EMAIL FROM SECURITY CHIEF ARTUR ADIRONDACK
IN RESPONSE TO JAVVY’S UNAUTHORIZED MISSIVE
ABOUT BELLE EPOQUE
Ten-hut!
You know when it all went to heck? I’ll tell ya when it all went to heck. January the F-F-F-First in the year Two Thousand. That was the exact day. Because that was the day that all heck was supposed to break loose, the day all this internet digital cyber-ninja inhuman fascist pedo-insanity was supposed to blow up — boom! — and be done.
No more space lasers, no more voting machines, no more computers, done, hasta la bye-bye, bring back people you can look in the eye, an actual eye not a red light dot, and let a mouse go back to being a dang mouse, something you hit with a hammer if you find it on your desktop.
(And yeah, more people were worried about space lasers in the 1980’s than they are now — just ask Reagan and his Star Wars efforts — so don’t think anything happening today is new in any sense of the word. There are no new conspiracy theories, every one of them is as old and cold and malignant as time, because time equals mortality and that means death and none of us is gonna beat it, so we fictionalize villains that turn us into heroes. Want to hear a sigh? Sigh. Just do me one courtesy, human being to human being, remember that Q came from Star Trek and was Chicken Little before that. Nothing is new, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and it’s impossible to prove a “not”. But I digress.)
So that was the day — Jan One, Two Thousand — that TMI was supposed to end, that we were supposed to stop hearing stuff we really don’t want to know about, because, for me, there are too many things I will never understand and even more that I do not believe, and I do not want to have to.
But dang if tech did not melt down on Jan One or Jan Two, in Two Thousand or any other year since, and, how-do-you-do, this digital world isn’t making us closer, it’s driving us apart because people by nature are trusting and they believe what they hear whenever it explains away what frightens them, even if it’s a complete f-f-f-lie.
Because none of us believes that fear ever lies. I mean, why would it? Fear is the wisdom of painful experience, isn’t it? And what could be more real and true than pain?
Which is what brings us to Javvy, pronounced “Havvy”, or as we call him “Havvy HaveNot”, the pained person who emailed you mid-day yesterday, and I’m sorry.
I’m head of security for Madame Belle — now the estate — and if Y2K had been Y2K, you would not have ever in your life heard of Havvy HaveNot unless maybe you caught his act howlin’ at the moon some night in Yakima when the keg ran dry.
So, sorry, we will find out how he got those e-mails out to everyone and we will stop it. But, just so you know, he’s no harm. He’s just havin’ a hard time letting go of Belle, I mean you gotta understand all he’s been through to try and please her, all the changes he made for her, back and forth, guy girl guy girl guy girl, girl guy, I’ve lost track, changes all over the place because it was what he thought she wanted, and then she up and died on him, and now what is he?
Nonetheless, stay clear of Havvy HaveNot for no reason other than he’s too time-consuming. And because Madame Belle’s last wishes were very clear. And being as I was the one who found her like that and couldn’t do nothin’ to help her, the least I can do is see to it that her final wishes are honored. The least I can do.
I’m Captain Artur Adirondack, Epoque Security Systems, and you are dismissed.
Have a good day now. See you at the memorial on April 30.