Infinite Jest Part 10

'You're sounding hale and fit, O.'

'You can tell me, you know. No shame in it. Let me tell you, boy, I did myself raw for years on end on that hill.'

Hal estimated over 60% of what he told Orin on the phone since Orin had abruptly started calling again this spring was a lie. He had no idea why he liked lying to Orin on the phone so much. He looked at the clock. 'Where are you?'

'Home. Snug and toasty. It's 90+ out.'

'That would be Fahrenheit I'm a.s.suming.'

'This city is made of all gla.s.s and light. The windows are like high-beams coming at you. The air has that spilled-fuel s.h.i.+mmer to it.'

'So to what do we owe.'

'Sometimes I wear sungla.s.ses even in the house. Sometimes at the stadium I hold my hand up and look at it and I swear I can see right through it. Like that thing with the flashlight and your hand.'

'Hands seem to be sort of a theme to this call, thus far.'

'On the way in from the lot off the street here I saw a pedestrian in a pith helmet stagger and like claw at the air and pitch forward onto his face. Another Phoenician felled by the heat I think to myself.'

It occurred to Hal that although he lied about meaningless details to Orin on the phone it had never occurred to him to consider whether Orin was ever doing the same thing. This induced a spell of involuted marijuana-type thinking that led quickly, again, to Hal's questioning whether or not he was really all that intelligent. 'SATs are six weeks away and Pemulis is less and less helpful on the math, if you want to know what I'm doing all day.'

'The man's face made a sizzling noise when it hit the pavement. Like bacon-caliber sizzling. He's still lying there, I see out the window. He's not moving anymore. Everyone's avoiding him, going around him. He looks too hot to touch. A little Hispanic kid made off with his hat. Have y'all had snow yet? Describe snow for me again, Hallie, I'm begging you.'

'So you go around with this image of me sitting around during the day masturbating, is what you're saying.'

'I've actually been thinking of maneuvering for the whole Kleenex concession at E.T.A., as a venture.'

'That of course would mean actually contacting C.T. and the Moms.' 'Me and this forward-looking reserve QB have been making inquiries. Putting out feelers. Volume discounts, preferred-vendor status. Maybe a sideline in unscented lubricants. Any thoughts?'

'O.?'

'I'm sitting here actually missing New Orleans, kid. It'd be just coming up on Advent I think. The Quarter always gets really quaint and demure during Advent. It almost never rains down there during Advent for some reason. People remark on it, the phenomena.'

'You sound somehow a little off to me, O.'

'I'm heat-crazed. I might be dehydrated. What's that word? Everything's looked all beige and powdery all day. Trash bags have been swelling up and spontaneously combusting out in the dumpsters. These sudden rains of coffee grounds and orange peels. The Displacement guys in the barges have to wear asbestos gloves. Also I met somebody. Hallie, a possibly very special somebody.'

'Uh oh. Dinnertime. Triangle's a-clangin' over in West.'

'Hey Hallie though? Hang on. Kidding aside for a second. What all do you know about Separatism?'

Hal stopped for a moment. 'You mean in Canada?'

'Is there any other kind?'

Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House 49 49 was founded in the Year of the Whopper by a nail-tough old chronic drug addict and alcoholic who had spent the bulk of his adult life under the supervision of the Ma.s.sachusetts Department of Corrections before discovering the fellows.h.i.+p of Alcoholics Anonymous at M.D.C.-Walpole and undergoing a sudden experience of total self-surrender and spiritual awakening in the shower during his fourth month of continuous AA sobriety. This recovered addict/ alcoholic - who in his new humility so valued AA's tradition of anonymity that he refused even to use his first name, and was known in Boston AA simply as the Guy Who Didn't Even Use His First Name - opened Ennet House within a year of his parole, determined to pa.s.s on to other chronic drug addicts and alcoholics what had been so freely given to him in the E-Tier shower. was founded in the Year of the Whopper by a nail-tough old chronic drug addict and alcoholic who had spent the bulk of his adult life under the supervision of the Ma.s.sachusetts Department of Corrections before discovering the fellows.h.i.+p of Alcoholics Anonymous at M.D.C.-Walpole and undergoing a sudden experience of total self-surrender and spiritual awakening in the shower during his fourth month of continuous AA sobriety. This recovered addict/ alcoholic - who in his new humility so valued AA's tradition of anonymity that he refused even to use his first name, and was known in Boston AA simply as the Guy Who Didn't Even Use His First Name - opened Ennet House within a year of his parole, determined to pa.s.s on to other chronic drug addicts and alcoholics what had been so freely given to him in the E-Tier shower.

Ennet House leases a former physicians' dormitory in the Enfield Marine Public Health Hospital Complex, managed by the United States Veterans Administration. Ennet House is equipped to provide 22 male and female clients a nine-month period of closely supervised residency and treatment.

Ennet House was not only founded but originally renovated, furnished, and decorated by the nameless local AA ex-con, who - since sobriety doesn't exactly mean instant sainthood - used to lead select teams of early-recovery dope fiends on after-hours boosting expeditions at area furniture and housewares establishments.

This legendary anonymous founder was an extremely tough old Boston AA galoot who believed pa.s.sionately that everyone, no matter how broad the trail of slime they dragged in behind them, deserved the same chance at sobriety through utterly total surrender he'd been granted. It's a kind of extremely tough love found almost exclusively in tough old Boston galoots. 50 50 He sometimes, the founder, in the House's early days, required incoming residents to attempt to eat rocks - as in like rocks from the ground - to demonstrate their willingness to go to any lengths for the gift of sobriety. The Ma.s.sachusetts Department of Public Health's Division of Substance Abuse Services eventually requested that this practice be discontinued. He sometimes, the founder, in the House's early days, required incoming residents to attempt to eat rocks - as in like rocks from the ground - to demonstrate their willingness to go to any lengths for the gift of sobriety. The Ma.s.sachusetts Department of Public Health's Division of Substance Abuse Services eventually requested that this practice be discontinued.

Ennet was not any part of the nameless Ennet House founder's name, by the way. was not any part of the nameless Ennet House founder's name, by the way.

The rock thing - which has become a grim bit of mythopoeia now trotted out to ill.u.s.trate how cushy the present Ennet residents have it - was probably not as whacko as it seemed to Division of S.A.S., since many of the things veteran AA's ask newcomers to do and believe seem not much less whacko than trying to chew feldspar. E.g. be so strung out you can feel your pulse in your eyeb.a.l.l.s, have the shakes so badly you make a spatter-painting on the wall every time somebody hands you a cup of coffee, have the life-forms out of the corner of your eye be your only distraction from the chainsaw-racing chatter in your head, sitting there, and have some old lady with cat-hair on her nylons come at you to hug you and tell you to make a list of all the things you're grateful for today: you'll wish you had some feldspar handy, too.

In the Year of the Yus.h.i.+tyu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-View-Motherboard-Easy-To-Install Upgrade For Infernatron/InterLace TP Systems For Home, Office Or Mobile, 51 51 the nameless founder's death of a cerebral hemorrhage at age sixty-eight went unremarked outside the Boston AA community. the nameless founder's death of a cerebral hemorrhage at age sixty-eight went unremarked outside the Boston AA community.

FROM INTERNAL INTERLACE-SYSTEM E-MAIL MEMO CAH-NNE22-3575634-22, CLAIMS ADJUSTMENT HEADQUARTERS, STATE FARM INSURANCE COMPANIES, INC., BLOOMINGTON IL 26 JUNE YEAR OF DAIRY PRODUCTS FROM THE AMERICAN HEARTLAND.

FROM: murrayf Kclmshqnne22.626INTCOM FROM: murrayf Kclmshqnne22.626INTCOMTO: powellg/sanchezm/parryk K clmhqnne.626INTCOMMESSAGE: guys, get a load. my def. of a bad day. metro boston region 22 this spring, comp claim. witnesses deposed by boston wrkmans comp. establish claimant Impaired and the emerg. Room rept. lists a blood-alcohol of .3+, so be pleased to know we're clear on the 357-5 liability end. but basic facts below confirmed by witnesses and CYD accident rept. here's just the first page, get a load: murrayf Kclmshqnne22.626INTCOM 626YDPAH0112317/p. 1 murrayf Kclmshqnne22.626INTCOM 626YDPAH0112317/p. 1Dwayne R. Glynn176N. Faneuil Blvd.Stoneham, Ma.s.s. 021808754/4June 21, YODPFTAHWorkmans Accident Claims OfficeState Farm Insurance1 State Farm PlazaNormal, Ill. 617062262/6 Dear Sir: I am writing in response to your request for additional information. In block #3 of the accident reporting form, I put ''trying to do the job alone'', as the cause of my accident. You said in your letter that I should explain more fully and I trust that the following details will be sufficient. I am a bricklayer by trade. On the day of the accident, March 27, I was working alone on the roof of a new six story building. When I completed my work, I discovered that I had about 900 kg. of brick left over. Rather than laboriously carry the bricks down by hand, I decided to lower them in a barrel by using a pulley which fortunately was attached to the side of the building at the sixth floor. Securing the rope at ground level, I went up to the roof, swung the barrel out and loaded the brick into it. Then I went back to the ground and untied the rope, holding it tightly to insure a slow descent of the 900 kg of bricks. You will note in block #11 of the accident reporting form that I weigh 75 kg. I am a bricklayer by trade. On the day of the accident, March 27, I was working alone on the roof of a new six story building. When I completed my work, I discovered that I had about 900 kg. of brick left over. Rather than laboriously carry the bricks down by hand, I decided to lower them in a barrel by using a pulley which fortunately was attached to the side of the building at the sixth floor. Securing the rope at ground level, I went up to the roof, swung the barrel out and loaded the brick into it. Then I went back to the ground and untied the rope, holding it tightly to insure a slow descent of the 900 kg of bricks. You will note in block #11 of the accident reporting form that I weigh 75 kg. Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rapid rate up the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor I met the barrel coming down. This explains the fractured skull and the broken collar bone. Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rapid rate up the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor I met the barrel coming down. This explains the fractured skull and the broken collar bone. Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulleys. Fortunately, by this time, I had regained my presence of mind, and was able to hold tightly to the rope in spite of considerable pain. At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of bricks. .h.i.t the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel from the force of hitting the ground. Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulleys. Fortunately, by this time, I had regained my presence of mind, and was able to hold tightly to the rope in spite of considerable pain. At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of bricks. .h.i.t the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel from the force of hitting the ground. Devoid of the weight of the bricks, the barrel now weighed approximately 30 kg. I refer you again to my weight of 75 kg in block #11. As you could imagine, still holding the rope, I began a rather rapid descent from the pulley down the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured ankles and the laceration of my legs and lower body. Devoid of the weight of the bricks, the barrel now weighed approximately 30 kg. I refer you again to my weight of 75 kg in block #11. As you could imagine, still holding the rope, I began a rather rapid descent from the pulley down the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured ankles and the laceration of my legs and lower body. The encounter with the barrel slowed me enough to lessen my impact with the brick-strewn ground below. I am sorry to report, however, that as I lay there on the bricks in considerable pain, unable to stand or move and watching the empty barrel six stories above me, I again lost my presence of mind and unfortunately let go of the rope, causing the barrel to begin a The encounter with the barrel slowed me enough to lessen my impact with the brick-strewn ground below. I am sorry to report, however, that as I lay there on the bricks in considerable pain, unable to stand or move and watching the empty barrel six stories above me, I again lost my presence of mind and unfortunately let go of the rope, causing the barrel to begin a endtransINTCOM626 endtransINTCOM626 HAL INCANDENZA'S FIRST EXTANT WRITTEN COMMENT ON ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY FILMIC, SUBMITTED IN MR. OGILVIE'S SEVENTH-GRADE 'INTRODUCTION TO ENTERTAINMENT STUDIES' (2 TERMS, REQUIRED), ENFIELD TENNIS ACADEMY, 21 FEBRUARY IN THE YEAR OF THE PERDUE WONDERCHICKEN, @ FOUR YEARS AFTER THE DEMISE OF BROADCAST TELEVISION, ONE YEAR AFTER DR. JAMES O. INCANDENZA Pa.s.sED FROM THIS LIFE, A SUBMISSION RECEIVING JUST A B/B+, DESPITE OVERALL POSITIVE FEEDBACK, MOSTLY BECAUSE ITS CONCLUDING WAS NEITHER SET UP BY THE ESSAY'S BODY NOR SUPPORTED, OGILVIE POINTED OUT, BY ANYTHING MORE THAN SUBJECTIVE INTUITION AND RHETORICAL FLOURISH.

Chief Steve McGarrett of 'Hawaii Five-0' and Captain Frank Furillo of 'Hill Street Blues' are useful for seeing how our North American idea of the hero changed from the B.S. 1970s era of 'Hawaii Five-0' to the B.S. 1980s era of 'Hill Street Blues.'

Chief Steve McGarrett is a cla.s.sically modern hero of action. He acts out. It is what he does. The camera is always on him. He is hardly ever off-screen. He has just one case per week. The audience knows what the case is and also knows, by the end of Act One, who is guilty. Because the audience knows the truth before Steve McGarrett does, there is no mystery, there is only Steve McGarrett. The drama of 'Hawaii Five-0' is watching the hero in action, watching Steve McGarrett stalk and strut, homing in on the truth. Homing in is the essence of what the cla.s.sic hero of modern action does.

Steve McGarrett is not weighed down by administrative State-Police-Chief ch.o.r.es, or by females, or friends, or emotions, or any sorts of conflicting demands on his attention. His field of action is bare of diverting clutter. Thus Chief Steve McGarrett single-mindedly acts to refas.h.i.+on a truth the audience already knows into an object of law, justice, modern heroism.

In contrast, Captain Frank Furillo is what used to be designated a 'post'-modern hero. Viz., a hero whose virtues are suited to a more complex and corporate American era. I.e., a hero of re reaction. Captain Frank Furillo does not investigate cases or single-mindedly home in. He commands a precinct. He is a bureaucrat, and his heroism is bureaucratic, with a genius for navigating cluttered fields. In each broadcast episode of 'Hill Street Blues,' Captain Frank Furillo is beset by petty distractions on all sides from the very beginning of Act One. Not one but eleven complex cases, each with suspects and snitches and investigating officers and angry community leaders and victims' families all clamoring for redress. Hundreds of tasks to delegate, egos to ma.s.sage, promises to make, promises from last week to keep. Two or three cops' domestic troubles. Payroll vouchers. Duty logs. Corruption to be tempted by and agonized over. A Police Chief who's a political parody, a hyperactive son, an ex-wife who haunts the frosted-gla.s.s cubicle that serves as Frank Furillo's office (whereas Steve McGarrett's B.S. 1970s office more closely resembled the libraries of landed gentry, hushed behind two heavy doors and wainscotted in thick, tropical oak), plus a coldly attractive Public Defendress who wants to talk about did this suspect get Mirandized in Spanish and can Frank stop coming too soon he came too soon again last night maybe he should get into some kind of stress counselling. Plus all the weekly moral dilemmas and double binds his even-handed bureaucratic heroism gets Captain Frank Furillo into.

Captain Frank Furillo of 'Hill Street Blues' is a 'post'-modern hero, a virtuoso of triage and compromise and administration. Frank Furillo retains his sanity, composure, and superior grooming in the face of a barrage of distracting, unheroic demands that would have left Chief Steve McGarrett slumped, unkempt, and chewing his knuckle in administrative confusion.

In further contrast to Chief Steve McGarrett, Captain Frank Furillo is rarely filmed tight or full-front. He is usually one part of a frenetic, moving pan by the program's camera. In contrast, 'Hawaii Five-0' 's camera crew never even used a dolly, favoring a steady tripodic close-up on McGarrett's face that today seems more reminiscent of romantic portraiture than filmed drama.

What kind of hero comes after McGarrett's Iris.h.i.+zed modern cowboy, the lone man of action riding lonely herd in paradise? Furillo's is a whole different kind of loneliness. The 'post'-modern hero was a heroic part of part of the herd, responsible for all of what he is part of, responsible to everyone, his lonely face as placid under pressure as a cow's face. The jut-jawed hero of action ('Hawaii Five-0') becomes the mild-eyed hero of reaction ('Hill Street Blues,' a decade later). the herd, responsible for all of what he is part of, responsible to everyone, his lonely face as placid under pressure as a cow's face. The jut-jawed hero of action ('Hawaii Five-0') becomes the mild-eyed hero of reaction ('Hill Street Blues,' a decade later).

And, as we have observed thus far in our cla.s.s, we, as a North American audience, have favored the more Stoic, corporate hero of reactive probity ever since, some might be led to argue 'trapped' in the reactive moral ambiguity of 'post-' and 'post-post'-modern culture.

But what comes next? What North American hero can hope to succeed the placid Frank? We await, I predict, the hero of non non-action, the catatonic hero, the one beyond calm, divorced from all stimulus, carried here and there across sets by burly extras whose blood sings with retrograde amines.

ENORMOUS, ELECTROLYSIS-RASHED 'JOURNALIST' 'HELEN' STEEPLY'S ONLY PUTATIVE PUBLISHED ARTICLE BEFORE BEGINNING HER SOFT PROFILE ON PHOENIX CARDINALS PUNTER ORIN J. INCANDENZA, AND HER ONLY PUTATIVE PUBLISHED ARTICLE TO HAVE ANYTHING OVERTLY TO DO WITH GOOD OLD METROPOLITAN BOSTON, 10 AUGUST IN THE YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT, FOUR YEARS AFTER OPTICAL THEORIST, ENTREPRENEUR, TENNIS ACADEMICIAN, AND AVANT-GARDE FILMMAKER JAMES O. INCANDENZA TOOK HIS OWN LIFE BY PUTTING HIS HEAD IN A MICROWAVE OVEN Moment Magazine has learned that the tragic fate of the second North American citizen to receive a Jarvik IX Exterior Artificial Heart has, sadly, been kept from the North American people. The woman, a 46-year-old Boston accountant with irreversible restenosis of the heart, responded so well to the replacement of her defective heart with a Jarvik IX Exterior Artificial Heart that within weeks she was able to resume the active lifestyle she had so enjoyed before stricken, pursuing her active schedule with the extraordinary prosthesis portably installed in a stylish Etienne Aigner purse. The heart's ventricular tubes ran up to shunts in the woman's arms and ferried life-giving blood back and forth between her living, active body and the extraordinary heart in her purse. Magazine has learned that the tragic fate of the second North American citizen to receive a Jarvik IX Exterior Artificial Heart has, sadly, been kept from the North American people. The woman, a 46-year-old Boston accountant with irreversible restenosis of the heart, responded so well to the replacement of her defective heart with a Jarvik IX Exterior Artificial Heart that within weeks she was able to resume the active lifestyle she had so enjoyed before stricken, pursuing her active schedule with the extraordinary prosthesis portably installed in a stylish Etienne Aigner purse. The heart's ventricular tubes ran up to shunts in the woman's arms and ferried life-giving blood back and forth between her living, active body and the extraordinary heart in her purse.

Her tragic, untimely, and, some might say, cruelly ironic fate, however, has been the subject of the all too frequent silence needless tragedies are buried beneath when they cast the callous misunderstanding of public officials in the negative light of public knowledge. It took the sort of searching and fearless journalistic doggedness readers have come to respect in Moment Moment to unearth the tragically negative facts of her fate. to unearth the tragically negative facts of her fate.

The 46-year-old recipient of the Jarvik IX Exterior Artificial Heart was actively window shopping in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts' fas.h.i.+onable Harvard Square when a transvest.i.te purse s.n.a.t.c.her, a drug addict with a criminal record all too well known to public officials, bizarrely outfitted in a strapless c.o.c.ktail dress, spike heels, tattered feather boa, and auburn wig, brutally tore the life sustaining purse from the woman's unwitting grasp.

The active, alert woman gave chase to the purse s.n.a.t.c.hing 'woman' for as long as she could, plaintively shouting to pa.s.sers by the words 'Stop her! She stole my heart!' on the fas.h.i.+onable sidewalk crowded with shoppers, reportedly shouting repeatedly, 'She stole my heart, stop her!' In response to her plaintive calls, tragically, misunderstanding shoppers and pa.s.sers by merely shook their heads at one another, smiling knowingly at what they ignorantly presumed to be yet another alternative lifestyle's relations.h.i.+p gone sour. A duo of Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, patrolmen, whose names are being withheld from Moment's Moment's dogged queries, were publicly heard to pa.s.sively quip, 'Happens all the time,' as the victimized woman staggered frantically past in the wake of the fleet transvest.i.te, shouting for help for her stolen heart. dogged queries, were publicly heard to pa.s.sively quip, 'Happens all the time,' as the victimized woman staggered frantically past in the wake of the fleet transvest.i.te, shouting for help for her stolen heart.

That the prosthetic crime victim gave spirited chase for over four blocks before collapsing onto her empty chest is testimony to the impressive capacity of the Jarvik IX replacement procedure, was the anonymous comment of a public medical official reached for comment by Moment. Moment.

The drug crazed purse s.n.a.t.c.her, informed officials pa.s.sively speculated, may have found even his hardened conscience moved by the life saving prosthesis the ill gotten woman's Aigner purse revealed, which runs on the same rechargeable power cell as an electric man's razor, and may well have continued to beat and bleed for a period of time in the rudely disconnected purse. The purse s.n.a.t.c.her's response to this conscience appears to have been cruelly striking the Jarvik IX Exterior Artificial Heart repeatedly with a stone or small hammer-like tool, where its remains were found some hours later behind the historic Boston Public Library in fas.h.i.+onable Copley Square.

Is medical science's awe inspiring march forward, however, always doomed to include such tragic incidents of ignorance and callous loss, one might ask. Such seems to be the stance of North American officials. If indeed so, the victims' fate is frequently kept from the light of public knowledge.

And the facts of the case's outcome? The 46-year-old deceased woman's formerly active, alert brain was removed and dissected six weeks later by a Brigham and Women's City of Boston Hospital medical student reportedly so moved by her terse toe tag's account of the victim's heartless fate that he confessed to Moment Moment a temporary inability to physically wield the power saw of his a.s.signed task. a temporary inability to physically wield the power saw of his a.s.signed task.

ALPHABETICAL TALLY OF SePARATISTEUR / ANTI-O.N.A.N. GROUPS WHOSE OPPOSITION TO INTERDEPENDENCE / RECONFIGURATION IS DESIGNATED BY R.C.M.P. AND U.S.O.U.S. AS TERRORIST / EXTORTIONIST IN CHARACTER.

(Q=Quebecois, E=Environmental, S=Separatist, V=Violent, VV=Extremely Violent) - Les a.s.sa.s.sins des Fauteuils Rollents Les a.s.sa.s.sins des Fauteuils Rollents (Q, S, VV) (Q, S, VV) - - Le Bloc Quebecois Le Bloc Quebecois (Q, S, E) (Q, S, E) - Calgarian Pro-Canadian Phalanx (E, V) - Calgarian Pro-Canadian Phalanx (E, V)- Les Fils de Montcalm Les Fils de Montcalm (Q, E) (Q, E) - - Les Fils de Papineau Les Fils de Papineau (Q, S, V) (Q, S, V) - - Le Front de la Liberation de la Quebec Le Front de la Liberation de la Quebec (Q, S, VV) (Q, S, VV) - - Le Parti Quebecois Le Parti Quebecois (Q, S, E) (Q, S, E) WHY - THOUGH IN THE EARLY DAYS OF INTERLACE'S INTERNETTED TELEPUTERS THAT OPERATED OFF LARGELY THE SAME FIBER-DIGITAL GRID AS THE PHONE COMPANIES, THE ADVENT OF VIDEO-TELEPHONING (A.K.A. 'VIDEOPHONY') ENJOYED AN INTERVAL OF HUGE CONSUMER POPULARITY - CALLERS THRILLED AT THE IDEA OF PHONE-INTERFACING BOTH AURALLY AND FACIALLY (THE LITTLE FIRST-GENERATION PHONE-VIDEO CAMERAS BEING TOO CRUDE AND NARROW-APERTURED FOR ANYTHING MUCH MORE THAN FACIAL CLOSE-UPS) ON FIRST-GENERATION TELEPUTERS THAT AT THAT TIME WERE LITTLE MORE THAN HIGH-TECH TV SETS, THOUGH OF COURSE THEY HAD THAT LITTLE 'INTELLIGENT-AGENT' HOMUNCULAR ICON THAT WOULD APPEAR AT THE LOWER-RIGHT OF A BROADCAST/CABLE PROGRAM AND TELL YOU THE TIME AND TEMPERATURE OUTSIDE OR REMIND YOU TO TAKE YOUR BLOOD-PRESSURE MEDICATION OR ALERT YOU TO A PARTICULARLY COMPELLING ENTERTAINMENT-OPTION NOW COMING UP ON CHANNEL LIKE 491 OR SOMETHING, OR OF COURSE NOW ALERTING YOU TO AN INCOMING VIDEO-PHONE CALL AND THEN TAP-DANCING WITH A LITTLE ICONIC STRAW BOATER AND CANE JUST UNDER A MENU OF POSSIBLE OPTIONS FOR RESPONSE, AND CALLERS DID LOVE THEIR LITTLE HOMUNCULAR ICONS - BUT WHY, WITHIN LIKE 16 MONTHS OR 5 SALES QUARTERS, THE TUMESCENT DEMAND CURVE FOR 'VIDEOPHONY' SUDDENLY COLLAPSED LIKE A KICKED TENT, SO THAT, BY THE YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT, FEWER THAN 10% OF ALL PRIVATE TELEPHONE COMMUNICATIONS UTILIZED ANY VIDEO-IMAGE-FIBER DATA-TRANSFERS OR COINCIDENT PRODUCTS AND SERVICES, THE AVERAGE U.S. PHONE-USER DECIDING THAT S/HE ACTUALLY PREFERRED PREFERRED THE RETROGRADE OLD LOWTECH BELL-ERA VOICE-ONLY TELEPHONIC INTERFACE AFTER ALL, A PREFERENTIAL ABOUT-FACE THAT COST A GOOD MANY PRECIPITANT VIDEO-TELEPHONY-RELATED ENTREPRENEURS THEIR s.h.i.+RTS, PLUS DESTABILIZING TWO HIGHLY RESPECTED MUTUAL FUNDS THAT HAD GROUND-FLOORED HEAVILY IN VIDEO-PHONE TECHNOLOGY, AND VERY NEARLY WIPING OUT THE MARYLAND STATE EMPLOYEES' RETIREMENT SYSTEM'S FREDDIE-MAC FUND, A FUND WHOSE ADMINISTRATOR'S MISTRESS'S BROTHER HAD BEEN AN ALMOST MANICALLY PRECIPITANT VIDEO-PHONE-TECHNOLOGY ENTREPRENEUR... AND BUT SO WHY THE ABRUPT CONSUMER RETREAT BACK TO GOOD OLD VOICE-ONLY TELEPHONING? THE RETROGRADE OLD LOWTECH BELL-ERA VOICE-ONLY TELEPHONIC INTERFACE AFTER ALL, A PREFERENTIAL ABOUT-FACE THAT COST A GOOD MANY PRECIPITANT VIDEO-TELEPHONY-RELATED ENTREPRENEURS THEIR s.h.i.+RTS, PLUS DESTABILIZING TWO HIGHLY RESPECTED MUTUAL FUNDS THAT HAD GROUND-FLOORED HEAVILY IN VIDEO-PHONE TECHNOLOGY, AND VERY NEARLY WIPING OUT THE MARYLAND STATE EMPLOYEES' RETIREMENT SYSTEM'S FREDDIE-MAC FUND, A FUND WHOSE ADMINISTRATOR'S MISTRESS'S BROTHER HAD BEEN AN ALMOST MANICALLY PRECIPITANT VIDEO-PHONE-TECHNOLOGY ENTREPRENEUR... AND BUT SO WHY THE ABRUPT CONSUMER RETREAT BACK TO GOOD OLD VOICE-ONLY TELEPHONING?

The answer, in a kind of trivalent nutsh.e.l.l, is: (1) emotional stress, (2) physical vanity, (3) a certain queer kind of self-obliterating logic in the microeconomics of consumer high-tech.

(1) It turned out that there was something terribly stressful about visual telephone interfaces that hadn't been stressful at all about voice-only interfaces. Videophone consumers seemed suddenly to realize that they'd been subject to an insidious but wholly marvelous delusion about conventional voice-only telephony. They'd never noticed it before, the delusion - it's like it was so emotionally complex that it could be countenanced only in the context of its loss. Good old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention to her. A traditional aural-only conversation - utilizing a hand-held phone whose earpiece contained only 6 little pinholes but whose mouthpiece (rather significantly, it later seemed) contained (62) or 36 little pinholes - let you enter a kind of highway-hypnotic semi-attentive fugue: while conversing, you could look around the room, doodle, fine-groom, peel tiny bits of dead skin away from your cuticles, compose phone-pad haiku, stir things on the stove; you could even carry on a whole separate additional sign-language-and-exaggerated-facial-expression type of conversation with people right there in the room with you, all while seeming to be right there attending closely to the voice on the phone. And yet - and this was the retrospectively marvelous part - even as you were dividing your attention between the phone call and all sorts of other idle little fuguelike activities, you were somehow never haunted by the suspicion that the person on the other end's attention might be similarly divided. During a traditional call, e.g., as you let's say performed a close tactile blemish-scan of your chin, you were in no way oppressed by the thought that your phonemate was perhaps also devoting a good percentage of her attention to a close tactile blemish-scan. It was an illusion and the illusion was aural and aurally supported: the phone-line's other end's voice was dense, tightly compressed, and vectored right into your ear, enabling you to imagine that the voice's owner's attention was similarly compressed and focused... even though your own attention was not not, was the thing. This bilateral illusion of unilateral attention was almost infantilely gratifying from an emotional standpoint: you got to believe you were receiving somebody's complete attention without having to return it. Regarded with the objectivity of hindsight, the illusion appears arational, almost literally fantastic: it would be like being able both to lie and to trust other people at the same time.

Video telephony rendered the fantasy insupportable. Callers now found they had to compose the same sort of earnest, slightly overintense listener's expression they had to compose for in-person exchanges. Those callers who out of unconscious habit succ.u.mbed to fuguelike doodling or pants-crease-adjustment now came off looking rude, absentminded, or childishly self-absorbed. Callers who even more unconsciously blemish-scanned or nostril-explored looked up to find horrified expressions on the video-faces at the other end. All of which resulted in videophonic stress.

Even worse, of course, was the traumatic expulsion-from-Eden feeling of looking up from tracing your thumb's outline on the Reminder Pad or adjusting the old Unit's angle of repose in your shorts and actually seeing your videophonic interfacee idly strip a shoelace of its gumlet as she talked to you, and suddenly realizing your whole infantile fantasy of commanding your partner's attention while you yourself got to fugue-doodle and make little genital-adjustments was deluded and insupportable and that you were actually commanding not one bit more attention than you were paying, here. The whole attention business was monstrously stressful, video callers found.

(2) And the videophonic stress was even worse if you were at all vain. I.e. if you worried at all about how you looked. As in to other people. Which all kidding aside who doesn't. Good old aural telephone calls could be fielded without makeup, toupee, surgical prostheses, etc. Even without clothes, if that sort of thing rattled your saber. But for the image-conscious, there was of course no such answer-as-you-are informality about visual-video telephone calls, which consumers began to see were less like having the good old phone ring than having the doorbell ring and having to throw on clothes and attach prostheses and do hair-checks in the foyer mirror before answering the door.

But the real coffin-nail for videophony involved the way callers' faces looked on their TP screen, during calls. Not their callers' faces, but their own, when they saw them on video. It was a three-b.u.t.ton affair, after all, to use the TP's cartridge-card's Video-Record option to record both pulses in a two-way visual call and play the call back and see how your face had actually looked to the other person during the call. This sort of appearance-check was no more resistible than a mirror. But the experience proved almost universally horrifying. People were horrified at how their own faces appeared on a TP screen. It wasn't just 'Anchorman's Bloat,' that well-known impression of extra weight that video inflicts on the face. It was worse. Even with high-end TPs' high-def viewer-screens, consumers perceived something essentially blurred and moist-looking about their phone-faces, a s.h.i.+ny pallid indefiniteness indefiniteness that struck them as not just unflattering but somehow evasive, furtive, untrustworthy, that struck them as not just unflattering but somehow evasive, furtive, untrustworthy, usnlikable. usnlikable. In an early and ominous InterLace/G.T.E. focus-group survey that was all but ignored in a storm of entrepreneurial sci-fi-tech enthusiasm, almost 60% of respondents who received visual access to their own faces during videophonic calls specifically used the terms In an early and ominous InterLace/G.T.E. focus-group survey that was all but ignored in a storm of entrepreneurial sci-fi-tech enthusiasm, almost 60% of respondents who received visual access to their own faces during videophonic calls specifically used the terms untrustworthy untrustworthy, unlikable unlikable, or hard to like hard to like in describing their own visage's appearance, with a phenomenally ominous 71% of senior-citizen respondents specifically comparing their video-faces to that of Richard Nixon during the Nixon-Kennedy debates of B.S. 1960. in describing their own visage's appearance, with a phenomenally ominous 71% of senior-citizen respondents specifically comparing their video-faces to that of Richard Nixon during the Nixon-Kennedy debates of B.S. 1960.

The proposed solution to what the telecommunications industry's psychological consultants termed Video-Physiognomic Video-Physiognomic Dysphoria(or VPD) was, of course, the advent of High-Definition Masking; and in fact it was those entrepreneurs who gravitated toward the production of high-definition videophonic imaging and then outright masks who got in and out of the short-lived videophonic era with their s.h.i.+rts plus solid additional nets. Dysphoria(or VPD) was, of course, the advent of High-Definition Masking; and in fact it was those entrepreneurs who gravitated toward the production of high-definition videophonic imaging and then outright masks who got in and out of the short-lived videophonic era with their s.h.i.+rts plus solid additional nets.

Mask-wise, the initial option of High-Definition Photographic Imaging - i.e. taking the most flattering elements of a variety of flattering multi-angle photos of a given phone-consumer and - thanks to existing image-configuration equipment already pioneered by the cosmetics and law-enforcement industries - combining them into a wildly attractive high-def broadcastable composite of a face wearing an earnest, slightly overintense expression of complete attention - was quickly supplanted by the more inexpensive and byte-economical option of (using the exact same cosmetic-and-FBI software) actually casting the enhanced facial image in a form-fitting polybutylene-resin mask, and consumers soon found that the high up-front cost of a permanent wearable mask was more than worth it, considering the stress- and VPD VPD-reduction benefits, and the convenient Velcro straps for the back of the mask and caller's head cost peanuts; and for a couple fiscal quarters phone/cable companies were able to rally VPD VPD-afflicted consumers' confidence by working out a horizontally integrated deal where free composite-and-masking services came with a videophone hookup. The high-def masks, when not in use, simply hung on a small hook on the side of a TP's phone-console, admittedly looking maybe a bit surreal and discomfiting when detached and hanging there empty and wrinkled, and sometimes there were potentially awkward mistaken-ident.i.ty snafus involving multi-user family or company phones and the hurried selection and attachment of the wrong mask taken from some long row of empty hanging masks - but all in all the masks seemed initially like a viable industry response to the vanity,-stress,-and-Nixonian-facial-image problem.

(2 and maybe also 3) But combine the natural entrepreneurial instinct to satisfy all all sufficiently high consumer demand, on the one hand, with what appears to be an almost equally natural distortion in the way persons tend to see themselves, and it becomes possible to account historically for the speed with which the whole high-def-videophonic-mask thing spiralled totally out of control. Not only is it weirdly hard to evaluate what you yourself look like, like whether you're good-looking or not - e.g. try looking in the mirror and determining where you stand in the attractiveness-hierarchy with anything like the objective ease you can determine whether just about anyone else you know is good-looking or not - but it turned out that consumers' instinctively skewed self-perception, plus vanity-related stress, meant that they began preferring and then outright demanding videophone masks that were really quite a lot better-looking than they themselves were in person. High-def mask-entrepreneurs ready and willing to supply not just verisimilitude but aesthetic enhancement - stronger chins, smaller eye-bags, air-brushed scars and wrinkles - soon pushed the original mimetic-mask-entrepreneurs right out of the market. In a gradually unsubtlizing progression, within a couple more sales-quarters most consumers were now using masks so undeniably better-looking on videophones than their real faces were in person, transmitting to one another such horrendously skewed and enhanced masked images of themselves, that enormous psychosocial stress began to result, large numbers of phone-users suddenly reluctant to leave home and interface personally with people who, they feared, were now habituated to seeing their far-better-looking masked selves on the phone and would on seeing them in person suffer (so went the callers' phobia) the same illusion-shattering aesthetic disappointment that, e.g., certain women who always wear makeup give people the first time they ever see them without makeup. sufficiently high consumer demand, on the one hand, with what appears to be an almost equally natural distortion in the way persons tend to see themselves, and it becomes possible to account historically for the speed with which the whole high-def-videophonic-mask thing spiralled totally out of control. Not only is it weirdly hard to evaluate what you yourself look like, like whether you're good-looking or not - e.g. try looking in the mirror and determining where you stand in the attractiveness-hierarchy with anything like the objective ease you can determine whether just about anyone else you know is good-looking or not - but it turned out that consumers' instinctively skewed self-perception, plus vanity-related stress, meant that they began preferring and then outright demanding videophone masks that were really quite a lot better-looking than they themselves were in person. High-def mask-entrepreneurs ready and willing to supply not just verisimilitude but aesthetic enhancement - stronger chins, smaller eye-bags, air-brushed scars and wrinkles - soon pushed the original mimetic-mask-entrepreneurs right out of the market. In a gradually unsubtlizing progression, within a couple more sales-quarters most consumers were now using masks so undeniably better-looking on videophones than their real faces were in person, transmitting to one another such horrendously skewed and enhanced masked images of themselves, that enormous psychosocial stress began to result, large numbers of phone-users suddenly reluctant to leave home and interface personally with people who, they feared, were now habituated to seeing their far-better-looking masked selves on the phone and would on seeing them in person suffer (so went the callers' phobia) the same illusion-shattering aesthetic disappointment that, e.g., certain women who always wear makeup give people the first time they ever see them without makeup.

The social anxieties surrounding the phenomenon psych-consultants termed Optimistically Misrepresentational Masking Optimistically Misrepresentational Masking(or OMM OMM) intensified steadily as the tiny crude first-generation videophone cameras' technology improved to where the aperture wasn't as narrow, and now the higher-end tiny cameras could countenance and transmit more or less full-body images. Certain psychologically unscrupulous entrepreneurs began marketing full-body polybutylene and -urethane 2-D cutouts - sort of like the headless muscleman and bathing-beauty cutouts you could stand behind and position your chin on the cardboard neck-stump of for cheap photos at the beach, only these full-body videophone-masks were vastly more high-tech and convincing-looking. Once you added variable 2-D wardrobe, hair- and eye-color options, various aesthetic enlargements and reductions, etc., costs started to press the envelope of ma.s.s-market affordability, even though there was at the same time horrific social pressure to be able to afford the very best possible masked 2-D body-image, to keep from feeling comparatively hideous-looking on the phone. How long, then, could one expect it to have been before the relentless entrepreneurial drive toward an ever-better mousetrap conceived of the Transmittable Tableau Transmittable Tableau(a.k.a. TT TT), which in retrospect was probably the really sharp business-end of the videophonic coffin-nail. With TT TTs, facial and bodily masking could now be dispensed with altogether and replaced with the video-transmitted image of what was essentially a heavily doctored still-photograph, one of an incredibly fit and attractive and well-turned-out human being, someone who actually resembled you the caller only in such limited respects as like race and limb-number, the photo's face focused attentively in the direction of the video-phonic camera from amid the sumptuous but not ostentatious appointments of the sort of room that best reflected the image of yourself you wanted to transmit, etc.

The Tableaux were simply high-quality transmission-ready photographs, scaled down to diorama-like proportions and fitted with a plastic holder over the videophone camera, not unlike a lens-cap. Extremely good-looking but not terrifically successful entertainment-celebrities - the same sort who in decades past would have swelled the cast-lists of infomercials - found themselves in demand as models for various high-end videophone Tableaux.

Because they involved simple transmission-ready photography instead of 149 computer imaging and enhancement, the Tableaux could be ma.s.s-produced and commensurately priced, and for a brief time they helped ease the tension between the high cost of enhanced body-masking and the monstrous aesthetic pressures videophony exerted on callers, not to mention also providing employment for set-designers, photographers, airbrushers, and infomercial-level celebrities hard-pressed by the declining fortunes of broadcast television advertising.

(3) But there's some sort of revealing lesson here in the beyond-short-term viability-curve of advances in consumer technology. The career of videophony conforms neatly to this curve's cla.s.sically annular shape: First there's some sort of terrific, sci-fi-like advance in consumer tech - like from aural to video phoning - which advance always, however, has certain unforeseen disadvantages for the consumer; and then but the market-niches created by those disadvantages - like people's stressfully vain repulsion at their own videophonic appearance - are ingeniously filled via sheer entrepreneurial verve; and yet the very advantages of these ingenious disadvantage-compensations seem all too often to undercut the original high-tech advance, resulting in consumer-recidivism and curve-closure and ma.s.sive s.h.i.+rt-loss for precipitant investors. In the present case, the stress-and-vanity-compensations' own evolution saw video-callers rejecting first their own faces and then even their own heavily masked and enhanced physical likenesses and finally covering the video-cameras altogether and transmitting attractively stylized static Tableaux to one another's TPs. And, behind these lens-cap dioramas and transmitted Tableaux, callers of course found that they were once again stresslessly invisible, unvainly makeup- and toupeeless and baggy-eyed behind their celebrity-dioramas, once again free - since once again unseen - to doodle, blemish-scan, manicure, crease-check - while on their screen, the attractive, intensely attentive face of the well-appointed celebrity on the other end's Tableau rea.s.sured them that they were the objects of a concentrated attention they themselves didn't have to exert.

And of course but these advantages were nothing other than the once-lost and now-appreciated advantages of good old Bell-era blind aural-only telephoning, with its 6 and (62) pinholes. The only difference was that now these expensive silly unreal stylized Tableaux were being transmitted between TPs on high-priced video-fiber lines. How much time, after this realization sank in and spread among consumers (mostly via phone, interestingly), would any micro-econometrist expect to need to pa.s.s before high-tech visual videophony was mostly abandoned, then, a return to good old telephoning not only dictated by common consumer sense but actually after a while culturally approved as a kind of chic integrity, not Ludditism but a kind of retrograde transcendence of sci-fi-ish high-tech for its own sake, a transcendence of the vanity and the slavery to high-tech fas.h.i.+on that people view as so unattractive in one another. In other words a return to aural-only telephony became, at the closed curve's end, a kind of status-symbol of anti-vanity, such that only callers utterly lacking in self-awareness continued to use videophony and Tableaux, to say nothing of masks, and these tacky facsimile-using people became ironic cultural symbols of tacky vain slavery to corporate PR and high-tech novelty, became the Subsidized Era's tacky equivalents of people with leisure suits, black velvet paintings, sweater-vests for their poodles, electric zirconium jewelry, NoCoat LinguaSc.r.a.pers, and c. Most communications consumers put their Tableauxdioramas at the back of a knick-knack shelf and covered their cameras with standard black lens-caps and now used their phone consoles' little mask-hooks to hang these new little plasticene address-and-phone diaries specially made with a little receptacle at the top of the binding for convenient hanging from former mask-hooks. Even then, of course, the bulk of U.S. consumers remained verifiably reluctant to leave home and teleputer and to interface personally, though this phenomenon's endurance can't be attributed to the videophony-fad per se, and anyway the new panagoraphobia served to open huge new entrepreneurial teleputerized markets for home-shopping and -delivery, and didn't cause much industry concern.

Four times per annum, in these chemically troubled times, the Organization of North American Nations Tennis a.s.sociation's Juniors Division sends a young toxicologist with cornsilk hair and a smooth wide b.u.t.ton of a nose and a blue O.N.A.N.T.A. blazer to collect urine samples from any student at any accredited tennis academy ranked higher than #64 continentally in his or her age-division. Compet.i.tive junior tennis is meant to be good clean fun. It's October in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. An impressive percentage of the kids at E.T.A. are in their divisions' top 64. On urine-sample day, the juniors form two long lines that trail out of the locker rooms and up the stairs and then run agnate and coed across the E.T.A. Comm.-Ad. Bldg. lobby with its royal-blue s.h.a.g and hardwood panelling and great gla.s.s cases of trophies and plaques. It takes about an hour to get from the middle of the line to your s.e.x's locker room's stall-area, where either the blond young toxicologist or on the girls' side a nurse whose severe widow's peak tops her square face with a sort of bisected forehead dispenses a plastic cup with a pale-green lid and a strip of white medical tape with a name and a monthly ranking and 10-15-Y.D.A.U. and Enf.T.A. Enf.T.A. neatly printed in a six-pt. font. neatly printed in a six-pt. font.

Probably about a fourth of the ranking players over, say, fifteen at the Enfield Tennis Academy cannot pa.s.s a standard North American GC/MS 52 52 urine scan. These, seventeen-year-old Michael Pemulis's nighttime customers, now become also, four times yearly, his daytime customers. Clean urine is ten adjusted dollars a cc. urine scan. These, seventeen-year-old Michael Pemulis's nighttime customers, now become also, four times yearly, his daytime customers. Clean urine is ten adjusted dollars a cc.

'Get your urine here!' Pemulis and Trevor Axford become quarterly urine vendors; they wear those papery oval caps ballpark-vendors wear; they spend three months collecting and stas.h.i.+ng the urine of sub-ten-year-old players, warm pale innocent childish urine that's produced in needly little streams and the only G/M scan it couldn't pa.s.s would be like an Ovaltine scan or something; then every third month Pemulis and Axford work the agnate unsupervised line that snakes across the blue lobby s.h.a.g, selling little Visine bottles of urine out of an antique vendor's tub for ballpark wieners, snagged for a song from a Fenway Park wienerman fallen on hard off-season times, a big old box of dull dimpled tin with a strap in Sox colors that goes around the back of the neck and keeps the vendor's hands free to make change.

'Urine!'

'Clinically sterile urine!'

'Piping hot!'

'Urine you'd be proud to take home and introduce to the folks!'

Trevor Axford handles cash-flow. Pemulis dispenses little conical-tipped Visine bottles of juvenile urine, bottles easily rendered discreet in underarm, sock or panty.

'Urine trouble? Urine luck!'

Quarterly sales breakdowns indicate slightly more male customers than female customers, for urine. Tomorrow morning, E.T.A. custodial workers - Kenkle and Brandt, or Dave ('Fall Down Very') Harde, the well-loved old janitor laid off from Boston College for contracting narcolepsy, or thick-ankled Irish women from the semi-tenements down the hill across Comm. Ave., or else sullen and s.h.i.+fty-eyed residents from Ennet House, the halfway facility at the bottom of the hill's other side in the old VA Hospital complex, hard-looking and generally sullen types who come and do nine months of menial-type work for the 32 hours a week their treatment-contract requires - will empty scores of little empty plastic Visine bottles from subdorm wastebaskets into the dumpster-nest behind the E.T.A. Employee parking lot, from which dumpsters Pemulis will then get Mario Incandenza and some of the naiver of the original ephebic urine-donators themselves to remove, sterilize, and rebox the bottles under the guise of a rousing game of Who-Can-Find,-Boil,-And-Box-The-Most-Empty-Visine-Bottles-In-A-Three-Hour-Period-Without-Any-Kind-Of-Authority-Figure -Knowing-What-You're-Up-To, a game which Mario had found thumpingly weird when Pemulis introduced him to it three years ago, but which Mario's really come to look forward to, since he's found he has a real sort of mystical intuitive knack for finding Visine bottles in the sedimentary layers of packed dumpsters, and always seems to win hands-down, and if you're poor old Mario Incandenza you take your compet.i.tive strokes where you can find them. T. Axford then stashes and recycles the bottles, and packaging overhead is nil. He and Pemulis keep the wiener-tub stashed under a discarded Yarmouth sail in the back of the used tow truck they'd chipped in on with Hal and Jim Struck and another guy who's since graduated E.T.A. and now plays for Pepperdine, and paid to have reconditioned and the rusty chain and hook that hung from the tow truck's back-tilted derrick replaced with a gleamingly new chain and thick hook - which get used really only twice a year, spring and late fall, for brief intervals of short-distance hauling during the all-weather Lung's dismantling and erection, plus occasionally pulling a paralyzed rear-wheel-drive student or employee vehicle either back onto or all the way up the E.T.A. hillside's long 70 driveway during bad snowstorms - and the whole thing derusted and painted in E.T.A.'s proud red and gray school colors, with the complex O.N.A.N. heraldic ensign - a snarling full-front eagle with a broom and can of disinfectant in one claw and a Maple Leaf in the other and wearing a sombrero and appearing to have about half-eaten a swatch of star-studded cloth - rather ironically silk-screened onto the driver's-side door and the good old pre-Tavis E.T.A. traditional motto TE OCCIDERE POSSUNT... TE OCCIDERE POSSUNT...unironically emblazoned on the pa.s.senger door, and which they all share use of, though Pemulis and Axford get slight priority, because the truck's registration and basic-liability insurance get paid for out of quarterly urine-revenues.

Hal's older brother Mario - who by Dean of Students' fiat gets to bunk in a double with Hal in subdorm A on the third floor of Comm.-Ad. even though he's too physically challenged even to play low-level recreational tennis, but who's keenly interested in video- and film-cartridge production, and pulls his weight as part of the E.T.A. community recording a.s.signed sections of matches and drills and processional stroke-filming sessions for later playback and a.n.a.lysis by Scht.i.tt and his staff - is filming the congregated line and social interactions and vending operation of the urine-day lobby, using his strap-attached head-mounted camera and thoracic police-lock and foot-treadle, apparently getting footage for one of the short strange Himself-influenced conceptual cartridges the administration lets him occupy his time making and futzing around with down in the late founder's editing and f/x facilities off the main sub-Comm.-Ad. tunnel; and Pemulis and Axford do not object to the filming, nor do they even do that hand-to-temple face-obscuring thing when he aims the head-mounted Bolex their way, since they know n.o.body will end up seeing the footage except Mario himself, and that at their request he'll modulate and scramble the vendors' and customers' faces into undulating systems of flesh-colored squares, by means of his late father's reconfigururing matte-panel in the editing room, since facial scrambling will heighten whatever weird conceptual effect Mario's usually after anyway, though also because Mario's notoriously fond of undulating flesh-colored squares and will jump at any opportunity to edit them in over people's faces.

They do brisk business.

Michael Pemulis, wiry, pointy-featured, phenomenally talented at net but about two steps too slow to get up there effectively against high-level pace - so in compensation also a great offensive-lob man - is a scholars.h.i.+p student from right nearby in Allston MA - a grim section of tract housing and vacant lots, low-rise Greek and Irish housing projects, gravel and haphazard sewage and indifferent munic.i.p.al upkeep, a lot of depressed petrochemical light industry all along the Spur, an outlying district zoned for sprawl; an old joke in Enfield-Brighton goes ' "Kiss me where it smells" she said so I took her to Allston' - where he discovered a knack playing Boys Club tennis in cut-off shorts and no s.h.i.+rt and a store-strung stick on scuzzy courts with blacktop that discolored your yellow b.a.l.l.s and nets made of spare Feeny Park fencing that sent net-cord shots sp.r.o.nging all the way out into traffic. An Inner City Development Program tennis prodigy at ten, recruited up the hill at eleven, with parents who wanted to know how much E.T.A.'d pay up front for rights to all future possible income. Cavalier about practice but a bundle of strangled nerves in tournaments, the rap on Pemulis is that he's way lower-ranked than he could be with a little hard work, since he's not only E.T.A.'s finest Eschatonic 53 53 marksman off the lob but Scht.i.tt says is the one youth here now who knows truly what is it to marksman off the lob but Scht.i.tt says is the one youth here now who knows truly what is it to punch punch the volley. Pemulis, whose pre-E.T.A. home life was apparently hackle-raising, also sells small-time drugs of distinguished potency at reasonable retail prices to a large pie-slice of the total junior-tournament-circuit market. Mario Incandenza is one of those people who wouldn't see the point of trying recreational chemicals even if he knew how to go about it. He just wouldn't get it. His smile, below the Bolex camera strapped to his large but sort of withered-looking head, is constant and broad as he films the line's serpentine movement against gla.s.s shelves full of prizes. the volley. Pemulis, whose pre-E.T.A. home life was apparently hackle-raising, also sells small-time drugs of distinguished potency at reasonable retail prices to a large pie-slice of the total junior-tournament-circuit market. Mario Incandenza is one of those people who wouldn't see the point of trying recreational chemicals even if he knew how to go about it. He just wouldn't get it. His smile, below the Bolex camera strapped to his large but sort of withered-looking head, is constant and broad as he films the line's serpentine movement against gla.s.s shelves full of prizes.

M. M. Pemulis, whose middle name is Mathew (sic), has the highest Stanford-Binet of any kid on academic probation ever at the Academy. Hal Incandenza's most valiant efforts barely get Pemulis through Mrs. I's triad of required Grammars 54 54 and Soma R.-L.-O. Chawaf's heady Literature of Discipline, because Pemulis, who claims he sees every third word upside-down, actually just has a born tech-science wienie's congenital impatience with the referential murkiness and inelegance of verbal systems. His early tennis promise quick-peaking and it's turned out a bit dilettantish, Pemulis's real enduring gift is for math and hard science, and his scholars.h.i.+p is the coveted James O. Incandenza Geometrical Optics Scholars.h.i.+p, of which there is only one, and which each term Pemulis manages to avoid losing by just one dento-dermal layer of overall G.P.A., and which gives him sanctioned access to all the late director's lenses and equipment, some of which turn out to be useful to unrelated enterprises. Mario's the only other person sharing the optic-and-editing labs off the main tunnel, and the two have the kind of transpersonal bond that shared interests and mutual advantage can inspire: if Mario's not helping Pemulis fabricate the products of independent-optical-study work M.P. isn't really much into doing - you should see the boy with a convex lens, Avril likes to say within Mario's hearing; he's like a fish in brine - then Pemulis is giving Mario, who's a film-nut but no great tech-mind, serious help with cinemo-optical praxis, the physics of focal-length and reflective compounds - you should see Pemulis with an emulsion curve, yawning blasely under his bill-reversed yachting hat and scratching an armpit, juggling differentials like a boy born to wear a pocket-protector and high-water corduroys and electrician's tape on his hornrims' temples, asking Mario if he knows what you call three Canadians copulating on a snowmobile. Mario and his brother Hal both consider Pemulis a good friend, though friends.h.i.+p at E.T.A. is nonnegotiable currency. and Soma R.-L.-O. Chawaf's heady Literature of Discipline, because Pemulis, who claims he sees every third word upside-down, actually just has a born tech-science wienie's congenital impatience with the referential murkiness and inelegance of verbal systems. His early tennis promise quick-peaking and it's turned out a bit dilettantish, Pemulis's real enduring gift is for math and hard science, and his scholars.h.i.+p is the coveted James O. Incandenza Geometrical Optics Scholars.h.i.+p, of which there is only one, and which each term Pemulis manages to avoid losing by just one dento-dermal layer of overall G.P.A., and which gives him sanctioned access to all the late director's lenses and equipment, some of which turn out to be useful to unrelated enterprises. Mario's the only other person sharing the optic-and-editing labs off the main tunnel, and the two have the kind of transpersonal bond that shared interests and mutual advantage can inspire: if Mario's not helping Pemulis fabricate the products of independent-optical-study work M.P. isn't really much into doing - you should see the boy with a convex lens, Avril likes to say within Mario's hearing; he's like a fish in brine - then Pemulis is giving Mario, who's a film-nut but no great tech-mind, serious help with cinemo-optical praxis, the physics of focal-length and reflective compounds - you should see Pemulis with an emulsion curve, yawning blasely under his bill-reversed yachting hat and scratching an armpit, juggling differentials like a boy born to wear a pocket-protector and high-water corduroys and electrician's tape on his hornrims' temples, asking Mario if he knows what you call three Canadians copulating on a snowmobile. Mario and his brother Hal both consider Pemulis a good friend, though friends.h.i.+p at E.T.A. is nonnegotiable currency.

Hal Incandenza for a long time identified himself as a lexical prodigy who - though Avril had taken pains to let all three of her children know that her nonjudgmental love and pride depended in no way on achievement or performance or potential talent - had made his mother proud, plus a really good tennis player. Hal Incandenza is now being encouraged to identify himself as a late-blooming prodigy and possible genius at tennis who is on the verge of making every authority-figure in his world and beyond very proud indeed. He's never looked better on court or on monthly O.N.A.N.T.A. paper. He is erumpent. He has made what Scht.i.tt termed a 'leap of exponents' at a post-p.u.b.escent age when radical, plateaux-hopping, near-J.-Wayne-and-Show-caliber improvement is extraordinarily rare in tennis. He gets his sterile urine gratis, though he could well afford to pay: Pemulis depends on him for verbal-academic support, and dislikes owing favors, even to friends.

Hal is, at seventeen, as of 10/Y.D.A.U., judged ex cathedra ex cathedrathe fourth-best tennis player under age eighteen in the United States of America, and the sixth-best on the continent, by those athletic-organizing bodies duly charged with the task of ranking. Hal's head, closely monitored by deLint and Staff, is judged still level and focused and unswollen/-bludgeoned by the sudden eclat and rise in general expectations. When asked how he's doing with it all, Hal says Fine and thanks you for asking.

If Hal fulfills this newly emergent level of promise and makes i