“What are you working on?” asked Tim.
Peter looked at him with an expression of startled curiosity, as if considering the question for the first time. Peter was lucky. He had dark, deep–set eyes; a mouth that curled cynically at the tips; a melancholy face like a thin curtain over profound and depressing thoughts. The weight of the Great Conversation hung about his brow.
“Oh—” he murmured abstractedly, and shrugged his shoulders with the pious resignation of Solomon discovering that all is vanity.
“Yes?” Tim leaned forward.
Peter jerked his head. “Oh… Do you know if there’s any mayonnaise left in the fridge?”
Tim nodded solemnly. He understood. Being Peter wasn’t easy. Sometimes you got too stuck in your thoughts, and then you had to think of things, ordinary everyday things, like mayonnaise, to snap out of it.
“I’ll go check,” he said, settling back in the armchair. “What are you working on?”
“A paper.”
“What class?”
“Neo-pancosmoexperiantialism.”
Tim’s eyes widened. “Wow.”
Peter warmed over the topic. “The trouble is,” he said… and his voice drifted. Peter had a tendency to dangle bits of sentences over you, leaving the ends concealed in mid–air, like Achilles’ ankles over Styx.
Tim was innocently impatient. “Trouble?”
“Yes,” said Peter. “The trouble is I have to write 8,000 words about something.”
“How many do you have?”
“4.”
Tim nodded sympathetically. “What are they?”
“‘The properties of spunks’.”
“Cool. What are spunks?”
Peter shifted uneasily. He wondered whether to ask for the mayonnaise again. “Well,” he said, “That’s part of the problem. You see, right now the spunks are a sort of… well, a sort of metaphysical placeholder. You know like when you buy a picture frame, and there’s a picture of a coffee mug, and it says, ‘Happiness is the new rich’, but you put a picture of your grandmother instead?”
“Sure,” said Tim. “Although when I think of happiness I really think of my uncle—on Dad’s side. He went to Jamaica last spring.”
Peter squinted. “No,” he said, “What I mean is, the coffee mug with the inspirational quote is just a placeholder. It’s the store’s way of telling you where to put the photo.”
“Oh! I know what you mean,” Tim interjected. “I was talking about this with that kid (you know, Paul’s roommate) about how nobody can do stuff for themselves anymore. Like, you gotta be told where to put the photo. There was this frat kid who bought a corkscrew for the first time, and there were no instructions, so he tried the flat end—stuck it upside down—and stabbed himself in the head. I think he’s on leave.”
“Too bad.”
“Yeah, bummer.”
“But that’s not quite what I mean,” said Peter. “You see, the point of the class is that everything’s made of smaller stuff—but also, we have things like experiences and consciousness that can’t just be explained by adding bits together—so the bits have to be conscious. See what I mean?”
“Sure,” said Tim. “What do you mean?”
Peter looked out the window again and sighed. A plaintive whimper of conscious ignorance, like a dog discovering it lacks rationality.
Poor Peter, thought Tim, and went to get the mayonnaise.
When he returned from the kitchen, Peter was standing. He was close to the window, watching the rose petals fall languidly on erratic wings of the afternoon breeze. The scene was worthy of Millais or Whistler, and yet the most delicate brush strokes would have crushed the fine-finialed edifice of his metaphysical distinctions.
“Here’s the mayonnaise.”
“Thanks,” said Peter.
Tim cracked open a Diet Pepsi and fell back into his chair. He did not fall languidly.
“So what’s the deal with—what are they called? The placeholders?”
“Spunks. They’re italicized.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure yet. But I think it’s because italics suggest movement. And the universe is moving.”
“Where?”
“Well… nowhere. Where would it go?”
“Hmm. To another universe, I guess.”
“There aren’t any others.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m assuming. For the sake of argument.”
“Fair enough.”
Peter decided it was fair. He opened up his laptop, which had been shut firmly in a fit of existential weariness, and skipped down a few lines with the Return key. He wrote the word ‘notes’ in bold and, and then, “Assume there is only one universe.” He sat down again, scratched his chin scruff, and sailed for speculative seas, far from the world of mayonnaise.
“So what do the spunks do?” asked Tim.
“Not much.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’ve only got 8,000 words.”
“True,” said Tim. “What do they do in your paper?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Hmm. Wait…!” Tim stopped, as the full, ominous import of Peter’s words descended upon his cerebrum. “You mean—” his eyes bugged, “You mean—you’ve discovered them?”
“In a way, yes.”
“That’s big.”
“It could be,” said Peter, skeptically.
“We should celebrate when you’re done.”
“Sure. But I don’t want to go back to that place with the IPAs. I hate hops, and that’s all they have.”
“Man! It’s your day.”
“Thanks.”
“So, what’s the point with spunks? I mean, what will they do—when they’re discovered?”
“Well, they’re a kind of metaphysical theory. Which means they’ll need all sorts of auxiliary vocabulary. Did you know that when Aristotle came up with hylomorphism, there was no way of writing ‘matter’? So he had to use ‘wood’.”
“Didn’t he have papyrus?”
“No, I mean he had to use the Greek word meaning ‘wood’. Which is hyle. But the point is, his concept was original. Nobody had thought of it before. So he needed a new word. See, I’m in the same boat. I’ve already done that with spunks; but even to describe what spunks do, I’ll need new words.”
“Can I help?”
Peter shrugged. “Sure.”
When we revisit our characters, later this evening, they are sitting at opposite ends of a small kitchen table and appear frozen mid-arm-wrestle. Arms elbow-balanced forty-five degrees off the table, they resemble two pensive busts around a large W, or two noble soldiers flanking the flag, or two seals balancing a ball. If we pursued the metaphor, the seals would probably run away and drop their ball. Let us wait and see what happens. Slowly, Peter and Tim exit their contemplative fog, like Rip van Winkle and his less astute twin. They turn towards us, and we are startled, for the sheen of mystical ecstasy upon their cheeks betrays, no weariness of defeat, but that emptiness which follows a tremendous spending of one’s essence, an exhaustive self-giving. They have done something. Something great. They have been in labor and delivered.
Peter spoke first. “Boy, I could sure use that mayonnaise.”
Tim nodded. “And a steak.”
“Really,” said Peter, “Anyspunk would do.” He yawned widely and stood up. Across the kitchen, through the living room partition, he could easily observe the descent of dusk, as daylight sought her refuge upon the window pane, beating and pleading admission. Then he stopped. For there it was… or wasn’t…! His very silence, like a vacuum, stirred currents of energy in the room, so that Tim raised his head, looked towards the window and saw. Tim rose, joining Peter by the partition frame.
“Can you believe it?” asked Peter.
“It’s beautiful.”
Dusk had completed her rounds and tucked away the details of things. Still, while she followed the horizon, her receding candle cast sporadic glimpses over the sleeping Earth. There were no trees. There were no houses or streets; no parked cars or electric lights; no distant fields; nothing where familiar things had been. There were no things at all, in the old way.
Only spunks.
The spunks were distributed in vast Twaddles that accentuated their Interstitial Fronds. Here and there Peter and Tim recognized instances of the Five Predominant Categories: Color, Extension, Love, Admiration, and Sauce. But the beauty of it was that, beyond these forms and relations, there was nothing. Their world was not just accurate. It was complete.
Tim was no poet. His repertoire of reactions to the marvelous had been truncated by low breeding and efficient education. To venture any description of his mind would rob it of mediocrity, its one distinguishing feature. But, to his credit, he expressed his visceral convulsion over paradigmatic change in the only way he knew. He cracked open a Pepsi.
Peter continued to stare. “What are those?” He exclaimed, pointing all over, as if dabbing fine dots on the window pane. Tim looked, squinting. He could hardly make out what Peter was showing. But his curiosity was short-lived.
“Why…” said Peter, “Yes, of course! They must be! Those are the footnotes!”
“So now what?” asked Tim.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, what do we do?”
“With the spunks? Well… we should publish it. Somewhere big.”
“Or…” A queer look came into Tim’s eyes, a distant primordial glow, like a vestigial spark of intelligence from a very remote ancestor. “Or we could do what they do in history.”
“What’s that?”
“We could burn it!”
Peter looked at Tim with undisguised contempt. “People who burn spunks are not remembered.”
“Well, I guess I don’t mean we actually burn it—but, you know, we could burn a copy because the secret is too dangerous, but keep another one just in case.”
Peter shook his head. “This is no work of art. It’s what they call a paradigm shift. The trouble is that history has progressed inexorably to this moment. We are simply historic agents and cannot ignore the moment. The universe would stagnate. Do you want the universe to stagnate?”
This was an unfair question. Tim did not want the universe to stagnate, and he looked hurt. “I want what’s best,” he said. “For the spunks.”
The classroom was fidgeting. The final papers had been submitted, so that, between the Students in Despair and the Students Triumphant, an overwhelming majority had moved on; and Professor Spuckman usually reserved such lectures for his more controversial comments: the ones he felt morally obliged to make, and prudentially obliged to make quietly. Just now, he was arguing that AI (Catholic AI, of course) should never be granted annulments, because individual AI did not possess such a thing as latent vices, or character defects that would only become visible over time. Any such defects would be model- or brand-wide, so that (applying Kant’s Categorical Imperative) any individual annulment would justify a general product recall. The eighty or so natural intelligences in the hall were unintrigued, although the topic was hotly debated, and Spuckman breathed a sigh of relief. Once more he could summer on an easy conscience.
“Now––the final papers…” Heads jerked back into reality at the sudden suggestion of imminent fates. Sally Kimball, sitting, as usual, in the front, almost choked on her biodegradable straw, which had been hissing with suctioned indifference for the past few minutes, and Borden Bowne, who secretly liked her, offered her a napkin. She snorted and furiously began taking notes, much to Spuckman’s consternation.
“Sally, did you have a question?” He asked.
“No, sir… you were saying… Are the papers graded?”
“The grades have been calculated, and Mike here” (gesturing to the artificial TA, who looked cheerful, as usual) “––Mike will communicate them to your minds at the end of class. I would just like to say a few words about your general performance. Overall, you did well. Your average was a B-. Some didn’t fare so well, but nearly all of you were careless in your vocabulary. For instance… a noticeable number of you defined ‘moral consciousness’ as a kind of spunk.” (General cackling from the students who wore ugly glasses.)
“Now,” continued Spuckman, with a gentle nod of solidarity to the budding nerds, “I’m sure you all found that a safe definition. Sally, why is that a safe definition?”
“Huh?” Sally had rediscovered her straw.
“Indeed, indeed,” muttered Spuckman. “Sally, why is it safe to define ‘moral consciousness’ as a kind of spunk?”
Sally’s eyes flashed with a rare admittance of light––the odd tear in the parasol––and she answered, haltingly, “Well… just… they’re all spunks!”
“Correct!” Spuckman was genuinely pleased, and celebrated with a self-indulgent improvisation on the point. “Of course, it’s always helpful for a senile professor to be reminded that spunks are spunks” (more cackles from the Omega 3 gallery). “I am in danger, more than ever these days, of missing my morning coffee, through a general forgetfullness of spunks… Unfortunately for you young brains, the papers are not being graded on the assumption of sexagenarian faculties…” Spuckman smiled, satisfied as only an academic can be with his pronouncement of the mildly amusing, and dismissed the class.
Gus Stalt, one of the fellows with the ugly glasses, rushed from the middle row to catch up with his roommate Zack, who sat at the back.
“Hey! Geist!”
Zack circled with a grunt. “Stalt.”
“Hey, did you hear all that?”
“No, I went deaf last night listening to you and your dad argue on the phone.”
“Seriously. Spunks? Really?”
Zack nodded. “How dumb can you be? Show me a non-spunk. Hey… there’s an idea for your next paper. Anti-spunkism.”
They chortled, passing from the auditorium into the round marble atrium, where they made for a door on the farthest end. Midway, the fountain bubbled, like Sally’s frozen acorn julep, over the white centerpiece, a statue of a young man with wide, opaque eyes and a mop of hair. Now and then, a jet of water shot directly into the interior of his bronze Pepsi can.