“And, of course, he was right. By the middle of that week, one of the Yachts—the less bright Chaz—I think it was Jr. but can never keep them straight—so Chaz or Chaz Jr., whichever, just a few days after the initial airing of the second AOL clip, he brought over his Executioner Set, along with a cure he’d previously taught to perform executions of other cures, and he fed the cure the Independence-NeedyBuddy cocktail, showed it the mirror, and then, every time it tried to hang itself, he interfered, got in the way—‘saved it from itself,’ in his words—til finally he got so bored or excited saving it from itself, he just tore its head off. Day after that, Bryce came over and rigged up a kind of double-AOL thing where he set a pair of cocktail-fed clones inside a box with four mirrored walls, causing all manner of chase and confusion and slapstick to ensue before they finally seemed to deduce which parts of what they were looking at were their own, which parts were reflections, which parts were their clone’s, and, in any case, bled out. Next day, Lyle AOL-cocktails a cure, but binds its wrists and ankles to a stake before showing it the mirror, and it somehow manages, after twenty minutes of struggle, to break its own neck just by twisting around. I mean, it writhes itself to death. And then the brighter Chaz comes by the compound that very same evening, brings a box of safety matches, a bottle of water, and—”
“I think I got the idea,” I said.
“You and everyone else,” Burroughs said. “That’s the thing of it, right? And Trip has a major crisis is the point. Artistic, moral. Crisis. Deep. Feels almost attacked.”
“By who?”
“Everything. The universe.”
“That’s a little much,” I said.
“He’s barely fifteen years old, and he’s smart, this kid. Whatever you or anyone else might think of him, he is sharp as a tack, highly introspective. But, yeah, barely fifteen years old. Ideological in that way younger people tend to be. So now, look at what’s happened. Appreciate what’s happened. First, he’s spent hundreds and hundreds of hours on A Fistful in order to make just the kind of impact that that second AOL video beats him to the punch on: all that revolutionary innovation stuff. And that stings, Belt—that would sting anyone, getting beaten to the punch like that, after having put in so much work. Way he sees it, there’s no point in screening A Fistful—it’ll be derivative—so he cancels the screening. Yet it’s not just that he’s gotten beaten to the punch that stings, but that he’s gotten beaten to the punch by the work of PerFormula designers. And I don’t know if you know about this, but the whole reason Trip ended up deciding to pursue a career as an artist is that he realized he didn’t have what it took to pursue a career as a formula designer. That’s what he originally wanted to do, formula design, but he didn’t have the talent, only the drive, and when, a couple years ago, he realized that, it broke his heart a little. The decision to make art—that was his salvation. It was his second choice, but after he made it, he worked hard to convince himself it had always been his first. He told himself art could do what technology couldn’t, and…nope. Suddenly, not anymore. Not from where he stands. From where he stands, it turns out technology can do it all, and can do it better. So that stings even more. And no less painful than that—this may even be the hardest part for him—is that his ability to be the earnest young believer in the power of art is pretty much annihilated. You see, Trip, introspective and ideological, he can’t help but feel like being stung via getting beaten to the punch here is a failing of his, okay? That the feeling he feels, the sting—a feeling he can’t help but feel—indicates that he’s a moral shitbag. And I’m not exaggerating. He used those words. Moral shitbag. He’d been telling himself—telling me, Fon, his father, but above all himself—that what he wanted to do with A Fistful was inspire others to behave innovatively, revolutionarily. He’d believed all along that to inspire everyday ‘revolutionary innovation of Curio interactions’ was his mission, was a moral good, and that his drive to inspire ‘revolutionary innovation’ was what set him apart, what made him a uniquely good and worthwhile human being, and, though he didn’t exactly say as much, I think he also believed that his drive to inspire ‘revolutionary innovation’ justified his having been born into such vast wealth and power.
“In any case, he believed he should have been happy because the airing of that clip achieved what he had purportedly thought to be a great good. And here it turned out he felt not only unhappy, but, as I said, stung, and so he had to contend with an unpleasant, worldshaking truth, and that truth was that he’d been lying to himself all along. He cared far less about the spread of ‘revolutionary innovation’ than he did about earning recognition as the person responsible for inspiring ‘revolutionary innovation.’ In other words, he wasn’t, according to his own standards, a particularly good person, let alone one who deserved all that he’d been born into. He was normal. He was petty. A hater, he called himself. So, like I said: crisis.”
“You’ve thought a lot about this.”
“Well, that’s my job. Most of it. Thinking about Triple-J.” Burroughs seemed a little hurt—as if I’d said, “You’ve thought too much about this.” I supposed that was reasonable—it might have sounded that way, I might have even meant it that way—but rather than attempt to clarify or apologize, I thought it better to pour him a third dram of Scotch and move on.
I emptied the flask into his glass and said, “So Colorized War Crimes fixed everything, then? Trip made it, everyone loved it, and…”
“Yes and no. I mean, it wasn’t that simple. Before he made War Crimes, he spent a couple days melting down. Soon as the brighter Chaz showed him the matches-and-water AOL, Trip told the Yachts there would be no such thing as the Yachts anymore, and then, when they asked him if they couldn’t please still just be Yachts without him, he beat the tar out of them for a few minutes before Duggan heard shouting and intervened. Then he hid out in the production house and refused to leave for the entire weekend. He’d let me bring him his meals, but hardly spoke to me, and wouldn’t let anyone else inside.”
“Not Fon?”
“I bet he’d have let her in, and I think he wanted Jonboat to come talk to him, but they were both doing a kind of joint charity/propaganda-appearance tour in Central Africa, and Trip was too full of self-hate to call either of them, I guess. By Sunday afternoon, it didn’t look like he’d be going to school the next day, and that was okay with me—if all he needed was a couple more days to himself—but I could tell that wasn’t all he needed. It was grim in that production house, Belt. The poor kid. He wasn’t working, just lying around. Wouldn’t eat the food I brought him. Wasn’t even crying, just…flat. He tried reading your book again, which, a lot of times, that gets him out of a funk, but: no go. Just didn’t work, and the fact that it didn’t made him feel even worse, he said. And he wouldn’t talk to a shrink, he would barely talk to me, he refused to accept three separate phone calls from his godsister, his parents wouldn’t be back for another couple weeks, so, finally, I brought him a Panacea, and only then did he get back on the horse.”