Much of what passes for dissent now is just more role play. From ‘strikes’ to re-enactments of Orgreave or the Carnival Against Capitalism. Carefully calibrated pressure valves.
Yet there are cracks. The Party was banned, members arrested, but dissent will find a way. You hear of things happening that shouldn’t happen. An underground. A loosening of the grip.
She’s waiting for me when I finish up. Shivering in the chill spring air. I’m a little shocked.
"Hey."
She smiles.
"Hey. You want to come to a party?"
"A party? What sort of party?"
She shrugs.
"You know, just a party. Music, dancing and so on."
I want to go home. To stare at the blank walls. Watch the view through the velux window.
So I’m surprised when I say yes.
The mathematicians are in the back, masked up, physically and digitally. I am terrified. She takes my hand and leads me through the mass of bodies to one of them, gives me a look. I nod.
She hands them cash. They do something with a tiny computer, touch two electrodes to the skin on my wrist where the veins show. Then the same for her.
It comes on slowly, like the tide coming in. Wave after tiny wave of something beautiful. We move onto the dance floor. 90s jungle shakes my rib cage, the beat matches the ever increasing waves and
oh
like I’m drowning
in a good way
did I ever tell you
yes
what is this
yes
what is this
yes
a very good way
did I
love you love all of you always
they never knew
we’ll leave the city go to the hills you know the hills a farm I visited one when I was a kid I can’t believe you grew up so close and we never met I wish we’d met before in a previous life or something
I had a dog he was he was he was
in a good way though
who are you
are you
you and me
me and you
in a very good way
we
Whose grip are we loosening?
We wake and disentangle. We are breached walls hastily patched to meet the new day. We smoke and don’t say a thing.
I feel around inside myself. It seems OK, nothing obviously broken. Ready to go.
We shower, dress and head out into the weak sunlight.
I think she is going to say something, the way her body tenses, the drop of her head, but she doesn’t. I try to think of something to say. The mites seem a little sluggish this morning, like they’ve taken a beating and are still feeling groggy. The moment stretches. The sky is so blue it makes my throat ache.
"See you tonight?"
She smiles.
"I’ll meet you at eight, outside your place, OK?"
I nod and we part with a kiss, each our separate ways, to work.
(2017)
THE MAN-UFACTORY
Frederic Perkins
Frederic Beecher Perkins (1828–1899) was the Bostonian author of two comic novels, a biography of Charles Dickens, and around fifty sketches and short stories. "What seemed best," he wrote, "I used to offer to Putnam or Harper. What they would not use I sometimes offered to Peterson’s Magazine, sometimes to the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post, and so on; and what I could not otherwise use I could always sell to the New York Sunday Dispatch for five dollars." His daughter Catherine, a prominent feminist and social campaigner, wrote that he "took to books as a duck to water. He read them, he wrote them, he edited them, he criticized them, he became a librarian and classified them. Before he married he knew nine languages and continued to learn more afterward… In those days, when scholarship could still cover a large portion of the world’s good books, he covered them well." In 1880, Perkins was appointed as head librarian of the San Francisco Public Library, where he served till 1887.
I was talking the other day with my friend Budlong, whom I met in New York after two or three years of separation, about the progress of the age, and especially about recent inventions. When I find any thing worth reading in the newspapers, I cut it out and carry it in my pocket-book for a few days, to read to all my friends; and then I put it in a scrapbook for all future generations. Much good may it do them!
Well, I drew Budlong’s attention to the last cutting, and began to read it to him.
It was a Washington despatch of the day before, with "display head," somewhat thus:—
"TALKING MACHINE!
THE GREAT PROFESSOR HANSERL FABER!!
All Washington Crowds To See It!
GRANT SAYS HE DON’T WANT IT!
————
"The inventor has closely copied the form and action of the different organs producing the human voice, and operated them in the same manner; levers and springs taking the place of muscles and nerves. The machine has a bellows for lungs, a windpipe for the conduction of air, an India-rubber larynx, with vocal cords modelled after those of man, and opening and closing in the same manner. It has a fixed upper jaw of wood, with a
LIP OF LEATHER.
"The lower jaw is made of India-rubber; and the mouth has a hard palate of hard rubber, and a movable tongue of flexible rubber."
And so on. "There, Budlong," I said; "what do you think of that?"
"I don’t think," said Budlong; "I know. See here!" And with a wise kind of grin, he fumbled in his breast-pocket, and drew forth a document, which I read:—
"Received [&c.] of P. Budlong, in full for advertisement and notices of Budlong and Fabers machines, fifty dollars. Jenks, Adv. Clk."
It was from the office of the very same newspaper. I stared at Budlong, as amazed as Balboa,
"Silent, upon a peak in Darien,"
when he first espied the boundless Pacific.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Why, it’s a costly business to get the right kind of notices in the papers."
"But do you know Faber? Were you ever at Vienna?"
"Hanserl is Viennese for Johnny," answered he. "I know that; and Faber is Latin for Smith; and professor is American for anybody. Don’t you remember old Johnny Smith?"
In short, this Dutchman is not a German Dutchman, but a Yankee one; neither more nor less than a self-taught mechanician from the native town of both Budlong and myself. I knew the man had been deluded at one time by the same "perpetual motion" goblin that has fooled so many halftaught or ill-balanced minds; but I had lost sight of him for years. He had, as my friend now informed me, applied to him for assistance in his semi-lunatic labors. Budlong, who, though extremely queer, is not without some good points, had set to work to help the poor fellow out of his delusion.
"I very soon found," said Budlong, "that, if I attacked him directly, I should only confirm his notions. I had had some ideas of my own about this talking-machine, for a good while; and so I set Smith at work on that, and managed to give him some correct views on the first principles of mechanics, on pretence of investigations at odd times for improving his own invention. He has really a very fair faculty for mechanics, with some help in the reasoning part; and, after a while, he found himself convinced, without knowing how. I guess he’s the only case on record of a radical cure."
"That is a process worth considering for other delusions," I observed; "it is the great tactical rule of flanking the enemy. But it is you, then, who is really running the talking-machine and Prof Faber of Vienna?"
"Yes; Vienna’s a good place for the invention to come from, since Von Kempelen’s chess-player. There’s a very neat sum of money in my invention, I reckon, and we’ve marketed enough of them to prove it too. I’ll tell you what—I’ll show you over the factory, and let you make an article on the subject for one of the magazines, if you want to."