TO-WIT: INTO THE VOID (PART ONE)
Oh, I am in love. This is no infatuation, mind you, but the real thing, true and everlasting love. The less worldly of you might assume I speak here of a human relationship, something that involves actually touching and fawning over a member of the opposite sex while drooling like a hypertensive spaniel. Though I concede that such behavior may be necessary from time to time, except for the drooling part, that’s really not at all what I have in mind at this particular moment. The kind of love to which I presently refer is less complex, considerably less time-consuming and infinitely less expensive. It is the purest, most gratifying, most uncomplicated kind of love there is, the love that can only exist between a man and his machinery.
Unlike a symbiosis with living objects, there is no need to guess with machinery. It’s simply a matter of touching the right button to produce exactly the right result. Machinery, for the most part, is predictable, reliable, has no emotional needs, and best of all, can usually be shut off with a switch. And if perchance things go permanently sour, it remains a relatively simple matter to bail out, with neither delay nor guilt, and with not even so much as a single suitcase. What more could one desire from a relationship?
In the course of my own practice, I have had many machines. Some I did not care for at all, like my earliest photocopy machine. It suffered from a fatal disability which obliged me to separate from it in short order - it did not take well to being kicked. Other machines had qualities of a more endearing nature, such as the next photocopy machine I acquired. It seemed to have the ability to print limitless copies without using any toner whatsoever and it afforded me the opportunity to win innumerable bets from my colleagues over lunch. There was always some cynic at the table who refused to put any faith at all in this miracle of reproduction, with the result that a wager was soon struck, and we would thereafter repair to my office for a demonstration. I was well on my way to paying for one child’s college education with the proceeds when the copier salesman, incensed that he hadn’t been able to sell me any toner in years, snuck into my office after hours and had the machine repaired behind my back. Thereafter it sucked toner like a Zamboni, and it was soon gone.
Later I had a brief and stormy relationship with a Correcting Selectric which eventually turned out to be not my type, and for a while, I adored an answering machine until it started answering back.
But now I have a fax machined, and so gloriously does it fulfill my needs that all the machinations of the past seem naught but a bad dream. I’m wild again, beguiled again, and I have body parts ready to do business that I haven’t heard from in years.
It was not that long ago I hadn’t the slightest idea what such a device was. There I sat, discussing over the phone the terms of a first draft lease with a colleague from Big City. We quickly agreed upon the modifications he requested.
“Let me make the changes here,” he said, “and I’ll fax you.”
“I, uh, think that’s against the law in this state,” I replied, a bit nervously.
When he explained to me exactly what he meant and what the machine could do, I was enthralled. I was also relieved. In short order, I bought one and had it installed in my office.
I shan’t soon forget the first time I used it to send off a document. A lengthy contract it was, and a particularly important one, and as I stood there faxing it off, an old but familiar feeling wafted by.
Long ago, when I was a young boy exploring the rural countryside near home with my friends, I stood at the edge of a field where it dropped precipitously off as a cliff into the valley below. The early dark of this warm summer’s evening had just settled in, and exhilarated by the sensation of the world beneath, inter alia, my feet, I did what young boys seem obliged to do in such environs – I relieved myself over the edge and it felt sublime.
And now, standing over the fax machine while an unseen facsimile of my work product disappeared into the dark and mysterious void, I had that very same sensation. I knew something important was leaving me, but I had no idea where it was headed.
So insecure was I of the whereabouts of my work, I felt compelled to call the recipient to verify that the material had in fact arrived. Indeed it had, and I experienced an incredible surge of power at my newly found capacity to reach out and touch so far beyond the boundaries of my body. My physical extensions could now be measured not in inches but in miles, nay, hundreds, thousands of miles, and through Ma Bell’s caressing tentacles, I was irretrievably connected directly to the whole world. My work, and therefore my very being, extended virtually without limit.
Instantly I was seduced and I spent the better part of the next three days obtaining the fax numbers of every colleague I knew. Thereafter, at night, when no one could see me, I snuck into my office and secretly faxed away to my heart’s content. So caught up was I in my nocturnal activities, I became terribly shortsighted. I could not see what lay just ahead, and for now, neither can you.
(NEXT MONTH, “INTO THE VOID, PART TWO.” YOU’RE IN FOR A TREAT.)
© 1988, S. Sponte, Esq.