Tao Lin - Eeeee Eee Eeee

“Power is stupid,” the president said.

The president said he was an alien. He was from a different planet. He came here and was bored. “I felt I needed a goal,” he said. “Now I’m the president. I have no human preconceptions, because I’m from a different galaxy. Listen to me, since I’m the ruler. You chose me. People need to process what I say. I’m the — I’m the fucking president. Patriotism is the belief that not all human lives are worth the same. Actually there is a oneness in the world because of consciousness and this oneness — what does it want, mostly. To avoid pain and suffering, seek pleasure and happiness. Patriotism and everything else like language denies the oneness; makes a twoness, threeness, so on. Why are we born? Why do we die? Where do we go when we die? Where did consciousness come from? Politics does not acknowledge those questions. Politics says, ‘Have we blocked out enough information so that the word “progress” has meaning? How do we distract from the mystery and oneness of existence?’ Politics is a pretend game where it is very important to block out the information that it is a pretend game. I’m the president, I think. There is no good or bad. You arrive. Here you are. No one tells you what to do. So you make assumptions. Or you believe someone else’s assumption. A common assumption is that pain and suffering is bad. But how do you know if an action will increase or decrease net pain and suffering in the universe from now until the end of time? You can’t know. Impossible. You don’t know if drawing your friend a picture will or will not cause fifty thousand years of suffering to ten million organisms on Alpha Centauri one billion years from now. So you create context. A common context is one’s life plus the next few generations, not including animals, plants, or inanimate objects, and only on Earth, with emphasis on one’s own country. So now you’ve made an assumption and also blocked out more than 99.9 % of the universe, 99.9 % of all life on Earth, and an infinite or unknown amount of time. You live a horribly distorted life. You don’t know anything. Fuck you if feel angry at someone else. I’ll kill you. You are stupid and boring. Killing isn’t bad. The only thing to be angry at is existence itself. We all force our assumptions and contexts onto other people. Each thought influences our actions and each action exists inside — and so influences — the world. That is politics. But who cares? How can you be angry at someone else’s assumption or context that was as arbitrarily chosen or adopted as your own? If you unsarcastically feel anger at anything except everything it means your context does not include the information that assumptions have been made and contexts have been created; so anger is okay, I guess. But any unsarcastic thought or action is a horrible distortion. Anything is a horrible distortion. We need to stop breeding. There are assumptions and contexts and we go around pretending and playing games by overlapping our assumptions and contexts with others until there is no more time left. Death is the taking away of assumption and context. Consciousness is being forced to assume and then block out information in order to be conscious. I don’t know how to think about that. Everything is preempted by the knowledge of death anyway. How do we stop death? How do we actualize the oneness of consciousness? I think we build robots. We fill the universe with microprocessors and match the expansion of the universe with the expansion of our microprocessors. We make the universe one unconscious mass, one computer program, one assumptionless thing whose context is everything. One lonely, meaningless robot programmed to not feel lonely or meaningless, or think or know anything. Thank you for listening to me. It doesn’t matter. The noises coming out of my mouth are the result of the physical laws of the universe, probably, of cause and effect, of my choiceless birth, which itself was the effect of the beginning of the universe. I didn’t choose for the universe to begin. I guess, to be practical, uh, distribution of wealth, uninhibited sharing of material possessions, debasement and de-evaluation of human power and authority. Wariness against any kind of progress that involves numbers. I don’t know. Thank you. Good night.”

“You just told us ‘thank you’ and ‘good night,’ ” Shawn said. “Uh.”

“Thank you,” the president said.

“Don’t you need bodyguards?” Andrew said.

“Bodyguards are stupid,” the president said. “But yeah. They’re coming. They missed the train.”

The president’s cell phone rang.

It was coconut noises.

Shawn looked at Andrew.

Andrew grinned.

“Coconuts,” Andrew said.

“Or bowling,” Lelu said.

“Now it sounds like bowling,” Andrew said.

“Coconuts is better,” Shawn said.

“Now it’s coconuts again,” Andrew said.

“We’re in a sushi place,” the president said into his phone.

Andrew went to the bathroom.

In the bathroom Andrew felt bored. He looked in the mirror and there he was.

Andrew left the bathroom.

There was a moose, a bear, a dolphin, and an alien standing around the president.

Andrew tried to not look at the alien.

He looked at the dolphin.

“I’m Andrew,” he said.

Andrew put out a hand to shake hands.

The president slapped Andrew’s hand away.

Andrew glared at the president a moment then grinned.

“They don’t have names,” the president said. “You don’t have to introduce yourself.”

The waitress asked if Andrew wanted ice water.

“Okay,” Andrew said.

“You don’t do that with bodyguards,” the president said. “I’m annoyed. How stupid is that.”

“Why did you become president if you think it’s stupid,” Shawn said.

“I don’t know,” the president said. “Life is meaningless. Everyone knows this. Look at Fernando Pessoa. He knew the most that life was meaningless. But he was always worrying about things. If life was really meaningless you wouldn’t worry about things.”

“You’ve read Fernando Pessoa?” Lelu said.

“You have?” Andrew said to Lelu.

“Yeah, you?”

“Yeah,” Andrew said.

“You?” Andrew said to the dolphin.

“Yeah,” the dolphin said.

“Have you?” Andrew said to Shawn.

“No,” Shawn said. “Who is he?”

“A Portuguese author,” the moose said.

The bear slapped the moose.

“Who hasn’t read this person?” Shawn said loudly.

Everyone had read Fernando Pessoa.

“You should just leave,” the president said to Shawn.

“I already ordered,” Shawn said.

“Just leave money for what you ordered,” the president said.

Shawn took out his wallet.

He only had a hundred dollar bill.

“Leave it,” the president said. “Wait. Is that counterfeit money?”

“It’s real,” Shawn said.

The president took it and put it in his pocket.

“You can leave now,” the president said. “You can go home now.”

Shawn left.

“That was mean,” Lelu said. “I bet we won’t even talk about Fernando Pessoa.”

“He probably believes the moon is really Australia and that they’re talking about Australia when they talk about the moon hoax, which he believes in,” the president said. “Which means he doesn’t believe in Australia.”

The alien sat where Shawn had been sitting, next to Andrew.

Andrew felt afraid.

He went to the bathroom.

When he came back the alien was still there.

Andrew thought about sitting somewhere else but saw the alien looking at him.

The alien was talking and it stared at Andrew a little then calmly averted its eyes as it kept talking.

Andrew sat in his seat next to the alien.