Love-Shaped Story

* * *

He arrived home late in the evening. He’d stopped to eat in one of the fast-food joints on the state highway, just outside town, and had walked the rest of the way. He usually steered clear of those places, but that evening dinner was the last thing on his mind, a physiological chore that separated him from that first, great night with the system.

To facilitate taking the system powder, Kurt had suggested he obtain a straw, and Homer, to be on the safe side, had taken four from the dispenser at the cash desk. On leaving the diner, he’d thanked the dark, cloud-laden heavens for allowing him to be born in a country that had reduced to a minimum the time you had to spend on procuring and consuming food.

Going indoors, he went and sat down on the couch without taking his jacket off. He placed the box containing the VCR on the coffee table and studied the instructions, trying to remember the advice the store assistant had given him - though with scant success, because all the time the man was talking he had been thinking about what it would be like to try the system while he watched, after eighteen years, the film of the body snatchers.

Then he set to work, with some trepidation, because he didn’t know much about electrical appliances. But the installation proved less problematic than he expected and, although the timer wouldn’t stop blinking 00:00 from the stop position, the machine seemed ready to perform its essential function, the only one that interested Homer at this moment: that of reading the magnetic content of the videocassette so as to decode it into luminous signals that one enjoyed by keeping one’s eyes fixed on the TV screen.

Preparing everything necessary for the taking of the system was even easier, because actually there wasn’t much to prepare. Kurt had told him to take out of the pouch a large enough dose to systemize himself, which needn’t be very much the first time. In fact he had recommended that it be extremely small, though he hadn’t seen fit to supply a parameter on the basis of which the quantity might be precisely calculated.

Using the corner of his laminated Aberdeen Public Library card as a measure, Homer extracted this blessed, tiny dose from the little pouch and put it on the Formica top of the coffee table. Kurt had counseled the use of a smooth surface, such as a hand mirror, but since Homer didn’t have any hand mirrors in the house, he thought the Formica table top would make a fair substitute, for the time being. On subsequent occasions, if it was really necessary, he would buy a mirror.

Still using the laminated library card, he shaped the extremely small dose of powdered system into a strip about a millimeter thick and just under a half-inch long. Then he took one of the straws into the kitchen and cut it in half. He sat down on the couch again, laying the length of straw next to the strip of powdered system, on the coffee table.

Everything seemed ready. Everything was laid out in accordance with Kurt’s instructions. All that remained, apparently, was to take it. The great moment had arrived. The cassette about the body snatchers was inserted the right way round in the VCR. The television was tuned to the VCR channel. All he had to do was press the Play key on the remote control. The opening credits would start to roll and he would take the powdered system through the nose, as Kurt had demonstrated.

He pressed Play.

Your first systemization is rather like your first kiss. You’re so preoccupied with the problem of where to put your nose that by the time you realize that that thing you felt on your tongue was actually her tongue, she’s already broken away from you.

During the first systemization your dominant thoughts are, first, how long it’s going to take for the powder to take effect; second, how you’ll know when it does take effect; and third, how you can be sure, if at some stage you think it has taken effect, that the feelings you’re having are the right ones.

On subsequent occasions, the difference between the system and kisses is that when you kiss you don’t think very much about it, whereas when you systemize yourself, whether it’s the second or the thousandth time, you do nothing but think. You’re almost always thinking. Thinking about things like whether this time will be better than the last, because last time wasn’t that great, though perhaps that was because maybe you’d had too much to eat, or hadn’t had enough to eat, or because it was better to take three small doses at a distance of, say, half an hour from each other, because when you take it all at once the system must be of prime quality, because if there’s anything wrong with the system - an eventuality known to people inside the system as ‘over-cut’ or ‘badly cut’ or ‘shit’ - you may, if you shoot too large a quantity, throw up, and then you’ve wasted system, time and money, not to mention the fact that if the system is too pure even worse can happen.

Such speculation is known to habitués of the system as ‘paranoia’. Of course, people outside the system get paranoid, too. But it’s not the same thing. Let’s take the example of a perfectly ordinary case of paranoid behavior, like leaving home much earlier than necessary because you’re convinced that the bus driver, not finding any traffic, will get to the bus stop, say, ten minutes earlier than the regulation time and that, since he is traveling with an empty vehicle and knows perfectly well that at the bus stop in question there’s only ever one person waiting, namely you, the person with the delusion of which we are positing an example, he will drive straight past without waiting for the regulation time, and all because you, the paranoiac, have come to the entirely baseless conclusion that the bus driver doesn’t like you.

Now, such a delusion would never even enter the head of a true systemizee. But if by some absurd hypothesis it did, he would soon put the matter in perspective. ‘What do I care when the fucking bus goes by?’ he would say. Note that he would utter these words without the slightest trace of acrimony, and would then continue: ‘Look, I may not even go to the bus stop if I don’t feel like it. Let him drive past when the fuck he wants. I’m going to stay at home and systemize myself. Who needs buses anyway? I’m never going to take another one for the rest of my life. I’m fine the way I am. I’ve got the system.’

Nothing in the world is truly important to a person who’s inside the system. Everything can be attenuated, viewed in a more reassuring light. No matter how big the problem, it can always be cut down to size. When you’re inside the system, having a paranoid delusion that’s extraneous to it seems completely meaningless, because the only, essential, constant source of paranoia is your concern with achieving the highest possible degree of integration. All other things are trivial. Decorative problems, ornamental anxieties, non-essential torments. The only thing that matters is integration into the system.

Homer’s first time. There’s not much to tell, as a matter of fact. What happened was this: as the TV screen framed a sinister sky of shifting white clouds, to the apocalyptic strains of woodwind, strings and rolling drums, Homer bent forward over the coffee table, brought the length of straw to his nose and inhaled the powdered system. At first he felt nothing, except, after a few seconds, a bitter taste in his mouth. He lay back on the couch, convinced he would soon fall asleep. The film continued and when Becky Driscoll, played by the delightful Dana Wynter, made her entry into Miles Bennell’s office, Homer was more wide awake than ever. He was still wide awake when it came to the scene where Uncle-Ira-who-isn’t-Uncle-Ira pushes the lawnmower across the lawn, exactly as Uncle Ira would do. And he was still wide awake when Becky and Dr Bennell, hunted by the Santa Mira police, who are now themselves in thrall to the difference of the body snatchers, hide in the office and swallow pills to stay awake. This is the scene where it becomes clear once and for all that it’s when people are asleep that the body snatchers take their places. So, Becky and Dr Bennell prepare to spend the night in the office and Bennell tells Becky she mustn’t close her eyes.

‘Or we may wake up changed? To something evil and inhuman?’ Becky asks.

‘In my practice I’ve seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happened slowly, instead of all at once. They didn’t seem to mind,’ muses Bennell.

‘Just some people, Miles,’ Becky objects.

‘All of us, a little bit. We harden our hearts, grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear.’

At this point Miles breaks off, gazes into Becky’s dark, fawnlike eyes, her perfect profile silhouetted against the white of the curtain that filters the sinister light from the street, and adds: ‘As you are to me.’ And as the violins soar, their faces draw together till their lips touch and they kiss.

And it was no good.

He was still awake.

Perfectly, totally, utterly awake.

He should have been getting worried, seeing that a fair time had passed since the beginning of the film footage and his taking of the powder, yet he felt inexplicably calm. He sat there watching those two magnificent specimens of the human race kissing - a sight that would normally have made him very uneasy - as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if he weren’t really there, in front of the TV, as if he were watching from the VIP box of a grand theater full of gilded stuccoes and velvet hangings. Dresses rustled, trails of cigar smoke rose, chandeliers glittered, and a confused murmur of voices mingled with the rustle of the dresses, which took on the smell of the bodies, which rose with the cigar smoke till it reached him in the box where he sat, as he kept his eyes fixed on one sparkling light in particular, a white light that spread outward till it occupied his entire field of vision, till it entered him, entered his body, heating him and relaxing him, a hot, white light that softened his legs and his abdomen, that set his chest ablaze and made first his shoulders then his arms go limp. He was perfect. He was relaxed. He was suspended. He was white. He was everything. He was safe. And he understood. He understood…. Now he understood that he had spent his whole life worrying and protecting himself for nothing. He understood that he had wasted his best years shielding himself from people, from the world, from the differents. He understood that there was nothing to worry about after all. What could they do to him? Who could ever have done anything to him? Why had he been so worried? Why had he been so tense? The anxieties of a whole life suddenly seemed incomprehensible.

He watched the film of the body snatchers continue to run, but those alarming pictures that had once revealed the true nature of things to him - those pictures that had been the cause of his not sleeping for eighteen years - didn’t disturb him as he’d imagined they would. He was well aware of the dreadful reality depicted in the film, yet it seemed as if all those things didn’t concern him, or concerned him only to a certain extent, that they couldn’t do him any harm.

Not anymore, anyway.

Not now.

He wondered how this could have happened and whence came this sense of calm that he had never felt in his life before, this white light that heated him from within, this white light of white heat.

He wondered when the system would begin to take effect.

The system that enabled Homer B. Alienson to sleep again - the system that he privately called ‘Kurt’s system’, after the person who introduced him to it - is extracted from the pods of a plant whose scientific name is Papaver somniferum, which means the sleep-inducing poppy.

Commonly known as the opium poppy, it is a flower of extraordinary beauty. A black heart encircled by scarlet petals, bobbing at the top of a long stalk, with pods full of gold-green seeds.

It has a long history, stretching back to the lost civilizations of Persia, Egypt and Mesopotamia.

The discovery of some fossilized poppy seeds suggests, indeed, that even Neanderthal man knew how to extract a system of life from this flower so beloved of the Impressionist painters.

He woke up at three in the afternoon. The television was still on and tuned to the VCR channel. Homer couldn’t believe he had slept so late. In fact he couldn’t even remember sleeping. Nobody really remembers sleeping - even he knew that, despite his scant experience of that state. But he hadn’t expected such total darkness.

The last time he’d looked at the clock it had been just before six. The body-snatchers tape had just finished rewinding and Homer had been on the point of starting it again. He’d already seen it twice, and still hadn’t fallen asleep. Deciding that he’d been too cautious, he’d inhaled another two lines of powdered system.

There had been high points and low points. Moments of white light with white heat and moments when he wondered when the system was going to take effect. He distinctly remembered seeing for the third time the sinister sky of shifting clouds and hearing the apocalyptic music. He thought he also remembered the scene of Uncle Ira pushing the lawnmower, but couldn’t swear to it.

Then he had woken up. Three o’clock in the afternoon. Nine hours. He had slept nine hours and he couldn’t believe it. Never before had he erased such a large portion of time from his mind. He knew that this was what happened when you slept, but he wasn’t used to it. Such intervals of unconsciousness were a new experience to him.

He had lived the last eighteen years in their entirety, second by second, always conscious of himself and of time. Not that he remembered those years clearly. Far from it. Had he been required to think back through them, it would have taken him no more than a few hours; a day at the very most. But that was because his life had been reduced to a few essential coordinates, a perfect geometry of tedium from which he had never escaped.

There had been times when his thoughts had wandered, it’s true. And other times when he’d daydreamed. But he was sure that - if he’d really had to - he could have reconstructed nearly the entire film of those eighteen years, perhaps with the help of some newly invented mind machine or some special memory-enhancing technique.

He straightened up and sat there on the couch, staring at the length of straw and the few grains of system left on the coffee table. The television was emitting its pale blue light and a constant, low electronic hum, but Homer didn’t notice. He was in a daze. The signals sent out by the world of physical things were too weak for his present state. He gazed at the coffee table without really seeing anything. His mind, too, was focused on nothing, sweetly void of thought.

All at once, for some inexplicable reason, without anything recalling him to reality, he came to. He emerged from the daze as suddenly as he had fallen into it. At first this puzzled him, especially as he wasn’t sure how long that strange, trancelike state had lasted. It couldn’t have been more than about ten seconds, but they had been seconds that didn’t correspond to one’s normal perception of time. Seconds that had slowed down till they almost stopped. Seconds drawn out to their maximum temporal extent, like an elastic band stretched to its limit. Time that had stopped while continuing to flow.

It must be an after-effect of the system, Homer told himself. And if he was really honest, he hadn’t found that trancelike state at all disagreeable. He cracked his knuckles and decided to go and stretch his legs in the woods, to breathe the cold, rain-scented air.

He walked for hours, his head full of thoughts that floated away freely, as if they had a life of their own. By the time he got home it was already dark and his thoughts had calmed. They seemed to have become at least partly his own again. He passed by the North Aberdeen Bridge and stopped to talk to Kurt. He wanted to tell him he’d tried the system and to thank him.

He was bursting to talk, which was another new experience for him. He’d never been much of a conversationalist; he was often at a loss for words, and sometimes for subjects too. But on this occasion he spoke fluently, describing in meticulous detail what had happened and what he thought about it.

Kurt listened in silence, nodding as if he already knew that Homer would say all this. He didn’t reply until Homer had already bid him goodbye and was walking away, when he called after him:

‘Boddah?’

Homer turned. ‘Yeah?’

‘Go easy with that stuff.’

Homer walked on, wondering what Kurt had meant. As soon as he got home, he went over to the couch and slumped down on it. He hadn’t eaten all day, and the TV had been on since he had gone out. But he didn’t notice his hunger or the TV.

Question: how did the system reach Aberdeen?

Answer: by a long, circuitous route. The earliest written evidence of man’s infatuation with the system dates back to the invention of writing itself, when the Sumerians divulged the secret of the system to the neighboring Akkadians, the latter handed it on to the Assyrians, and the Assyrians, through their trade contacts with the Egyptians and the Syrians, extended the system both westward and northward, taking it even as far as Greece.

Then, thanks to the mercantile enterprise of the Arabs, the system reached China, where with enlightened instruction from the Portuguese the population achieved a degree of integration into the system more total than any previously attained in history. The Portuguese taught the Chinese that there was a method of integration far more powerful than their own one of mixing opium with bamboo juice and boiling it with oatmeal. The new technique, inhaling the system through a pipe, proved highly popular in China, and soon opium dens were opening all over the country.

The Europeans discovered that the system was highly profitable, because it could be used as a cheap exchange commodity for silks, spices, and other exotic articles which the Chinese usually sold at high prices. Consequently the Portuguese were followed in rotation, first by the Dutch, then by the French, and lastly by the British. All of these countries traded with the Chinese, offering their opium system in exchange for precious goods.

The British may have been the last to arrive on the scene, but they were the shrewdest operators of all. They gave an entirely new impetus to the lucrative trade by founding the East India Company, thus laying the basis for addiction to the system on a massive scale. By 1840, there were about three million Chinese doing nothing all day but systemizing themselves in opium dens.

Although the three million Chinese derived great benefits from the system, and regarded it as an indispensable part of their lives, the Chinese government for some reason frowned on this development and decided to ban the system in all its forms. This did not go down well with the British, who risked losing a rich source of income. The result was friction, which on two occasions flared up into open conflicts, referred to in the history books as the First Opium War and the Second Opium War.

While quarrels and battles raged in that part of the world, a considerable number of Chinese - some seventy thousand all told - sailed across the ocean and disembarked in the United States, where they worked on the railroads and in the West-coast gold mines. Some of them, naturally enough, took their pipes with them and began to proselytize among the whites, opening opium dens like those shown in some well-known film footage of the story of Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane, starring Jeff Bridges and Ellen Barkin.

Today many people still imagine that when the gun-fighters and cowboys of the Old West came into town, parched with thirst after riding for days across prairies and deserts, the first thing they did was to head for the inevitable saloon - complete with pianist and cancan-dancing hookers - to down a couple of whiskies, usually after limbering up with a hearty fist-fight. In actual fact many of them preferred the exotic peace of the opium dens, where they could drift off into dreams of the system, with an attentive young Chinese girl by their side to keep their pipes primed with opium. That’s how it all started. That’s how the system reached our country.

Question: Okay, that’s clear enough as far as it goes. But what about Aberdeen?

Answer: Well, to be honest, the system never actually got that far. Aberdeen was off the circuit, so to speak, and any inhabitant of the town who became dependent on the system was in deep trouble. But Kurt got to know Grunt, a disreputable character with one redeeming feature: he could get you any kind of system you wanted, because he went around robbing pharmacies with his sidekick.

It was Grunt who initiated Kurt into the great world of the system. Kurt was a perfect candidate for addiction: he was sick, he was neurotic, he was a mass of tics, he hated people, and he harbored grudges by the wagonload. He himself was convinced he’d end up as a teenage schizophrenic, the kind of guy that turns up at school one day with an assault rifle and wipes out half his classmates.

Kurt definitely needed something to soothe him and Grunt had him try Percodan, one of the many system-derived painkillers. Before he knew it, Kurt found himself taking ten a day, so euphoric and relaxed did it make him feel. He almost began to like people.

Then, one summer night, Grunt and Kurt systemized themselves with heroin. Kurt thought he would never let himself get truly integrated, never become a real addict. He thought there wasn’t enough system in Aberdeen for anyone to become hooked on it. What he didn’t know was that all that Percodan he’d swallowed had been more than enough to systemize him. He had been fully integrated from the very first time he had taken it. He was wholly and utterly dependent on the system, though firmly convinced that he wasn’t. It’s quite normal for integratees to think they depend on nothing and nobody.

The ubiquity of the system did the rest.

He tried the system for the second time that same evening. He would have liked to lull himself to sleep with a nice piece of video, but he only had that film of the body snatchers, and he’d already seen it three times.

He decided to settle for a night of television instead.

The first item was a newscast, then came: a commercial break; the weather forecast for the next forty-eight hours; a game show whose rules he couldn’t quite understand; a documentary on the sex life of tropical insects; more commercial breaks; some old film footage of gangsters starring James Cagney; a show where people argued; the fourth inning of a baseball game; another newscast about sports events; a discussion show about incurable diseases; a show featuring a man with an ingratiating smile who talked about God and urged viewers to call a number that scrolled across the screen; another show with a young woman in her underclothes touching herself and panting who also urged viewers to call a number flashed up on the screen, which was not, however, the same number as the one recommended by the man with the ingratiating smile; one of those shows where people talk about their problems, that focused on a boy with a serious form of insomnia whom Homer would have phoned to advise him to try the system, had it not been for the fact that in that show there weren’t any numbers displayed on the screen for you to call and that something warned him against talking to strangers about his relationship with the system.

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