Old
Rottenhat
He was on an east coast tour when he came across
Cary. He looked considerably older than their last encounter.
But that had been years before. That aside, the cast Cary
cut was substantial and refined. Appropriate external for
the setting, which was cast in dress code formality. Suits
exquisite. Tailoring by hand. The tailoring bit suited Noir.
Suit suits the suite. Dress code. Always et cetera when in
a huddle.
Seeing Cary was not on his personal list at
the moment. He had other immediate matters. But he knew that
converation would probably be unavoidable. They would talk,
but not here. His team leaders, the core group, were in huddle
with the shell group. The core group were bland, designedly
unassuming leaders in their fields of endeavor, but the fields
themselves were bland, so who was to know. They measured,
designed, improved. Steadily. It could have been written as
a rule but never was. Not too fast. The core group were experts
in that particular skill of introducing a technology, an innovation
or improvement, in time. Of late they had become worried if
the admixture wasn't right. Others, including members of the
shell group were active in development and delivery and offered
innovations that upset the balance. The field was admittedly
a large one and they could only do their best.
It was a meeting within a meeting, as usual.
The shell's meeting was a discussion of policy positions for
the North American Trading Group in view of the increasing
encroachment by the Aisian Pacific Zone, and the withdrawl
of the European Group from its traditional, generally supportive
position. The shell talk had been clouded in subterfuge as
usual. The unease of the group was palpable. Too many unidentified
spies, Noir included, around the table. The lines were cloudy.
Encroachment was happening so rapidly in many sectors.
The encroachers were in expansion mode. In contrast,
the shell group was in retreat. All represented broad sectors
of the economy, factors of production, and all were being
undermined. The producers were being supplanted by entities
that could produce more or less the same thing for less. Sell
for just a bit less than the good stuff. Quality considerations
were on the retreat everywhere. Too abstract a concept, it
would seem.
Noir played music to the conversations. `Hang
on to your ego... Hang on because I know that you are going
to lose the fight... They come on so peaceful, but inside
they're so uptight.' Playing a game that is becoming impossible
to win. `Halftime, fellas. hit the showers.'
Football analogy. They would understand that
sort of thing. The football group? Noir could pick the players
by how they attempted to steer discussion. `Something to hide
in the far seat, countered by someone who knows and is....'
Others baffled and genuinely afraid. Mostly bankers. Cary
was not part of that group, athough he was one of them. No,
he was more on the past resignation part of the journey. Attending
out of politesse? Or. Cary had less to worry about. He had
seen the trends and taken steps to secure the interests of
his clients. Nevertheless, Noir could measure Cary's general
concern. That was only natural. A pattern of organization
was in radical flux, and by the looks of things, the shell
group could not come up with any constructive analysis.
Perhaps if they met in smaller groups. Cells,
even. They could take a page from an organization that always
struck Noir as being a tour de-force. He had just attended
their latest meeting in G.T., and had held private discussions
with a miniature core in Port-Perry at some person's retreat.
Good music. Scugog a bit too eutrophied. To substance, that
group did nothing but plan, design, and discuss the development
a new standard for a generalized markup language. The private
jokes came in the newsletters sent out twice a year which
were loaded with powerful trends analysis couched in SGML
talk. Their conferences were overtly, a chance to meet others
of one's own kind, and also, in the shadows, to discuss tactics,
joke over each other's analysis, and plan for a future where
information could travel as freely as air.
SGML designers and observers held standards
as noble, aspired toward something for their discipline that
would correspond to the CSA standard. Something so clear,
so carefully concieved that adherence to the standard would
ensure quality. He admired and supported them. He wished that
he could feel the same way in the present company. He searched
the faces for a coach, a quarterback. He would settle for
anything, a wide receiver. Someone who could take the ball
and carry it. Football analogies. Well, they liked the game,
so why not think in those terms.
He was tempted, slightly, to say something at
one point to unravel a conundrum. He stared at Cary instead.
`Pick up the ball, man'. It wasn't that they did not have
good intentions, the sincere ones. They did. They had been
caught off guard. Too much situation, not enough context.
At the moment, the best thing that the assembled group could
do would be to declare a private state of emergency, and hire
some tactical specialists and hold the line, as it were. Instead
they fell back on touchie feelie type `crisis?, what crisis,
bad digestive tract may be all I'm experiencing at the moment
burp gotta piss bad too.
The discussions were degenerating. Noir passed
the time playing mind games: Assembling enveloping and mating
atomic structures. They were tailor made in each instance
for a specific set of circumstances. This for that, that for
this. Any time soon. Time and space are... No, let the poisons
seep out. Timing. Timing. Reverse radicle precipitation. Codes
floating ever upward, electrons, protons, neutrons, simple
blocks just like their mates made by mates around the table
among other things.
A way of life. Once, in a park, on a lark, he
had sat beside a moderately talented chemist and had told
in singsong fashion exactly what to do about this or that.
Better to have told the park bench. He had known that but
one never knows. Never learn not to love. Hadn't Dennis and
Charlie whispered those words? Come on, ecstasy.
Blah, blah, blah, went the conversation. He
hoped that some of the shell group had a personal stake. Those
who did might eventually get the game. The rest were simply
warming seats, adding volume to balance the subterfuge who
play acted so well. The shell group vanished into thin air
to piss, eat, drink, show teeth, measure balls, or whatever
it was that they did when they took a break. The core remained
seated, as did Cary. The nominal leader, Doctor Hosmer, glanced
to Noir before beginning to talk as a core with Cary still
present. Noir took the fundamental required step.
Cary wanted to speak to him. He rose, and going
to the window, took in the view. He looked north, out of the
South Tower, up along the river that led to Samuel's lake.
Cary joined him at his side. They sat staring out the window
for twelve minutes. Finally, Noir smiled, and turning to face
Cary, introduced himself. Cary extended his hand and chose
to initiate. "Food for thought." "Hungry?" "I take my meals
at home." "Good practice, that." "What do you do, professionally,
Mister Noir?" "I guess you could say I make things." "That
is a very interesting occupation. One that you share with
the majority of the attendants of this meeting. But if I were
to ask them that question, they would give me a more concrete
answer." "I agree completely. I suppose my answer is vague
because, like you, I do not make things myself. I merely make
it possible, in much the same way that you do, by securing,
concentrating, and allocating capital. But in modesty, I do
not do much of that."
Cary remained silent. Noir resumed. "I will
have to show you one or two projects that I am involved with.
Perhaps soon." Cary was direct, but only tentatively so. With
an `it was nice to meet you,' he turned and left the room.
Hosmer closed the door. Oblique strategies began. The core
were ready to report. Noir was not. He walked out into the
reception hall and took in the scene.
Cary was not in the crowd. No surprise in that.
Being only.
More talk about ball size and carrying bricks
while driving in leather. Laughter, dribbling mouths more
champagne snoot snoot. Over in the corner with knife blades
just showing each other. Real long, maybe second hand car
spiv somewhere in the family roots. Other corner poo pooing
and mumbling thisthat ooh how nice yes we say such sweet smelling
words squish you like a bug naah, just kiddi.... Noir felt
like falling out of a wheelchair window, catch Robert, break
the fall, but for hard lessons and he would never have become
an old rottenhat but for it.
Always smoking. And he wrote such subtleties
about occasions such as this. Noir watched the syrup pablum
that passed for conversation among the polite facade so murky
but obvious. Room. "You are joking into battle, waving old
school ties." And turned to face the core, who sat, patiently
waiting.
*******
Noir returned to the window where he had stood
with Cary. There down below lay a mass of urban frenzy. Crowded
crowds, crowding. Bouncing frenzied on occasion polite productives
offgassing vapor trails that swirled into eddy currents rising.
Rising. More practically immediate minds than his saw to the
immediate details. Nakamichi locked the door, Hosmer set up
the viewer, interfacing a sweet mouse with the existing liquid
crystal display fixed atop the overhead projector.
Hosmer manipulated the mouse. A standard graphical
user interface father Xerox mother Lisa appeared on the screen.
Icons covered the subjects at hand. The presentations were
compiled with a modified version of Hypercard that took advantage
of the power of the mouse. The program was designed to run
stacks based on voice activation using keywords, and to open
multiple stacks based on an inference model of related concepts.
It had a cross reference capability of seven million keywords
in twelve spoken languages and seventy three scientific languages.
The mouse was rarely deficient and also could
play dumb like any smart rodent.
The first, main presentation covered the massive
water redistribution scheme being designed for the southwestern
economic region. Twelve B.C. rivers were to be channeled,
diverted, reversed, and fed into a system of five massive
reservoirs. These reservoirs would generate electricity that
would feed into the grid serving B.C., and all of the western
states. The discharge water would then enter the largest human
designed waterway conceived of to date. A channel would be
constructed along the plateau lands that ran between the two
major mountain ranges, the coastal mountains and the rockies.
This water would supply the growing megalopoli that ran from
Asissi to Electric Lay.
The water would also fuel the massively distributed
agribusiness, semiconductor industries, et cetera, that all
demanded a constant supply of water. The Oquallala was projected
to have eight to fifteen years of drawable water left in it,
and it grew less potable with each passing year. The need
was obvious, the solution, apparent. Acquisition procedures
for the scheme had been underway for the past five years and
few restrictions and impediments remained.
The project was a `Go' in the lingo of the proponents.
Long standing opponents to the scheme, academics and ecologists,
saw their way of life reduced in some cases to nonexistent
by the long arm of governments both in the U.S.Amnesia and
in its satellite to the north, often refered to as the land
of `nothing there'. Private consortia south of 49 and B.C.
Hydro to the north were supplying the funds for the project.
No government had the purchasing power for such a project
any more.
Laissez faire saw the public sector's role
as facilitation. In the land of Amnesia, this was full bore.
Environmental assessments would take too long, which was true.
When a well is running dry, one looks for water and gets it.
Water, water. Amarok. Happy? The reservoirs were to be built
as rapidly as possible to allow for the collection of water
to begin. The reservoir system as a whole, would take two
years to fill. No trees were to be cut, no structures cleared.
Nothing would be done to prepare the reservoir beds for their
future purpose. As a consequence, the supply of water would
be toxic for decades to come as the boreal forests decomposed.
The lessons of James Bay put aside, the proponents claimed
that filtration downstream would assure a safe supply.
Possibly true. It was certainly true that the
water would be unfit no matter what after travelling down
one thousand miles of artificial channel. The Supplanting
of an existing way of life for tens of thousands of people
was regarded as a problem of relocation. But native B.C. bands
such as the Okinagan and the Kootenay were prepared to commit
personal suicide by warfare rather than see their entire cultures
eradicated. Their actions were considered to be a minor impediment
by the proponents. Aboriginal claims had fallen on deaf ears
in the past. This present saw no ears present. Special provisions
withstanding. Gharbzadegi. Made it easier still.
*******
Hosmer then turned the focus to predicted ecological
catastrophies, primarily the complete eradication of the already
doomed west coast fisheries. The fish could not spawn in dry
watersheds. No mitigative steps were contemplated by the proponents
and in the absence of an environmental assessment, the warning
cries would remain just that. Several non governmental organizations
were positioned to take positive action to protect the few
remaining intact watersheds that would be left after the scheme,
but they would need help.
Hosmer stressed help. Noir assented. Hosmer
slid the mouse, clicked an icon, moved on. Several thousand
predetermined mechanisms stirred in a surreptitious sequence.
Doubtless excited voices in humid offices around the continent.
Source unknown but who would want to look a gift horse...
Offers. Six months free dataline worldwide. Priority crash
access. Offers. Foundation offers grants for watershed restoration
and reclamation. Submit proposals to... `All of these calls
all of a sudden. We need more lines.'
Other matters. Infiltration approval. Von Recklinghausen
reported on the extent to which the system design division
had assumed positions within the infrastructure of the proponents.
Could his people take positive mitigative steps that would
improve the design and implementation of the scheme from an
engineering standpoint.
Noir took a block of wood from his pocket. Manitoba
mahogany. Poplar. A secret wood. He tasted it. "Twigs."
Von R. waited. "Dry savour, like sandwood, only
different. Dry rot causes the trees to collapse after a short,
but vigorous lifespan. They house life for innumerable species.
They fall. They decay." He looked at his fingers, brushing
the tips lightly together. "Keep them silent. I have done
an analysis of this potential. We can offer no technology
that can alter the fact that the proposed watercourse is a
human designed system. Natural watercourses are by nature,
self cleansing. Human designed watercourses are self polluting.
No amount of finesse on our part can alter this basic tenet.
It is axiomatic and always will be.
"This system will have a lifespan of less than
one hundred years. Some innovations at this point could extend
this to two hundred on the generous side of outside, but to
what end? Let them remember Timor if they ever get wind, which
is unlikely. "That being said, I think that we should continue
to develop our water sensible culture. I see no reason why
our own people should have to rely on outside sources at any
time in the dry future. Nakamichi, engage."
Nak left to catch a shuttle.
Final steps, tables set, the core disengaged
leaving Noir to watch darkness fall.
Lesley came, they left holding hands.
©1994 (from Zero She Flies)
