Corruption

1991

The mailer program seems to have risen from the dead, like some skanky, rotten zombie, its flesh falling from its limbs like the meat of an overripe avocado, shambling forth into a George Romero movie. It leaves messages all over the file system, bits scattered from its decaying core image.

"Did you know that during 70's, the comics code wouldn't allow the word 'zombie' to be used in comic books?" Shellie asks while two of her teeth fall out.

The corpse shudders as Gustav gently runs the scalpel down its chest. He caresses the incision and, insinuating his fingers into the cut, carefully parts the folds of skin. His breath playing across its chest is almost enough to warm the corpse's blood. Almost, but not quite.

Under Graceland, the King rolls over in his grave.

"So they called them 'zuvembies', to get around the code. Nowadays nobody gives a fuck about the code except Disney. Now it's a selling point not to be certified by the comics code."

He's disoriented when he falls into the water from the ship. The ocean is deep and the water is buoyant and gravity fails to guide him. He swims down at first, before he orients himself - the light that manages to filter down through the water tells him of his error. He spends his strength pushing up to the surface, lungs searing, and comes up under the ice floe. He pushes against it but has no leverage; the ice is thick and ancient and he is small and dying. His lungs fill with water, the water fights with the cold to see which will claim him first. His heart stumbles. His blood chills and coagulates. His fluids thicken and jell; his chemistry slows and fails. Life is a process his body can no longer sustain.

Silicon does not decay, not in a human timescale. It merely ages. What is the difference? You can wear out a microprocessor. Software does decay, but you can't wear it out. Programmers talk about "bit rot" - programs that have been around for too long gradually behave differently, fail to work the way the used to and generally do unexpected things.

The dead can be like that sometimes.

She is sprawled out in a chair, gesturing with her cigarette while she talks. She inhales and her eyes roll back slightly as the nicotine stimulates her. When she exhales again, smoke pours out through a hole in her throat that she covered while sucking on the cigarette. Quiet sounds of wind and the sea come from her throat when she is not talking. She is not concerned about cancer.

He brushes his lips across the incision. Not sensing rejection, he pushes on and dares to touch the tip of his tongue to the cut.

Some living people believe that any system with enough interconnections in it acts intelligent, and is intelligent, like a shadow of the sum of its parts. Only the dead know for sure.

Lennon imagined there was no heaven. He was right.

She shifts in the chair. "When L. Ron Hubbard finally died, they burned him and scattered his ashes on the sea before there could be an autopsy." She spasms as the hot tip of the cigarette falls on her, and continues: "Then there's always JFK."

If only there were more light, he would have a magnificent view from his resting place on the ocean floor.

I was in California when concert promoter Bill Graham died. His helicopter crashed into a 225 foot tall electric tower; one would assume he was killed instantly. When did the sensation end, I wonder? Or will it?

Gustav's breath was faster and hotter; his tongue flicking along the slit faster, his saliva beginning its predigestion of the already rotten meat. He feels light headed.

The smell of the cigarette mingles with the odor of her flesh.

When a child dies, it has no further need of its birth certificate. Living people can take advantage of the child's death, beyond rendering its body into the components of pet food, leather goods, Spam and organ transplants. They know, in some exact and certain way, that the dead child will no longer use the certificate. Further, they know that the government does not manage death certificates well, and they can use the dead child's birth certificate to forge themselves a new identity and lead the dead child's life. This is one of the simplest ways the living become closer to the dead.

The Grateful Dead get their start in San Francisco, during the summer of love. For a while they have their own chemist, one Owsley, who manufactures the purest acid to burn away the illusions of life. The Dead develop a cult-like following of Deadheads, some of whom track them as they tour, who recite play lists of how long which songs last and in what order they are played at any particular concert in the last twenty years. Two of the Dead's band members pass over and their lead singer almost follows, but recovers instead from his diabetic coma.

"JFK." She stares at me. Her left eyelid droops down over the eye, but it is torn and I imagine she can see through its gap. "Even he probably didn't know how many bullets hit him, or from what direction. Remember Timothy Leary? He designs software now, but he used to be the acid king in the 60's. The godfather of the summer of love. He met Marilyn Monroe before she went on. Wait, there's more." She inhales again. I can smell her breath, putrid, across the room. Sweat pools on my arms. Her breath makes me think of orchestras and old gods.

Gustav climbs atop the corpse and straddles it.

If there were more light, he would see the coral formation near where he first came to rest. Then the small insects, the shrimp and other sea creatures would nibble the delicacies of his eyeballs, leaving him to the exquisite darkness. Now he swims the ocean floor, blind.

For some, software is spirituality.

"Leary said that Norma Jean told him she'd get Kennedy to trip on LSD. She died soon afterwards. Imagine, the president, turned on, tuned in and dropped out? The shadow behind the government wouldn't be able to control him anymore."

Sometimes in the sea there is a phosphorescence, a shimmering of color. It comes from bacteria that live in the water. I see it, green, scintillating in the corruption of her eyes.

Today a global computer network links most of the living world. Hundreds of thousands of computers are connected to it. Once it was killed by a parasite, but it was resuscitated and restored to life by its priests. Its death coincided with a discussion by thousands of the living about the shadow behind their government arranging that hostages one president sought freed would only be freed after he had lost the election to a senile ex-actor. The network was assassinated just before the election, just before the story could work its way to the news media. The story stayed hidden for years afterwards, until finally it was exposed. Too late, the Congress tried to investigate its truth, but perhaps the shadow behind the government moved to stop them, as well.

"He was killed."

Gustav exerts himself, he strains against the body; sweat pours down his skin and he pushes harder and flushes. The cool organs provide gentle resistance against his thrusts.

Joseph Campbell would describe Kennedy in terms of the Fisher King or the Year King, a mythical figure whose health is bound to the health of the land. But Joseph Campbell is dead. John F. Kennedy is dead. Bela Lugosi is dead. Are the dead jealous when there are more living people than have ever died?

More important than computers, the network links millions of people.

Do the dead dance in Brazil? Do Elvis and Jimmi, Janis and Jim, John and Adolph limbo where the rainforests once stood? Were Jimmy Hoffa's last shoes cement? Bill Graham could present a final show, a coming together of the ones who didn't make it, or the ones who did, the dead rock stars, rumored still among the living.

congress n. 1. A formal assembly of representatives, as of various nations, to discuss problems. 2. The national legislative bodies of certain nations, especially of republics. 3. Capital C. Abbr. Cong., C. a. The national legislative body of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. b. The two-year session of this legislature between elections of the House of Representatives. 4. A coming together; a meeting. 5. Sexual intercourse. - intr. v. (from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1973)