Cogito Zero Sum
Then I am in a room. White walls, neon lights. I am standing at a counter. On the other side is a man. He wears a strange uniform.
He says: This was a mistake. You should not have come here. You cannot go back. But you must get out. This place is the war of all against all. This is kill or be killed. For you there is only one rule. You must keep moving. You must get out.
He hands me a set of keys and gestures beyond me. Through the storefront window I see a Jeep.
Take that car. Head that way.
He gestures again.
Periodically, the road will fork. You must choose. All turns will be the same. If you make a mistake you will enter a town. The road will be a series of holes. When you encounter a body laying on the road, drive over it. If you stop they will come from the sides.
Then I am driving. Periodically there are forks in the road. Before each fork is a sign. I do not speak the language. I make a choice and continue. I am constantly on edge.
Then I am entering a town. It is corrugated metal and dust. The road is a series of holes.
I had a sense that I had turned from the beginning of one story into the end of another. I do not know how it happened.
In front of me a human being is lying across the road.
Then I say to myself: Drive over it.
My tendency toward inaction is absorbed into continued forward motion and the rattle of the engine.
When I hit the body I am in a room.
A voice says: That was quite a conundrum wasn't it?
Another says: Who would create such a game?
I am across a table from two men. They are the same as the agent in the storefront. But now they are two. They wear derbies and white pancake makeup. They have red circles on their cheeks.
They take turns speaking. First one then the other. I do not know the sequence. I cannot tell them apart.
One says: Sometimes, to keep your humanity is to lose your humanity.
The other says: Adaptation is a harsh mistress.
One wrong turn and
Poof!
They say together: All gone.
One says: The situation is fucked up
The other says: And you are fucked up.
Adaptation makes anything normal.
Anything at all.
One says: Self-interest is never enlightened.
The other says: It's a zero-sum game.
All our games are zero sum.
I say: But this is not a game. I just killed someone.
One says: Of course it's a game.
Another says: Everything's a game.
Situation, possibilities
Objectives and goals
Moves that are included
Moves that are excluded
Choices
Any arrangement is a set of rules.
One says: You see through them.
Another says: You become them
So the rules disappear.
It's human nature.
And we understand that.
We know philosophy.
Cogito zero sum.
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Author's Note
I was going to post this a few weeks ago, but the afternoon after I made it an accident happened that didn't make the story seem so funny any more.
It's from the 100 Edge Effects project:
http://100edgeeffects.tumblr.com/
which I finished on Sunday (yay!)
I've started on another project (102 and up) but haven't quite overcome inertia enough to put it/them somewhere else. Plus I like the way the space looks. Enjoy.
Other stories by stephen hastings-king
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Dang! I just wrote a rather lengthy response to this piece, mentioning that a piece including I think, therefore I am nothing? and including A Clockwork Orange is fairly kick-ass, but the site kicked me off. Sufficient to say, *.
strong piece, great ending. as jp pointed out, your URL has a problem. loved this.
As a description of a dream ('Then I am in a room ...'),or an exercise in surreality, the form is suitable. I notice it speeds up and speeds down at various points, this the result of paragraph length changes, though mainly it's forced on us to be read slowly, disjointedly. The dreamness changes somewhat in the second half - to accomodate small commentaries on the narrative. Lines like "Adaptation makes anything normal." is the utterence of a fully awoke mind, a fourth person, a narrator seperate from the three dream persons. In a sense, at moments like this the piece seems to return to a conventional narrative structure, though still utilising a fragmented form.
Great! Reminds me of 'I Am Legend' which I started reading last night, in a good way. Fave
Makes me uncomfortable, this, an odd concept of possibility. The fact of its uncomfortable effect makes it food for some and anathema for others, but that is what literature can and should be. The unfortunate aspect of its subsequent value makes it less attractive, less salient to ... say, the average Wal-Mart customer. A mixed blessing for the artist.
You get a fave from me, but my inner redneck would walk right past it.
thanks much for the reads, comments and asterisks.
@jp-->clockwork orange. nice.
@eamon-->maybe.
@marcus-->pleased that you enjoyed the piece & thanks for the head's up on the link. fixed it.
@ gil-->nice. tnx.
@ jld-->interesting. the afternoon after i made this piece i was at a company party. about 800 people gathered on a steep-ish hill above a beach. a van started backing up & lost control. it plowed into the crowd & killed a friend of mine. when i made the piece, i thought it a bit disturbing. but after that happened, it became a lot more disturbing to me.
the piece comes from a sequence on the collapse of empire. one of the ideas is that the bones of the dominant ideology are becoming visible. another is that something of a more real world surfaces. this fits into the second thread. it's maybe a bit unnerving. i'm ok with that, though. it's part of the world.
what i'm curious about why a putative "regular folk" reader would avoid a piece like this.
it's not like i'm going to change it, but still, i wonder why that'd be the case. gets to the question of what folk read for, i suppose.
Such a mood you created, eerie, suspenseful, spooky. I love the straightforward mater-of-factness. *