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Oh, yes, you're right, I did forget to tell you how little Tommy learned to drive. He and the two brothers, John and Dick, and their maroon 1934 Buick (the Doctor's Car), are still where we left them when Thomas answered the phone, initiating a different series of events. We rejoin them now at the riverbank where locals surreptitiously dump trash into the resupply depot of Hudson & Waters. After an hour or s0 of rummaging, the three Boozehounds had found but few keepers: two glasses, a white plate with a red ring around the edge, and a chipped mug inscribed NEVER SAY BUTT. In the summer of 1958, Tommy was ten, the same age his twins are now. Tommy and his comrades clambered into the Buick, ready to go. Rrrrrrruh ruh ruuu. Dead battery. No go. Tommy and Dick got out to push. So, then---- ten years later, home from Yale, where he'd gone after prepping at Webb School in Claremont, California, on July Fourth, at dinner, after his father called him a dope-smoking draft dodger, he'd swept his plate off the table and shouted: "What the fuck you know about me! Generation gap! What the fuck you expect from the original throwaway kid?"
No red ring edged that dish.
Then in 1978, after another decade had passed, on holiday from Georgetown, Guyana, drinking beer at the Antique Bar in Cold Spring with his father, he said, "When you sent me to prep school in California, you sent me as far away as you could and still have me in the States."
His father looked up at Eisenhower's five-star general's helmet, which Ike had given the saloon keeper, and was now displayed with other West Point memorabilia above the back bar, and, smiling slightly, replied: "Precisely so. I suspected then what I know now. You are passive. You have no character. You're ignorant and egotistical. When General Washington stopped near here on a hot day like this to drink from a spring, he said, on finishing, 'Oh my, what a cold spring,' and his sycophants and toadies all said yes yes how right you are, it surely is a cold spring, and then they changed the name of the goddamned town!" He peered ice-blue into Thomas' eyes. "You're like that. A kiss-ass yesman. No wonder they never tapped you for Skull & Bones."
"And you, father. You. The Stock Exchange! It's fed you all these years, and you call it a gambling joint, a casino, a cas-fucking-ino."
"And now, Thomas, you're in the CIA, practicing the profession of desperate and depraved mediocrities."
"A profession essential to the survival of our country."
"You are a superannuated fraternity boy above the law playing realpolitik with unlimited funds, ignorant and arrogant, always living a lie, quite without accountability, a smart-ass adolescent prankster of thirty, manipulating millions of lives. My son is a confidence man, utterly devoid of probity and honor."
"I am what you made me."
The old man stared contempt.
"Casino capitalism! This fucking sermon! Preached by the same voice which jokes about the money cow, a continental heifer being fed in Nebraska and milked in New York! Yes, here stands the same man who says the founders believed all men are created not equal, but evil. The same one who says if the people were to learn what bankers and brokers really do, they'd parade their heads on pikes. Another thing he often said, and with a smile, "Democracy! Democracy means the rule of the rich by the rest. That's something we'll never see here, or anywhere else."
Shortly after this conversation, thrombosis struck the old man down. Ten years after that, in 1988, the DCI advanced Thomas to GS-14 and promoted him to Deputy Division Chief of the robotization and eugenic projects subsumed in MJSIMSOR. By 1998, he found himself serving as Taskforce Chief of MJSIMSOR's Subproject MOSCA, based at Fort Meade, and in January of 2002, the current year, on the creation of a living Mosca, the DCI upgraded the subproject to MKMOSCA, making it virtually autonomous, and appointed Thomas, at GS-15, to the post of Center Chief of what was meant to become the armature of a large-scale operation.
But Mosca, the one being upon whom s0 much depended, axis alike of the engine itself and the hopes and fears of its conductors, had been plucked from place, and now stood perched on the dashboard of a Baltimore-bound Mercedes, conversing with hir creator, and, as she thought for the moment, hir liberator.
"All right, you two insects, we'll abandon my car in Baltimore. Then we'll taxi to an all-night travel agent I've noticed on Charles Street. With cash, I'll buy a ticket to Windsor Locks, Connecticut. Yes. Under a false name. We'll taxi to the airport and fly. Then, bus to Hartford, train to Springfield, Greyhound to Detroit. I'll change my style. No more blazers or lab jackets for me. I'll outfit at the Goodwill in Hartford or Springfield. And in Detroit, we'll make more plans."
"Why?" Mosca asked. "Why such complexity?"
"From here on, we're playing for our lives. Our opponent's not those boneheads in CIA. Not at all. It's their state-of-the-art Promis II computer system, which has doors opening secretly into all the conventional places---- and into other Promis systems, sold and installed by MOSAD-CIA: law-enforcement, Pentagon, Social Security, IRS, commercial credit, and more." He explained how by means of compare-and-contrast, associated with psychological profile, Promis II, with its immense range of data, can find almost any fugitive who's alive and on earth. Understand me, if they catch up with us, we're dead."
Donovan Tesla Bruhn's Mercedes tunneled on into the night. Moonless and foggy. Cold. Rain began sloshing over the windshield. Donovan said people had called him by many names, from D.T. to Dr Bruhn, each implying a complex of perceptions, which, when seen together, all at once, would give Promis a detailed three- or, through time, four-dimensional conception of him and what he might do. "Yes indeed, I've been called by numerous appellations, including all the likely ones, except for Don. So from now on I'll be Don. I'll dress like Don, I'll act like Don, just simple plain old retired---- what from?----retired . . . uh . . . yes . . . taxi driver . . . ."
"Don."
"Yes, Don. That makes me a germ, not a virus. Viruses are named for locations, bacteria for people."
"The discoverer, or their first victim?" O! Bet your ass, Don & Company, to fulfill my vow I'll use places against people. Why the fuck not? People against people. "So, hey Don, why not be Tesla instead? You could be a fucking foreigner. A retired New York cabby. Yes. Tesla. Is that some-where or some-body?"
"A body, now partially mummified, and planted most likely in a Brooklyn grave."
It all worked out as he planned. But why not? Bruhn---- pardon, I mean Don, is a very intelligent and accomplished senior, the
type of chap upon whom we all rely. So, now, we rejoin Don and his muscid companions. They are in Detroit. Where? As in radio drama, your perception is as good as mine. Their accommodations are as you imagine them to be. But . . . how do they look to Promis II? Mosca is perched on the TV thinking of his friend Oscar the Emasculated Cat, and the vet, and L.A. Lysle is flitting nervously, up, over, back, around. Richard and Blaise Cendrars (both of whom you'll eventually meet) are drinking down in the bar. Lysle is brimming with world-class angst.
O! Lord, please revivify,
This weary aging suffering fly!
"Doc! My joints ache. My feet can scarcely taste chocolate any more!"
Mosca broke in: "Why didn't you put receptor buds on my feet?" "Same reason I'm glad I don't have them on mine. Reflect on it! Do you want to taste everything you step on?"
"How should I know, unless I try it?"
"I didn't program you to lay eggs on decaying meat, either." Lysle buzzed over to Don, saying, "And my eyes. All of them! Fading and dimming!"
"Be quiet for a while, Lysle. Be patient. I have to plan our next move. We're playing chess with Promis II, a grand master without the slightest doubt. Our game, in fact, is more complex than chess, because the whole world is the game board, and we can use one turn to make a series of moves."
"When I eat, blood comes out with my stool!"
"Please be quiet."
"Don! I'm losing my memory!"
"Silence is a virtue."
"Don!"
"And so is patience."
"Hell with patience."
"Lysle. Do you realize I have to know more about me than Promis II does, or we'll lose the game, and our lives?"
"How about me?''
"You'll soon die of old age, full of weeks and wisdom."
"Help me!" "I have to extrapolate the Promis-II-me from the true me, and then plan my moves contrary to what Promis II expects." Donovan turned his head to watch an immense lake boat slowly moving up the Detroit River.
A boat!
Would Promis Bruhn take passage on a dirty freight boat?
Be the Man-Without-a-Country II.
"Doc, er . . . Don. You gave me your word you'd extend my life."
"Control yourself."
"You pledged."
"Silence!"
"You're a man of honor!"
"Shut up."
"Doc . . . !"
"Don. Call me Don."
"Who," asked Mosca, trying to imagine a dipterous Don, "is Tesla?"
"Was Tesla."
"All right, was."
"Thor on Earth."
"Don, I'm dying."
S0 is Blaise. And Blaise has but one arm.
"Be quiet, Lysle. For the good of all, I have to work this out."
"You fucking promised."
"I don't have a laboratory."
"Well, rent one."
"Don't buzz in my face."
"I'll buzz wherever I want!"
Blaise is a god-damned Swiss!
Is SW/ISS a CIA op.?
Is Blaise a one-armed robot?
"Hey pal, shut up. Let him think it through."
"I'm dying."
"That's the way the cookie crumbles."
"What's that mean?"
"Shit happens. Flies live short accelerated lives, pal."
"Nobody gives a fuck about me. You both just use me." Tears came to his eyes, all of them. "Why the hell did I ever leave Salinas?" "Stop whining." Don rose from his chair, and went to the window, and watched the huge black ore ship moving slowly toward Huron and Superior, and then gazed beyond it at Windsor, Ontario, and at the immense Canadian Club sign perched on the distillery.
"For Christ sake, Don, help me."
Cold silence came in reply.
"Quiet, pal. Don's got to think."
"Big fucking deal. You don't need me any more, that's what! You've learned what I know, enough s0 you can live the fly lie. So now I'm superfluous. A burden. Because of me, me, you'll live in warm air away from danger. Your career jumps off my back! You'll be soaring way high when I'm just a speck of dried grease on some window."
"Slow down, pal. Watch that boat."
"Shove the fucking boat up your fucking ass!"
"Look at me. Do I look that fat?"
"I'm dying, and nobody cares."
"We're all dying, and we all care."
Lysle buzzed over to Don B., who was contemplating the lofty towers of the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit, trying to compose his thoughts, seeking tranquility, and Lysle flitted and fluttered between his face and the window, raving about promises, and honor, and the CIA, and death, and nobody cares, and Don B.'s hands are rising slowly upward upward and draw apart and smack him flat.
Lysle's tiny corpse dropped and vanished in the nap of the carpet. Peering into angry Mosca eyes, Don B. said: "I cannot submit to provocation by mere flies." Now, his cherished mentor dead, Mosca can learn no more. No other fly will ever defect from the dipterons and debrief him. Mosca and his tutor: cleaved apart, forever. Well, all he taught me still flies with me. "Dr Bruhn, I don't want to be a fly. Nor do I want to be a person. I want to be me, whatever that is. Me."
Dr Bruhn sat down with a sigh.
"Beloved muscid, we're alone now. It's just you and me."
"And CIA, and Promis II telling CIA what to do."
"Yes. At this juncture, yours is to polish and focus your gifts. Mine is to plan our next move. They fear you because they cannot control or predict your behavior. The same with me. If they catch you again, they'll liquidate you. Believe it."
"What can one little fly do to curb the CIA?"
"Tesla started an earthquake in New York City with a mechanical oscillator smaller than a dispatch case. He said that machine could collapse the Empire State Building, and maybe even split the earth in half."
What does Bruhn want me to do, and why?
Is this all play-acting?
More of the CIA lie?
"Who was Tesla?"
"My father's idol."
"And?"
Dr Bruhn described how Nicola Tesla, a Serbia immigrant, overcame Thomas Edison's commitment to power distribution systems based on direct current and established the present alternating current electrical grids. Tesla invented the radio, created lightning, operated
boats by remote control. And all this at the turn of the nineteenth century! "Tesla's is a physics of vibrations. He thought everything in nature operates on vibrations corresponding to alternating current. Tune a coil to the natural frequency of the electricity in the earth, and, using the coil, disturb the electrostatic equilibrium of earth, and this will resonate, amplify, create a mighty force, and harmonics, which can build up to immense effects. The earth is a battery. Produce a commotion in its electrical field, and you can draw all the power from it mankind will ever need. In the natural equilibrium, produce commotion that amplifies the vibrations, and you will produce tremendous results. I think of this as ample-vibes. Mechanical vibrations augmenting resonance can create stupendous effects on matter when it resonates with either the natural vibrations or one of the harmonics. And electricity! You can transmit it like radio, through air or through the earth. Vibrations! Resonance! Augmented! Apply it to gravity, or even to light!" Eyes dilating, he looked around the room. "Electricity is everywhere!" And now he was gesturing. "Matter is contained vibrations; energy is unconfined vibrations!" He stamped the floor and said: "It's just coming to me! Tesla's physics resonate with the new physics called Chaos!"
"Dr Bruhn, if humans can get all the power they want, free, and for a century they've known how, why the hell don't they?" "Because, as Tesla says, to do so would be to turn the immense capital wealth embodied in power plants, the coal and oil flow that feeds them, and the power grids themselves into worthless junk." He leaned against the window. "So the big banks and utilities have suppressed both research into and application of this seminal marvel: Tesla's physics of vibrations."
"It's stupidity, then, rather than necessity, which causes humankind to ravage the biosphere."
"Precisely so."
"It's time to erase humankind and let insects rule."
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