Sunday, May 2, 2010

Data dump

Cayce puts the card facedown on the trestle table and signs its virgin back. Something seems to clunk heavily at the rear of her ethical universe.

---

[hilarious perfection]

Looking up now into the manically animated forest of signs, she sees the Coca-Colo logo pulsing on a huge screen, high up on a building, followed by the slogan "NO REASON!"

---

Curled in a body-warm cave of cotton broadcloth and terry, the remote in her hand, she unforgets her father's absence.

---

Cayce and the German designer will watch the towers burn, and eventually fall, and though she will know she must have seen people jumping, falling, there will be no memory of it.
It will be like watching one of her own dreams on television. Some vast and deeply personal insult to any ordinary notion of interiority.
An experience outside of culture.

---

"Thank you. Just a moment, please, while I find my key." Actually it's in the pocket of her Rickson's, ready to be palmed when needed, but she checks the bathroom, the closet, glances behind the black furniture, then notices a large gray carrier bag, with the Blue Ant logo on the side, at the foot of her bed. She kneels to look under the bed, discovers it isn't the kind you can look under, and comes up, still kneeling, with the key, a plastic mag-strip card, in her hand. "I've found it. Thank you very much."

---

[incomprehensible without background information, so you'll have to take my word that it's cool]

"Yes, it ends in .ru Observe the protocol H-B"

Baranov, emailing from the hyphen.

---

Her mother had once said that when the second plane hit, Win's chargin, his personal and professional mortification at this having happened, at the perimeter having been so easily, so terribly breached, would have been such that he might simply have ceased, in protest, to exist.

---

[and an absolutely brilliant conclusion to the story, snuck in by way of an e-mail message from a background character]

Prion now has some connection with a Russian yogurt drink that is about to launch here, purchased I think by the Japanese. I know because it is part of my briefing for work now, this drink. Also because he has it in a cooler at the gallery - revolting! I think he will try to serve it at the opening but absolutely NO! So mystery Internet movie is out, yogurt drink is in.

---

The ending wasn't exactly stellar, but it was a very enjoyable read nonetheless. Next up... The Graveyard Book, I guess.

No comments: