Joshua Cohen - Book of Numbers

“We? Meaning you or Tetration itself?”

“No difference. We are the business and the business is us. Selfsame. Our mission is our mission.”

“Which is?”

“The end of search—”

“—the beginning of find: yes, I got the memo. Change the world. Be the change. Tetrate the world in your image.”

“If the moguls of the old generation talked that way, it was only to the media. But the moguls of the new generation talk that way to themselves. We, though, are from the middle. Unable to deceive or be deceived.”

In the script of this, a pause would have to be indicated.

“I want to get serious for a moment,” I said. “It’s 2004, four years after everything burst, and I want to know what you’re thinking. Is this reinvestment we’re getting back in NY just another bubble rising? Why does Silicon Valley even need a Silicon Alley — isn’t bicoastalism or whatever just the analog economy?”

Principal blinked, openshut mouth, nosebreathed.

“You — what attracted us to NY was you, was access. Also the tax breaks, utility incentives. Multiple offices are the analog economy, but the office itself is a dead economy. Its only function might be social, though whatever benefits result when employees compete in person are doubled in costs when employees fuck, get pregnant, infect everyone with viruses, sending everyone home on leave and fucking with the deliverables.”

“Do the people who work for you know your feelings on this? If not, how do you think they’d react?”

“Do not ask us — ask NY. This office will be tasked with Adverks sales, personnel ops/recruitment, policy/advocacy, media relations. Divisions requiring minimal intelligence. Minimal skill. Not techs but recs. Rectards. Lusers. Loser users. Ad people. All staff will be hired locally.”

“You realize this is for publication — you’re sure you want to go on the record?”

“We want the scalp of the head of the team responsible for this wallpaper.”

I had a scoop, then, as Principal kept scooping himself deeper — and deeper — digging into his users, his backers, anyone who happened to get on the wrong side of his pronoun: that firstperson plural deployed without contraction (not “all that bullshit we got for having Dutch auctioned the offering, we could’ve thrown it in their faces but didn’t,” rather “ we could have thrown it in their faces but did not ”).

“The investors lacked confidence in Tetration or in the market?”

“Confidence is liability packaged as like asset, and asset packaged as like liability. Only we were sure how it would play, going public.”

“I missed out on it totally — what was your stake, again?”

“Nobody noticed that the 14,142,135 shares we equitized ourselves was a reference to √2.”

“What?”

“The square root of 2: 1.414213562373—stop us when you have had enough.”

“I will.”

“095048801688724209698078569671875376—stop us whenever — where were we?”

“5376?”

“7187537694?”

“If I dial that, I’m calling your aunt in the Bronx?”

“We do not have an aunt in the Bronx.”

“What about the name?”

“The name of what?”

“Joshua Cohen.”

“We invented that too?”

“Not at all, too unoriginal. That’s why they have me writing this, you realize? I’m trying to work in something about the future of identity, something about names linking, or mislinking. Two Joshua Cohens becoming one, or becoming you, how it makes us feel?”

“We have the same name?”

“That wasn’t mentioned?”

“No.”

“No?”

Pause for a blush: “Dumb — it makes us feel dumb.”

“Dumb because you have me beat in the rankings? Or dumb because you hadn’t been privy to what we’ve been sharing?”

But he’d gone dumb like mute. Dumb like no comment.

“I mean, we even resemble each other? The nose?”

Principal pinched his nose. Rigidified.

I leaned against a wall, between magicmarker scribbles labeling imminent workstation emplacement: “A unit,” “B unit.” The dictaphone clicked, time to flip.

Remember that? the dictaphone?

I went back to Ridgewood and typed it all up, doubled my 2000 word limit but figured with this material they’d have to accommodate: how he hadn’t wanted to meet, but had been compelled, how I hadn’t wanted to meet, but had been compelled. I demarcated our respective pressures: his partners and shareholders, my rent and ConEd.

I delineated the effect of Principal’s affect, the texture of his flatness, how he’d left a better impression on the chair, how the chair had left a better impression on the carpet, and concluded like the session had concluded with an account and analysis of the one thing that’d converted his format, from.autism to.rage — his ignorance.

Anything he missed didn’t exist for him, and whoever pointed it out to him was destroyed. The reader was supposed to be that person — standing around, like I’d stood around, gaping at the chutzpah.

I emailed it in — jcomphen@aol.com, back then. The site was pleased. But then Tetration got in touch and requested quote approval. The site, without consultation, agreed. Then Tetration requested nonpublication. They were expecting doublefisted puffycheeked blowjob hagiography. I was expecting to be protected. But no.

The writeup was killed, it was murderized. The only commission of mine ever dead, stopped at.doc.

The site paid me half fee, and then another envelope arrived in the mail containing a copy of my book, with an inscription on the flyleaf, “great read!!” and an impostor’s signature, “Joshua Cohen.” The bookmark was a blank check likewise signed, made payable to me from Tetration, which I filled in and cashed for $1.41—proud of my selflessness, proud of my ignorance — all endeavor is the square root of two.

\

Nothing of mine has appeared since “in print”—rather it has, just anonymously, polyonymously, under every appellation but my own. I spent mid to late 2004 through early to mid 2006 responding to job listings online, falsifying résumés to get a job falsifying résumés, fabricating degrees to get a job fabricating papers for degrees, undergrad and grad, becoming a technical writer, a medical and legal writer, an expatriate American lit term paper writer, a doctoral dissertation on the theological corollaries to the Bakhtinian Dialogue writer: Buber, Levinas, Derrida, references to Nishida tossed in at no additional cost.

I edited the demented terrorism at the Super Bowl screenplay of a former referee living on unspecified disability in Westchester. I turned the halitotic ramblings of a strange shawled cat lady in Glen Cove into a children’s book about a dog detective. I wrote capsule descriptions of hotels and motels in cities I’d never visited, posted fake consumer reviews of New England B&Bs I wasn’t able to afford but still, two thumbs up, four and a half stars more convincing than five, A− more conniving than +, “the deskclerk, Caleb, was just wonderfully polite and accommodating.” Or else I posted as “Cal,” dropping his name to assert that the B&Bs were closer to attractions, or farther from garbage dumps, more amenitized, or less pest infested, than otherwise claimed, while for rating car rental businesses I trended toward black, posting with interpolations of the names of dead presidents, “Washington Roosevelt,” and for spas and pampering ranches I tended dickless as a “Jane”—Dear John, Sincerely, Doe.

I wrote catalog copy: “Don this classic tartan wool driving cap and suddenly you’re transported to the greenest backroad in County Donegal. You stop to let a shepherd get his flock across — is he wearing the same Royal Stewart as you?”