The Combinations, page 79
slowmotion out of a catapult & puffs of flack blossoming all around, marring a
blue cardboard sky like stageprop weather.
Cautiously, and without taking his eyes off the assembled weirdoes,
Němec backed up the stairs. The carp goggled after him, squirmed in its
wrapping. Not the ideal time from Němec’s P.O.V. for the fish to start spouting
witticisms. The sound of his own heartbeat was like a dozen cocktail onions
going crunch. He started to sweat. It was just a matter of time before the carp
gave the game away. Seeing his options running out, Němec succumbed to a
very reasonable desire to flee as fast as humanly possible. But nobody, it seemed,
was interested in pursuing him — they all had his number.
Now, if Major Zeman* had been in Němec’s shoes, it might’ve been a different
story. There was a man with method, reason & Comrade Husák on his side. Not
to mention a wicked duck-egg-blue polyblend suit, vest, tie, black plastic square-
framed glasses & a side-part brushed across, forward, then back, like no other
cop on TV. A man with sleeves big enough to pull out a conspiracy of foreign
agents, saboteurs, the ubiquitous Mašín brothers & Bugs Bunny as well, if he’d a
mind to, like a magician pulls scarves out of a pocket — put History in a box,
saw it in half & get the ends stuck back together arse-ways — just in time to
crack the whole case wide open single-handed, so to speak, & show the culprit
after all was you!
No doubt about it, kids, Zeman would’ve known exactly what to do.
Here’s his famous checklist — see if you can solve Němec’s dilemma:
. Proceed from the beginning: secure crime scene — interrogate suspects
— interview witnesses — check network of informants — collect
* The Thirty Cases of Major Zeman, Commie crimebuster extraordinaire, made Poirot & Miss
Marple look like Custard Tart & Peach Melba. The guy every other jerk on the project wanted to
grow up to be, when they didn’t want to be Karel Gott (except without the falsies). [:]
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evidence — call in forensics — source records — stake-out. (Always be
prepared to ask: What next?)
. Case not cracked wide open yet? Back to square one.
. Repeat.
. If all else fails, don’t give up! Devise new methods for proceeding: A to
B (& back again). C & on to D. Skip E in order to arrive at F.
Incorporate G & H.
. If you can’t falsify the evidence, improvise.*
Not so colourless as it might appear on the surface. A certain discretion in such
cases is called for. Observing, for example, the rituals which people passing-by
seemed unconsciously to participate in. Perhaps their behaviour might be a clue:
for example, walking while (at the same time) clicking tongue, humming, biting
lower lip, talking to self without interruption, holding breath & allowing “breath
pauses” to determine points of observation — taking stock mentally of objects,
events, places, people…
All of this in a symbiotic cadence, so to speak, seeing things at the same
speed as the things themselves, static or moving, dull or brightly coloured,
animate or inanimate — slowly, moderately slowly, very slowly, very very slowly,
moderately rapidly, rapidly, very rapidly, etc. How, for instance, to properly see a
tram pulling away from a tram stop & at the same time, into the tram, through
its windows, faces of people seated, fragments of standing bodies, windows open
or closed, windows of different shapes, a red&beige tram, a red&silver tram, a
blue tram, green tram, a single-carriage tram, two carriages coupled together, an
articulated “one-piece” tram with accordion folds of black rubber, the street, the
buildings, billboards & advertisements, the overhead wires, the whole
complicated depth-of-field in constant agitation, constant flux. (Did people have
any idea how incidental they were, tied to this monstrous necessity: that without
the Evolutionary Accident, none of this? Try to envisage it, some late Jurassic
arbour by a swelling stream, bluegrass, the eve of apocalypse…)*
* Remember, kids, don’t try to do this at home without a responsible adult supervising you at all
times. As Zeman always says, Safety first! [:]
* No such thing as a coincidence, kiddo.
The narrative was getting out of hand & maybe this was as good a place to pause as any. Proof by
conjecture born of self-fulfilling prophesy, as the Great Man once said. Consider the opposite of what
appears to be the case. In each previous scenario, what if it was Němec’s own actions that were being 509
interrogated? Begin with that. How to observe the fact of being observed, without tipping your
hand? Surrounded by an invisible network of informants, constantly under surveillance, lured or
directed from one carefully constructed situation to the next. A rat in a maze disguised as the
world at large, where each turn, cut-back, dead-end is part of a calculated Mind Experiment. Like
those microphones the Soviets snuck inside Bobby Fischer’s teeth, right where the fillings were
supposed to be, cunningly disguised, listening in on his chess brain — miniature TV cameras in
his head — beaming it all back to the boys on Dzerzinsky Square secretly at work building a chess
revenge-weapon, a proto Karpov-droid, Mk I, still experiencing malfunction issues, though plans
already on the drawing board for Mks II (“Korchnoi”) & III (“Kasparov”), input pro & con from
Komsomol. The sort of thing that might set Němec to thinking about the archivist at Strahov
Monastery — Fišer, with an “s,” & the four knights like a backwards Ruy Lopez — which Fischer,
with a “ch,” played as white almost unerringly in that Reykjavik match of ’: pawn to king four, repeat — knight to king’s bishop three, knight to queen’s bishop three — bishop to queen’s knight
five, etc. And if it was good enough for a rat, then why not? At the end of the day, the rat itself
wasn’t important — Němec knew it wasn’t about any particular rat, but the rat mind in general.
Whether there were microphones in teeth or not was moot, as long as it (the rat) believed there
were microphones in its teeth & behaved accordingly (& do you know how a rat with microphones in its teeth should behave?). For the general hypothesis to hold, what was true of one rat would
ostensibly have to be true of every other rat (call it the rat “Rousseau Principle”). It was all about
abstraction: not the same thoughts necessarily, but the same way of thinking different thoughts. Fišer or Fischer or Faktor or Joe Blow — whether they knew a pawn from a pigmy or a bishop from an
ayatollah. As Major Zeman says, Never underestimate the subtleties of surveillance. You only ever see
what they let you see. And the more you see, the less you know. Decoyed by fake CCTV, the real
cameras are the ones hidden inside that cracked grime-grey megaphone or this broken-down
Trabi, radio-controlled Wiener dogs sniffing your crotch in the park, at tram shelters, on escalator
steps, in phone booths installed with hidden x-ray machines, not to mention all those robot
mosquitoes that come buzzing in the night to implant a permanent state of unsleep paranoia, the
spider at the bottom of your glass, a fly’s eye above the light fixtures (always someone awake on the
other side of the wall, watching, listening). In the great scheme of things, wasn’t he, too, therefore,
Němec-sometimes-Nemoc, nothing but a conjecture in shorthand? An experiment that could’ve
gone on without him, with anyone else taking his place, like an x in an algebraic equation, the
universal variable: Nemo, Neiman, No-man? In which case, what’s he doing here at all? Has he
written himself into a corner he can’t get out of, hoping for some editorial sleight of hand to make
sense of the situation, the intervening Secret Agent who’ll bring it all to resolution, one way or the other? That drunk in the doorway pretending to be asleep, maybe? The fag in the white trenchcoat
giving you the eye? The bolshy brunette in a blue postal worker’s uniform brushing past? The
couple of suits parked out in the street, at the end of the passageway, leaning against the wall with
expressions & gestures that look too focused, too rehearsed? The tourist with the conspicuously
large Nipponese camera pointed straight at him? The hustler in the doorway with shuttered eyes
behind cigarette smoke? The beat-up Merc that slows down at the pedestrian crossing when
there’s no-one trying to cross, taking the opportunity to glance back at him in the side mirror? The
leering pink effigy on the hill like some porno panopticon…? To lesser minds, the obvious thing
might’ve been to work backwards from the end, unwrite it all & fill in the blanks afterwards,
imbue even the most inadvertent / haphazard / accidental detail or non-detail with an air of having
been pre-elected, set down, written as if in stone atop Sinai, etc. It’d just be a matter of joining the
dots in retrospect, painting by negative numbers, typing with the “backspace” key permanently
held down… ( Sure, now you’re thinking, kiddo. Just gotta figure out which dots to join, then you’re all
set. Like they say, easy as pie. Ever made pie, kid? [:])
510
37
___________
PANDORA’S “BOX”
According to a certain Monsieur Poisson, the probability of an event is the
reason we have to believe it has taken place or will take place. For example, there
was the story of Pandora, the world’s first cybernated robot, the original bionic
woman. Now, some postmodern Hephaestus experimenting in a Golem City lab
claimed to’ve built an exact likeness, right down to the valves & tubes &
hydraulic compressors described by the ancient authors of the Antikythera of
Rhodes… The story was reported in the weekly Vesmír:
The all-new Pandora C3I* provides care for the elderly & comfort for
every home. Totally lifelike in most respects, the Pandora C3I is easy &
inexpensive to maintain. Monthly service & maintenance included with
our generous instalment plan. The Pandora C3I comes equipped with
speech recognition & vocal synthesis, possessing a basic 800-word
vocabulary, & using 90-degree micro-CCD cameras to process lip
synchronisation & visual recognition. The Pandora C3I also has 17 facial
points allowing for 56 degrees of freedom in adjusting its facial features
to suit any occasion. The Pandora C3I’s entire body is made of highly
advanced synthetic jelly silicon with 80 artificial joints in her head, neck
& body providing for all manner of physical expression. The Pandora C3I
is 160cm tall & weighs 50kg, self-cleaning & easy to store…
Pandora, the reporter from Vesmír explained to his readers, was the original Eve,
the first woman, conceived by the Greek gods as punishment for mankind’s
(through no fault of its own) infringement of the divine prerogative, being
caught red-handed in possession of the very fire thieved by Prometheus from
Hephaestus’ workshop (receipt of stolen goods being nine-tenths of the law).
This archetypal fembot was created in the image of sheer guile: a beautiful evil
sent to torment the race of men — a pink-lipped doomsday box whispering of
hope eternal — a killer robot with a name like a buttery Italian Christmas
breadcake sprinkled with icing-sugar. Crafty old Hephaestus with his rude
hammer, anvil, tongs, sweating over his furnaces, lame in one leg — the man
* The four pillars of the cybernetic Kama Sutra: Command-Control-Communication-Intelligence.
All for one & one for all. [:]
511
who made Aphrodite’s girdle — stammering as he conjures this fantastical
femme fatale from his fiery forge. Gift of the gods & all that.
Sensors allow the Pandora C3I to react to external stimuli by way of an
air servosystem distributed throughout the upper & lower body. In
addition, the Pandora C3I is able to imitate human-like behaviour, such
as slight adjustments in position, spontaneous head & eye movements,
& modulated breathing. The Pandora C3I has a highly elastic silicon skin
“grown” on a genetically enhanced collagen scaffold & is capable of
sensing changes in temperature & touch…
Fast forward three thousand years to the Intelligent Mechatronics Lab of
T.E.S.L.A. Corp, eighth floor, Aetna Towers (Vyšehrad), the company
boardroom, silver-tinted floor-to-ceiling windows affording a sweeping northerly
vista of Golem City — Nusle Valley, the Botanical Gardens, the river winding
under bridge & over weir, Hradchin-on-the-Hill in cameo, etc. Our motto? To err
is machine! The company C.E.O. (known to employees & Board-members alike,
as his predecessor before him, simply as G.O.D.) sits in a walnut&leather swivel
chair at one end of an oversized “War Room” table. The photograph shows
G.O.D., face in silhouette, taking a conference call on a vidphone that’s been
propped on a stand, leaving his hands free to be draped in a relaxed executive
fashion over the precincts of his groin. The face on the vidphone is of a genetic
technician, grade three according to the decal on his labcoat lapel. He’s holding
up a diagram of a female robot. Below the picture, the caption reads: AND
G.O.D. CREATED WOMAN!
An independent microprocessor in the brain allows the Pandora C3I to
coordinate gestures & expressions as well as bodily symmetry,
permitting it autonomy of movement while responding to subtle changes
in its environment. The Pandora C3I is designed to be fully interactive, &
is able, for example, to demonstrate realistic facial expressions while
simultaneously singing & dancing. As part of our sustainability pledge,
the Pandora C3I is capable of extracting & storing energy from external
sources utilising an advanced parasitic thermalisor & thermionic
convertor to supplement internal long-life promethium-147 batteries…
Another picture on the facing page shows the prophylactic cyborg in anatomical
detail: Ready to go into Large-Scale (Re-)Production! A group of engineers stand
around grinning while the mechanical doll sips a martini, dressed in blonde
Marilyn Monroe wig & white dress & heels, positioned over a ventilator grate
that periodically wafts up thigh-tingling currents of air…
512
The Pandora C3I is programmed to perform simultaneous translation
between sixtyfour natural & artificial languages. In addition to its
linguistic capabilities, the Pandora C3I functions as an intersubjective
facilitator with a strong positive karma rating. Utilising advanced
probability functions, the Pandora C3I is able to anticipate to within a
single standard deviation the motives, wishes & desires of its
interlocutors, making it potentially indispensable in a wide range of
applications, including business negotiations & private entertainment.
The Pandora C3I’s wireless Ψ-function also allows it to transmit sense-
data non-verbally to an external control centre using high-end
encryption, ensuring secure communications between itself & a remote
operator, for maximum discretion in the most sensitive situations…
According to the hack at Vesmír, the next generation of humanoid robots would
even be capable of changing their facial features to match the ethnic type of
whoever they were interacting with — some would even possess mirror-like
characteristics, to satisfy the latent narcissism of their “users.” It’d make any
decent self-respecting reader wonder exactly what their “makers” had in mind for
these fleshbots — the ideal secretary jujitsu assassin femme-fatale, e.g., ever-
available & skilled in over a hundred varieties of fellatio, not to mention the
entire illustrated Kama Sutra & Marquis de Sade. (Envisage a basement room
with smiling android in latex cop uniform wringing a seventytwo-hour
confession out of you with a toilet plunger, pliers & alligator clips, & not a single
bead of sweat to mar that uncanny visage, eyes expressive of a deep human
sympathy, the full red collogenated lips, the ample bosom & slender arms you
long to find comfort in even as the volts surge, the alien object probes deeper in
your entrails, the fingerbones snap. You’ll bear anything if only to be forgiven by
her. Say & do whatever she tells you to, and the longer it goes on — the longer
you’re made to gag on your own puke, the longer you piss & shit yourself, barely
able to see, barely able to think, mind jolting back & forth between pain &
unconsciousness — the more you love her…)
