between a pathological phenomenon and a breakfast cereal

 

 

 

 

 

I found myself watching a 9 Lives cat-food commercial.

I straightened, rubbing my eyes. I was supposed to be looking at the static on Channel 1 . . . but instead I was watching the late-night movie on Channel 11. The China Syndrome. Hurriedly I switched back to static.

'Rocky,' I said. 'Have you been playing with the TV?'

He was lying on top of the warm console with one paw draped over the side. Rocky always liked watching baseball. My mom used to put the Yankees on Channel 11 for him and he'd bat the TV ball with his paw whenever he saw a pitch go in.

'Don't tell me you know how to turn on Channel 11,' I said. 'But the Yankee game is over. It's almost midnight.'

I got a little choked up there. Poor Rocky. Mom never told me he knew how to work the TV. He must be missing her.

Not that he showed it. He jumped into my lap and howled.

'Go away,' I said. 'You have plenty of food. And you don't even like 9 Lives.'

Nine lives, I thought, following Rocky into the kitchen. Serge's daughters had nine lives, and one of them was gone.

I opened some Fancy Feast for Rocky. Nebbie materialized from out of the chaos and spat at him. Absently, I broke up the ensuing scuffle with my foot. I had started wearing my mother's Snoopy slippers and Nebbie was afraid of them.

I thought:

You know what, those logic bullets don't look like bullets at all. They look like eggs.

Little metal eggs.

Eggs laid by a mechanical chicken.

Which came first, the chicken or the—

No, that was too simplistic. But...

Synchronicity. An acausal connecting principle.

I might not be able to watch TV, but you'd have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to know about that video with three bleach-blond guys in raggedy clothes on a junk heap.

I thought:

IS MY WHOLE LIFE GOING TO TURN OUT TO BE A BAD JOKE?

I dragged out a few of Mom's books and found some stuff on Carl Jung. What a weird guy. But reading psychological theories felt like a dead end. I was too afraid that I'd find out I was nuts, and then where would I be?

OK, I thought. Let's see if we can put something together.

The girls must represent some aspect of Grid intelligence, because they seemed able to control the golems. They staged the first golem raid on the logic mines. But in the process they lost one of their own number, and Dr. Gonzalez, recognizing the corpse as the product of one of her own Island of Dr. Moreau experiments and a potential biological bridge between the Grid and humanity, went straight to Machine Front with the new information. She even sent them the corpse as proof that the Grid could make more than just zombie-like golems.

Machine Front made no effort to change its posture. It launched the MaxFact, but the missile didn't wipe out the mines because the girls had planned to capture it all along. This left the mines aswarm with golems and all the equipment and personnel at risk of assimilation into the well.

Gonzalez followed the necessary procedures and ordered a self-destruct for her team. But she didn't follow the order herself. She grabbed the logic bullets and took off into the Grid alone.

Meanwhile, the MaxFact went into the well, and the girls began to unpack it. They unpacked the obvious, causal associations first. . . and this process destroyed the Grid in a strip leading to the logic mines, while at the same time altering the Grid's structure in the areas adjacent to the dead zone. Making that structure more Earthlike.

At the same time, the golems (or was it the girls? Or the Grid? What was the difference, anymore?) took control of the mines and the humans couldn't get the logic bullets they so desperately needed for the Third Wave. It was a standoff.

Then Serge found Gonzalez still alive.

Gonzalez believed that MF were the source of all evil. She had no intention of giving them the logic bullets. For their part, the girls and the golems seemed to protect her. But for all her willingness to experiment with others, she was afraid to go into the well itself.

After the MaxFact had unraveled itself into a dream city, the girls began to link it to the logic mines. And – evidently – this was how it became the SynchroniCity, better known as a hit record. Because if we were talking about causality, this linkup between the MaxFact and the mines was the point where causality seemed to break down.

Because:

The logic bullets weren't bullets. The mines weren't a case of the colonists raping the planet. The Grid was eating the mining equipment even as it produced logic bullets. Which looked like eggs – to me, anyway. And which had been stored by Dr. Gonzalez in the well, floating like frog spawn, soaking up the Grid's essence.

So the raped planet produced seed. Rape. Seed. Rapeseed.

This word was vaguely familiar, so I looked it up and found out it was the old term for canola oil. Low in cholesterol.

I thought:

Should we check Gunther's ad base to see if canola oil is a product being pushed? I'M TOTALLY PARANOID NOW. I don't know what means which.

Besides, I hated myself for thinking this way or even using the rape analogy to think about the Grid. It was the old 'Did she ask for it?' excuse. Or – and speaking of Channel 11, Toyota were the official sponsors of the NY Yankees and the Toyota slogan was You asked for it, you got it: Toyota. So for all I knew, I'd picked up the whole idea during the commercial breaks for the Yankee game that had preceded The China Syndrome.

Which brought me right back to my problem of what to believe in – my own eyes, or not?

And anyway, leaving the Police out of it, there were other interpretations of the unpacked MaxFact meeting up with the logic mines. The term SynchroniCity could also be taken to mean an attempt to unify two kinds of thought: human thought, and Grid thought. To synchronize watches. And then to build this meeting-of-the-minds in physical form. So you could walk around inside the conceptual possibilities.

But thinking about this made me woozy, like quadratic equations in tenth grade. Too much like hard work.

OK: back to the facts.

At around the time Serge and Gonzalez encountered each other in the Grid, Galante recaptured the mines for MF. But the logic bullets were gone, and as soon as Galante went off to look for them, the personnel she left behind were trapped inside the mines – which were now a part of the SynchroniCity. Elsewhere, Serge was betrayed by Gonzalez, and went into the well alive.

Where she was now having a belated stab at motherhood, the only problem being that her offspring were not human.

Klaski of all people had gone in the well and come out again, apparently unchanged, and now intended to use the logic bullets to bargain for her own life. The Third Wave MFeels (possibly incorporating data mysteriously gained during examination of the dead girl's body? Was that even possible?) were waiting to launch against and destroy whole regions of the Grid, including the SynchroniCity, in response to Serge's own orders. Except Serge had captured Klaski and her intentions did not look good.

Whose side to be on?

It was all so ugly and unfathomable.

Lucky for me, I've never been one of those people who remember their dreams or I'd have been afraid to go to bed. By the time I turned off all the equipment and got into bed, it was only a few hours before dawn.

 

When my alarm went off, I felt like a rusty crane from N-Ridge. I padded barefoot down to the laundry room in my building's basement to drag my gi out of the washing machine, where I'd shoved it the night before. Someone had already started another load of clothes, and my gi was spread across the top of the dryer. It was nearly dry, but creased as hell. I took it upstairs and plugged in the iron. In the steam that rose off the ironing board I tried to send messages to my various body parts to get ready for the pocketbook-and-broom demonstration. I wasn't worried about my kata – I knew it wasn't very good, but I wouldn't forget the moves. I wasn't worried about sparring, either. We wear gloves and shin protectors and I'd promised myself I wouldn't sweep anybody and jump on them, no matter what names they called me. I'd be Bushido Girl. If I lost, I lost.

But I was deeply afraid I'd crack up laughing in the middle of pocketbook-and-broom and walk away from Mr. Evanovich even as he was hurling himself through the air to fake being thrown by me. Not that I couldn't throw him. He was only a small guy and I'm a big woman, which made the whole exercise even more absurd. As if some geeky little civil engineer like Mr. Evanovich – brown belt or not – was going to come up to a big sister like me at a bus stop and try to rob me! It was pure comedy.

'Just get through this, Cookie,' I told myself as I showed Rocky that he had the same cat food as Nebbie. 'You can quit the team after today.'

 

I was a little late arriving at Passaic High School and the tournament was already under way. There were hordes of people wearing all different gis and patches. Kids everywhere. In the gymnasium, different rings had been set up with corner chairs for the judges, and the stage had been laid out with all kinds of bricks and boards and other equipment for the demonstrations. The stands rang with the talk of the crowd.

I watched people warming up as I made my way through the throng and I couldn't help thinking they all looked like dufuses. How could anybody be so stupid as to practice a kata that looks like that? I found myself thinking, more than once. Or: why do they put their hands in front of their foreheads when they bow? Duh, that's lame.

Maybe they thought the same about us. But of course they would have been wrong. What we do is real.

Gloria hailed me. 'I'm so nervous about the sparring,' she said. 'I wish I could just enter kata. Did you see some of the girls in our division? They look like mooses.'

I craned my neck. 'There's no contact, is there?'

'No, only tagging each other. But still, they're scary.'

'You stand a really good chance in kata,' I said. 'Where's Miss Cooper?'

'That's what everybody wants to know.'

Then we spotted Shihan Norman.

'Excuse me, Shihan,' Gloria said, and we both bowed as he turned to us. 'Hello, ladies.'

'We were just looking for Miss Cooper – we wanted to say good luck on the demonstration.'

He frowned. 'She couldn't make it.'

'Couldn't make it? What happened? Is she sick?'

He looked uncomfortable. 'She's having some personal problems.'

Gloria and I exchanged shocked glances. Tanya, miss a demonstration? This demonstration, the day after her test? The day after the greatest day of her life?

'But who's doing pocketbook-and-broom?' I blurted.

'Mrs. Canalletto is going to fill in. She's been practicing the moves with Miss Knight. Now, I need you to go help Mr. Juarez organize the kids. Make sure they've tied their belts right and there are no runny noses, OK? Now if you girls will excuse me, I have to go talk to Master Hideki.'

We bowed to Shihan Norman again and he nodded back, then walked off.

'Do you ever get tired of brown-nosing this guy and calling him Shihan?' I said.

Gloria giggled. 'If he gets demoted we'll just call him Sensei. So what's with Tanya? I wonder if she's just hung over from the party last night.'

'She wasn't drinking when I left. Maybe I should have stayed. It seemed like she wanted me to, somehow.'

Gloria frowned. 'I hope she's OK.'

'I'm sure she's fine.'

'I'm going to go over there and just check,' said Gloria. She made it all sound so sinister.

'We're supposed to be helping with the kids,' I said weakly.

Gloria made a face. 'Let Cori do that – look, she's flirting with Mr. Juarez again and he looks like he needs a break from her. We'll just slip off. Tanya only lives five minutes from here.'

I hesitated. 'Maybe we should call her first.'

'Let's just go,' Gloria persisted.

 

_______

Miss Cooper lived in a one-bedroom above a pizza place in a Valley Road minimall. She answered the door barefoot, in jeans and a tank top. I had to admire her forearms. She actually had muscle where most people just have bone; where I still had sausages, even after weeks of weight lifting and barely eating. But her pale skin was almost as dark as mine now, except where some of the older bruises were turning yellow.

Her face was puffy and blotchy and her eyes were red.

Gloria and I burst out talking at once: 'Oh my God! Are you OK? What happened?'

'Oh, guys, hi,' she said stiffly. 'Yeah, I'm all right, listen, I'm sorry but I won't be able to be there today. I'll call you, OK?'

And she started to shut the door.

'Whoa, whoa,' said Gloria, putting out her hand and stopping the door. 'What happened? Is it your family? Can we help?'

'No, it's nothing like that, honestly. I just. . . I don't feel very well. I told Shihan. I'll call you later, OK?'

I would have left it there, but Gloria set her lips firmly.

'What is going on? Shihan had a really shifty look on his face when we asked about you. What is going on, Tanya? We're your friends. We can help you.'

Suddenly I had the feeling that Gloria knew more about this than I did.

'Let us in,' she commanded, and Miss Cooper took a step back.

'It's a mess,' she said. 'I'm a mess. You guys are going to miss the kata competition. Just go on. I'm all right, honestly. I'm being stupid.'

'Then come on, if you don't want to tell us, then wash your face and get your stuff and we'll all go over there together. OK?'

Miss Cooper shook her head so fast that her hair flew.

'No, no, I can't. You guys go, really . . . '

It went on like this for a couple of minutes and finally Miss Cooper said:

'It's Masunobu, all right? Something h-h-happened with Masunobu last night and I don't want to see him and I don't want to see anybody, I just want to be alone.'

'Something happened? What happened?' Gloria's eyebrows drew together in a fierce grimace. 'Was he fresh with you?'

Miss Cooper started crying.

We all went into the living room and Gloria made everybody sit down. She seemed to know exactly what to do. She sat next to Miss Cooper and gave her a hug. Miss Cooper clung to her, sobbing.

'What exactly happened, sweetie?' Gloria said. 'I know you don't want to talk about it but you'll feel better if you get it out.'

'I don't even know how it started,' said Miss Cooper. We were hanging out in his room and I was talking to Masunobu about the wars with the Japanese and how the Okinawans fought the samurai with wooden weapons. It was a whole bunch of us, playing music and stuff. . . and then suddenly all the guys seemed to be leaving. You know Reggie, the guy from Sensei Price's dojo? When he was leaving he asked if I was OK and if I wanted to go with them. He was very protective. I didn't understand. I looked at Masunobu and Masunobu said, We talk goju history. We talk important stories,' and he pointed to me and himself. So I said it was cool and I'd see them tomorrow, and the guys all left. They didn't really want to talk karate anyway, they were going on about baseball the whole time and getting really, really drunk. They said they'd be in the bar if we needed them.'

Gloria let out a long breath. 'Oh, Tanya. Didn't you think?'

'I don't know, I don't know, it seemed harmless . . . I guess Masunobu was pretty drunk but he's a master, what could I say? What could I do? He was telling me really interesting stories. I guess I was flattered. I never imagined . . . I mean, he's married, and I never came on to him or anything. I'm taller than him!'

'Like that ever mattered a crock of beans,' Gloria observed. What do they teach you in college, anyway?'

'Not much,' I said. 'Go on, please, Miss Cooper.'

'At first I thought it was a joke. I thought he was just messing around. Then I started getting scared. He was on top of me and I couldn't get out from under him. He's so strong, Gloria, you'd never believe somebody so short could be so strong. He started taking my clothes off. He kept saying, 'This I like, this I like,' and 'You have face like doll.' I was like, 'No, no, please stop,' and I tried to get free but I couldn't. Then he stood up and took his pants down – no, Gloria, this is too embarrassing.'

'Honey, this is criminal stuff, I'm telling you.'

'It's cultural differences,' Miss Cooper said wildly, still crying. 'I'm sure it's not his fault.'

'Cultural differences my behind,' I snorted. 'Have you told Shihan?'

'I tried to. I kept crying when I was talking to him, though. He told me to stay home today and he'd look into it. But I don't think he understood.'

'What's to understand?' said Gloria. 'The guy's a menace. Tanya, did he actually force himself on you?'

Miss Cooper shook her head. 'I rolled off the bed and got to the door. He tried to come after me but he tripped over his pants. He was talking Japanese – I don't know what he was saying.'

'Well!' said Gloria, making a wry face. 'Is it true they have really small dicks?'

Miss Cooper started crying again. Gloria broke into a spate of apologies. I went over to Miss Cooper's speedball that she has mounted in her living room and started hitting it.

'I don't believe this,' I said. 'Everywhere you look, there's no integrity.'

'I agree,' Gloria said. 'If these are the people that Shihan is looking up to, then I think he ought to know what they're really like.'

'It's probably perfectly acceptable in their country,' said Miss Cooper, but even she sounded doubtful.

I said, 'I guess I'm just highly connable in all departments. I really believed that karate was about warriors.'

'But it is,' said Miss Cooper passionately. 'Maybe our Shihan isn't always the best example. Maybe Masunobu Hideki was out of line last night – and I'm not saying he was, I really can't be sure—'

'Ho!' cried Gloria. 'He was outta line already. I'm thinking about calling my cousin Paulie and asking him to go up to their hotel and have a conversation, you know what I mean?'

'Oh, I wouldn't do that! Your cousin could get hurt.'

'Pffff!' said Gloria. 'Gimme a break.'

Gloria's cousin vs. the Okinawan masters. I thought about what I'd seen in the pool hall. It hadn't looked much like a kung fu movie, had it?

Miss Cooper must have seen the thoughtful look on my face. 'Now, Cookie, you mustn't let this put you off. Karate is still pure. The spirit of Bushido is still pure.'

'So, what's the plan, then?' Gloria broke in. 'We're only purple belts. And fellow women. We came by to see if you were OK, and you're not. Are you going to the tournament? Or to the police? If I were you, I'd go to the police.'

'I can't do that! Shihan told me to stay here, and that's what I'm doing.'

 

So in the end, after a lot more talking, we left her there. What else could we do? I knew one thing. She needed to keep believing in karate. To do otherwise would shatter everything she'd worked for. I had too much empathy for how that feels to tell her that probably these masters would get mopped up if they had to fight for real, and anyway, I knew she wouldn't believe me if I did.

But I knew I was right. I just thought of Serge and I could see where all this karate stuff fit into the big picture. Yes, Miss Cooper could do fifty push-ups without putting her knees on the ground once. Then again, I could do five and so how hard could it be to get to fifty? Yes, Miss Cooper could do a kick to the height of somebody's face. So could the Rockettes. Yes, she knew all the moves to Seipai kata. But even Miles's dog had some choreography in his newspaper-catching routine – was Seipai really that special? Still, I knew that if you put everything together, Miss Cooper looked pretty good. Especially to me. I'd always been overweight and shy, I'd always believed in arcane knowledge and yearned to be part of an elite.

On the other hand, Serge moved like a rusty pipe. But I remember one time when Serge sat exposed on the perimeter of the N-Ridge mines with lightning hitting the Grid over her head and rain coursing down her back. Sat there for three days. For hours at a time she barely moved, watching the golems through her scope. She lived on rainwater, and I suspected her breathing filters were damaged because she kept taking them out and fiddling with them. She waited her quarry out, she used incendiaries, she completed her mission; and then she went back to X and got really drunk. And went out and did it all again.

Was that what made a warrior? Why had Serge done what she did in the end, right down to ordering her own destruction and letting herself be taken by the Grid? Her rhetoric declared that she was a patriot and a servant of the military. Yet nobody really believed that. Serge just couldn't back off – that was it. Didn't have the concept of it in her brain. Couldn't quit.

And Serge wouldn't have let some little toad grope her up just because he was a higher rank and she was in awe of that, whatever it meant.

Let's face it: Serge would have wiped the floor with Masunobu Hideki and then gone out to practice barrel-racing on her pony Captain Painter. But there I was, all these months and years, standing in line, practicing the moves, bowing religiously – thinking there was something these people could give me that was worth having. I broke the brick because Troy was baiting me and I was angry, not because I'd learned to move ki into my left toe.

Gloria was agitated.

'I just don't get it,' she finally said as we stopped at the lights on Alps Road. 'How could she be so stupid?'

'It shouldn't be about how smart she is,' I said. 'He should have left her alone.'

Gloria clicked her tongue. 'Hey, easy. It's not like I'm defending the little s%*t,' she said.

 

Just because something happens, does that mean it's destined? Is there a big picture, or is everything just a mess? Why would the Grid really offer up logic bullets that could be used to destroy it? Are the logic bullets really bait, like Serge thinks – will the Grid use them to turn Machine Front against itself?

Or will the Grid turn into Machine Front in the process of fighting it?

And just because something happened, does that mean the Universe wanted it to happen? Does the past justify itself, just by being the past?

Is Gloria right? Did Miss Cooper ask for it? Somehow? Toyota?

No. No, I can't put any of it together. I can't understand the Grid. I can't understand people. I don't understand myself.

 

Gloria parked her Lincoln Town Car on the far side of the Wayne Hills High School parking lot. The hot engine cracked and pinged as we got out. The cars all shimmered liquidly in the burgeoning heat. I was reminded of Gossamer's visuals during a pollen storm.

'I changed my mind about one thing,' Gloria said. 'I'm looking forward to the sparring now.'

We set off into the mirages. I was still thinking, hard. I said:

'I wonder when I'm going to learn. I can't seem to tell the difference between a psychopathological phenomenon and a breakfast cereal.'

'What?' Gloria said, turning her Ray Bans on me.

'I don't know the difference between reality and TV.'

'Oh,' she said. 'That. Don't let them get to you, Cookie. You're OK.'

'I'm not OK. I can't tell the authentic from the BS. Why is this? Have I taken myself totally out of the equation? Am I always going to be behind the curve, out of fear, when I could be ahead of it, darn it? Am I going to let the fact that I'm a nutcase ruin my life?'

'I think we should just concentrate on what we have to do right now,' Gloria said. 'Let's get through today. I'm serious about calling Paulie. I just might do it.'

I wasn't really listening. I was still talking to myself. It wasn't that I expected Gloria to understand. I just needed to hear myself say it.

'No. No. Nononononononono. I'm going to be a nutcase and I'm going to be it to the best of my ability, starting now. I'm going to be an authentic nutcase. Thank you very much.'

I turned on my heel and marched away. Gloria called after me,

'Hey! Cookie! What about pocketbook-and-broom? What am I going to tell Mrs. Cannalletto?'

I waved my hands in the air to show I didn't care what she told Mrs. Cannalletto. I was going to try Quark/not-Quark again. Miles kept saying it was an interactive game. Well, maybe it was time for me to start interacting.

Time for me to get tough.

I reached my Rabbit and burned my hand on the chrome when I put the key in the lock. 'Shhhhhh— sugar!' I said. That was very nearly a swear. It really was.