Not long ago I found myself sitting in a secluded booth toward the back of a Washington, DC-area steakhouse with a man whose name I can’t reveal, because he is one of this country’s leading psi-warriors.  “X-men, Jedi, whatever you want to call them,” he told me, “are real, and they live among us.”

In the suburbs of northern Virginia there are an estimated ten psi-warriors in government employ, who spend their weekends barbecuing and playing touch football, and their weekdays inside a secret facility, learning to use mental powers that some would call occult.

“The program was started by the Nazis,” my informant said.  “Uncle Sam brought it state-side after the war.  Operation Paperclip—airlifting Nazi scientists out of Germany before the Russians could get ahold of them.”  Read more »

Fuzzy pink handcuffs binding his wrists to the chrome armrests of the Barcelona chair, Michael Dukakis reviewed the events that led him here with mathematical precision.

Sometimes it was easy to believe the dwarf’s prophecy was true: that he would never become a real boy.  But always within him there was a powerful voice that said, “Wouldn’t you really rather have a Buick?”  Also there was a fainter voice, further in the back, that said, “You must believe in yourself.”

But who was he?  The sleekly handsome millionaire playboy?  The self-abnegating doctor who ministered to the poor in the jungles of Epsilon VIII?  Or the wry and intellectual mechanic who lovingly restored antique motorcycles belonging to rich divorcées while—sometimes—mending their souls as well?  Read more »

• Neo/Beckett.  “The Lost Ones” by Samuel Beckett Analyzed as a Precursor to “The Matrix,” or, Whoa! Enclosed Worlds as Ontological Ground-Situations!
• Derrida: Are We Pronouncing His Name Correctly?
• Philosopher Deathmatch: This Week: Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt versus Adamantine Friedrich Nietzsche.  We bring you the story straight from the Tel Aviv Thunderdome!  Read more »

Washington, DC—

         A new report issued by the Institute of Libertarian Science warns that within decades we may completely exhaust the earth’s supply of things to be worried that we’re exhausting the earth’s supply of. 

         “If we don’t start conserving the belief that there are things that need to be conserved, soon our entire stock of these beliefs will be gone,” Neil Paxson, a spokesperson for the Institute, said.  “As early as the 19^th century our society nearly depleted the idea of the near depletion of whale oil.  Even as we speak we’re approaching the end of the belief that we’re approaching the end of oil reserves.  Imagine a world in which we couldn’t read any more articles in Time or The Economist about the exhaustion of natural resources.  That’s not a world I would want to live in.” 

         Edward Flynn (D-MA) has sponsored a bill to restrict the ability of scientists and journalists to needlessly publicize their fantasies about diminishing natural resources.  “If we ration our irrational fears, we should have enough to last until an alternate source of fear can be developed,” the Senator said.  “Without adequate supplies of fears about inadequate supplies of resources, an entire sector of our economy would collapse.  If we don’t act now, our grandchildren have only a world of confidence in the endless exploitation of fossil fuels and ever-rising crop yields to look forward to.” 

         “Think of the children,” said suburban mother of two Susan Armstrong as she picketed the offices of Scientific American.  “The excessive consumption of worries about the excessive consumption of resources must be stopped.  For years, Scientific American has callously promoted allegations that supplies of oil, metals, and arable farmland are finite.  Now they must pay for their crimes.” 

         The report has drawn criticism as well.  Hank Haplong (R-LA) has said, “This country must never accept any form of limitation, especially not on our ability to worry about accepting forms of limitation.” 

         “This is just wild complacency-mongering,” said University of Chicago economist Niet vån Cluysvael.  “As the scarcity of alarm about the scarcity of the cheap energy upon which our culture is based makes itself felt, the economy will become more efficient, and we will begin to get more use out of the alarm we have already.  Ironically, this report will probably spur entrepreneurs to innovate even more fears about resource depletion.  There’s nothing to worry about.  There, there.  Nothing at all.”

By T.S. Eliot

(A translation from the French)

• The waiter deliberates about nothing:
• However chattersome, the dogs may not pinch his epaulets:
•           “In my country I fear pluvial times,
•           Of the wind, of the big sun, and of the rain;
•           They name the day of the lesser wars.” 
• (Bravo, cows of the neighborhood corner,
• I am private, my coins, not brave in the soup.)
•           “The tremulous sails, and the surgeons of the scones—
•           Are averse to it, and not too bright. 
• I am seven years old, but she is even smaller. 
•           She is all muddy, floating like the primitives.”
• The mustaches of our moment are in the wardrobe of the tent. 
•           “I chat, for the fair wire. 
•           I approve an instant of power and of delirium.”
•  
• Zounds, old lubricated one, at your age. . .
• “Mister, the fate is dirt. 
• He is venal, our bicyclist, a gross dog;
• My poor marmalade, I quit in my nightgown. 
• It is dominated.” 
•           Zounds, you are an author!
•  
• The tent decoheres in the rides of your face;
• Times, my foursquare, declassify your crane. 
• By what right do you pay your experiences like me? 
• Times, there are six pennies, for the bathroom. 
•  
• Phlebas the Phoenician, hanging fifteen noisome days,
• The crisis obligated the little smiles of the hookers of Cornouaille,
• And the profits and the parties, and the stained cargo:
• A current under the sea imported three lions,
• The repression of the tapes of the anterior life. 
• You figure, there’s a sort of parable,
• Co-dependent, in the jaded man with the high tail. 

(Translator’s note: Although best known for his work in English, his native tongue, Eliot also produced a number of poems in French.  However, after translating his most famous such poem, “Dans le Restaurant,” I have discovered that Eliot’s command of French was, at best, extremely limited; he may not have been able to read, speak, or understand the language at all.)

Wet blond hair fell over pale shoulder blades illuminated only by the glow of the receding city lights like microelectronic circuitry. 

             “I don’t see how 50 metric tons of benzethydrine can just vanish into thin air,” Zoë said, toweling her hair with plush Egyptian cotton. 

            Michael Dukakis sat up in the temperfoam bed, the vat-grown leather blanket falling across his rippled abdominals.  “I’m a nihilistic loaner at odds with society,” he said, “so don’t fall in love with me.” 

           Tokyo, a million blinking lights spread out beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows like a 21^st Century Neo-Aztec tapestry, presented a vertiginous diorama, but he had no time for such fripperies.  His mind turned to the man who’d almost found them in Shinjuku, the cloned ninja assassin.  The Yakuza kept him on ice in their orbital platform and unthawed him for special occasions. 

                Like hunting down the thief of a recipe for monoclonal antibodies. 

               The recipe that occupied 566 kilobytes of RAM in a Kawasaki wetware chip in the slim black Nintendo attache case tossed nonchalantly in the Oshimitsu Polymers chrome-and-leather chair across the room. 

               “The detective said there’d been no calls to or from the Patagonia bio-dome, so Konovolev couldn’t have called in the hit at the Hayakawa Geneva labs.”  Zoë wrapped the towel around her body.  “Unless they wiped the comsat memory cores…” 

              A soft chime from the Akai console indicated an incoming transmission.  Jarred from his reverie, Michael Dukakis reached across the table and flipped the lid with the languid grace of a jungle cat.  The call was from the Disco Volante. 

               The screen came to life, revealing a wrinkled face washed in Mediterranean sunshine. 

               “Are you there, old son?”  It was Baron Lucian Samosata.  “You must come visit me on my yacht sometime.”  The Baron looked seventy but was at least twice as old, his metabolism distorted by an extensive synthetic hormone regimen.  “We’re off the coast of Monaco now, I believe.  Now listen, old son, I’ve got a job for you.” 

              “Being a stylish, street-wise computer criminal is a full-time job already, Baron,” he replied. 

               “Oh, you want to take this one as well, I assure you.”  The Baron lifted a flute of Daihatsu-brand pink champagne to his florid lips.  “It’s custom-tailored for a failed Democratic presidential candidate.  You’re the perfect man for the job.”