lose all our backers."
After the adjournment, Pitman deleted my comments from the meeting minutes. I was now but a passed master, crouching stupidly over the desk, commemorating my forty-second birthday in deplorable solitude. Alas, the man of clay fell flat on his face. Golly gee! Didn't anyone feel sorry for me? And why should they have? After all, I had composed my own swan song.
The whiskey bottle on the filing cabinet was only half empty when the window revealed the snowstorm. The verdict (death by plague and pestilence) was old news. This insane experiment of Herder's had devoured my sanity and annihilated my capacity for human interaction. As it turned out, my wife would never prove that her wayward husband had ever really had a mistress. Plugging that Sumerian succubus into the forest of Eden had been The Perfect Crime - committing adultery with absolute impunity.
That damnable ringing! I answered the call warily. Instead of that headbanging paroxysm of skreelching, I heard the trembling voice of a child singing Happy Birthday. Then I cradled the receiver - ever so gently - and floated away from my office. (No time to look for a coat. I was on auto-pilot.)
The decorous blizzard continued as I staggered outside and collapsed in the drifts, creating impressions of angels across the park’s clean canvas. This was supposed to be a message for the kids but the winter wind kept obscuring it with fresh snow. Lacking the credibility and resources of an epidemiologist, I didn't know how to break the bad news to anyone.
Jimmy Frazer witnessed the breakdown from his third-floor window without any prejudice. He left the brownstone calmly and perfunctorily retrieved my rigid remains, somehow dragging me back inside. I loosened up beside the radiator in his studio.
"The Youngbloods will cut you off eternally if they find out about this."
"You've caught me cold. I will remain... under the Rose, if she doesn't mind."
"We can't afford to carry you anymore. My sore back will attest to that. Try to leave with some dignity, will you?"
I suspect a hole had been pricked in Frazers's conscience as the infamous hellraiser now seemed morally deflated. I hope I said something like: "You back-stabbing bastards. You'd all be nowhere without me. You fuckers drained me dry. And I’m still waiting for my fucking cake!"
Let’s say I used up the last remnant of consciousness to give him the finger before I passed out on the old psychiatrist's couch. This had been a commendable commemoration of my moral defragmentation, as I can’t possibly recall with any accuracy.
By the middle of February, we should all have been disheartened; but everybody missed the mark. Something compelled me to eavesdrop on the Youngbloods on that great day of destiny - as I hunkered down in the stairwell near the lobby. Greta must have been sorting through the Carnivores' mail at the reception desk. A few Valentines were displayed on the counter. Doc Herder showered Greta the Spear Maiden with cinnamon hearts. There was even a postcard from Florida. Louise had taken her girlfriend with her. Somebody should've told her about the fringe benefits of being a frequent flyer.
Greta revealed that Mark Damon was madly in love with his neighbour's daughter.
"The switchboard operator at the stock exchange? She's too good for him."
A moment of silence. Then: "Anything for the Tin Man?"
They all exchanged silent laughs on my account. Das frivole Mädchen presented Hannah Wieland with two letters and she opened them carelessly. (Apparently, Security had the right to know everything about me.)
"A bouquet from the kids... and Lori's request for the pleasure of more Faustus moolah."
My ex would have to suck a bit harder than that to get it, but she'd get down to the real nitty gritty in the fullness of time. Another catchy pop tune… but I’d forgotten the melody. It’s a musician’s curse to live with a squirm of earworms, only mine had grown into the Lernaean Hydra burrowing into my skull.
Herder must have been reading his New England Journal of Medicine. He’d found something of note to share with the group. That mutating Prospero virus - once relegated to the footnotes - was being rescued from the tundra of speculation by Doctors Without Borders.
"It’s really quite the comeback."
"That's one for our resident prophet," Weiland muttered.
I promptly returned to the wasteland that used to be my bulwark. Over their heads, my office had become the infernal sewing circle, as it was no longer the well-ordered universe of the past. I must admit the room was a shambles. The young masters in the hall cackled hysterically as I rummaged through a mountain of rejection notices. Mark Damon entered the cell with extreme caution. I was expecting a wake-up call from my dream girl. How would she ever find me in all this detritus?
"You're not even in the book anymore," Damon said.
Maybe I should have shot up a flare right then and there. Did they ever suspect?
He assured me the Youngbloods knew nothing about this courtesy call. Frye and Frazer were working on theatrical commercials. They had diverted all available resources and I was still confined to quarters. All banking privileges have been revoked.
"You're on sabbatical without salary. I'll take care of your support payments until the residuals kick in. Isaac buried you very neatly, my friend. You're more than just deep-sixed. You're pretty much cremated".
Not a clean hit. We couldn't all be fighting men.
I spent my summer vacation at the university library, whiling away the waning hours as a 'mature student'. One got used to the heavy police presence on campus after the first few visits. (Still can’t recall who provided me with that guest pass. You probably know or you wouldn’t have asked.) Those red shirts plastered with merit badges seemed like overkill, now that the campus radicals were relegated to continuing studies at those holiday camps in the far north.
The redshirts barely noticed me. Now I was nothing more than a muttering, nattering curmudgeon, clinging to my books and taking up space as I shuffled through the turnstile, all dipzoid and doddering. Preoccupied with the due dates, I failed to notice that troublesome woman in the foyer.
That woman. She'd been there.
She must've watched me pin a note to the board as I left. These pamphlets had been stashed in plastic pockets under prudently monitored and censored library bulletin boards across the city with no questions asked; and there they had remained, gathering dust for three months.
The heat wave was painfully long and silent with so many jackboots marching through the streets. The nation was completely wired from station to station. How they loved to dance on the strings of their ubiquitous masters! Everywhere there was sameness. No opposition remained. Raelynne Frye frantically studied the printout in the largest of the Faustus labs.
"Forget the Dark Continent. It's official! We are the living dead."
Hannah Wieland and Doc Herder slid down the poles in capes and cowls and activated their emergency procedures, gunning for another virus.
"Prospero's chewing its way through the network like it’s The Last Supper," Wieland said. "I'll have to disconnect everything and launder the backups."
Every thing.
Faustus Inc was the first on the block to become self-contained. Herder had taken us off the big board. There was no more access to external screens - including notebooks. We still had the cleanest plates in town. And then there was that sudden cashflow surge from those mysterious benefactors on high we all love to believe in. Back in the black, we locked ourselves in and prepared for the whitest winter I’d ever live to see.