Editing Malady (section)

==Sickness==
Our health has suffered here in Cuba, not least because we have a
very narrow diet. It consists of salted pork and dirty rice each day for
lunch and dinner, and a mango in the morning. Perhaps even the
nutrition is fine, but it has made us feel ill just the same. That's what
you get when you eat a steady diet of junk.


Aristotle began to feel ill. He was twenty-nine years old. Phoenix
had treated him quite well since he had arrived there, and he had met
with great success. He and Iggy went out to dinner on Tuesdays, and
the rest of the week he cooked a simple meal over the gas flame of his
kitchen range. It reminded him of the fires he had built with giggles.


His home was small, and it was furnished very sparsely - clean lines
everywhere, and walls in various shades, all completely flat. He loved
his home, and he loved his work. It truly was his work. Shortly after
arriving in Arizona he had founded Halcyon. Now, a few years later,
business was booming, and he sent out new bids every day. He called
the work interpretation. He said he would speak the language of the
machines so that his clients didn't have to. He built systems for them,
and he told the systems exactly what it was that the client wanted.
They always listened, and Ari felt that his job was easy.


He enjoyed it, though, speaking to the machines all day. He was the
best. Let us not forget that no one was as fluent as Aristotle. It showed
in his success, which was tremendous, and which was noticed
throughout the industry. But Ari began to feel ill.


He couldn't explain it to his doctors - he didn't even try. Perhaps
illness is not the right word. Perhaps we're really talking about a
malady. In any case, Aristotle did not feel at all well. Each day when the
veil of his dreams lifted, he felt it growing stronger inside of him, this
malaise, this malady, and he did not know what to do. At first there
were no symptoms, only the creeping feeling that something was
inside him, and that is should not be there. Ari tried to tell himself
that it was psychosomatic, but he had never been a hypochondriac,
and didn't know why he would start now. Day by day the feeling grew,
some days more than others, but always by at least a little, and never
by a lot. In the early days of sickness, Aristotle thought that it was
entirely within. But soon it seemed that it was outside of him, too. He
could see it in the faces of children and colleagues, people he met on
the street. The growth began to accelerate, and soon the sickness was
everywhere, growing stronger by the day, not airborne or bloodborne,
but borne of the spirit. Perhaps he had been sick all along, perhaps
everyone had - but Aristotle saw it now, could feel it creeping, knew
that it was deadly. He wondered sometimes if he was the only one who
could see it, or if it was simply too terrible to speak of. But his brother
saw it, and felt it too. There was a sickness about, and they were falling
ill so quickly.


Aristotle often wondered if giggles was still out there, squatting
and stealing in the dark and the dust. He was sure that he was, and he
was sure that the sickness would never effect the squat. It was
something above the surface. Perhaps it was on the airwaves or it came
in through the uplink, but it was real, and soon it became clear. It was
clear enough that people began to speak of it, but only at a whisper,
and never during daylight, and not in front of children. It was the
radicals who began to discuss it first, on the left and on the right, but
they were sure that they were unaffected. In their heart of hearts,
perhaps, they knew the truth, that they were as ill as the others. No
one was immune, and soon enough they would all fall prey.


Still Aristotle went to work each day, and still on Tuesdays he met
Iggy for dinner. But it was the first thing he thought about in the
morning, and like a rotten memory it would at times buzz loudly in his
ear as he drank his coffee or as he sat at his desk.


It was real, he was sure. He only spoke of it with his brother, and
rarely at that, but he heard other rumblings of it, and he was sure that
it was real. He was sure that it was real now, and that it was getting
worse, and that it had been getting worse for a long time. Most people,
he surmised, were completely oblivious to it, even if they had it bad,
and even if they were giving it to the people that they loved. But Ari
was not content to let it take him, and he knew that there had to be
something he could do. There was always the squat, but he did not
want to go back to that. So he decided that he would pay attention,
and that even if he could not breathe a word, he would work towards
an understanding of the malady. He set about his task by identifying
the symptoms.


Aristotle began to keep a notebook then. It was large and black,
bound in a soft leather. He marked the front cover - 'Notes on the
Malady.' He set to work. He stared at the humans, and they sometimes
stared back. As Ari kept a watchful eye, patterns began to emerge.
Something was wrong with their minds.


The first, most obvious symptom was avarice. So many of them
were marked with greed. There were penthouses and palaces and
private clubs.


A certain group of humans was defined by their insane desire to
own. These were the worst of the infected. The avarice of the powerful
was beyond measure. They would do anything for profit. They would
rob and lie and manipulate anyone, friend or foe. Always they wanted
more. They wanted more money, they wanted more things, the wanted
more wealth. If ever they obtained their prize, they would only seek a
new thing to covet, more things to covet.


It wasn't that they needed these things. It wasn't even that they
thought they deserved them. It was only that they wanted them, they
fancied them, they would kill for them. It wasn't that there wasn't
enough to go around - it was only an obsession, a sickness, a
dysfunction. Many devoted their entire lives to this endless
acquisition. Many of them valued nothing else. Everybody seemed to
think that getting a bunch of stuff was going to make them happy.
They bought things they could not afford, and they did not care who
would pay the price. Aristotle was astounded by the avarice, and he
marked it clearly in his soft, black book. He felt it all around him,
surrounding him and hounding him. He wanted it to stop.


Aristotle also saw that it wasn't just about the things - the avarice
ran deeper than that. It was simply about more - more of anything.
If one was good, then two was inherently better. More land, more sex,
more pain, more pleasure, more time - they wanted only, always more.


They wanted each other, and they wanted themselves. Always they
wanted themselves, to be bigger, to be cooler, to be more powerful. It
seemed to Aristotle that humans could do little but want.


Their desire for power was perhaps the only thing stronger than
their desire for things. They believed that things come from power. For
power they would lie and cheat and steal. They would kill for power.


The more control, the better - over everything and everyone. They
traded power for money and money for power and went on like that,
always seeing if they could get a bit more.


They wanted power over their friends and families, over the people
who worked down the hall. They wanted their voice to be the loudest,
the shrillest, the most listened to. They had built up these huge
machines of war, so that their power was held up by violence, and
avarice could be their creed. Healthy organisms tend to take only what
they need, but the human organism wanted anything and everything
on which it could lay its hands.


Aristotle had seen it in business and he had seen it in politics, and
he had seen it in sex - it all boiled down to money and power. It went
well beyond the instinct of self-preservation - it was a new form of self-
serving that had no limit whatsoever. It was a boundless avarice that
had overcome so many human minds. It was a limitless greed, and an
endless quest for power. It was corporate fraud and rampant
corruption. It was dividends and stock splits, violence and deceit.


The uninfected did not display this condition - they only took what
they needed and left the rest. Healthy organisms don't take more than
they can use, because they know that it will only go to waste. The
malady could make one forget all that. The malady could make any
little wealth or any iota of power seem to be the be-all-end-all of
existence.


It wasn't mere humans who displayed this avarice, it was humanity
as a whole. Enough of them were infected that their group behavior
was indicative of the disease. The whole of humanity seemed to focus
on how it could reap more from the earth, even when for some time
there had been enough for all to eat.


It was not enough for things to simply exist - it was essential that
they belong to humanity. It was not enough that the earth held
diamonds and gold. They needed to be stripped from the ground and
put into our hands. It was not enough that fish filled the sea - we had
to catch them and eat them. The sky was not enough, and the
mountains were not enough, and the bounty of the planet was simply
not enough.


We took what was given willingly, and then we did not stop. We
drilled and bored and sucked everything we could find. Soon there
would be nothing else, and Aristotle wrote about avarice.


Soon he wrote about malice, too. It wasn't just that humans were
bent on acquisition - it wasn't enough if they did well. They needed to
be better than everyone else. They needed the others to fail, to have
nothing, and be without power. As long as they remained without
power they could be exploited and oppressed.


Certain humans had begun to make excuses for their behavior.
They had offered countless forms of discrimination as reasons why
they could display such malice without shame. It was always another
tribe or another country that they wanted to exploit. It was people
whose skin had a different hue, or those who spoke a foreign tongue. It
was those of the other gender, those of the other class, those of the
other form. Soon it was simply the other.


Humans had come to display a tremendous malice towards one
another. In his notebook, he wrote 'malice.' Aristotle was sure that it
was due to the malady. Other organisms didn't kill for fun, they didn't
murder and rape and torture and kill. Humans had come to hate
whatever was foreign to them. They caused each other untold pain.
They caused the planet pain, simply because they could. They ate
animals raised in tiny prisons of filth, and they threw their plastic trash
into the oceans.


They did all of this despite the consequences. It brought them
pleasure to bring others pain. They did not see what they were doing -
they could not or would not understand. Aristotle wrote 'myopia' at
the top of a page - the malady made the mind myopic.


They did not see that they were rendering a planet unlivable, or
they did not care. Either way, humanity took a view only of what would
happen next. They did not care about the ultimate effect. They burnt
up whatever they could find, and they did not care if it would trap the
sun's heat, or melt the world's glaciers. They killed each other, and it
did not matter that violence is a thing which begets itself, only more
terrible.


It seemed to Aristotle that humanity could not see. It could not see
what fate awaited it, if it continued down its path of malicious avarice.
It did not invest in its own future, but took its money and its power to
make more money and more power. It did not matter who or what was
harmed. All that mattered was the new, the next, the near. So what if
the birds and the beasts went extinct? So what if its possessions were
the product of its own suffering.


Humans did not see, because of their myopia, that they could have
so much more. They did not see that there was enough for all to share.
They did not realize that their consciousness could evolve, if only they
quit their biting and fighting and scratching and digging long enough
to become free. They could be free. There could be freedom and
equality and enough for all humans. Sadly, though, humanity simply
could not see.


Aristotle had found three symptoms so far, and the existence of the
malady was now beyond doubt. He filled page after page with accounts
of astounding avarice, unbearable malice, and the stubborn myopia of
the mind.


It was not easy for Ari to see the worst, but once he started, there
was no turning back. His notes were beginning to form the body of a
pathology. A coherent picture began to emerge, of a terrible disease
inside the body of all humanity. The malady didn't effect every cell, but
it metastasized, and it had come to control the whole being.


Even if only a few cells are malignant, the host is said to have
cancer. It was the same with humanity. Though it was only a portion of
humans who were truly malignant, the malady would kill us all. It was
essential that Aristotle be scientific now, and thorough. It was essential
that he understand.


So Ari moved on and on, and he began to realize that the human
body was also rife with symptoms of the sickness. He could see the
decay. At the top of a new page, Aristotle wrote 'enervation.' He could
see the vitality of the body slipping slowly away. He saw a great
weakness in the beasts. Human anatomy was changing, and it was not
for the better.


The humans had forgotten what their bodies were for - for running
and jumping and swimming and making love. They stuffed themselves
until they were too fat to function, or they starved themselves until
too frail to stand. They did not care for their bodies, and they did not
need them. They had needed them less and less since the dawn of
history. There were machines to do their bidding, and their fingers
forgot the feel of things. They could not feed themselves or make for
themselves a shelter. They could not survive with just the earth. The
enervation was deep. The malady was wrecking by waste the bodies of
whoever it touched.


It wrecked the bodies of the others, too, but in a different way.
There were children starving hysterically, too weak to move. There
were mothers malnourished and the bodies of fathers that withered
away.


The humans could not work the land, and they could not build.
Their hands had become such clumsy tools. They could not see or hear
or smell. The flashing lights and loud bangs and the sulfur-scent of
decay had rendered their senses all but useless. They did not know
which way the wind blew, or if those clouds would bring them rain.
They could not hear each other speak, and they could not hear each
other cry out. They no longer smelled the morning dew or tasted the
sweet summer rain. They only tasted the petulant stench of garbage
and rot.


Aristotle looked around him, and he saw something else. On one of
the few remaining pages in his notebook, Aristotle wrote 'thirst.' It
seemed to him that humanity had an unquenchable thirst. They drank
their double-big-sips, and their two-liter bottles, and their handles of
booze, but the thirst went beyond that. It went to the very root of
their condition.


Humans were thirsty for meaning and joy, of which they had
precious little. They had in them a fundamental drive to understand,
and this drive went always unfulfilled. The uninfected understood that
we only get the privilege of asking questions - we do not demand an
answer. The thirst of the uninfected was satisfied by the wonders of
discovery, even if they would always be thirsty.


Yet the thirst of the infected was not quenched by the status quo.
No matter how much insight and knowledge and technology they
attained, the infected were perpetually distraught. The emptiness and
the shallowness of their lives precipitated a thirst for more than this,
and their absolute avarice told them that they should have an answer
to any question, and at any cost. They did not consider that their mode
of inquiry would soon produce no answer, no matter how small. It was
sad to Ari that they did not realize the nonsense of their demands, but
he could not allow their unquenchable thirst to destroy us, to destroy
them, to destroy it.


At this point, Aristotle had been working feverishly on his project
for eight months, and he felt he was very nearly done. His hope was to
create a document which would allow for the diagnosis of this disease.
He had wanted to include every symptom - he had wanted to be
scientific and thorough.


Yet something still nagged at Aristotle, and though he was proud of
his work, thought he had done fine work, he knew that something still
was missing. He had written extensively about five symptoms of the
malady - avarice, malice, myopia, enervation, and thirst.


He believed that he had categorized the ways in which the
affliction affected the body and the mind. These he had researched and
analyzed thoroughly.


No, the symptoms that remained had to be elsewhere. Aristotle
looked to the soul. Yes, surely the disease affected the soul - perhaps
most of all. But medicine steers quite clear of the soul, and Aristotle
knew that he was entering uncharted territories. The nomenclature to
diagnose a malady of the soul did not exist, and Aristotle knew he
would have to make it up. He had to do it, though, because most of all,
he felt that the disease was in his soul.


After eight months of intense observation of the world outside
himself, Aristotle would have to turn his penetrating eyes inside, and
see what he could find. He told his employees that he was going away,
but he did not say where. He left the company in the hands of Danny,
despite the severity of his timidity. And then he left.


But Aristotle only withdrew to his home, where he stayed almost
all the time. He ventured out occasionally, but only to buy necessities
or to meet Iggy for dinner. I can't describe the process by which
Aristotle searched his soul. I am not Aristotle. Outwardly it consisted
mostly of pacing, and lying motionless on his bed, eyes open wide,
seemingly focused on nothing but the nothing. I cannot describe the
method, so I will have to skip to the findings. In his journal, marked
clearly with the words 'Notes on the Malady,' he had written the
following:


IMPULSE


This is the best word I have been able to find for one of the two
halves of the soul. Not to be confused with impulse in the
psychological or physical senses.


IMPULSE is the product of complexity. It is what gives rise to
the will. Swirling mother of desire, IMPULSE demands it's own
existence. IMPULSE gives rise to the instinct of self-
preservation. IMPULSE is the product of eons of evolution -
from the quark soup of everything's fiery birth to this very
moment. IMPULSE arises from the tendency of complexity to
arise from chaos. Any thing which is distinguishable as a thing
contains IMPULSE. IMPULSE is amplified by complexity. A
planet's IMPULSE exceeds that of a person, which exceeds
that of a proton. IMPULSE is tied closely to existence, but
differs in that it is not a binary - it is variegated and measured in
an infinite spectrum. An object, as a rule, contains all of the
IMPULSE of its constituent parts. The Tau, The Electron, and
The Muon demonstrate the three fundamental flavors of
IMPULSE. A Hydrogen atom, containing a top quark, a
bottom quark, and a single electron contains far more
ELECTRON IMPULSE than the sum of the particles taken
independently. The leap in complexity when particles fuse leads
to an IMPULSE JUMP. The IMPULSE JUMP is even greater
as atoms becomes molecules, and still greater as molecules
become organelles. Organelles become cells, cells become
organs, organs become organisms, and all the while the
IMPULSE grows by orders of magnitude.


Now that I have provided a definition of impulse, I can speak
to the way in which the malady affects the human soul. We are
as a cancer in the organism which is our host - the organism of
earth. The organism of humanity - what we will call civilization
- has become a destructive force. That is to say that it has
arranged itself to contain an impulse which threatens to reduce
the impulse of its host. Those humans who are attuned to their
souls can sense this shift in the impulse of humanity as a whole.
They are aware that we are part of a larger organism, and that
killing our host would result in our own demise. This is at the
root of the malady. We sense a pain in our soul that did not
exist before this shift in impulse. It is experienced by all
humans, perhaps felt, even if they are unable to express this
feeling. It is experienced by all those who play a role in the
organism of civilization. This pain is the calling of a higher
consciousness. Since the dawn of civilization, humanity's
impulse has grown steadily more destructive. This growth has
accelerated rapidly since the dawn of globalization. We sense in
our soul the profound backwardness of the organism that we
have become. In its moments of higher consciousness,
humanity recognizes that its cells are malignant. We cells, in the
relatively feeble consciousness of our own selves, carry out the
destructive impulse of reckless metastasis. This is the essence
of the malady.


PULSE


This is the name I have chosen for the second half of the soul.
PULSE is that element of the soul that provides for
consciousness. PULSE expresses the degree to which an
organism allows for and invites chaos into its being. Humans
possess a greater PULSE than the other organs of earth. Where
IMPULSE is the product of complexity, PULSE is the product
of flexibility. The greater the number of distinct arrangements
that a being is capable of embodying while retaining its
existence, the greater its PULSE. The brain provides for the
vast majority of HUMAN PULSE. It does so through a neural
network. This network is capable of producing a finite but
practically innumerable number of electrical states. PULSE
gives rise to creativity, ingenuity, imagination, and memory. A
single particle also contains PULSE, spinning one way or
another. An atom contains far more, with its constant argument
between quark and lepton. The soul of a human is full of
PULSE, but the soul of humanity is fuller still.
The evolution of the universe is the product of the way that
PULSE affects IMPULSE over time. From a sea of quarks,
PULSE ga ve rise to all complexity by allowing for the
occasional IMPULSE JUMP. The increase in net IMPULSE
when things become more complex increases the chances of
their survival.


Where there is thought, there is PULSE, where there is
consciousness, there is PULSE, wherever there is dynamic
complexity, there is PULSE. Some very simple things contain
tremendous PULSE - amino acids, for example. Some very
complex things contain little PULSE - the crystalline lattice of
diamond is immutable. Diamonds contain little PULSE.
With a definition of pulse, I can now detail the way in which
the malady affects this element of the soul. Simply, it does not.
Thought we are afflicted in our minds and in our bodies, and
though the affliction attacks the soul's impulse most of all, the
pulse remains free of disease. We are as capable as ever of
transformation. This gives me great hope. If we are to fight off
the infection which took hold in humanity at the dawn of
history, the fight will come from our pulse. Pulse has the ability
to cause impulse jumps. Pulse is the only element of humanity
that remains uninfected. We must look to the pulse.


So there you have it. Aristotle looked inside himself, and what he
found was that the sickness was not incurable. He knew now that a
tremendous fight lay ahead, against the twisted impulse of humanity,
against the structure of our civilization. He waited until Tuesday to tell
Iggy the news. Aristotle half expected his brother to tell him that he
had gone mad. He nearly had. But Iggy did not tell Ari that he was a
madman. He only looked at him, and for the first time that either of
them could remember he said:


"You're right."


Though Iggy and Ari agreed on almost all things, they always somehow
found a way to eek out an argument. But this time there was no
argument, and both brothers were alarmed by the clarity of the
pathology. Every member of civilization was part of a deadly disease.


Things got very serious between the brothers in those days. They
met more often, and frequently their conversation turned to the
malady. It was up to them to find a remedy. They needed a pulse. They
had to find a way to rearrange the organism of humanity. As it stood it
consisted of a few very rich and very powerful cells exploiting all of the
weaker ones. These cells took more than they needed, even though it
meant that other cells would not have enough. It seemed to aristotle
that most people were good, but that the destructive impulse of the
people in charge overpowered the fundamental impulse towards
survival. They had to change the balance of power. They had to let the
impulse of the masses reign. All it would take was a blast of pulse.


Aristotle returned to Halcyon two weeks after he finished the
pathology. People told him he looked tired. On the afternoon of his
first day back, he gathered the fourteen employees in their conference
room, and presented his findings. When he was finished, two of his
employees quit on the spot. Eight asked what he wanted them to do
about it. He said he didn't want them to do anything. They went back
to work. Four of his employees only sat there, and when the room had
emptied, it was clear that they understood.


Aristotle went back to his office to log on. As his fingers flew over
the keys, he felt a pulse. He knew instantly that he had found the
remedy, if only he could get it to the people - a network. Humans had
to arrange themselves into a network. The malignant cells retain
control over humanity's impulse because the others are disjointed. If
only the people could be connected, the new impulse of a more
complex being would prevail, and the malaise would be done. Aristotle
felt certain that he had found the remedy - uncensored, unfettered,
untaxed access to each other. It would not be easy - of that he was
certain - but the machines would help. He could talk to them, ask
them to help connect humanity as never before. He could talk to them
as no one else - he, Aristotle the cynosure. He was certain that he
could. He remembered the dream he'd had on that hospital gurney in
Colorado. He remembered the pulsing, heaving diodes of a planetoid
brain - the connectedness of it all. He felt certain he had found the
cure for this affliction. He had found the remedy, and now it remained
only to distribute it to the people. He knew that he would need help,
human and machine both, but he was sure that it would work.


Aristotle was thirty years old when he discovered a remedy for the
malady of civilization. It only took a pulse.


Oy. I don't want to stop here, but my hand says that it's time for a
break. In a sense, this is the part that I think we've both been waiting
for, you and I. Now we get to see what Aristotle is really made of - the
power that has lain dormant in him all this time. I think he was keen
to search his soul like that, and come up with a gem. I guess that's
another way of saying the pulse and impulse thing is something I really
believe. It's not just a tool for the story. In fact, the story is probably a
tool for it. You wouldn't have believed me though, if I had been the
one to tell you. It had to be Aristotle.


To tell the truth, and I do want to be honest, I had pretty much no
idea where the story was going when I finished chaos. I really didn't
know until I wrote that journal entry for Aristotle. I had to get into his
head, which is somewhere in my head. Now though, it seems quite
clear. That is to say that I have pretty good idea where it's headed from
here. I suppose you do too. I'm just excited to let it all play out. I
mean, I don't know what's going to happen, but I certainly know what
I want to happen. Then again, who doesn't want the hero to win?
Unfortunately, it doesn't always turn out that way. There are a lot of
forces aligned against Aristotle now. Then again, he's a pretty
incredible dude, as far as I know, which is pretty damn far.


Also, I'd like to apologize for the tone of this chapter. Even I found
it a little grating. I just wasn't sure what else I could do. I think it was
important that I got across the way that Aristotle viewed the sickness -
the seriousness and the science of it all. I wasn't sure how to do that
without sounding like a stodgy professor.


I must say, it's getting hard for me to do anything besides write this
book. I mean, why else would they give me a summer vacation? Why
else would I be here?


I guess in a lot of ways, I do feel like Aristotle still. Not that I'm
saving the world or anything - I'm just writing a lonely little book. I
just mean in the sense that we both have certain things we're supposed
to do. He's supposed to save the world, and I'm supposed to write
about it. I think it's a nice little arrangement. I definitely get the easier
job of the two. Easy is actually an understatement. I think more than
anything else, I'm shocked at how fun this is. I'm not sure if it's my ego
or what, but I just feel so right while I write. Seriously, you have to give
a try.


Now, besides the fact that the chapter is over, I've really got to go.
Marcus and I have tamale making lessons at a place on 10 y 15. We're
thinking of opening a tamale stand when we get back to school. Got to
make money somehow, and lord knows that this bag of vowels isn't
worth jack shit. But like I said, it's a blast. That's what matters, right?


Alright, see you on the flip side.


Get it?


Flipside?


Sorry. I'll stop.