The Serf’s Hologram Remitted
Traditional
cords of jute held the squirrel-sized bundles of Nazi memorabilia and brown
saxophones. To one side of the
ceremonial basket in which these bundles stood like one-legged soldiers were
the protesters, a phalanx of bearded youths and their lank-haired women, all of
them dressed in heavy coats and jeans of decidedly socialist manufacture. These protesters had been momentarily
silenced by the arrival of the christchild, who stood on an elaborately
decorated box of gold box set on a litter borne by seven functionaries in
all-concealing garments. The
christchild, though still too young to stand alone, did so anyway, and waved at
the people assembled here on the floor of Mr. Mexican’s mighty dome. One could hear the indistinct murmur of
conversation from one of the adjoining rooms.
“What are
they saying?” Grosvenor Bobsqueak, a
temporal stand-in for any of a number of my intermediate manifestations, asked
Schaeffer Detour. The two men were
sitting in the makeshift press box glued with hopeful permanence high on the
interior of the dome, although neither was a member of any recognized
permutation of the press.
Schaeffer put
his ear to Mr. Mexican’s folding table and listened.
“Two voices,
maybe three,” he determined. “Although
that last could be a television. Yes,
definitely television. Probably tuned to
a commentary on last year’s ceremony.”
Grosvenor
kept his thoughts to himself concerning this determination. He doodled in his notebook and the doodle
looked like this:
Masterton could
play the piano. He was self-taught and
knew nothing about reading music, but had composed over a hundred short
pieces. He ended his shift by checking
on the disused studio down in the basement.
