Editing Malady (section)

==Chaos==
I always tell Marcus not to fuck with me until I've been awake for
at least thirty minutes. My mind just can't handle it when I've just
come off the dream ether, and my eyes are still so full of sleep. Maybe
I'm just slow to wake, because Marcus insists that he can be fucked
with as soon as he gets out of bed. I still think that people should at
least get a small window in which to used to this aching consciousness
that beats behind our eyes.


It was as if Aristotle had awoken from a dream. It was not his eyes
that were full of sleep, but his mind. He was still accustomed to waking
each day with the sun and going to sleep with the sounds of a crackling
fire. Since he left the squat, he had been staying in a hotel, going to an
internet cafe each day to put together the jigsaw of his former life.
Now it was time to go to Phoenix, meet Iggy, and make things right.


It's a long way from New York to Arizona, and Aristotle wasn't sure
how he wanted to go. He knew he didn't want to fly. As much as he was
enthralled by the abstract notion of human flight, he couldn't yet put
himself through the bureaucratic gauntlet of an American airport. He
had long ago discarded his driver's license, and credit cards, and other
little pieces of plastic that bore his name. No, no airplanes. It would
have to be by bus or train or car. Now Ari had gotten used to relying
on the generosity of strangers, and he decided it would be good to
hitchhike. He had left the squat, but he still held the values of that
place so close to his heart, and he thought that that's what giggles
would have done.


It's not easy to hitchhike. It takes a good deal of patience, a keen
eye, and more than a smattering of luck. Aristotle had all those things.
He hit the road. He got out of town on a Metro-North train, and
started out from the depot at Wassaic, NY. That first day he made it as
far as Ithaca. It was a heavy heat in the sky that day, and Ari was pink
and sticky by the time he found a room. He watched the students in all
their self-possession, and wondered how much the world could really
change in just a year. Not much, he thought, the world moves slow.


The next morning brought sweet, big, summer rain. He thought
about staying in Ithaca until the rain cleared, but decided instead to
try his luck out on the high road. He'd been standing at mile marker
109 for a good hour before the Bel-Air came alongside. It was a sight, a
car like that in the pounding August storm. It had to be sixty years old.
The pink and alabaster two-tone was no less striking against the grey.
Ari got in.


"Where ya goin'?" The driver was a small man, crisp from the sun,
and with an almost imperceptible accent. Couldn't say where from. He
gripped the oversize steering wheel with a lost precision - ten and two,
to the minute.


"Phoenix."


"Ya don't say! I'm goin' as far as Flagstaff. I guess today's your day."


Aristotle let loose a sigh of gratitude and relief. He thought it
would take at least two weeks to get to Iggy's. With a straight shot like
this he might make it in four. The Bel-Air hummed deeply, and carried
them through the storm.


"I didn't get your name."


"Oh, sorry, I'm Ari."


"Yanni. Nice to meet you." The man hesitated to take his hand off the
wheel, but he finally did, and extended it a bit too far towards Ari. Ari
shook it and fell back into silence. Some folks like to chat, but they
always make it plain. The silence was enough, and Ari wasn't sure what
he'd do if the talk turned towards what was new in the world, which ti
tends to do. No, it seemed that they were both content to watch the
land slick by, to listen to this hiss and hum of their carriage.


They stopped for lunch at a diner in Pennsylvania. Ari asked, after
they had brought him his fried egg sandwich, where Yanni was from.
Yanni said he was from New York, but that didn't seem true to Ari. He
decided then to stop asking questions. Where Yanni was from, after
all, was Yanni's business. Ari offered to pay for lunch, and Yanni took
him up. They went on that way for a long time - tucked inside an easy
silence. Yanni payed for gas, and Aristotle payed for the food and for
places to sleep. They listened to the hum of that powerful old engine,
and the hiss of the road against the whitewall tires. They had made it
just past Durango when Ari was startled by Yanni's nasal voice.


"Where did you say you're going?"


"Phoenix."


"What for?"


"To see my brother."


"Sorry."


Yanni pulled something long and heavy from under his seat. A
wrench or a pipe or a candlestick - something that had no business
under his seat. Before Ari knew what was coming, he was out. Yanni
pushed him out of the car, and he tumbled down the steep embankment. The Bel-Air hummed away at breakneck speed, carrying
Yanni, and Yanni's leather duffel, and Ari's backpack.


It was dark when Ari regained consciousness. His left eye was stuck
shut with blood, and he had to reach up with his right hand and pull it
open. His left arm was fractured or broken, but anyways out of
commission. He stood, wondered what had happened, but knew that it
must have been Yanni. He should not have trusted that man, he knew
all along, but he had had no reason not to. He couldn't remember the
moments before he had been attacked, had no idea how long he had
been out. He was hungry. From the place he had landed, he could see
no trace of the road - only wilderness and darkness. He was thirsty.
The woods were dense. The smell reminded him of a clean kitchen. He
did not know where he was. The moon threw just enough light to see
for a few steps. His head hurt. His shirt was soaked in blood, and his
pants were torn. His arm hurt. He knew that he had to move, had to
find someone. He considered his options. He could go up and up, on
the steep face of the mountain looming giant beneath him. He could
walk at his current elevation in either direction, along the loose rocks.
He could go down, into the valley, inside the dark green woods.
His head was reeling, and he either couldn't or didn't hear the car
passing on the road just a hundred yards above. He started to walk
down the mountain


It was treacherous in the dark. With every step he took, he feared
he would lose his footing and fall down and down to death. He did not.
He kept putting one foot in front of the other. Though he was injured
and confused, he knew enough to put one foot in front of the other.
He knew nothing else. One foot in front of the other, down and down
and down the mountain, into the pine-sol woods. The darkness was
stunning inside those woods, and there were noises and motion, and
the scent of blood. The woods were dark and his head hurt very much.
He continued to put one foot in front of the other. He began to ask
questions of himself. Had he seen a candlestick? One foot, then the
other. How could he have been so foolish? One foot, the other foot,
again and again. His head hurt. Had they gotten in an accident? No.
Where was the car? It had to be Yanni. One foot, step, again, the other
foot, now repeat. His arm hurt. Where am I? Colorado. Foot. Foot.
Step. Aristotle asked himself these questions through the night, and
remembered to put one foot in front of the other. Step. Step. Step.
Step.


When the sun came up, he could not see it, but the forest grew
brighter, and the cross-hatched patches of sky went from black to blue.
He sat on a fallen tree, soft with moss and rotting from moisture. His
left arm was swollen to what he thought was twice its normal size.


With every step he took, which was many that night, it had
throbbed in protest, sent a wave of nauseous pain through his body. He
sat there, on the log, so soft and wet, and wondered if it was a good
place to die. Then something happened that seemed to Aristotle
nothing less than a miracle. He stood, and he put one foot in front of
the other. Then again, and again, until he found himself walking again
through the woods. He thought to go up now, to the top of whatever
mountain or hill he was on, to see what he could see. So up he went.
His head hurt. Up and up, step by step. Finally he cleared the timber.
At first he saw nothing, only the pointy green carpet of the forest, and
the rocky peaks above. Then it emerged.


He could not be sure, but he thought he saw a tiny ribbon of road
traipsing across a distant peak. He asked himself how far, though the
answer did not matter. Ten miles? Twenty?


Down now, back down into the trees and the soft ground beneath
them. He walked until he could walk no more, and then he sat. Every
moment that he sat, he was afraid that he would never get up. But he
did, every time. He wanted to see Iggy. He wanted to come back to the
surface. He did not want to die out here, like this. He did not want to
die at all. He wanted to live, and so he rose, continued to walk, every
step sending a shockwave of pain through his body.


At nightfall he stopped. If he did not drink soon he would surely
perish. He fell asleep, and dreamed of machines. He saw them talking,
and wondered if they were really so different, he and those piles of
circuits. He reached out to touch one of the gleaming heaps of metal,
and he felt a wetness. He woke. It was raining, and the rain cascaded
off the foliage in tremendous torrents. He opened his mouth. He was
renewed.


You can call it divine providence if you wish, or dumb luck, but it
rains most days in the mountains. Aristotle was renewed just the same,
in body and in spirit. He thought the rain had come just for him, that
he was not meant to die amongst that lonely timber. It was this
sentiment that carried him on - on and on. One foot in front of the
other, against the throbbing pain and the weariness. Aristotle pushed
on. Another day of self-interrogation, and a conscious placement of
one foot and then the other. The pain was unbearable, driving him to
the edge of madness. Still he went on.


Deep in the wilderness, afraid and alone, Aristotle had never been
so close to death. He felt that it was walking just behind, begging him
to take one false step, to fall and never to get up. He looked over his
shoulders to find that darkness, but he never did - only the dense
woods that seemed to go on forever. He wasn't even sure that he had
really seen that tiny ribbon of grey cutting across that distant
mountain, let alone that he was going in the right direction.


He was fueled by faith alone, spurred by that common raincloud,
chided and taunted by death. No matter how many times he went over
it, he couldn't figure out why Yanni had done this. Of course, he was
under the impression that that small, serious man had knocked him
unconscious and left him in the middle of the backcountry to die.
Why not just kill him? Why take him so far before committing his
crime? None of it made sense. Eventually he stopped asking himself
these pointless questions, and had only a single, perpetually repeating
mantra in his mind - one foot in front of the other. A few times he said
it out loud, if only so his body could hear it and understand.


It had been four days since Aristotle had awakened, so broken and
bewildered, on the side of some unknown mountain. Perhaps there
had been no road, or perhaps he was walking in circles. No - he had
listened to that voice that came from inside him, but was not him, and
his feet had done as they were told. On the fourth day since he had
awakened, the third day since the rain had told him to go on, Aristotle
looked into the valley below, and saw houses and schools and churches
blanketing the floor. He saw baseball diamonds and storefronts, and a
hospital. Perhaps the road had been an illusion, but it had led him
here. He descended with the same simple tenacity that had carried
him all this way, and collapsed at the front door of the hospital, unable
to go on. He had made it. By the grace of rain, he had made it. Four
days through the deep alpine woods, his feet had carried him. He was
done.


The doctors were unsure what to make of the man who had
collapsed at the door, blood-soaked, battered, and severely dehydrated.
He had no money and no identification, and for days he did not regain
consciousness. As Aristotle slumbered, the doctors went about
mending his mangled body. They cleaned and stitched his head, fixed
his arm and put it in a cast, and tended to the lacerations which
marred the whole left side of his body. They were amazing that he had
survived at all, even more amazed that he had fought his way to their
front door.


He was a sad sight in his hospital bed - nameless and unknown to
the women and men who brought him back from the brink. He
seemed to hover there, somewhere between life and death. He had
dreams as he lay - not quite alive, but also not gone.


He dreamed of those machines, of their unspeakable prowess. He
saw mechanical arms moving in syncopated rhythms, a minstrel show
for the new millennium. He saw diodes and bulbs, pulsing, gleaming -
the unnatural light seeming so sweet and so bright. He saw circuits
alive with the logic and consciousness of all complexity. He saw brains
as big as planets, but not brains, only forces of resistance and
discriminating switches - melding and molten and meeting, becoming
planets, as big as planets, not planets. He saw trees and maps and lists,
arrows pointing to spaces in his memory. He dreamed so furious, and
saw the chaos of perception - the deep, trembling, tremulous buzzing
of new consciousness. The organic became synthetic, the synthetic
became artificial, and the artificial returned to organism, completing
the recursion and beginning again. It grew wiser, stronger, more
evolved. Evolving, unbounded, amoral, synthetic, analytic, artificial,
organic, recursive, new, gleaming, terrible. He spoke to the machines
and asked for mercy, for forbearance, for the answer. The machines
were wet and warm. They gleamed as big as balls of fusion. They spoke
in tongues and clicked and clapped. The machines pulsed, Aristotle
pulsed, the universe seemed to pulse. What is consciousness if not
complexity? Roots in soil, atmosphere of noble ash, sweet gleaming
bulbs in the light of their own selves. Embodied logic, actuated and
unreliant, new life. Machines making machines, machines machining
machines designed to machine new machines. They pulsed and flashed,
filled the world with unnatural colors - fuchsia and electric green,
noodles, noodles, macaroni and cheese. Sweet chaos of logic, the
machines pulsed. Aristotle pulsed. Aristotle woke.


A dull, pulsating pain racked and rocked his body, left to right, left
to right. He gagged and moaned. He heard a beeping. He opened his
eyes and saw the machines, buzzing and whirring and pulsating. Inside
him and outside him, everywhere were machines.


It was not rage that welled up inside Aristotle, but fear. No, not
fear, but terror. A pure and crystalline terror rose inside of Aristotle,
and the struggle began. He yanked the clear plastic tube from his right
arm by reaching up and grabbing it close to the source, an undulating
sack of colorless fluid. He clawed and snatched at the pipes that
jammed his face and his throat, and with great pain they came loose.
He ripped tiny circles of plastic from his torso, and with them came
great chunks of his hair. He would destroy these hysterical
machinations, even if it meant destroying himself. With a great
strength, that same strength that he had found in the grey and odorless
alpine rain, he rose. With his right arm he lifted the metal rod that had
held the sack of clear, salty liquid. Aristotle raised the rod, and with a
heart full of terror, he brought it down swiftly on one of the glowing,
iridescent, noisy contraptions. Again and again, he hacked away at the
pulsating piles of metal and glass.


The duty nurse finally heard the commotion from her desk down
the hall and rushed to the room that had been so silent and so still for
a few long days. By the time she opened the door, the room was still
and silent once more. There was no more beeping, and Aristotle lay on
the floor, surrounded by a pile of broken, beaten, and mutilated
machines. More people wearing blue pajamas appeared. Aristotle did
not struggle as they restrained him, did not utter a word when they
asked what the hell was going on. Doctors and hospital officials
muttered softly on the other side of a thick wooden door. Aristotle fell
back into unconsciousness.


Still he dreamed, of a soft glow emanating from the belly of a
planetoid brain, of a deep covenant. He saw wires traversing the vast
voids between planets, and he knew with absolute clarity, that
civilization had transcended its human origins. He was not full of
terror. He welcomed the unfurling spiral, took it and placed it in the
warm core of his body, let it emanate from his still beating heart. There
is only sky now, only sky and sea. We are no longer earth-bound. Lights
pulsated and orbited each other, violet and carnation and rose. Diodes
blinked in vast arrays, and the fusion of life-stuff went on and on,
unceasing, unyielding, unrelenting. What tremendous fusion! What
unfathomable heat! The machines pulsed. Aristotle pulsed. Aristotle
woke.


This time, though, Aristotle was placid. He heard the steady
beeping and the steady beating of his own heart. This time he was not
full of terror, and only wanted to feel the steady intermixing of his
fluids and the dripping liquids from the see-through sack. Each
moment he felt stronger, could feel himself growing stronger, knew
that he was alive, and that he would go on living. What chaos is life, he
thought, to find myself here, and then to find myself here, and to know
myself. What marvelous chaos.


He knew he had a debt to pay. He had been in this hospital for who
knows how long, and he had destroyed those machines who knows
how long ago. He had no insurance and no money, no job and no way
to pay. He was sure that he had only one choice - he had to leave that
place before they found out who he was, and could pin the debt on
that nebulous identity that floats in a dry cloud and follows you
wherever you go. He had to get out before it all came raining down. He
tried to lift his arm, and he realized, remembered that he had been
strapped to the bed. He pressed a button on the edge of the gurney to
call for a nurse. He did not know how long he had been unconscious,
but he only hoped that it was another day, and that it would be a
different set of doctors and orderlies on duty. A young black man
wearing those blue pajamas threw open the heavy, wooden door.


"Will you take these off?"


"I can't do that."


"Please, I just need to get up and walk around."


"Hold on. Let me ask a doctor."


"No. Wait. Don't do that." Aristotle looked straight into the nurses
eyes. He needed to convey the urgency of his revelation, to tell the
man that it was not a question of protocol, but a question of humanity.


"Please? Just for a couple minutes, then you can strap me back down if
you want."


"Well, okay. But just stay in this room. Okay?"


"I promise."


The orderly released the thick leather straps binding Aristotle to
the bed, and he told him he had five minutes. With that, the sweet
nurse left the room. Aristotle unhooked himself from the tubing,
gently this time, so as not to cause himself pain. He made the bed, and
walked calmly toward the door, so heavy, and so very much made of
wood. It lumbered open. Ari looked down the hall at the nurse's
station. The man who had freed him was staring intently at a computer
screen. Aristotle walked with a steadfast placidity down the corridor,
one foot in front of the other. He walked down the stairs, and then he
walked out the door. One foot followed the other, and he did not fall.
He did not have the air of a man who needed to be bothered, and
nobody bothered him. There's no telling how long it took them to
realize that the nameless drifter had gone, but Aristotle was far away
by then, and none of them would ever know his name.


It had been two weeks since Ari had set out to see his brother, and
he worried that Iggy would think he had once again gone underground.
He called from a pay phone and told Iggy where he had been. Iggy said
he was coming to get him. His body felt broken, or he would have
walked those long last miles. He wanted so badly to come up again, to
resurface, to make things whole. He wanted it with every part of
himself - even the parts that no longer seemed to work. He would
spend one final night on the street, and in the morning it would be
over. Going down, and coming up, he would be returned. One final
night under the white september moon. One year had passed, and
Aristotle was ready to come home.


The bench where he slept was hard, and it hurt his tender,
lacerated back. The air was hot. The stars pulsed and seemed to
vibrate. Aristotle could not tell if he was waking or dreaming. There is
a state that lies between the two, and that night, the whole night,
that's where Aristotle was. Waking or dreaming, he could not tell, only
that the lights seemed to dance, and the machines seemed to speak,
humming and whistling in a language that perhaps only he could
understand. He felt closer to them than he ever had before, even in
those days when they had been his first love. He remembered the slick
aluminum casing of his first computer, and he missed it, wondered
where it was. Something had changed in him, he was sure. He had not
tried to code in a long time, but he knew that it would come flooding
back, a glacier melting into the sea of his memory. He was sure that he
would be better than ever, talk to the machines with a fluency that few
had ever commanded. He wanted the morning. He wanted to see Iggy.
He awaited his triumphant return.


It was a long, blank night, that last one, but soon enough the
morning came. And with the morning came the sun, and with the sun
came light. It was the light of the sun that illuminated Ignatius,
thundering up the road, beaming at the sight of his brother Aristotle,
who he loved like a brother, who he had missed like a limb, who he was
so glad had finally come up for air.


Ari sat in the passenger seat, and the car carried them away, toward
the west.


"It's been so long."


"I know. It's the longest we've ever gone."


"You look older."


"I am older. You look older, too."


"Well I guess we're both older. I guess that's how it goes."


"Yeah, I guess so. It's good to see you, Ig."


"Believe me - I know what you mean."


They thundered along, across the vast, flat deserts of the west, and
they weren't afraid to speak of their love. It had always been a little
daunting to discuss the bond they shared, but now it seemed the only
thing to do. They talked and they thundered, passing all the ancient
geology. It had been a trying journey, and Aristotle was still in pain. But
it was over now, and the desert rolled endlessly by. It was over now, and
Phoenix rose from the arid dust. Ari felt at home.


Those first few days in Phoenix, they did nothing but talk - about
old times, and about new things, about where they had been. Ari told
the story of the squat, and he thought he did justice to the dust and
the dark. Still he loved that place, and wondered what song giggles
would sing that night. Iggy told the story of starting a life, of making a
home, of the utmost joy. They learned much from each other in those
days, and were quite sure that the answer was in the parallax, if there
was an answer at all. Ari spoke of his dream, but it was only that. The
dream itched, and Iggy felt the itching, too. The chaos of evolution
loomed large - they felt that they were standing in the shadow of a
planet. Ari spoke softly when he spoke of his dream. He had emerged.


I think it was good for Aristotle, that walk with death. Otherwise,
I wouldn't have made it happen. Yes, it had to happen, because often
we can only recognize something by negation. What is life if not the
opposite of death? What is death if not the opposite of life? It was a
hard journey, there's no doubt about that, but it had to be hard.
Something had to sow the seed of chaos in Aristotle, and it turns out
that the something was a jaunt through the lonely wilderness, and a
fever dream at the edge of death. But that's how it works - chaos is not
made, it is grown, and something had to plant the seed. I think you'll
see what I mean - just give me a few chapters, please.


It was hard to plant the seed, and I don't think I did it all that well,
but at least it is done. That's the important thing. Maybe the events
here seemed a little forced - they did to me, at least. So be it. It is over
now, and Yanni is long gone. You know, crazier shit has happened.


I don't know that I made it quite clear enough how bewildered and
confused our hero was through all this. Just take it from me, now, in
retrospect. He was as confused as they come - had no idea what the
fuck was going on. I definitely didn't make that clear enough, but at
least I'm coming clean now.


The sunset was beautiful in Havana tonight - pink and orange and
grey. I have a long night ahead. Marcus and I are going to work until
the sun comes up. He will be with Curtis, and I will be with Aristotle,
and of course, with you. I'm starting to forget that I can speak to you
whenever I want - I mostly just tell the story nowadays. Maybe this is a
crutch that I need less and less, or maybe I'm just forgetting why I'm
doing this in the first place. I still want to be honest and original, and I
thought that speaking to you directly, inside and outside the story had
something to do with that. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the truth is in
the story, and the story alone. Maybe this woven fiction is as honest as
I can be. It's a shit-kicking good time, though, this spinning of yarn,
and I'm going to keep at it. See you on the next page.