Blake Butler - Three Hundred Million - A Novel

We count upon our hands the gold. We elect bodies to edict above our bodies. Numbers become counted, tallied, praised. Days each day feel the same with slightly different skin. We remember the story of the birth of Christ, of erosion, of the barbarism of the land, relayed by people repeating words inside words; the words change shape each year. It’s impossible at all to remember any of it more than in short life shifts, as we’ve been slaughtered, sautéed, saladed again, so continuously it feels like progress.

There is a catalog of vast delight. We’ve been murdered, but we’re inventing! We make more locks to fit with keys, taking photographs to deform the light with what we might remind ourselves we know, and what we looked like then, and who stood by us, and anything at all. It’s not a dream we’re dreaming; it is us.

We invent swim fins. We invent the octant and the stove. We invent mail order, the lightning rod, the catheter; we invent the swivel chair, the flatboat, bifocals, the automatic flour mill. We have held these things before. They take shape around our bodies. We invent the cracker, the cotton gin, the wheel cipher, the fireplace, the suspension bridge, the hydrant, the amphibious vehicle, refrigeration, percolation, the lobster trap, the circular saw. These are American creations. It’s another new beginning. We are Americans again, filling ourselves again into where we were or are again or will be or want to or want to want to or will or were. We invent dental floss, the milling machine, the lathe, the detachable collar, the graham cracker, the platform scale, the electric doorbell, the machine reaper, Morse code, the sewing machine, the threshing machine, the combine harvester, the steam shovel, the wrench, the solar compass, the circuit breaker and the relay there between. Each day is less a day of ours. Each day is a day. We invent the self-polishing steel plow, the corn shelter, the sleeping car, vulcanized rubber, anesthesia, the grain elevator, the ice cream maker, the evaporator, the printing press, the tape primer, the baseball, holding on tight to our eyes; the printing telegraph, the doughnut, the safety pin, the gas mask, the inverted microscope; Herman Melville publishes Moby-Dick ; the fire alarm, the elevator brake, potato chips, the clothespin, the breast pump, condensed milk, we will relearn to feed our child; toilet paper, pepper shaker, monkey wrench, and mason jar; ironing board, twine knotter, burglar alarm; escalator, vacuum cleaner, repeating rifle, the twist drill; postcard, pin tumbler lock, machine gun, the enclosing surface of the home; Henry Howard Holmes kills at least twenty-seven bodies; breakfast cereal, ratchet wrench, roller skates, spar torpedo, cowboy hat, urinal, chuckwagon, motorcycle, paper clip; barbed wire, ticker tape, water-tube boiler, refrigerator car, paper bag, tape measure, vibrator, American football, the pipe wrench, the clothes hanger, the can opener, sandblasting, the mixer, the diner, the railway air brake, jeans, the knuckle coupler, earmuffs, the fire sprinkler, ice cream soda, the quadruplex telegraph, QWERTY keyboards, the dental drill, the mimeograph, the synthesizer, the airbrush, the tattoo machine, the phonograph, district heating, the carbon microphone, the free jet water turbine, the bolometer, the cash register, the oil burner, candlepin bowling, the electric chair, the electric dead; the metal detector, the electric iron, Christmas lights, the electric fan, the solar cell, the thermostat, the dissolvable pill; do you want me to keep going, do you love me, are you inside me, are you mine; you must keep up; we invent the lap steel guitar, the popcorn machine, photographic film, the skyscraper, fuel dispenser, dishwasher, filing cabinet, telephone directory, slot machine, softball, gramophone, comptometer, AC motor, kinetoscope, trolley pole, drinking straw, stepping switch, revolving door, payphone, the stop sign, the tabulating machine, the smoke detector, the jackhammer, the Ferris wheel, the Tesla coil, the zipper, the bottle cap, the dimmer, the tractor, laxative, radio, mousetrap, volleyball, comic strip, cotton candy, muffler, charcoal briquette, remote control, semiautomatic shotgun, hairbrush, filing cabinet, flashlamp, and the century ends, this ends the century, the next century begins, this begins the century; we invent the thumbtack key punch assembly line Jane Toppan kills at least thirty-one safety razor radio direction finder hearing aid postage meter teddy bear periscope air-conditioning tea bag offset printing press airplane windshield wipers baler automatic transmission AC power plugs batting helmet architectural acoustics fly swatter ice pop paper towel electric washing machine electric mixer Skee-Ball paper shredder suppressor gin rummy headset binder clip automobile self-starter road surface marking autopilot fast food restaurant electric blanket electric traffic light traffic cone fortune cookie skeet shooting supermarket cloverleaf exchange where the fuck are the bodies tow truck condenser microphone the bodies the bodies the toggle light switch the killer’s arm stream cipher superheterodyne receiver hydraulic brake blender pneumoencephalography silica gel pop-up toaster Albert Fish kills at least five and maybe more than one hundred jungle gym garage door flowchart bodies adhesive bandage bodies water skiing radial arm saw bulldozer bodies masking tape Reuben sandwich Gertrude Stein publishes The Making of Americans Tilt-A-Whirl killer cotton swab America fucked in America instant camera gas chamber execution Moviola garage door opener power steering drive-thru liquid-fuel rocket bread slicer jukebox garbage disposal where are the bodies negative feedback amplifier recliner ice cube tray this is America bubble gum this is a list of holy wars wars inside the bodies for the bodies in the name of the name of names electric razor iron lung air traffic control Freon tampon applicator flight simulator sunglasses frozen food particle accelerator car audio Carl Panzram kills at least twenty-one and sodomizes at least a thousand runway lighting the bathysphere chocolate chip cookie electric guitar strobe light golf cart we have not yet learned quite how to kill radio telescope tape dispenser drive-in theater impact sprinkler trampoline Richter scale franchising black light parking meter surfboard fin pH EEG topography stock car racing programming language the bodies in the head the chairlift bass guitar photosensitive glass digital computer shopping cart blood bank cyclamate beach ball fiberglass xerography nylon Teflon soft-serve yield sign VU vocoder deodorant acrylic fiber corn dog napalm killkillkill microwave oven cruise control chemotherapy William Heirens kills at least three bodies DEET diaper proton therapy cloud seeding transistor Ed Gein kills at least fifteen women defibrillator acrylic paint supersonic aircraft hair spray windsurfing cat litter video games cable TV flying disk carbon dating airsickness bag atomic clock crash test dummy artificial snow credit cards leaf blower cooler wetsuit correction fluid airbag polio vaccine barcode artificial heart Apgar Wiffle ball TV dinner automatic door synthetic diamond radar gun nuclear submarine William Gaddis publishes The Recognitions hard disk OS wireless microphone laser sugar packet bubble packing carbon fiber integrated circuit fusor weather satellite spandex artificial turf magnetic stripe card global navigation the pill spreadsheet wearable computer biofeedback light-emitting diode jet injector glucose meter computer mouse lung transplantation BASIC neutron bomb plasma display Moog eight-track heart transplantation LCD SQUID snowboarding Kevlar hypertext cordless phone Richard Ramirez kills at least fourteen space pen minicomputer CD internal-frame backpack food bank handheld calculator racquetball virtual reality bone marrow transplantation lunar module laser printer Charles Manson kills no one with his own hands inside the family mind of minds Taser mousepad markup language LAN PC microprocessor floppy disk email C video game console John Wayne Gacy kills more than twenty-four bodies and buries them inside his home oh here are the bodies there will be more bodies more bodies ended more bodies made Randy Steven Kraft kills at least sixteen bodies and maybe more than sixty Thomas Pynchon publishes Gravity’s Rainbow personal watercraft recombinant DNA catalytic converter mobile phone Ted Bundy kills more than forty bodies voice mail Dean Corll kills more than twenty-seven boys Heimlich maneuver Post-it UPC David Berkowitz kills six bodies wounding seven digital camera Ethernet breakaway rim Hepatitis B vaccine Gore-Tex MRI BBS Carlton Gary kills at least seven women Joseph Paul Franklin kills at least eleven Jim Jones kills nine hundred and seventeen bodies with his mind Coral Eugene Watts kills between eighty and one hundred women winglets polar fleece control-alt-delete fetal surgery space shuttle paintball GUI internet laser blind signature Gary Ridgway kills at least seventy-one women laser turntable Henry Lee Lucas kills at least eleven and as many as six hundred Cormac McCarthy publishes Blood Meridian atomic force microscope stereolithography DMD Perl Richard Angelo kills at least twenty-five bodies Eddie Leonski kills at least five nicotine patch firewall ZIP file format magnetic lock sulfur lamp Bret Easton Ellis publishes American Psycho Jeffrey Dahmer kills at least fifteen people and consumes their bodies Aileen Wuornos kills at least seven men GPS scroll wheel JavaScript low plasticity burnishing bait car David Foster Wallace publishes Infinite Jest Francisco del Junco kills at least four women Ronald Dominique kills at least twenty-three men Mars rover DVR virtual globe phase-change incubator Dr. Harold Shipman kills at least fifteen Segway artificial liver SERF Tommy Lynn Sells kills at least twelve and as many as seventy-one HPV vaccine 3-D model rendering shingles vaccine trongs Dennis Rader kills at least ten women nanowire battery bionic contact lens composite aircraft whoever what Gretch Gravey kills three hundred million all in all.