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352 pages, Hardcover
First published April 5, 2022
...tens of thousands of crimes solved; child pornography all but eradicated; Alzheimer's and dementia sharply reduced by reinfusions of saved healthy consciousness; dying languages preserved and revived; a legion of missing persons found; and a global rise in empathy that accompanied a sharp decline in purist orthodoxies...
...tens of thousands of crimes solved; child pornography all but eradicated; Alzheimer's and dementia sharply reduced by reinfusions of saved healthy consciousness; dying languages preserved and revived; a legion of missing persons found; and a global rise in empathy that accompanied a sharp decline in purist orthodoxies—which, people now knew, having roamed the odd twisting corridors of one another's minds, had always been hypocritical.
It was Athena who first made them aware, in the workshop where Gregory and Dennis met, of word-casings and phrase-casings: gutted language she likened to proxies..."I want words that are still alive, that have a pulse. Hot words, people! Give me the bullet, not the casing—fire it right in my chest. I'll die gladly for some fresh language."
She meant their prose, not their conversation, but Gregory and his peers strained for fresh ways to say, in workshop, that a piece of writing was powerful ("coiled," "obsidian," "hegemonic") or flat ("Waxen," "kerneled," "Coffee grounds").
...by age nine, Alfred's intolerance of fakery had jumped the life/art barrier and entered his everyday world. He'd looked behind the curtain and seen the ways people played themselves, or—more insidiously—versions of themselves they'd cribbed from TV: Harried Mom. Sheepish Dad. Stern Teacher. Encouraging Coach. Alfred would not—could not—tolerate these appropriations.
In frantic league, we flailed for ways to end the “sharing” that was dismantling our father’s business and our father. We contemplated a nationwide billboard campaign to remind people of that eternal law, Nothing is free! Only children expect otherwise, even as myths and fairy tales warn us: Rumpelstiltskin, King Midas, Hansel and Gretel. Never trust a candy house! It was only a matter of time before someone made them pay for what they thought they were getting for free. Why could nobody see this?
The days of losing touch are almost gone ………… Everyone we’ve lost, we’ll find. Or they’ll find us ………..I picture it like Judgement Day ….We’ll rise up out of our bodies and find each other again in Spirit form. We’ll meet in that new place, all of us together, and first it’ll seem strange, and pretty soon it’ll seem strange that you could ever lose someone, or get lost
So here we are, conniving once again to bump Scotty’s reputation, along with Bosco’s and—let’s be honest—my own and that of everyone else over 60 striving for cultural relevance in a world that seems to happen in a nonexistent “place” that we can’t even find unless our kids (or grandkids!) show it to us. The only route to relevance at our age is through tongue-in cheek nostalgia, but that is not—let me be very clear— our ultimate ambition. Tongue-in-cheek nostalgia is merely the portal, the candy house, if you will, through which we hope to lure in a new generation and bewitch them.
Even so, there are gaps: holes left by eluding separatists bent upon upon hoarding their memories and keeping their secrets. Only Gregory Bouton’s machine—this one, fiction—lets us roam with absolute freedom through the human collective.
Nothing is free! Only children expect otherwise, even as myths and fairy tales warn us: Rumpelstiltskin, King Midas, Hansel and Gretel. Never trust a candy house! It was only a matter of time before someone made them pay for what they thought they were getting for free. Why could nobody see this?
…
But knowing everything is too much like knowing nothing; without a story, it’s all just information.