I’ll agree with that one, marriage, what a terrible institution. Am I still married? Would my wife accept me as a woman? That would put the fire back in the bedroom. How would I fuck her? We’d have to get some tools. Who am I?
Politics, what a boring topic. Go on, now. You can’t mix fire and water. I may very well know what is good, but that certainly doesn’t mean I’m going to do it. Think of the pear-stealing story, my man. I know I shouldn’t be touching myself on stage, even though they can’t see me, but that doesn’t stop me from doing it. That is a horrible description of me, I have donkey ears for god’s sake, and breasts. I’ve got to stop touching them; they can see that.
Ass-kissers, nature, worship, good, images, yes, the community of goods, now that sounds like folly, teachers, okay, there aren’t any more of those, this is all null and void, there’s no religion, kings, whatever, war, this is all very dated, trees bare fruit, that’s it, there hasn’t been a poem written in two-hundred years, you fool. The dream and the cock, now that sounds interesting. Just the word, makes me…
Thank you, thank you, you are too kind. Thank you, bow, bow, clap along like they all had a hand in it, thank you, thank you.
* * *
An anonymous building, just one of many, two more just like it up the street, no reason to pay it any attention, move along now, no pictures… The sign outside says: “The Department of Social Tranquility” with an emblem directly underneath. The insignia is a circle cut evenly into twelve portions (like a very well sliced pie), two olive branches border the circle and there is the silhouette of a bird of some kind that frames the insignia (probably a raptor of some sort); within each of the twelve pieces of the circle are smaller emblems, which represent the Sections. There are no guards or fences around the building; it looks, for all exhaustive purposes, like any other office building in the city. The sign that reads The Department of Social Tranquility is off the road, set very close to the building, and slightly turned away from the driveway, as if it doesn’t really need to be there. It’s not hidden, not really, not when you consider that it is out in front of the building, but it is slightly, simply, inconveniently placed. No one who doesn’t work at the department needs to really know where it is, it’s not the kind of place that people stop by or come to visit or have any business with; it’s large, but not too big, it’s just another angular silhouette in the skyline; the architecture’s utilitarian, no one would take a picture of it for its aesthetic qualities, it doesn’t really stand out amongst all the other buildings, it doesn’t appear that much really goes on there either.
Not that its uninviting, Captain Vincent feels comfortable enough there, as he strolls down the stark white hallway with the grayish blue tile floor and the clinical walls. There are no placards or posters or pictures hanging from it, none of the doors have suite numbers or people’s names etched into them, and to the passive observer, it looks like a labyrinth of halls with the same door replicated over and over and over and over again (thusly, the agents call it the Puzzle Palace). All the floors look the exact same, but in truth, every three stories are devoted to a Section, with the department head and his administration (an ingenious abstraction of sloth feigning enterprise) occupying the top six. Captain Vincent, now that he thinks about it, has never actually been on any of the other floors, or he might have been, but he didn’t know that he was, because it looks just like the floor his office is on. Sometimes he wonders if he were to get off on the wrong floor and go to his office if he’d find himself sitting there or a man that looks just like him, with the same life and the same tasks, who’d probably look up as he walked in, wondering what his twin is doing walking into his office without knocking, with the same calendar on the wall (the only thing hanging from it, in violation of department regulation we might add), the same desk, the same gray filing cabinet with the top drawer that refuses to close all the way, and the same fan hanging limply from the ceiling.
When he first began working at the department, they sent along with his employment informational packet detailed instructions: “take elevator to nineteenth floor, step out of elevator, turn left and walk to end of hallway, turn right, count doors, the thirteenth door on the left, open and step inside, turn right, count doors, ninth door on the left, open and step inside, take right and follow the hallway to the door at the end, step inside, third door on the right” and Vincent had used these instructions for a full year, until he didn’t need to refer to them anymore and he could find his office without their assistance.
By now, Vincent knew exactly how to get to his office, from his office to the john, from the john back to his office, from his office to the vending machines, from the vending machines back to his office, from his office to the stairwell, from the stairwell back to his office, from his office to the cafeteria, from the cafeteria back to his office, from his office to his supervisor’s office, from his supervisor’s office back to his office, from his office to the ‘interviewing’ rooms, from the ‘interviewing’ rooms back to his office, from his office to Agent Tobias’ office, from Agent Tobias’ office back to his office, from his office to the conference room, from the conference room back to his office, from his office to the information containment library, from the information containment library back to his office, from his office to the lab, from the lab back to his office, and one or two other places (both ways). Everything else was a bit of mystery, and potentially (he’d have to look into this) off limits anyway (ID passes were miserly passed out for specific purposes only).
Once Vincent was in his office (he very rarely could be found occupying it — being primarily a field agent), he usually checked the view screens in the adjoining room, where thirty or so nameless, voiceless women (once in awhile he could hear someone popping gum) monitored the network and administered assignments. They all faced the same way, sitting in stadium style rows in front of the master wall, where two hundred large screens broadcasted surveillance and fed evidence into the Machine. Each woman had three smaller monitors in her seating area (there were small, plastic dividers separating the women), a keypad and connection switches. Elisa’s screen (not always on her case) was third row down, sixth from the left (Vincent gave the Machine a rather benign feed from three of his in-house cameras, none of which ever caught her doing anything but walking by or reading) and had been for the last twelve months. Her assistant’s screen (not always on her case) was the twenty-second row down, eighteenth from the right, only recently being fed into the system (and with no censorship from the captain). The two hundred or so screens flickered back and forth from different cases every six seconds (although the women could capture an on-going feed on their monitors if need be) and followed the surveillance of women currently under investigation so that at any time, while thirty or more women sat typing, plugging jacks into different connections, and monitoring different cases, a variety of different images appeared on the master wall, everything from sexual interludes (the six second switch always being halted) to showering to panty adjustment to masturbation (red light, red light) to peeing to sleeping to the mundane (such as watching sites or doing laundry). Vincent prized peering out at the master wall and watching, he could spend hours simply examining the screens, focusing on one, then switching to another, and over time, he’d grown to know the women broadcasted into the room.