Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

But not completely because up next was the horrifying story of the Dutch woman whose New York vacation has turned into a nightmare that just won’t end, the face said this with a solemnity that veered towards glee. Then they sped to Cindylou or whatever who was at the scene with the full story: Thanks Chuck. A nightmare is exactly what Dutch tourist Lana Huber is experiencing. Behind me is the TGINMONDAY’S in midtown where the twenty-three-year-old single mother stopped in for what police believe was a decaffeinated beverage. Police say Ms. Huber left her ten-month-old daughter outside on the sidewalk in a stroller while she had her coffee. When she returned (dramatic pause) the baby was gone .

Yes it appears that the female in question was in this establishment consuming a decaffeinated beverage while the child in question was left outside for a period of time. When the female returned to the scene the child in question was gone .

Any leads?

We’re not going to discuss a pending investigation .

Reaction in the community was mixed .

Serves her right! You can’t leave no baby out in the street like that. This is New York this ain’t Iowa!

My heart goes out to her as a fellow mother. She may have made a mistake but nobody deserves to have her baby abducted in that manner. I certainly hope they can find the person who did this and I hope the baby’s safe .

It just goes to show you that nobody’s safe not even a baby .

Chuck, police are asking anyone who might have information on this missing baby to call 1-800-BAD BABY. The BAD is not meant as any kind of value judgment Chuck, its alliterative allure is simply designed to increase consumer awareness. From outside MONDAY’S in midtown this is Cindylou or whatever reporting .

Thank you. In Harlem a brutal slaying has shocked.. .

There followed grim descriptions of further mayhem and an almost heartfelt plea to stay tuned for a report on the record lows from their vaunted Weather-tis-Better-Center. I ignored this plea and flipped the channel to this hyper, ultra-white guy saying you could visit all sorts of calamities on your car but the Buffbuster would still clean it good as showroom new and I disliked this guy intensely but when I went to re-flip the bastard battery giving me remote control picked then to die and I was too spent to get up and exercise immediate control. But then the guy started engaging in these like spontaneousy demonstrations of the product in response to studio questioning and just like that I found I could tolerate him. Then he kept it up and now I felt bad for having judged him rashly because it seems all he wanted was for the autos of the world to be clean, which seemed admirable, and the studio audience must have agreed because their oohs and aahs increased until I almost reached for the phone and bought the damn device in what would have been, for me, three very difficult installments.

I was fading fast… Television still spoke but now without sound… the clock ticked insistently… a three and a twenty-eight… four minutes past my original grand introduction.

I was 24.

I dreamt often those days and almost exclusively to ill effect.

Okay class listen and observe closely First we trip the locus coerulus alarm to ensure unfettered exploration As you can see the top of the subject’s head has been sliced open in a perfect ellipsoid Note that by purposely failing to cut entirely through the dorsal portion we can use the flesh to a hinge effect, allowing us to peel back the top of his cranium and peer inside What you see is, of course, mechanistic, intricately so but so nonetheless, nothing else and nothing more, hard wiring all of it But it’s hard wiring we have to know cold if we are to succeed because success will most likely not arrive suddenly but rather gradually, and incidentally it had better arrive whatever the means for your pathetic sake Now some are easier than others but this one looks easiest of all Here’s the cerebral cortex which we purposely dim so that only day to day affairs are of concern and it is within this very banality that we thrive See his amygdala? What he most fears threaten him with, dangle it, not as mere possibility but as overwhelming probability, a proven technique with this sort of specimen Look at the hippocampus sloshing in acetylcholine courtesy of his basal forebrain This will almost be too easy Always remember that we are here not to cure but to sicken So while normally at this point we begin to suggest the toxic, break down the healthy, and foster disorder, here an entropic chaos is already spreading virtually unchecked seeking its own heat death and this despite the fact that our own procedures are completely adiabatic and therefore blameless So why tamper? To tamper would be to excuse in a sense Closing I’ve seen enough After all, there are rules We’re not savages .

When I awoke I put my hands to my head. The pain there and in my ear was obscene but I at least felt relief to be alone on my bed and not on an icy slab of steel surrounded by questionable medical personnel. The woman in charge wore a ptosic eyelid that almost completely shut her left eye, she lifted her chin to compensate, and when my eyes began to shut again I feared I would return to her. I sat up quickly, inviting reality and looking for a toehold. I was concentrating, concretely thinking myself into the real as if exiting a theater into midday’s bright city.

I felt disbelief at the clock’s assertion of 9:45. Impossible, I thought, because I hadn’t really slept. I had merely lowered my lids, been pried open at the skull, then raised them again. The whole thing took maybe ten minutes but those numbers claimed hours. The digital clock I stared at had an invisible seconds-hand that circled ceaselessly, accelerating. Next to it Goya’s postcard-sized Saturn had devoured the speaking part of his son, a bloody stump where the head once lay.

I was in a bad way from the night before so I tried to convince myself I had options. I could call in a comp day and stay home. But a quick look at my book revealed I had two out cases on — another Terrens-Lake-type kid and an emaciated credit card misholder serving an ersatz death sentence — neither of which could really be dumped on even a willing colleague. There was also the matter of a meeting that afternoon to discuss the death penalty appeal I had volunteered to help write; my brilliant ideas never ceased. I had to go in.

The radio came on and said the missing baby had a name. Everyone should keep an eye out for Baby Tula and all were beseeched to call the toll free number with any potential information on the bad baby.

I was almost tragically late so I took my time showering and getting dressed. Turning twenty-four was no minor disappointment. At twenty one, Edward Van Halen erupted and placed all other similarly-engaged guitarists into a group called the rest . At nineteen, Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter won her gothic bet decisively, giving birth in the process to a sentient seventy-thousand word monster that, more than two centuries later, still haunts readers. Then there was this kid named Wilfred. At seventeen, Wilfred Benitez embarrassed the great Colombian fighter Antonio “Pambele” Cervantes to become the scientifically gifted Junior Welterweight Champion of the World at a time when twelve different guys couldn’t simultaneously make the same claim. They and so many others mocked me.

My response was to leave. I made sure to grab friendly Casper this time before moving down the two flights and out the door. It was angry cold again. Then from the second-floor window I heard Angus screaming down at me: