Letters from Novosibirsk Read online
Page 12
earliest inhabitants of this town had. And just from honoring their eating traditions!
My back yard herb garden has tarragon, coriander, and parsley, along with a neverending supply of dill. I use them all as much as possible, on my wild thrushes and boar’s head as well as my breakfast eggs.
If any of you would like a copy of my recipe booklet (Back Woods Dishes of Ancient Siberia) I will be happy to SCD it to you. Otherwise, look around you, do some research and find out what your ancestors ate. Stop relying on the food councils to tell you what to buy and plant, or the “doctors” who tell you they know what’s good for you. All that is good for you is the knowledge that is deep in your bones. Rediscover it!
Wynnet, back in his main data discovery room, set his Total-fu sandwich on one of the monitors and mumbled an opening command.
“Third update A.M. second Tuesday.”
The computer responded; its screen lightened and a normal series of boot-up images appeared in 3-D between Wynnet and the backdrop of greenish light.
Then something less normal appeared: Karyne’s Letter from Novosibirsk, in its entirety, and still growing line by line as she continued to write.
Wynnet neither knew nor cared to know who the author of this unwanted text was, though his eyes quickly scanned it for possible substance.
Nothing worth reading, he thought. And then his hands almost mechanically fell to the keyboard, where he typed the same thought.
Twenty-eight seconds passed.
An explosion of capital letters rocked the screen: WHO IS THE TWIT WHO JUST WROTE THAT!
Wynnet looked over his shoulder. His initial surprise was quickly tempered by intrigue, and his fingers automatically went for the keys again:
It was I. Your thesis of eating local ancient vegetables is totally without reason, and 45% lunatic. It would be counter-productive for me to finish reading it…
Maybe you’re the counterproductive thing. Narrow-minded? Closed to anyone’s reasoning but your own?
Is this by any chance that California-born root specialist?
What do you mean by that?
Nothing extra-sensory. It was a question, deserving of an answer.
Then I am. But I can do without the ancient paternalistic wisdom.
Not a bad vocabulary for a native Californian. I should enter your case into my ethnographic log. But first, may I ask whether you write your letters on InstaMail often? I can be reasonably sure that I would be satisfactorily entertained by their content on Mondays and Thursdays…
I do not write my letters on Instant Whatever, and I am certain I will never be able to entertain you!
I can tell you with absolute certainty that you are writing in InstaMail, and that your root pronouncements are entertaining to at least 62% of the world population, and possibly 70-77% on Saturdays. Currently this exchange is approaching nullity in data/entertainment harvest, so I will terminate it shortly.
Thank God.
Funny, thought Wynnet, she invokes deities. But he shouldn’t be thinking communally.
“Disengage.”
With his computer’s red light now gone back to steady green, Wynnet disengaged himself from the recent past, as he was often wont to do, and let a new barrage of facts compound the air between him and the holoscreen: comparative prices of the world’s most popular and recent models of Antigravity Recreational Vehicles (ARVs), the daily life schedule of an anonymous Asian from the current month’s most productive corner of the world (Lhasa), three perfect lima beans, and the world’s most beautiful (computer-elected) female face.
Wynnet took a hologram image dump of the face and distributed it over various corners of his home: the breakfast table, shower stall, data discovery chain, and daily necessity charts. Perhaps he’d masturbate under it at 10:29, just before his sleep commenced. (Last weeks’ most beautiful female face had been almost identical to this week’s, excepting that the subject was three weeks older.)
In the two-and-a-half minutes it took him to fall asleep, Wynnet threw a wad of tissue into the trash, called off the hologram dump, pulled up the sheet, gently folded his delicate hands over his stomach, and closed his eyes.
Kolya then entered his dreams.
After the two-and-a-half minutes had passed Wynnet was barely conscious, and just beginning to dream: there he was frolicking through a field of facts, picking radiant data charts and sniffing antique volumes of corporate profit. The sky was a jigsaw puzzle of numerical codes, influential dates, and holograms of his most memorable statistical discoveries, such as Lake Baikal’s nutritional value, the success of a campaign to minimize leisure time, and thirteen ways of looking at grass—his favorite plant.
But this sense of euphoria was abruptly cancelled for Wynnet when a strange but familiar perfume issued from the Healthy Hair chart he had just picked, and he recognized the scent as a shampoo that an acquaintance of his had used.
For Wynnet, all people were acquaintances. Since there were so many people, he had taken, since the age of 13, to labelling them—Acquaintances A03AAn70, 7BZ3–9, DM40.pk, and so on—according to an elaborate code system he had devised which designated such matters as time and place of acquaintance, positive or negative impact, color of hair and eyes, and length of acquaintance.
The shampoo in his dream had been worn by [(y)828.62]2, although he couldn’t for the life of him remember why she had been squared. He searched his memory, numerically then chronologically, and could not remember ever having squared another acquaintance, for whatever reason. And if he took the square root of [(y)828.62]2, no one else came to mind.
But that shampoo—a strange accord of cinnamon, rose, and camphor—seemed to blot out those luscious fields of unscented data, and the brightly-coded sky. He was lost in his senses, and frightened, so frightened that he woke up, in Todd’s bed.
Todd, however, was not in his bed. He had risen quite early that day to break down the doors of the post depot, where a package for him was waiting.
Wynnet, still sweating, did not quite notice where he was. Shampoo scented the inside of his nose with every breath, and he could taste it at the back of his throat. He began exhaling so forcefully that it had the effect of waking him even more; and now, with eyes wide open, he drew a silken quilt tightly up to his chin, and gasped.
The shampoo scent had been replaced by the scent of the silken quilt: woven of fine red silk from China, and infused with a potpourri of herbs and rose petals. In his crouching terror Wynnet then realized that the sheets were also of silk, and that the silken bed covers were teasing him into a new kind of comfort.
But soon, he thought, this dream within a dream will be over. He might as well hasten the process, get out of bed, wash, and pore over the daybreak figures.
His feet hit not the floor, but a pair of leather slippers that felt unbearably soft and, yes, even silky. On the way to the bathroom, wherever it was, he couldn’t help seeing the gold brocade that adorned every doorway, and the luster of the tiled and marbled floors, where Wynnet’s deep shadow lay.
So deep was Wynnet’s shadow, in fact, that it did not move. It stayed glued to the floor just in front of the gilded doorway that led to the bathroom, even as Wynnet continued walking through it, but stopped and turned back the moment he saw another shadow lying in the tub. Breathless again, he leaned against the bright, reflective doorframe and waved his arms in a circular motion, like a bird who doesn’t yet know how to fly. For he was trying to awaken the shadow stretched before him into motion. But it gave no response. Its position was one Wynnet recognized as the one he must have borne when he first noticed the unusual doorway. Considering, then, that he had given birth to it, he might as well try to unlock it, and let it get on with itself.
Awakening it with arm motions having failed, Wynnet turned to face the bathroom from the other side of the doorway. He planted his feet at the tips of the shadows’, and slowly raised his arms. But, upon twisting around, he saw that the shadow’s arms were not raised. Nothing had changed.
And then, with an outburst of determination that nearly made him self-conscious, Wynnet lay on the floor, directly on top of the shadow, hoping to pick it up and move it out of the way. After having situated himself there, however, Wynnet found the perspective agreeable, for now he saw the brightly-painted wood trim of the ceiling: a repetition of roses interspersed with lattices of blue and yellow bars, all outlined finely in silver. Indeed, he could actually smell the roses, as his eyes moved around the ceiling, from rose to rose to rose to…
“This is 100% lunatic,” he said aloud. “Not much of a dream anyway. I should be up soon if I stick to willful consciousness.”
He stood up, brushed off his pyjamas, and saw that the shadow was gone. Happy with the conclusion of that challenge, Wynnet went back into the bathroom, turned on the water, and whole-heartedly avoided looking at the shadow lying like a pampered diva in the tub. It was his will to take a bath, regardless of where his shadow now chose to rest.
With the water nearly filling the long porcelain basin, Wynnet stepped into a pool scented of orange rind, patchouli, and vanilla, among other things he had trouble distinguishing. Wynnet hadn’t bothered to procure anything so scented since his sixteenth birthday, when he secretly drove to a distant cosmetic shop to try out colognes in preparation for a formal dance. And now here he was, surrounded by a steamy, fragrant bath
My back yard herb garden has tarragon, coriander, and parsley, along with a neverending supply of dill. I use them all as much as possible, on my wild thrushes and boar’s head as well as my breakfast eggs.
If any of you would like a copy of my recipe booklet (Back Woods Dishes of Ancient Siberia) I will be happy to SCD it to you. Otherwise, look around you, do some research and find out what your ancestors ate. Stop relying on the food councils to tell you what to buy and plant, or the “doctors” who tell you they know what’s good for you. All that is good for you is the knowledge that is deep in your bones. Rediscover it!
Wynnet, back in his main data discovery room, set his Total-fu sandwich on one of the monitors and mumbled an opening command.
“Third update A.M. second Tuesday.”
The computer responded; its screen lightened and a normal series of boot-up images appeared in 3-D between Wynnet and the backdrop of greenish light.
Then something less normal appeared: Karyne’s Letter from Novosibirsk, in its entirety, and still growing line by line as she continued to write.
Wynnet neither knew nor cared to know who the author of this unwanted text was, though his eyes quickly scanned it for possible substance.
Nothing worth reading, he thought. And then his hands almost mechanically fell to the keyboard, where he typed the same thought.
Twenty-eight seconds passed.
An explosion of capital letters rocked the screen: WHO IS THE TWIT WHO JUST WROTE THAT!
Wynnet looked over his shoulder. His initial surprise was quickly tempered by intrigue, and his fingers automatically went for the keys again:
It was I. Your thesis of eating local ancient vegetables is totally without reason, and 45% lunatic. It would be counter-productive for me to finish reading it…
Maybe you’re the counterproductive thing. Narrow-minded? Closed to anyone’s reasoning but your own?
Is this by any chance that California-born root specialist?
What do you mean by that?
Nothing extra-sensory. It was a question, deserving of an answer.
Then I am. But I can do without the ancient paternalistic wisdom.
Not a bad vocabulary for a native Californian. I should enter your case into my ethnographic log. But first, may I ask whether you write your letters on InstaMail often? I can be reasonably sure that I would be satisfactorily entertained by their content on Mondays and Thursdays…
I do not write my letters on Instant Whatever, and I am certain I will never be able to entertain you!
I can tell you with absolute certainty that you are writing in InstaMail, and that your root pronouncements are entertaining to at least 62% of the world population, and possibly 70-77% on Saturdays. Currently this exchange is approaching nullity in data/entertainment harvest, so I will terminate it shortly.
Thank God.
Funny, thought Wynnet, she invokes deities. But he shouldn’t be thinking communally.
“Disengage.”
With his computer’s red light now gone back to steady green, Wynnet disengaged himself from the recent past, as he was often wont to do, and let a new barrage of facts compound the air between him and the holoscreen: comparative prices of the world’s most popular and recent models of Antigravity Recreational Vehicles (ARVs), the daily life schedule of an anonymous Asian from the current month’s most productive corner of the world (Lhasa), three perfect lima beans, and the world’s most beautiful (computer-elected) female face.
Wynnet took a hologram image dump of the face and distributed it over various corners of his home: the breakfast table, shower stall, data discovery chain, and daily necessity charts. Perhaps he’d masturbate under it at 10:29, just before his sleep commenced. (Last weeks’ most beautiful female face had been almost identical to this week’s, excepting that the subject was three weeks older.)
In the two-and-a-half minutes it took him to fall asleep, Wynnet threw a wad of tissue into the trash, called off the hologram dump, pulled up the sheet, gently folded his delicate hands over his stomach, and closed his eyes.
Kolya then entered his dreams.
After the two-and-a-half minutes had passed Wynnet was barely conscious, and just beginning to dream: there he was frolicking through a field of facts, picking radiant data charts and sniffing antique volumes of corporate profit. The sky was a jigsaw puzzle of numerical codes, influential dates, and holograms of his most memorable statistical discoveries, such as Lake Baikal’s nutritional value, the success of a campaign to minimize leisure time, and thirteen ways of looking at grass—his favorite plant.
But this sense of euphoria was abruptly cancelled for Wynnet when a strange but familiar perfume issued from the Healthy Hair chart he had just picked, and he recognized the scent as a shampoo that an acquaintance of his had used.
For Wynnet, all people were acquaintances. Since there were so many people, he had taken, since the age of 13, to labelling them—Acquaintances A03AAn70, 7BZ3–9, DM40.pk, and so on—according to an elaborate code system he had devised which designated such matters as time and place of acquaintance, positive or negative impact, color of hair and eyes, and length of acquaintance.
The shampoo in his dream had been worn by [(y)828.62]2, although he couldn’t for the life of him remember why she had been squared. He searched his memory, numerically then chronologically, and could not remember ever having squared another acquaintance, for whatever reason. And if he took the square root of [(y)828.62]2, no one else came to mind.
But that shampoo—a strange accord of cinnamon, rose, and camphor—seemed to blot out those luscious fields of unscented data, and the brightly-coded sky. He was lost in his senses, and frightened, so frightened that he woke up, in Todd’s bed.
Todd, however, was not in his bed. He had risen quite early that day to break down the doors of the post depot, where a package for him was waiting.
Wynnet, still sweating, did not quite notice where he was. Shampoo scented the inside of his nose with every breath, and he could taste it at the back of his throat. He began exhaling so forcefully that it had the effect of waking him even more; and now, with eyes wide open, he drew a silken quilt tightly up to his chin, and gasped.
The shampoo scent had been replaced by the scent of the silken quilt: woven of fine red silk from China, and infused with a potpourri of herbs and rose petals. In his crouching terror Wynnet then realized that the sheets were also of silk, and that the silken bed covers were teasing him into a new kind of comfort.
But soon, he thought, this dream within a dream will be over. He might as well hasten the process, get out of bed, wash, and pore over the daybreak figures.
His feet hit not the floor, but a pair of leather slippers that felt unbearably soft and, yes, even silky. On the way to the bathroom, wherever it was, he couldn’t help seeing the gold brocade that adorned every doorway, and the luster of the tiled and marbled floors, where Wynnet’s deep shadow lay.
So deep was Wynnet’s shadow, in fact, that it did not move. It stayed glued to the floor just in front of the gilded doorway that led to the bathroom, even as Wynnet continued walking through it, but stopped and turned back the moment he saw another shadow lying in the tub. Breathless again, he leaned against the bright, reflective doorframe and waved his arms in a circular motion, like a bird who doesn’t yet know how to fly. For he was trying to awaken the shadow stretched before him into motion. But it gave no response. Its position was one Wynnet recognized as the one he must have borne when he first noticed the unusual doorway. Considering, then, that he had given birth to it, he might as well try to unlock it, and let it get on with itself.
Awakening it with arm motions having failed, Wynnet turned to face the bathroom from the other side of the doorway. He planted his feet at the tips of the shadows’, and slowly raised his arms. But, upon twisting around, he saw that the shadow’s arms were not raised. Nothing had changed.
And then, with an outburst of determination that nearly made him self-conscious, Wynnet lay on the floor, directly on top of the shadow, hoping to pick it up and move it out of the way. After having situated himself there, however, Wynnet found the perspective agreeable, for now he saw the brightly-painted wood trim of the ceiling: a repetition of roses interspersed with lattices of blue and yellow bars, all outlined finely in silver. Indeed, he could actually smell the roses, as his eyes moved around the ceiling, from rose to rose to rose to…
“This is 100% lunatic,” he said aloud. “Not much of a dream anyway. I should be up soon if I stick to willful consciousness.”
He stood up, brushed off his pyjamas, and saw that the shadow was gone. Happy with the conclusion of that challenge, Wynnet went back into the bathroom, turned on the water, and whole-heartedly avoided looking at the shadow lying like a pampered diva in the tub. It was his will to take a bath, regardless of where his shadow now chose to rest.
With the water nearly filling the long porcelain basin, Wynnet stepped into a pool scented of orange rind, patchouli, and vanilla, among other things he had trouble distinguishing. Wynnet hadn’t bothered to procure anything so scented since his sixteenth birthday, when he secretly drove to a distant cosmetic shop to try out colognes in preparation for a formal dance. And now here he was, surrounded by a steamy, fragrant bath
Letters from Novosibirsk