Wednesday, August 27, 2008

TRAVELS IN THE SCRIPTORIUM Travels in the Scriptorium. A demented man, Mr. Blank, a war criminal on trial, tries to remember. Like us. "The old man sits on the edge of the narrow bed, palms spread out on his knees, head down, staring at the floor. He has no idea that a camera is planted in the ceiling directly above him. ... The Confederation... The Con-fed-e-ra-tion... It's all very simple, isn't it? Just another name for America. Not the United States as we know it, but a country that has evolved in another way, that has another history. But all the trees, all the mountains, and all the prairies of that country stand exactly where they do in ours. The rivers and oceans are identical. Men walk on two legs, see with two eyes, and touch with two hands. They think double thoughts and speak out of both sides of their mouths at once. ... The Confederation is a fragile, newly formed state composed of previously independent colonies and principalities, and in order to hold this tenuous union together, what better way to unite the people than to invent a common enemy and start a war? In this case, they've chosen the Primitives. Land is a double agent who's been sent into the Territories to stir up rebellion among the tribes there. Not so different from what we did to the Indians after the Civil War. Get the natives riled up and then slaughter them. ... What if the rumor of an insurrection is no more than a blind to cover up a far more sinister undertaking: a quiet slaughter of the Primitives that would enable the government to open their territory to white settlement, to expand the reach of the Confederation all the way to the shores of the western ocean? ... Yes, Land was sent into the Territories as a double agent, with instructions to stir up the Djinn into invading the western provinces, which would unleash the war the government so desperately wants. But Land fails in his mission. A year goes by, and when nothing happens after all that time, the men in power conclude that Land has betrayed them, that for one reason or another his conscience has gotten the better of him and he's made peace with the Djinn. So they cook up a new plan and send a second army in the Territories. Not from Ultima, but from another garrison several hundred miles to the north, and this contingent is much larger than the first, at least ten times larger, and with a thousand troops against a hundred, Land and his ragtag bunch of idealists don't have a chance. Yes, you heard me correctly. The Confederation sends in a second army to wipe out the first army. All in secret, of course, and if a man such as Graf should be sent out to look for Land, he would naturally conclude that the Djinn are responsible for that pile of stinking, mutilated corpses. At this point, Graf becomes the key figure in the operation. Without knowing it, he's the person who's going to get the war started. How? By being allowed to write his story in that crummy little cell in Ultima. ... That's the crucial point: a vivid, eyewitness account of what happened, with all the blame put on the Djinn. ... When is this nonsense going to end? It will never end. For Mr. Blank is one of us now, and struggle though he might to understand his predicament, he will always be lost. I believe I speak for all his charges when I say he is getting what he deserves - no more, no less. Not as a form of punishment, but as an act of supreme justice and compassion." Telegraph: "The letter began, 'My fellow Americans, I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease'. Ronald Reagan then went on to explain why he and his wife Nancy had chosen to go public. The letter ended, in a style befitting the curtain call of a veteran of Hollywood B-movies, with the words, 'I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life'. This week, we learned that Reagan's political soulmate, Margaret Thatcher, has embarked on her own journey into the sunset with confirmation of her battle with dementia." 2:10:02 PM

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