Chimpanzee Page 8

  The bill is done up in black and red ink. A sort of mid-century modern design block. It says 1 SHARE in impressive, hip letters. I could use it in class, teaching visual rhetoric. It follows all the rules.

  “Same principle as regular cash,” she says.

  “You’re printing your own money?”

  “Does that bother you?”

  She likes this. Whether she intended to or not, she . . . arranged, or whatever, this conversation according to her self-satisfaction with things like free education, dreadlocks, riding motorcycles, and flaunting her skin. Certainly, she has to be abrasive about these things with her peers—establishing order, rank, genuine interest. Not with me. She wants me to be impressed with her street-wise expertise. She wants validation, of the things she thinks.

  More importantly, though, she’s compensating, acting authoritative, even (especially) around David. But for what, who the fuck knows.

  I put my apple down. “Not really.”

  She stabs at a bowlful of greens. “These people can’t get jobs, but they have things to offer. Skills, labor hours, apples. You sign up with the SHARE committee, record a number of volunteer hours, or produce donations, or whatever you have, and then the committee hands you a stack of bills.”

  “Are you on the committee?”

  “No. The office is upstairs, though. We could meet some, I’ll bet.”

  “How does the committee fund itself?”

  “It takes dues from those who buy in and sells what it can.”

  “I see.”

  There is a small piercing hole in her cheek, near her nose, where she must sometimes wear a stud. I can see that now.

  “Where do you spend them?” I say.

  “There’s a registry,” she says, “of participants. People, establishments. You can trade labor for more SHARES, or you can spend them on produce, handcrafts—whatever.”

  “Clever,” I say. Until the committee gets out of hand.

  “It’s all underground,” she says. I’m sure she likes that part. “Un-taxed.”

  Un-taxed. Despite the committee’s dues. It’s important to own one’s language. The usage and meaning of it, for things like this.

  “Do you want me to sign you up?” she says.

  I give her a look, like I’m thinking. “Why are you taking my class, Zoe? Are you learning anything?”

  One shouldn’t ask two questions in a row, rhetorically speaking. It yields the initiative when sourcing subject-object discourse relationships. I know better. It feels weird to know better.

  She points at the copy of The Mountainist that I carried in with me.

  “Did you like the article?” she says.

  “It’s disturbing.”

  “Did you think it was well-written?”

  “Well enough. The journalist could use some practice.”

  “That’s why.” She’s not posturing when she smiles now. The dead air blows between us.

  “You want to write articles,” I say.

  “Something like that,” she says.

  “Yes, then,” I say.

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, I want you to sign me up.”

  Outside, a kid walks past wearing a pair of chimping goggles. They are plugged into his mobile phone via a cord and a small adapter.

  “They use wireless phone signals now,” Zoe tells me. “To network. It’s all mobile.”

  “I see.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  THERE ARE TWO POLICEMEN WAITING AT THE TOP OF THE amphitheater stairs in Sentinel Park. My students wait quietly, in rank and file, on the stone terraces beneath them. There are around sixty of them. By this point, it has become clear which ones are friends. Which ones are dating. Who thinks he’s smarter than the others. The retirees are the most diligent.

  For many of them, this class is the characterization of their entire lives. Their frustration. Their underground madness. Like me, most of these have been conditioned against neurological imbalance since childhood—standing in line outside the school nurse’s office, waiting for their vaccinations and their turns with the adhesive pads that warmed their brains against madness. This is as close as they can come to being disturbed. Doing things that agitate their better sense.

  This or a pair of chimping goggles.

  “Benjamin Cade?” one of the officers says. The other stares at the students, at the traffic in the surrounding thoroughfares. Anything.

  “Yes.”

  He looks about my age. He is armed with a sidearm, a taser, a telescopic billy club, and several canisters of chemical irritant.

  Police officers often do not go to post-graduate school. Some departments no longer even require a bachelor’s degree, because it is unfeasible, considering their hiring needs. I read an article that explained as much.

  “I need to ask you about your relationship with Leah Johnson,” the officer says.

  Declarative intent is not a question. It is insidious. It establishes a position of subject authority. It performs the task of making demands without making them. I can cooperate, if I like.

  “Very well.”

  He frowns. “Do you have a relationship with Miss Johnson?”

  “I may,” I say. “Who is she?”

  I look into the amphitheater, plumbing depth and attendance from on high, with these officers.

  The officer shows me a photograph of Zoe. It is a candid shot: she is descending the stoop in front of an apartment building—somewhere downtown, judging by the ashlars and stringcourses in the architecture. She is not looking at the photographer. There are handwritten numbers along the bottom.

  I think about the woman on the chimping network.

  “This person attends my class,” I say. “On occasion.”

  I see David in the crosswalk across the street, coming late to class. When he sees the officers, he paints them with his best hatred gaze and reverses his direction.

  “Where can we find her?”

  I wonder if he means we in the sense of law enforcement collectively, or if he is actualizing semantic cooperation. A game to determine who I am and what I will do.

  I turn away and stare again into the amphitheater. “She doesn’t seem to be here today.”

  He wants me to ask him if there’s a problem. If Zoe’s in some kind of trouble. Play along.

  But I couldn’t care less. Zoe is interesting because she is interesting, not because I feel attached. One must keep distances between oneself and one’s students. One should, anyway.

  He hands me his business card. I put it in my pocket without looking at it.

  “If you see her again,” he says, “let her know that we’d like to ask her a few questions.”

  “Will there be anything else, officer?”

  “Yes. Class is canceled. City ordinance.”

  “Which ordinance is that?”

  “If you are caught fomenting civic discord in public again, you will be detained.”

  “It’s a rhetoric class.”

  The quiet one produces a copy of The Mountainist. The first officer opens it to the page containing my original advertisement for the class. He points to the chimpanzee image I used.

  “Are you associated with any groups that identify with this imagery, Mr. Cade?”

  “It’s just an advertisement,” I say. “Chimpanzees seem to be the thing these days. I thought it would attract people to my class.”

  “This group has become an organization of interest,” he says. “I recommend that you don’t reference their imagery again.”

  He hands the circular back to his partner. “Have a nice evening, Mr. Cade.”

  “That’s it,” I say.

  I can’t figure out if I’m angry or not. It was bound to happen, and sooner or later, I wouldn’t even be capable of teaching it anymore anyway. I don’t know how I was going to end it.

  Most of them just stand up and go. Move along.

  I never cared when students dropped my class. It made my job easier.

>   “What do we do now?” one says. One of the retirees.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Teach each other. Keep it up.”

  “Good luck, Dr. Cade.”

  “Thanks,” I say. They’re being emotional. Standing there in a little group. Staring at me for some parting experience. Something to cap it all off while the classmates they smiled at and chatted with and waved to in happy coincidences in the bread line, exchanging quips about missed classes and their plans for the weekend. While those classmates become inert humanshapes around them. Irrelevant to experience.

  I watch the dispersal.

  “Et cetera,” I say.

  Sireen says. She’s talking into her phone, in her palm, where her mother’s face tries to remain steady upon the screen. Her tremors are only getting worse. The video image brings them into Sireen’s life every few weeks, when they talk. They never speak of it—the disease. But I see Sireen’s efforts, from time to time, on her computer. The files and sites and browsing odysseys that take her into her mother’s world, where she tries to understand dying. And I can tell when she’s talking to her cousin. The doctor in Beirut. Who answers idiot questions and dispenses reassurance and yes he’ll talk to his colleagues at the hospital. Only the best. Everything we can do.

  Sireen says.

  I only met her mother once, at our wedding. It was in the middle of a semester because the venue was cheaper then. We paid for it with our student loan disbursement. Her mother stayed with us that weekend. I had a paper to write.

  Sireen waves at me. I stop in the middle of the living room. Just stand there.

  Sireen says.

  It was in the . Little cups of Turkish coffee that I’d fucked up, but Huda, her mother, was too nice . She smiled almost as much as Sireen did, who was out at .

  It’s okay, Ben, , she said. You’ll do everything. Write your paper. What is it about?

  - . ’ .

  Sireen points the screen at me, and extends her arm.

  “Hello, Ben, ,” Huda says.

  I lift a hand and wave. “Hello, Huda.”

  She loves you, Huda said. She’ll do everything. Just like you.

  She lived the civil war, back in Lebanon. Was still steely with it. Still looking at everything like a revolution. Including us.

  Sireen says.

  Especially us.

  Sireen goes over to see her sometimes, a few weeks in the summer. She hasn’t mentioned it in a few months.

  She ends the call.

  “They canceled the class,” I say.

  “What?” Sireen says. “Who canceled it?”

  She sets down her phone, tucks her legs underneath her on the couch. There is a glass of wine on the floor beneath her. She is still wearing the nylons she worked in today.

  “The police.”

  “What?” She moves a pile of rosters and homework assignments from one cushion to another. Making room for the conversation. For me.

  “They were just looking for one of the students,” I say.

  “Are you in trouble?” she says. I can’t tell if she’s angry or afraid.

  “No.”

  She looks down at her wine. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

  We didn’t get the bungalow we liked. One of the other tourists outbid us.

  “I’m going for a drink,” I say. “You want one?”

  “I can’t,” she says. Hefts the papers to demonstrate.

  “Okay.”

  There is a sign on the door. My neighborhood bar now accepts SHARES. That changes things. I walk inside quickly, and I can see through the other door that most of the patrons are on the large patio in the back, drinking and flirting under out-of-season Christmas lights and neon beer signs. They wear layered clothing in casual, ironic ways, despite the heat.

  The bartender recognizes me.

  “Gin martini,” I say. “Whatever’s in your well.”

  She turns around.

  “And a pair of goggles,” I say.

  I start picking SHARES out of the stack the committee gave me when Zoe signed me up. Back pay, they called it. For all I was doing for the community as a teacher. I took them—all two hundred. I don’t care. I can order a decent drink now.

  I walk to a booth. The bartender can bring the drink to me.

  I enjoy feeling like I’m in control. I don’t know what this sim is, what I’m experiencing. I didn’t even bother reading the title from the menu. The goggles’ microchip selected it at random from the list of simulations that have been approved and licensed for public use. The subscriber fees for the simulations with restricted licenses, those for use only in private theaters, are too high to pay.

  Even if you could pay, and you hacked the appropriate servers, databases—whatever—if you altered the registry for your goggles you’d be arrested if you were caught chimping restricted sims in public places. Disorderly conduct against the common good.

  The sim takes the edge off. Things feel a little better. It is making me micromanage my impulses. Choosing, selecting, directing the stream of my own consciousness. At least, that’s how it feels. If I had to guess, I’d say that the neuronal processes generating my sense of self are being regrouped in some scalar fashion, higher-order to lower, that creates the illusion of associative control. A feeling of control is just the dump and slosh of communicative neuro-chemicals anyway. I remember that much.

  What had kept Zoe from class? She never skipped. And David, going to ground when he saw the cops across the street. I didn’t bother noticing who else wasn’t in class. Who else knew not to show up. I should have paid attention. I can’t figure out if I’m angry or not. If I would have been once.

  Emotion is just auto-correction, I tell myself. My self tells me— the sim reclaiming control. It’s the brain qualifying whatever experience for proper storage. Having names for emotions, like anger—and figuring out how to create them with goggles made of cheap plastic and electrodes manufactured in plants overseas— those are the consequences of being both a psychological and a sociological being. The sim in action. We exist out there, beyond ourselves, whether we like it or not. Behavior must be named and moderated by the masses. We feel what the outside world has best taught us to feel. To keep things in line.

  The martini helps.

  The goggles superimpose a network connection request icon in my field of vision.

  No one is sitting particularly near to me; I can talk to myself all I want.

  I approve the request.

  “You’re back,” she says, “Ben.” Her voice, like the first time, is digitally altered.

  The last time I chimped, when Sireen and Dimitri and I played “Jim and Carol,” I didn’t tell them that Jim, the associative identity that had been fully indexed and processed and offered up to the simulation for the sake of whatever behavioral research his debtors sold him to, and then again to the company manufacturing and distributing consumer-grade goggles and simulations—I hadn’t told them that, in love though he was, he was afraid of what would become of him and Carol. He had doubts. I had them for him. We are more than our simulated selves, real or otherwise, but it sure didn’t fucking feel that way.

  Sireen and I had sex that night. All the liquor. The goggles. That simulation. It scared me, though it shouldn’t have. I’m not Jim.

  I didn’t want to talk about it.

  I adjust the goggles’ microphone. “I’m back,” I say.

  “Did you miss me?” she says.

  “Fuck you.”

  “I’m feeling submissive tonight.”

  “You should.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she says. “It’s the sim.”

  “It’s all the same to me,” I say. “You might as well be a sim yourself.”

  She makes a little noise.

  “Your name isn’t Carol, is it?” I say.

  “Do you want to know my name?”

  “Isn’t that supposed to be a secret?”

  “I’ll tell you.”

  “And I’m s
upposed to believe you?”

  “Please,” she says. “I’ll tell you the truth.”

  The dial for the intensity of the simulation is on the opposite earpiece from the one housing the broadcast button. I thumb it up a couple of degrees. I’m enjoying this. It enjoys me.

  “What do you want?” I say.

  “Do you want to meet me someplace? Private?”

  I change my mind and dial the sim back down. I don’t know what this woman is on, but all I can think about is being arrested. I have no idea how far you can go on public channels like this.

  The coincidence makes me nervous. I randomly selected something dominant, and tonight she’s being submissive. I don’t like it.

  “I’m married,” I say. “Jesus.”

  “I know.”

  Jesus.

  “What do you mean, you know?”

  She makes a little noise. I’m feeling pressure behind my eyes. In my fingertips. She’s making me angry.

  “Answer me!”

  I feel a thousand tiny fists along the top of my skull, down my spine. I close my eyes against the warmth, the vertigo. Breathe deeply.

  I want to shout again.

  “People know who you are,” she says. “You teach downtown.”

  “Jesus. How do you know that?”

  “I told you not to use your real name. People find things.”

  “Yeah, thanks for the fucking tip.”

  “So, what’s new?” she says.

  “You want to chat?”

  “That’s the point, Ben,” she says. “It’s not as fun alone.”

  It takes great effort not to lash out at her again. To call her a cunt and threaten to find her, on the other end, and teach her a lesson.

  Which must be the point of this sim.

  Jesus.

  I swallow some martini. “You know I teach. Well, class has been canceled.”

  “It’s getting too big. You’re making a scene.”