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He can't remember when he bathed last. Most of his time is
taken up with research, watching its coming to pass. Round-the-clock he works,
his curiosity still demanding full attention. He sits, hiked over his paunch,
stooped in a hunch, looking into his little screens, his compulsion to munch
being his only distraction. The constant hum of his Grand Switch Board
is part of the ambiance. He finds his passive research suspenseful; the munchies
go with the job. Besides, what else is there to do while being so fully occupied?
Among the clutter he perseveres, just to see what will happen--how it all
comes out. Yes, he has some serious character disorders, but he is the
only one we have. There was a time when he didn't but that was before we
came along. Now that he's created it, his work can't be left alone; through
the years his methods have changed. There was a time when he loved to tinker,
making it up as he went along, but that was long ago. In the beginning things
had been different somehow. Now he sits around picking his nose and,
all the time, wanders back and forth from the refrigerator to the Grand Switch
Board, the unit that's coupled into the Big Room -- the room he never goes
into anymore. He used to spend a lot of time in there, but now he sits on
his high stool with his paunch pushed over the edge of the control panel,
of his tiny work area. Cluttered with crumbs, wrappings, and cigarette butts,
his workspace is also jammed with his self-made equipment; creativity doesn't
leave time for maintenance. Underneath layers of crud his control panel flickers
information from sensors in the Big Room. The glow of hundreds of tiny
monitor screens blink bits of information for his entertainment and interest,
time and labor saving devices which he installed for his convenience,
inventions to save wear and tear on fallen arches. He used to make many trips
in and out of the Big Room back in the beginning, hanging and moving things,
rearranging objects for aesthetic reasons and practical considerations; he
had wanted everything to be just right. Worn and haggard from decision making,
he is content now just to watch. He sits and eats, enjoying the fruits of
his labors, watching it come to pass. He munches and peers at the screens
through coke-bottle glasses. The flickering little screens sprawl across
his Grand Switch Board, allowing him a more leisurely life style than before.
It's wonderful what his tinkering has done, creating so many labor saving
devices with such facile efficiency. He had had lots of ambition in the beginning
when everything was shiny bright and new, but since then time has worked
him and his projects over a little; things had not always worked according
to plan. His perfectionist bent has since broken into a somewhat laissez
faire attitude: he prefers eating to action anymore. With headphones in place,
he sits and nibbles as he watches the monitors; the flickering lights play
against his limp pudgy features and give the tiny room a greenish yellow
glow. The toilet is clogged again and the hall light is out. Puffy balls
of lint-like material swirl about his feet when he shuffles down the darkened
corridor to the fridge and twirl again on his return. His slippers echo a
scrub-brush rhythm in the hollow hall while galaxies of fuzz rotate about
his naked ankles. Odd but a redecoration has never occurred to him what with
all there is to do and so little time to see it done. Once active, he
now prefers a passive approach to the strains of conscience that once plagued
his projects. He peers into the screens, earphones secured to balding head.
We would call his Grand Switch Board a console: he does too. His clothes
are of a functional nature owing to the fact that he has never paid a heating
bill, a bit down in the knees and shiny in the seat, but suitable for his
purposes. Having no one to dress for eliminates his need for good hygiene
or neatness. He sips tea for warmth in the wee hours, muttering to himself,
fascinated by what might happen next. We would never know by his appearance
of his scrutinous eye for detail: the minutest detail. The switches on
the console connect to operations in the Big Room. They lie, clustered in
groups around the many monitors, in a slurry of dried food and cigarette
ashes, obscured by smears of jam, droppings from ketchup- laden ham sandwiches,
and pizza. The keyboard sitting before him is disused, the circuitry shorted
by spilled soft-drinks and crumbs from sweet pastry; the many keys are stuck
to the point of dysfunction. The runes signifying key function are worn to
a blur of non-recognition. The creator has forgotten their meaning, even
though he was the one who assigned them significance. The key codes are obliterated
by stuff glazed to a polish by the brush of his threadbare shirt sleeves.
Forgotten, his microphone -- moved aside on its flexible shaft -- was once
a large part of his work, valuable for messages and pronouncements, but due
to faulty circuitry his communications became garbled and misunderstood. It
sits unused; he hasn't bothered to fix it. Besides, passive research doesn't
require direct interaction anyway. He had dabbled with other means of
communication, even experimenting with robotics. Using an android with a
swervo unit he called his automaton; he sent them forth into the big room
to do his bidding. They moved about the big room preening his pet projects
-- damming and diking the spillage of entropy -- but they too seemed to be
just a Band-Aid where a truncate was needed; their mission he did not clearly
define. Leaving the power of discretion in the hands of others weakened his
self-esteem, control being his most potent tool. They didn't always do what
he thought appropriate, injecting their tangents left him feeling unappreciated.
Things had gotten out of control, they were unmanagable -- untrainable and
not at all obedient. He recalled and dismantled his hirelings, they still
sit in bits and pieces on the kitchen table, waiting for his intended modifications.
Despite the general appearance of disorder he manages to keep a few monitors
free of food and ash. These screens he keeps very clean, polished to crystal
clarity. The images' color and intensity are true to life, as if he were
right there in the Big Room. He pads back and forth from fridge to console
with half-smoked cigarettes tucked behind his ear, keeping an eye on his
favorite screens, ignoring the obscured flickers of the rest, much like daylight
is ignored by we who watch the soaps. Although he has forgotten most of the
objectives of his project he perseveres, knowing his purpose in the scheme
of things has been petering out. His life's work seems to have taken on a
purpose of its own, but he can't tear himself away -- besides, where would
he go? He lives simply, with one exception: his refrigerator is state of
the art, and morsels he keeps there bear a striking resemblance to stuff
found in a tiny corner of the Big Room. He thinks he would die if he didn't
have his fridge and what he calls a microwave. Placidly sitting before the
screens, he munches, waiting to see what happens. He has to know how it all
comes out. GOK mormon
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