Name of Author

Name of Author by Title of Book by Tom Murphy VII enjamin|who always spells it out like a president|who had made his fortune selling name brand time-travel circuitry at B low, low prices|who, even now, tops The Wall Street Jour- nal's 100 Most Influential Entrepreneurs from the Future list|who is the kind of fellow who will normally listen carefully to what a conversant has to say before unconditionally dismissing his or her ideas|who, slamming his fist on the table in the heat of discussion causes his date's drink to jump closer and closer to the edge, and who, having been educated at Harvard Future Law school, has the dual and conflicting perspective of a sophisticated alcoholic, who, in the sense that it is classic appreciates the conic shape of a Martini glass but who, also having a practical education from a top-tier in- stitution, believes at the same time that its form more than casually approaches the minimally appropriate one|that being a flat piece of glass, the liquid having to be attached to the glass by its molec- ular cohesion alone and the beverage consumer having to ingest the liquid by means of licking|who, when talking, speaks like this: in- credible sentences of preposterous length, each fragment grammat- ically reasonable but the whole completely unparseable, and who, by now livid at his date's inacuity for rational thought and her ten- dency to invent words that are not only nonexistent but also seem- ingly malappropriated|who, in standing causes the final bump that drops the martini glass to the ground and shatters it|he suddenly has an idea for a flooring substance that is shock-absorbing, or perhaps just a clear solid material that is shatterproof|Benjamin has ideas like this all the time; ten a day, more, he assigns them to his lackeys by way of a device that allows him to communicate for- wards and backwards in time|he communicates exclusively with himself, sometimes his secretary if he is busy in the future|no time to wait for himself to become free, have an appointment|and these inventions and ideas, implemented, become at once part of the scene before him, such that the martini glass is now made of superhard epoxy, non-toxic, and the floor of a colloidal material such that it is able to accept dropped items with a gentle deceleration while still providing a firm and reliable surface for feet, and the date is replaced with a Fulbright Scholar supermodel, waiflike but not anorexic, and 5 who never tries to conjugate words like malapropism, and who has darling ideas of her own, like why don't we blow this joint and head to Neo Amsterdam|such an infallible impropriety to the way she speaks, her usage in the lowest|or perhaps uppermost?|percentile according the grammarians' taxonomy, when they even can be both- ered to attempt to classify her utterances with scientific rigor. here on her table is a copy of Scientific Armenian. I glance through it secretly while she prepares coffee, responding to T her inaudible monologue with ambiguous comments like, \Oh yeah?" and, \Do tell!" and \Top draw, my fine chap!" SA is carrying an article about the increasing frequency of coronal mass ejections, a sort of bursting of the sun's giant, fusion-powered pim- ples. There is a total pinup centerfold, which I clip and stuff in my pocket. I need to cancel my enrollment in Gas Giant: Barely Legal and pick up a subscription to this instead. Those blank brown paper envelopes are causing suspicion around the house. She returns with three cups. The third, she says, has been poisoned with an undetectable neurotoxin that she manufactured in her converted basement methamphetamine lab. It will go as a prize to the first to finish his or her cup. We chat about this and that. But the coffee tastes like an oil spill to me. I can't finish it, and before I know, the tinking of her cup against the saucer indicates that she's won. Before I can dispute the drops at the bottom, she downs the prize. Moments later, she enters a generalized tonic-clonic \grand mal" seizure, shaking around like a maestro, spastically conduct- ing her invisible orchestra. The effectiveness of her concoction is uncanny; she will be rich posthumously! I wipe the fingerprints off of my cup and the magazine and make an anonymous call to 911 Emergency. \911 Emergency." \Yes, Susan has been poisoned." 6 \Sir, may I have your name?" \ Ànonymous.' " \We're dispatching ambulances. Stay on the line until they ar- rive. OK, Sir?" \ : : : " \Sir?" I am totally out of there. From her veranda I see the Houston As- tronomical Observatory's massive eight-meter catadioptic telescope. \Let's go," I mutter. At the observatory I present my membership badge to the night watchman. \Good evening, professor!" he says. Night watchman is a good friend, we have played euchre many times when we become older. He will die of cancer. He checks my security badge anyway; looks at the photo and then into my eyes, searching for the tell-tale palpitations of telescope fraud. He hands back the badge and asks me to sign my name in the log. I write, Figure 1: Signature in Log Book I sign my name like this ever since I discovered an obscure legal principle that validates as a signature any mark whatsoever, as long as it is made with clear intent. I pocket the pen, nestling it comfortably next to the centerfold. At the telescope control panel I am a virtuoso. I flip this switch, and I turn some dial. Whatever. Nobody can tell me what to press. 7 I turn the telescope at an unprecedented angle: it faces directly at Susan's house. Through her window at ten million times magnifica- tion I see the crime scene vividly. The crystallized toxin on her lip. The ash of the detective's cigar contaminating the evidence. The fingerprint duster's kleptomaniacal pilfering of her cosmetics. That rotten bastard! I make a mental record of the image to be illustrated in my memoirs. Suddenly, Earth is sprayed with the creamy charged particles of another zit bursting. An aurora courses across the sky. The fierce magnetic waves disrupt my telescopic voyeurism and the machina- tions of similar first persons around Earth. But the solar storm does not affect the planet's high-tech communication system. make an arbitrary rule. I'm the boss. The purpose of such rules is to keep my employees, my sycophants, on their toes. An ex- I ample arbitrary regulation: You must label each compact disc in two-color permanent marker. Even letters must be black, odd letters blue. I do not mention how to treat space characters. This is so that I can always find a reason to persecute a CD-labeler whose CD title happens to have more than one word in it. Vagueness is no criterion for unconstitutionality in my sovereign state! And persecute I will, and do. I have a staff, its members sub- ject to capricious quotas. Each day a vassal must be selected from our organization, two on Fridays or \Firedays," as we sometimes refer to them, jokingly, behind our closed soundproof doors in our ridiculously extravagant offices, overlooking the city or the river, a jacuzzi and steam room in each, smoking cigars and ordering expen- sive wine, we don't even understand how it is different from regular people wine, we have never had that piss, restaurants where they say sir and don't ever spit in your food if they have communicable diseases, where the silverware is real silver, oxidizing and affecting the taste of food but god damn, at least it is real silver. The employee is sent an impersonal memo, expected to appear in our star chamber, our farcical mock trial, over which I preside, smashing my gavel down when he speaks, objection!! which of course I sustain, 8 for I am the judge, he is silenced, the jury rigged and no defense council appointed. The culprit is allowed an elaborate and meaning- less appeals process, during which his pay is suspended, the appeal always denied, except when we allow a retrial merely so that we may subpoena his unknown enemies, his one night stands, his embarrass- ing secrets and make them part of the public record. I am Q to his Jean-Luc Picard, although truthfully he is more like a \Bones" McCoy, stammering and helpless, the scapegoat officer court mar- tialed in a military cover-up, a scandal underreported and anyway, squelched by members of the conspiracy seated at the helm of major news organizations. Sometimes my rules are complex, predicated on obscure facts and phenomena. If the Riemann hypothesis holds, then your employee ID card must be worn on the left breast pocket. Otherwise, the right side. I don't even know what that means. Fuck it! My rules are contradictory, You may not read this rule. #5.33. See rule #5.33. Smoking is only allowed in no-smoking areas. Void where permitted. This is all I do, fire people. Here's another rule: You are fired. It can apply to anyone at any time. It improves morale at the company, by which I mean that it improves efficiency, by which I mean that it improves my morale and the morale of my firing staff, and their efficiency in firing you. Sometimes they are fired too, because, nobody is above the law.

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