3/5/2000 Geoffrey Ashbrook
Roy wiped his fingers on his apron, pumphing off the white powder in clouds and knocking some of the black pellets onto the floor, as he turned and began towards the door. He stood for a moment in front of the closed door, looking over a diagramed list that was posted on it, running his fingers down and checking his pocket watch. Then he took an accountants visor off the coatrack, put it on, and opened the door.
"Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Global Significance please, come in, come in. You can sit over by the radio if you like, or you can try your hand in the kitchen , the choice is up to you and, here, let me take your coats. Or actually, my hands are a bit raphted so, you should probably do that yourselves, Mm-Kaaaaay? Great. Would either of you like anything to drink? The coatrack is upstairs, the fridge is back there by Randolph VIII -he's Russian [he added in a whisper with a few knods]."
The two people whom he had addressed as Mr. and Mrs. Global Significance were by first appearance two large men in dark overcoats. However, upon a closer inspection one might observe that their faces were of an unusual color and texture for a primate, most likely it was paper machete. The mouths were oblong and irregular, the eyes were a bit too close together one on, and too far apart on the other, the hair was simple knitting yarn clumped on with some Elmer's Glue, the face was more polygon-ish than smooth. The eyes painted on around holes. The one figure turned to the other, in a way that would suggest that he had no ability to move his neck. Something was whispered. Then the other nodded his head, and whole upper body, in a similar fashion. Then the one who had been spoken too raised a large stiff arm tipped with bright pink paper machete fingers that stuck out in an untraditional manor. "Yes," it said.
Roy, who had been patiently examining their faces for the ordinary facially communicated feedback which would indicate how much they had understood, then smiled and nodded and gave them a little wave and went back to the join the busy kitchen crew.
The one large figure put down its arm, and the two of them walked ahead. The next room was a living room, in which the chairs and sofa, and even the television (which was on) were covered with plastic sheets. The carpet smelled new, and pictures on the walls were covered in plastic too. At the back of this room there was a staircase, which they walked over to.
As they walked on they could hear the sound of someone talking upstairs. It sounded like an old radio broadcast. When they got to the top of the stairs they looked around. Ahead of them was a hall leading to a room, the door half cracked, and there looked to be people inside. To the left there was a tall thin door, and to the right there was another hall that turned a bend. Down that hall all they could see were framed pictures of label printing machines. They walked strait ahead.
When they got to the door the one of them pushed it all the way open, and a half dozen rabbits dashed past them, followed by a frantic looking sewing machine with crane-neck lamps for arms and eight spider like legs, and it was shouting the whole time in a young Scottish voice, "Come back here, you little devils; I'll teach you to divide!" And out of the bulb socket at the end of one of its arms came a stream of wires and rods which formed into a large scoop (with a geodesic bulb at the end). It picked up the rabbits as they made for the stairs and the ladle then shrunk and retracted. Then the rods and wires retracted all the way in, at the end opening to leave-show one rabbit sitting in the head of the sewing machine's arm. As the sewer strutted across the room to put the rabbit back in a pen with a bunch of other animals (including a duck, a platypus, a small kangaroo, a small pig, and a penguin; all dressed in casual outfits and playing cards or working with construction sets) they looked around the room. Near the middle of the room there were a whole bunch of, what looked like small trees growing radishes composed from electric circuitry. Each tree was growing from a large pot with transparent sides, and inside you could see the tree roots were moving around in an aqueous soil medium of dolls and action figures which the roots would dismember and digest. There was also a boy sitting at a desk on the one side of the room and a girl at a draftman's table a bit further down, and between the two sat a rather large pot of soil and mulch. The boy turned around, "Oh, hey." And he gave a small wave and turned back to his work. The one figure whispered something about Oliver, and the two of them walked over to the desk.
Working under a loud halogen bulb, Oliver, they could see, was pouring attention into a composite sheet of stamps. "How's it going over there?" he called to the girl.
"Almost there," she said. "I don't know why you insist on using stamps," she said.
"It works,"
"Yeah," she said, "but so would a lot of other things that would be a lot more aesthetically pleasing. "
The figures looked down at Oliver, working on his loom weaving nearly microscopic fibers into the sheet of stamps. A dozen spindles of brightly shining metallic thread-wires sparkled off colors from across the rainbow, but more varied, earthier. Four or five bright ones mixed to make a dull red one. 'Autumn's antiquated ten cent circulatory,' he thought.
One of the figures stepped over to and craned over the girl. "Batts," said Oliver.
"What?" she asked.
"I'm almost done."
"Um… ok." She replied, trying to remember what he'd said.
The one figure waved the other to come look, with an ambiguous looping arc of the arm. The girl's slanted table was covered with sketches and schematics. There were houses, the interior of a restaurant's kitchen, a barber shop, an old rocket, a car, a few bicycles, a checker board, a duffle bag, a schematic for a tea cup, and silverware, a pair of curtains, a puddle of water being hit by hail, and then a few sketches of two tall figures in overcoats with paper-machete faces, done in profile and from all different angles. "Ok," Oliver said. And he jumped up from the chair swinging his stamps.
He handed the sheet to one of the figures, who took it. The fingers, which tapered like lumpy pink wet paper telescopes, held the sheet like chopsticks holding an envelope. The sheet flopped down over the hand, and then the top edge burst open spraying filaments that adhered to the figures hand, arm, and chest. Lines of text were visible loosely in the air as the sheet was eaten away like a fuse hissing out solid chunks and threads and liquid blots and slurps and gaseous mists and particulate vapors. The figure tried to drop it, and then shake it out of its hand. But it didn't work. The boy stood there just looking at the creatures face. Batts looked over her shoulder briefly, and then turned back her sketch. She reached over and grabbed the back of an exacto-knife, and ran the tip down the length of the figure of the page. The figure who was not holding the sheet walked slowly up behind Batts, and using its hands the best it could it spread her open along the line down her back. Reaching in, it gripped a handle, and pulled back and up with a quick jerk. Oliver watched as the figure pulled the long blue level out of her, flipping her inside out, and onto the drawling board. As her body inverted it pulled the figure forward, and the coat and machete head and hands flew off onto the table, leaving behind a kind of space suit comprised of swimming rings of looped indices, joints of commingled athletic strategy, fabrics of regenerating syntax, and over the whole thing lite humming blue sparking. The other figure, the one holding the still spattering stamp-sheet fuse, looked at the space suit. The fuse burned down in its hand, and then the hand itself began to unravel and fume as if it were made of the same weave. But as the hand began to unravel, it came apart into larger threads which rewove themselves in the air into a transparent gridded sheet. The figure began walking around the room, waving its shortening arm, flapping the clear sheet like a flag. The animals looked up from their pen, the sewing machine cocked its head, and the figure ran about until it was two legs dragging the sheet behind, and then the last edge of the sheet flopped down on the floor. Oliver walked over and picked up the sheet, and tossed it over the pot of soil like a table cloth. Almost immediately small eruptions began rising up into form and then falling back down to the sheet. Lots of little ones like graphs of static, then larger ones, then historic scenes and figures and designs and handwriting styles would show up here or there for a moment. Batts held out her arm as if looking at a time-piece and a hologram of a view of a building jumped up in front of her, about the size of a beach ball. Moving her fingers around on the 'watch' arm she moved into the house, past the kitchen crew, up the stairs and into the room. She was watching herself and Oliver and the tables and the bubbling pot from a Birdseye view with a fish eye skew to it. Then she zoomed in on the pot. By this time the pot was cycling patterns faster and faster. First a view of the planet crystallized, then zooming in through the clouds to a continent and then closer down until you could see cars and airplanes, and then down to the house, and then in through the roof until the perspectives of the two were precisely close enough. Oliver looked back and forth between the too maps, waving his hands to see the images wave too. "Zoom in a little more," he said. "On what?" she asked. "Open your suit visor for a sec." She punched some keys and the top slid open. "What?" And he walked forward, pointing to the hologram in front of her, "Look at that?" Then he dashed up and kissed her, and toppled the two of them into the pot.