The Gerbils in the Machine
I am the gerbil in the machine.
The senator from Alaska famously said the internet was a series of tubes. He wasn't entirely right, but he wasn't that far off, either.
For most of you, for most of the sites, those tubes, a series of cables and plastic sheathing stuffed with copper and filaments of glass, end up right in my living room, where most people would have a television, or a set of shelves. And for the last ten years, I've been stuffing the little rolled up bits of paper I was given, and continue to receive, month after month, week after week, each little parchment into one of any number of pipes leading out to those cables.
It's a talking piece. In fact, its the talking piece of the house. This is due, in large part, to the fact that I cannot leave this room for more than a few seconds without the light in the center of the living room wall, about where I'd put a television, if I had one, flashing on and off in rapid succession: blink, blink-blink, blink. So I take another scroll out of the basket by the sofa, walk over to the wall, and shove it into whichever of a few dozen holes, over which are blinking little while LEDs. By the time I'm done, unless I'm really concentrating on what it is I'd intended to do, like a bathroom break or a quick food run to the kitchen, I usually have forgotten what it was I was intending to leave the room for, and settle back into my couch. And so company stays mostly in the living room, where they have no choice but to talk about the massive wall full of holes and blinking lights. Long ago, unfortunately, I had to dissuade friends with epilepsy or epileptic tendencies from coming over for a visit.
It all started when I answered an email promising a great income from working at home, ten long years ago. The white van showed up at my door the next day. Two men in paint-flecked jumpsuits got out, lugging what seemed like miles and miles of cabling over their shoulders. A few neighbors watched with their hands up to their eyes, feigning that they were blocking a nonexistent sun from their eyes when they were only scratching their heads in wonderment.
The men worked quickly, starting on the outside of the house without a word past, "You Jones? Tod?" To which I replied, "Yes, that's me." They threaded the cables up along the brickwork at the foundation and somewhere behind the siding of the house. After a quick break of lemonade out of a thermos they'd brought, they headed inside with heavy metal toolboxes the size of a smallish mountain lion each, took off their shoes at the door, plunked down the toolboxes at the entryway. They teased parachute-like drop-cloths out of the toolboxes and swirled them around the furniture in the living room like a Russian ballet until the room was one giant ghost, ready for Halloween.
The dust settled around 4pm, and the men were gone, leaving me with my blinking wall of holes and a small wicker basket set on a side table near the sofa, full of little scrolls, wrapped with red ribbons, and a note. The note read:
"Thank you, for joining our most illustraious (sic) organization. Over the coming months, years, decades, we will be experiencing a massive growth, thanks in large part to people like you. When big central lights blink, please to put scroll in one of holes with blinking lights abovehead. Thank you.
The Mgmt."
As I finished the note, the lights at the center of the room, near the ceiling, blinked in what would become the almost Pavlovian manner: blink, blink-blink, blink. This set off the cascade of lazily blinking lights along the wall. I put a scroll into one of the holes. The lights slowly faded out.
To be continued... ?
disclaimer:
We're not late! Let the angels rejoice!
We're mostly on time, and out with an issue completely unrelated to the previous issue, which had hinted at being a serial... just perhaps not to be continued in the next few weeks.
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