David Wallace - Infinite jest

The addicted man rose slowly and carried the burning ashtray with him nearer to Marathe, trying to kneel. His Blue Jeans of Levi #501 were strangely torn in spots with tattered white strings which showed the pallor of the knees; the torn holes had the size and perimeter-damage of holes that Marathe recognized had been made by shotgun-blasts of the high gauge. Marathe was mentally memorizing every detail of all things, for both his reports. The addicted man kneeling before him, he leaned in closer, trying to remove something he believed was on his lip. Close in, the expression that through the veil had appeared as glaring corrected itself: the expression was more truly that the man’s eyes had the vacant intensity of those who have violently died.

The man whispered: ‘You real?’ Marathe looked through the veil at his facial square. ‘Are you real?’ again the man whispered. All the time leaning more and more in, slowly.

‘You’re real I can tell ain’t you,’ the man whispered. Quickly he looked behind him at the uproaring room before leaning once more in. ‘Listen then.’

Marathe kept his hands calmly in his lap, his machine pistol bolstered securely to his right stump beneath the blanket. The whispering man’s searching fingers were leaving small bits of filth on the lip.

“s these poor fuckers’ — the man gestured slightly with indicating the room — ‘most of them ain’t real. So watch your six. Most of these fuckers are—: metal people.’

‘I am Swiss,” Marathe experimentally said. It was the second of his lines of introduction.

‘Walking around, make you think they’re alive.’ The addicted man had the way with subtleness of looking all around himself which Marathe associated with intelligence professionals. One of his eyes had an exploded vein within it. ‘But that’s just the layer,’ he said. He leaned in so far Marathe could see pores through the veil. ‘There’s a micro-thin layer of skin. But underneath, it’s metal. Heads full of parts. Under a organic layer that’s micro-thin.’ The eyes of men violently dead were also the eye of a fish in a vendor’s crushed ice, studying nothing. The man’s smell suggested livestock on a hot day, a goatish, even through the smoke of the room. Trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid was a material, M. Broullîme had lectured to pass times in long surveillances, a chemical material in the sweat of grave mental illness. Marathe, he had no trouble timing his breath so his exhalation matched the addicted man’s, who leaned more in.

‘There’s one way to tell,’ he said. ‘Get right up close. Like right up flush next to: you can hear a whir. Micro-faint. This whirring. It’s the processors’ gears. It’s their flaw. Machines always whir. They’re good. They can quiet down the whir.’

‘I have no six.’

‘But they can’t — can not — eliminate it.’

T am Swiss, seeking residential treatment with desperation.’

‘Not under no micro-thin tissue-layer they can’t.’ If the gaze were not vacant the gaze would be grim, frightened. Marathe distantly remembered the emotion fear.

‘Did you hear what she said?’ the ironic man on the divan laughed. ‘Potable means drinkable. It’s not even the same root. Did you hear what she said?’

The man’s breath, it smelled of trans-3-methyl acid as well. ‘I’m clueing y’in,’ he whispered. ‘They’re there to fool you. The real ones of us’re getting fooled. Nine-nine-plus per cent of the time.’ The flesh of the knees through the holes in the Blue Jeans was the white of long death. ‘But you, I could tell you were real.’ He indicated the veil. ‘No micro-thin layer. The metal ones — have faces.’ The smoke of his cigarette in the ashtray rose in a motion of corkscrewing. ‘Which this is why’ — feeling the lip — ‘why the ones on the T or in the street — they won’t let you right up close. Try it. They’ll never let you right up close. It’s programming. They know to look scared and — like — offended and back away and move to another seat. The real advanced ones, they’ll give you change, even, to let ‘em back off. Try it. Get right — up — like this — close.’ Marathe sat calmly behind the veil, feeling the veil move with the man’s breath, waiting patiently to inhale. The women with experiences in cults had smelled the odor of the man’s trans-3 odor and relocated farther away upon the divan. The man’s face smiled with one knowing side only of his mouth, acknowledging their movement away. He was so close that the nose of him touched the veil when Marathe finally inhaled. Marathe was prepared for death in all forms. The smells were trans-3-methyl-2 and of digested cheese and the under of an arm, from the facial skin. Marathe ignored impulses to impale the eyesockets with one two-finger motion. The man had his hand to his ear in a mime of to listen closely. His smile disclosed what might have once been teeth. ‘Nothing,’ he smiled. ‘I knew. Not a sound.’

‘The Swiss, we are a quiet people, and reserved. In addition, I am deformed.’

The man waved his cigarette with impatience. ‘Listen up. This is why. You’re how come I was here. I only thought it was the habit. They can fool you.’ He scrubbed at the lip of his mouth. ‘I’m here to tell you. Listen. You ain’t here.’

‘I have emigrated from my native Swiss.’

Still whispering: ‘You ain’t here. These fuckers are metal. Us — us that are real — there’s not many — they’re fooling us. We’re all in one room. The real ones. One room all the time. Everything’s pro — jected. They can do it with machines. They pro — ject. To fool us. The pictures on the walls change so’s we think we’re going places. Here and there, this and that. That’s just they change the pro — jections. It’s all the same place all the time. They fool your mind with machines to think you’re moving, eating, cooking up, doing this and that.’

‘I have come desperately here.’

‘The real world’s one room. These so-called people, so-called’ — with again the flourish — ‘they’re everybody you know. You’ve met ‘em before, hunnerts times, with different faces. There’s only 26 total. They play different characters, that you think you know. They wear different faces with different pictures they pro — ject on the wall. You get me?’

‘This Recovery House was recommended highly.’

‘You follow? Count. Coincidence? There’s 26 here, counting the one without feet on the stairs. Coincidence? Chance? This here’s every machine that’s played everbody you ever met. Are you hearin’ me? They fool us. They take the machines in the back room and they — like —’

The visible door of the locked Office opened and an addicted patient emerged with a person in authority holding a clipboard. The addicted patient limped and leaned far to a side, though was attractive in the blond stereotype of the U.S.A. image-culture.

‘— change them. The thin organic layers. All the different people you know. So-called. They’re the same machines’

‘Physically challenged foreign person with unpronounceable name!’ the authority called with the clipboard.

‘I am being indicated,’ Marathe said, bending to release the clamps on his fauteuil’s wheels.

‘— why I’m in this pro — jection, to clue you. So that now you know.’

Marathe manipulated the fauteuil to the right with its trusty left wheel. ‘I must be excused to plead for treatment.’

‘Get right up close.’

‘Good night,’ over his left shoulder. The inutile woman seemed to twitch slightly in her heavy fauteuil as he passed.

‘You only think you’re goin’ someplace!’ the addicted man called, still one-half kneeling.