The counter-revolution
At the counter of a store
People buy the things they want
And borrow for a little more
All those wasted years
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?
Do we have to be forgiving at last?
What else can we do?
Do we have to say goodbye to the past?
Yes I guess we do
Like a million little crossroads
Through the backstreets of youth
Each time we turn a new corner
A tiny moment of truth
[For] so many different connections
Our separate paths might have made
With every door that we opened
Every game we played
I don't believe in destiny
or the guiding hand of fate
I don't believe in forever
or love as a mystical state
I don't believe in the stars or the planets
or angels watching from above
but i believe there's a ghost of a chance
we can find someone to love
and make it last
You can roll that stone
To the top of the hill
Drag your ball and chain
Behind you
You can carry that weight
With an iron will
Or let the pain remain
Behind you
Chip away the stone
(Sisyphus)
Chip away the stone
Make the burden lighter
If you must roll that rock alone
January 16, 2001 -- 11:31 AM EST
Michael hated waiting. He hated the void between having done something, and the waiting for the next thing to do. He had wasted much of his life waiting. Too many times, the sun had raced around to come up behind him again, and was still waiting for something. Input, output, direction or inspiration. He had begun getting good at it when he started Rivendell Research. He'd gotten tired of waiting for his ship to come in, and decided to build his own. And when some of the seeds he had sown brought forth the fruit of 'connections', he landed this contract with the UN. Modeling Nuclear War with the eye toward eliminating nuclear weapons. Although, that was not exactly how it had started.
The original spec had called for analysis of post nuclear situations, and how the UN could best be prepared for them. Then they realized that they couldn't. Michael convinced them to let him try to optimize the nuclear situation to optimize the UN's pre-strike handling. His analysis helped with the Indian-Pakistani border situation. But nothing he or the UN could do would prevent them from actually pressing the buttons. But perhaps that could be changed.
Perhaps Michael's speech would have the effect he desired. Perhaps the nations of the world could get together on the idea of eliminating the nukes. But it was too soon to tell. And that was what Michael was waiting for. He had just spent the last two weeks after his speech on talk shows, radio call-ins, and most importantly, Internet Forums, explaining his vision. He spent much of it convincing people that is could happen. That it was "realistic." His counter was that justifying a benefit for a nuclear war was that part that was not "realistic."
In one of the Face the Press discussions, he had been at the table with the Secretary of Defense. Michael's question was "Given the cost of maintaining our current arsenal over the next 20 years, what would you do with the money if you didn't have to spend it on nukes?" The secretary lived up to his title as he was both secretive and defensive, but each of the media hosts pressed the issue into the lap of the Pentagon officials. They eventually admitted that most of the money would go into research. Admittedly, it might be going to "YAMP", Yet Another Manhattan Project. After all, they were always eager to explore, to build the best big stick to turn the winning trick. Michael had hoped for something more.
But then again, the space program had started out on the basis of the ICBM program. Perhaps there was hope for butter from guns, plowshares from swords. His suggestion for an Omni-national moon base to search for earth-crossing asteroids, and possibly as a defensive position from same, was not flatly rejected. He made a mental note to check "omni-national.com" as a viable domain name. But that was the future... Michael was stuck in the 'now', waiting.
Michael hated waiting. He hated the void that he felt. He felt as if he had just given birth after a long, arduous pregnancy. All of the weight and the pressure of just being, suddenly deflated. Then comes the throngs of admirers, with everyone telling you how cute the baby is, or the 5 million things you will have to do next. The reaction to his speech was immediately positive, but time and talk shows tend to grind the diamonds of wisdom in the dust of reality. It was now time to let the public soak it in for a few weeks, then push again. He glared at his Date-a-Book. He didn't know when he was going to see Marena again, but judging from what he saw, it was definitely not going to be in the next couple weeks.
In appreciation for their efforts, Michael had ejected his entire staff on a forced 2 week paid vacation. He was alone in the office, except for the few regulars who were using Rivendell's massive bandwidth for their own purposes. Most were merely trying to frag each other. For a change, Michael was not among them. He needed to be gone more than any of them. But where? And what? The thought of a distant ocean was tempting, but it was too late to leave today, and he needed to be somewhere else, NOW. He remembered an old saying, 'When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping!" That was it!
Michael placed his workstation into passive mode. He paused, and thought for a few seconds about what, specifically, he was going to shop for. He reached way back into a drawer and pulled out a reflective plastic card, still sheathed in anti-static Tyvek. He buttoned his secret weapon into his shirt pocket and punched out of the office.
After several hours of the usual digging through the bottoms of CD bins for the good stuff, Michael mustered his courage and waltzed into a clothing store. Shopping for clothing was not Michael's favorite activity, thanks to his maternal grandfather. "Can't fight heredity" was his battle cry. Shoe shopping was the worst. He liked this store because it was close enough to the edge of what he could wear, and the staff was the best. Most of the time, he would walk in, toss his credit card and say, "Buy me something."
The advantages were numerous, such as looking as good as your body would let you... in the eyes of the college girls who worked there. The greatest advantage was that for sometimes as much as two hours, he had the undivided attention of someone who was pleasant to talk to, quite pleasant to look at, something to say that was not related to nuclear war, or even databases. He got a glimpse of a world very much unlike his. It was a pleasant vacation. On some really bad days, it served as a replacement for a date. He could spend hours with the girl (or girls), and when the interaction was over, he didn't have to wonder what he should do next. Just hand them the credit card, get your receipt and walk out hoping they remembered to remove the anti-theft tags. In many ways, it reminded him of his ersatz marriage.
OK, maybe that was unfair. Michael knew why his marriage had failed, and the reasons were as holographic and interrelated as his nuclear war simulations... and as hard to explain to someone else. Aside from the many selfish reasons, one of the many reasons that Michael had had a vasectomy may have been to saving him from having to explain to his hypothetical children why Daddy had been married to someone other than Mommy. What loomed now was to explain to Marena why his failure in one marriage precluded failure in another. And maybe to himself. Then it came to him... in Gloria's voice. "So I'll go the distance this time. Seeing more the higher I climb..." That was true enough. He whipped out his Date-a-Book and made a note on a page titled "Way Future" where dates didn't matter.
He made a final reconnaissance pass of his favorite store, saw what he had been waiting to see, and plotted his course through the racks to his destination. He casually browsed as he moved, trying to look disinterested enough to keep the sales staff from descending upon him. Finally, his intercept course met with the intended target. One of the sales staff had just finished unloading herself on the clearance racks, and looking up saw a welcome face.
"Oh! Hi, Michael"
"Hello, Adrienne!" It was no accident that she was working, and that he was here. He seldom got that lucky. Early in his shopping here, she had slipped him the password to their intranet, so he could peek at when she was working. Michael's image processing nature scanned and updated her image in the database of his mind. There were some subtle differences in her from his last shopping spree. Her eyes were still the same piercing blue, but her hair had more volume, more curl. She had slipped into the retro look of bigger hair, as opposed to the retro look of long straight "Marcia Marcia Marcia" look. When the hair was coupled with her too-dark-to-go-gothic complexion, Michael was startled by her resemblance to Marena. Despite being too tall and blue eyed, it made him wonder if his heart and his missing her was generating a mirage. It wouldn't be the first time Michael noticed an illusive resemblance to a lost love in a new actress. He recalled a progression of resemblance from Pamela Reed to Jobeth Williams to Shelley Long to Heather Graham to... where was his progression now. Oh yes, Winona Ryder. Ironically, they didn't look anything like each other. And besides, the girl they resembled probably didn't look like any of them now, for all he knew.
"So what can I do for you tonight?"
"I think I want 'the treatment'. I want to be Adrienne-ated by the Adrianator." He deftly ignored the fact that it was still 2 in the afternoon, and that she might have been playing a little game with him. She stole a glimpse of the clock.
"Sure, that will be great." She knew that he would spend at least two hours here, and would quadruple her commission earnings, not counting the under-the-counter tip he made sure she found. She had three more hours on the clock. Maybe she could stretch him that long. "Any particular direction you want to go tonight?" She had a very expressive face and the way she used body language made her a natural for an investigative reporter, or a psychic friend. She could ask you a question, but with her eyes tell you "I know you're lying, you cheating slime."
"I guess, to sum it up, I'm ready to be done with the last millennium. It's 2001 and I'm ready for an odyssey. Do you have anything in Light Emitting Polymers shirts that allow you to download a pattern from the net and have it be wallpapered all over the fabric?"
"No, but I'll hit our corporate intranet and get them right on it." The twist of her face registered the proper response to his sarcasm.
"How about active electronics that uses the Peltier effect to regulate body temperature?"
"Sold the last ones, but these can make you look hot and cool at the same time?" Dang, she was good. The illusive shimmer of the fabric made the thousand words required to describe it change every few seconds, depending on the light. He wondered how it would look in black light, or if it were scanned. He shopped with her suggestively helpful skills making the most of his body shape.
She showed him their latest line of "ActiveWhere", clothing with embedded electronics, such as MP3 players with ear buds built into hats, pants with high resolution GPS antennae sewn into the seams, and solar arrayed shirts to recharge batteries on the go. After about an hour, Michael was getting into the latest refreshing of his image. Adrienne was doing an absolutely fabulous job. She was as helpful as possible and still be honest. At one point, when Michael came out of the dressing "room", her face registered an emotion so strong that she, being a sales person, would not be able to find the words to express. Without looking in the mirror, Michael wheeled around and bolted back into the dressing "module" and stripped himself of the travesty of fashion. Without even putting something else on, he passed the shirt out to her. "Thanks for being honest. Check the pockets."
As she scurried back to where the abomination had hung, she pulled her tip out of the shirt pocket. It was enough to make sure she remembered his name the next time he came in. His first name anyway. She hovered near the so-called door and asked, "Do you like Hawaiian shirts?"
"Do you?"
"On the right people. You'd make one look good. I designed it as part of my college's term-project."
"Really?"
"Yeah, I uploaded the pattern to the store's manufacturing and they printed it. I guess you could call it a Hawaiian shirt."
"Sure, I trust you..." He tossed on the latest shirt candidate, but quickly removed it after he realized what it felt like on. "So you're studying design in college?"
"Hold on..." her voice faded, as she was at least 10 feet away and fading. After a minute, her feet were visible again. "What now?"
"I asked if you studied clothing design in college." He opened to door to let her see how her last pick looked on him.
"No... PoliSci" She was holding a shirt up to herself. Michael was stunned. First at her major, but secondly at the shirt.
"You did this?"
"Sort of... I was surfing some sites when I found this image from the UN web site, taken from a speech given a couple weeks ago. My school project theme was "Make the difference real".
"I like it... can I steal it?"
"Sure... so I took the image and mapped it onto a shirt." Starting from the right shoulder, the coastline from Alaska to Panama cut diagonally down to the buttons, where the coast from Columbia to Tierra del Fuego continued down the shirt to the left side. On the flipside, Ireland to Indonesia covered the oversized back. What set the shirt off, from a fashion sense was that the visual left of the front was the ocean, a gorgeous Pacific Blue, which wrapped all around the side to meet Japan on the right shoulder blade. But what riveted Michael's eyes was the array of blossoms of color on the land masses, near the big cities... they were his own Death Rosettes, showing nuclear destruction on the populace. Stunned, he nearly staggered forward to her for a closer look at something that wasn't on the original image. Just above Hawaii was a stylized Orange Mushroom cloud. Wrapped around it, just as Jimmy Buffet's line wrote 'Cheeseburger in Paradise', were the words in Neon Green/Yellow "Use 'em or Lose 'em!"
"Oh my God... the words glow... And the mushroom cloud!" She waggled the shirt just a little for maximum effect. Michael laughed as much as he could with his mouth agape, and without drawing too much attention. If he had been online, he would have typed ROFL. He wished he had a card that said that, so he could hold it up.
"ActiveWhere... it's actual radioactive material, set in fluorescent goop. .. But why is it so funny?"
"Who did the original image?"
"I got them from the UN site, but they were produced by some consultant called Riverdale, or something. We're going to get permission if we go full scale production. For the focus group phase, we're just doing the Internet thing and borrowing."
"The Napster of fashion?"
"Something like that... easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission."
"I'll remember that. Though I'm sure you would have no trouble getting permission. If they really want what you want, they will give this image out for free. They may have already." Michael knew that the copyright statement allowed free distribution, provided that credit was given and the image wasn't altered so as to be inaccurate. It was essentially the Open Source concept, applied to data. Stylization wasn't addressed, but no one at Rivendell imagined that they would end up on a shirt.
"No, I don't suppose I would." Apparently she was well aware of her capabilities.
"Did you read the speech, or hear it?"
"I read it. It was given by some computer geek the UN hired. The images were so freaky if you stopped to think about them, that I wanted to make more people stop and think about them. So as part of my project, I tried to take a powerful concept for world change and make it "mass marketable". Some people did music videos, or even just web sites, but I went for fashion. Not everyone in the world has a computer or even a television, but nearly everyone has a shirt."
"I like it... but you are both crazy, you know."
"Both?"
"You and the geek who did the simulation."
"Hey... think different. The idea I have is to have everyone who wears the shirt put a pin or something to indicate where they live. I hope to have the map be centered on where they live, so the pin is always in the front. "
"Sort of a 'you are here' in the middle of the Death Rosette."
"Yeah, that's what they called them... Oh, so you've read the speech."
"Sort of." Michael browsed to hide his lying. "I don't see how it could work, do you?"
"Sure... us! Did you see the graphs of afterwards?"
"The ones where everybody gets poor, hungry and dead?"
"Yeah, I guess so, once you put it that way. Anyway, you see this shirt, where the square pattern is repeated? I'm going to have the globe's graph and the locale's graph repeating. Everyone can see how they would fare, even if they weren't in the blast zone."
"You're a genius..." Mind if I steal that? or perhaps, I should just steal you.
"Me?"
"You could be part of the Dream Team."
"Okay..." she didn't get it.
"Can you get to the net from here?"
"Yeah... where to?" They migrated toward the counter, with his new wardrobe.
"Go to the site where you got the image." She surfed off to the UN site. "OK, now click on the link to the consultant. RivenDELL." Riverdale was where Archie courted Veronica. When the Rivendell home page popped up, he pointed to "About Rivendell." As she clicked it, she opened his wallet and placed his debit card on the stack of rad threads, or whatever they would be called now.
"Yeah, that's the guy who gave the speech. Michael Gavon. No picture though."
"There's a reason for that."
"I can imagine. All set here?" She saw the card, picked it up and after a couple seconds, gasped and covered her mouth. "Oh my... it's you? I didn't remember your last name."
"I told you that you two were crazy... now you know why."
"I don't know. The Net is abuzz with discussion. That's what prompted me to think it might work. You should surf it and see how much effect it has had, especially on the people who are young enough to know better."
"I like that..." He help up his hands at her, with his right hand pointing his his index and middle fingertips at her, and his left hand made an arch between his thumb and index finger. He had made a "smiley" in 3 dimensions. Adrienne smiled for real.
"Keep dreaming up your ideas, and Email them to charris@rivendellresearch.net... Or me. "He handed her his Rivendell research business card." I'll make sure she helps you with the fun stuff. In the mean time, could I borrow you after work? I need a shopping consultant? You will be compensated"
"Sure... what are you shopping for?"
"A Wedding ring..." She was wise enough to know that it wasn't for her, and she'd never heard him mention 'anyone else' in his couple years of shopping here. She figured it was a little poker chip in a game he was playing. She upped the ante. "Oh really... Well, I've heard some interesting ways to get a girl into bed, but this is a new one on me." He noticed that she didn't say 'heard of some ways...'. Maybe in another world, another time, that would have been significant to him. Not tonight.
"It's worked for thousands of years."
"And vice versa..." He wasn't precisely sure what she meant, but he got the general idea. The details were not important, anymore. He smiled to acknowledge the truism, but decided not to continue down the treacherous path, at least this time.
"What time do you get off work? I need to go drop this stuff into my car, and stop at a software store, but after that we can get started."
She looked at the clock and did a quick calculation. I was 4:10 and her shift ended at 5:00. "I get off in about 20 minutes... That should give you enough time." Her eyes did that trick that altered his brain waves. He felt like he had had the Jedi Mind Trick used on him. He had planned on taking 30 minutes in the software store. "See you at 4:30. Will you be needing to eat?"
"Shopping or food... which do you think?"
He didn't know, but he pretended, playing the odds. "Shopping." She bit the corner of her lip and nodded slightly. She reminded him of someone when she did that, but he couldn't put his finger on who it was.
"I'll meet you at that jewelry store in... 18 minutes."
"Which end are you parked at?" He gestured off to one side of the store. "I'll meet you at the store on the other side."
"Really, why?"
"It forces you to see all of the jewelry stores, so you don't make a hasty decision. That's important when you shop for wedding rings. Don't go with the first gem you see, until you've seen them all. Then you go back..."
"Good advice. No wonder your a professional shopper. See you in a bit." He took his wardrobe alts and headed for his car. He was still trying to figure out who she reminded him of. After he had gone out the door, Adrienne, turned to her co-worker.
"I'll be right back." Thinking she was going to get a drink or a latte, the girl asked, "Whatcha doin'?"
"Research..." She crossed the mall, and waved to another retailer as she slipped into the back of the store and cracked the outside door. She spotted Michael loading his hatch with his clothes. She couldn't tell what kind of car it was, but it wasn't any car that a married man would drive. As he hustled in from the cold, she ducked back into her store and disappeared in the back. Fifteen minutes later, Michael was peeking in a window at several settings of large, almost gaudy rings. He wasn't sure if these were wedding rings, or just serious adornment. He was taking a terrible risk. He was shopping for a wedding ring for a girl who he wasn't sure would marry him. He knew what they had said, but doubt was creeping in again. Not doubt that he loved her, or that she loved him. It wasn't even doubt that she 'would' marry him, it was a question of 'could' she marry him. They had agreed to try to make their relationship work, despite distance, time and motion. But that didn't mean that they would succeed.
Michael realized that the time from now until a potential wedding would be the hard part. If they got married, he would make sure that it succeeded, and by his own definition, marriage was a suicide mission. And he knew what rated a successful suicide mission. Then something occurred to him... she would have to move here, become an American, at least in proximity. Would she be allowed to work here, or would she need a green card. Would she adjust well to being away from her root culture? Would two high-powered movers and shakers be able to be in the same room for very long, let alone a lifetime? Michael finally caught himself doubting, and he forced himself to remember how he handled it in the past. He steeled his resolve to make it work. But then he wondered, what if he had to become part of her world? That could be a walk in the clouds where only fools rush in. Could he change cultures and place in this world, and still be happily married to her in her native environment?
"A beautiful diamond can be spoiled by the wrong setting." Michael was startled by a voice whose truth so closely matched his thoughts at that moment. He looked up from the glass to see Adrienne, assuming her 'retail associate' pose, with her hands folded behind her back, and leaning slightly forward, to see what he was looking at.
"Really?" He was trying to recover from where his mind had been. He let her do the talking.
"Mmmhmmm," she nodded. "See that one there... a whole carat, round-cut, surrounded by 12 baguettes..."
Michael was nodding in appreciation. It had a symmetry and radiance to it, literally, that reminded him of a fabled space city, or something.
"Ruined!" She was absolute in her assessment. "That stone should be wrapped in gold in a way that draws the eye to the central brilliance. Instead, it's surrounded by lesser gems that merely compete for attention, hopelessly."
"I sense a metaphor of life there." Michael could find metaphors of life on the back of cereal boxes, but this one was far more legitimate. Adrienne continued. "The ring is not really a wedding ring. That's really just the gold band. You are actually shopping for her engagement ring. For that, you want a solitaire... one stone to represent the singularity of your love for her. The setting should be both attractive and secure. If it's not both, it's neither. Michael was impressed by how she mixed her salespersonship with an artistic flair, but capped it off with pure logic.
"Do you know what the true purpose of the engagement ring is?"
"To signal to the guys that she is taken?"
"A perfect answer... for a male."
"Sorry, I passed my male licensing exam with flying colors. Why don't you tell me, since that's what I'm paying you for..."
"What's the first thing a woman does when she gets a ring?"
"She shows it to her friends... the other women."
"Why?"
Michael tried to quickly slip into his Deanna Troi personae, but he was out of practice. He shrugged.
"She shows it to her friends to draw attention..." she let him hang for a second, "...to the guy she's marrying. It's not the ring, it's the guy who bought the ring." Michael considered what she meant by that. He tried to think back into history for examples. The farthest he got was Motel Kamzoil in "Fiddler on the Roof." He began to understand.
"In the old days, who you married pretty much determined what your life was going to be like," he correlated aloud. "If you were a farmer's wife, a tailor's wife, or a butcher's wife... those were stations in life, and seldom did that change. Fortunately, things have changed."
"Have they?" She asked sarcastically. Michael sensed a trap, and kept pedalling.
"Sure. I wasn't doing this ten years ago. I've approximately doubled my income every 4 years. I've 'moved with the cheese' as they say."
"Would you ever be a farmer?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Um, you haven't seen the plants in my house."
"Would you ever work in a factory? Drive a truck? Sell vacuum cleaners? Deliver pizzas."
"Hey, be nice. That's what I was doing ten years ago... ok, maybe 12."
"You see what I mean?"
"She's showing off what kind of life she'll have?"
"She's showing off the minimum, and possibly, depending on the guy, she's showing off his potential. If she's wise, she'll be all about his potential"
"Behind every great man is a great woman, pushing?"
"Perhaps..." She knew friends who were dating guys who would have been professional DreamCasters, if there were such a thing. Had they not married, they would have been less lucrative to the IRS.
"In this case, she may be pulling. She's a great woman. Whether or not I'd be a great man behind her remains to be seen."
"That's sweet that you think she's a great woman. Mind if I ask her name?"
"Marena." Michael had yet to handle the proper accent, but it was obvious that he was trying to say it the way she said it. Adrienne scowled for a moment, then suddenly cried, "Oh!" Her eyes grew wide in amazement. "Dr. Marena San Leoni?"
Michael was both amazed that she recognized the name, and blushing because apparently he was in love with someone famous. "She's not a doctor."
"Yet!" Adrienne corrected. "She will be. I just quoted her Doctoral Thesis in my term Paper last semester." Michael was clearly trying to piece together how this college girl knew Marena. "PoliSci major? Remember? Hello!?"
She took a breath, as if to ask a tough question, but instead, paused and asked, "So who's shopping, you or me? Am I shopping, and you just approve and pay for it, or am I helping you shop?"
"Here's the deal. I want to find a ring that tells her how much I want to marry her, but without looking like I'm trying to impress her with the Ivana Trump edition. I don't want to appear that I'm going overboard." For some reason, a Britney Spears song flitted past.
"Let's do this... I'll make a pass through all of the jewelry stores here. When we get to the end, we can stop and get some yogurt and talk about what we've seen."
"Sounds qewl." They began the recon pass.
"So, tell me a little bit about her, so I can imagine what she would like. I've only read her papers. I have no idea what she looks like or anything else."