Don DeLillo - Zero K

We stood in the veer, gliding out of Zero K, out of the numbered levels. I thought of prime numbers. I thought, Define a prime. The veer was an environment, I thought, suited to rigorous thinking. I was always good at math. I felt sure of myself when I dealt with numbers. Numbers were the language of science. And now I needed to find the precise and perpetual and more or less mandatory wording that would constitute the definition of a prime. But why did I need to do this? The guide stood with eyes closed, thinking in Russian. My father was in a waking state of mindlapse, in retreat from his pain. I thought, Prime number. A positive integer not divisible. But what was the rest of it? What else about primes? What else about integers?

• • •

I walked the halls toward the room, eager to grab my bag and meet my father and head home. This was the one energy left to me, the expectation of return. Sidewalks, streets, green light, red light, metered seconds to get to the other side alive.

But I had to pause now, stop and look, because the screen in the ceiling began to lower and a series of images filled the width of the hallway.

People running, crowds of running men and women, they’re closely packed and showing desperation, dozens, then hundreds, workpants, T-shirts, sweatshirts, shouldering each other, elbowing, looking dead ahead, the camera positioned slightly above, an angled shot, no cuts, tilts, pans. I back away instinctively. There’s no soundtrack but it’s almost possible to hear the mass pulse of breath and pounding feet. They’re running on a surface barely visible beneath their crowded bodies. I see tennis shoes, ankle boots, sandals, there’s a barefoot woman, a man in sneakers with undone laces flapping.

They keep on coming, trying to escape some dreadful spectacle or rumbling threat. I’m watching closely and trying to think into the action onscreen, the uniformity of it, the orderly deployment and steady pace that underlie the urgent scene. It begins to occur to me that I may be seeing the same running cluster repeatedly, shot and reshot, two dozen runners made to resemble several hundred, a flawless sleight of editing.

Here they come, mouths open, arms pumping, headbands, visors, camouflage caps, no seeming slowdown, and then something further comes to mind. Is it possible that this is not factual documentation rendered in a selective manner but something radically apart? It’s a digital weave, every fragment manipulated and enhanced, all of it designed, edited, redesigned. Why hadn’t this occurred to me before, in earlier screenings, the monsoon rains, the tornadoes? These were visual fictions, the wildfires and burning monks, digital bits, digital code, all of it computer-generated, none of it real.

I watched until the images faded and the screen began to lift, soundlessly, and I’d gone only a short way along the hall when there was a noise, hard to identify and rapidly getting louder. I went a few more paces and had to stop, the noise nearly upon me, and then they came wheeling around the corner charging in my direction, the running men and women, images bodied out, spilled from the screen. I hurried to the only safety there was, the nearest wall, back flattened, arms spread, the runners bearing down, nine or ten abreast, blasting past, wild-eyed. I could see their sweat and smell their stink and they kept on coming, all looking directly ahead.

Be calm. See what’s here. Think about it clearly.

A local ritual upheld, a marathon of sacred awe, some obscure tradition adhered to for a hundred years. This was all the time I had for theories. They approached and went past and I looked at the faces and then at the bodies and saw the man with flapping laces and tried to see the barefoot woman. How many runners, who were they, why were they being filmed, are they still being filmed? I watched them come and go and then, in the thinning lines, with the last runners approaching, what I saw was a pair of tall blondish men and I leaned forward for a better look as they went by, shoulder to shoulder, and it was the Stenmark twins, unmistakably, Lars and Nils, or Jan and Sven.

They were drenching me, out-thinking me, these several days, this extreme sublifetime. What was it beyond a concentrated lesson in bewilderment?

It was their game, their mob, and they were a sweating panting part of it. The Stenmarks. I kept to the wall, watching them blow past and go racing down the long hall. When the runners were gone I remained in position, wallbound for a moment more. Was I surprised to learn that I was the only witness to whatever it was I’d just seen?

An empty hall.

The fact is I did not expect to see others. It had never occurred to me that there were others in the hall. It was uncommon in my experience that there were such others, with several brief exceptions. I stood away from the wall now, mind and body buzzing and the hallway seeming to tremble with the muffled thrust of the runners.

On the way back to my room I realized that I was limping.

But am I who I was.

I think I am someone. There is someone here and I feel it in me or with me.

But where is here and how long am I here and am I only what is here.

She knows these words. She is all words but she doesn’t know how to get out of words into being someone, being the person who knows the words.

Time. I feel it in me everywhere. But I don’t know what it is.

The only time I know is what I feel. It is all now. But I don’t know what this means.

I hear words that are saying things to me again and again. Same words all the time going away and coming back.

But am I who I was.

She is trying to understand what has happened to her and where she is and what it means to be who she is.

What is it that I am waiting for.

Am I only here and now. What happened to me that did this.

She is first person and third person both.

The only here is where I am. But where is here. And why just here and nowhere else.

What I don’t know is right here with me but how do I make myself know it.

Am I someone or is it just the words themselves that make me think I’m someone.

Why can’t I know more. Why just this and nothing else. Or do I need to wait.

She is able to say what she feels and she is also the person who stands outside the feelings.

Are the words themselves all there is. Am I just the words.

This is the feeling I have that the words want to tell me things but I don’t know how to listen.

I listen to what I hear.

I only hear what is me. I am made of words.

Does it keep going on like this.

Where am I. What is a place. I know the feeling of somewhere but I don’t know where it is.

What I understand comes from nowhere. I don’t know what I understand until I say it.

I am trying to become someone.

The involutions, the mind drift.

I almost know some things. I think I am going to know things but then it does not happen.

I feel something outside me that belongs to me.

Where is my body. Do I know what this is. I only know the word and I know it out of nowhere.

I know that I am inside something. I am somebody inside this thing I am in.

Is this my body.

Is this what makes me whatever I know and whatever I am.

I am nowhere that I can know or feel.

I will try to wait.

Everything I don’t know is right here with me but how do I make myself know it.

Am I someone or is it just the words themselves that make me think I’m someone.

Why can’t I know more. Why just this and nothing else. Or do I need to wait.

She is living within the grim limits of self.

Are the words themselves all there is. Am I just the words.