Vicious Aliens (continued)

Cycle 11

CYCLE 11

This is the song that never ends

Yes, it goes on and on, my friends

Some people started singing it not knowing what it was,

And they′ll continue singing it forever just because

—Shari Lewis, The Song That Never Ends (fragments)

The fact that my friends from the Television Monitoring Agency were missing did not seem to bother anyone else in the building, distracted as they usually were with their own hobbyhorses. On the other hand, everyone noticed that Channel 24 had stopped broadcasting. Channel 24, Nathan’s pet project, so-called because it broadcast twenty-four hours a day, had ground to a complete halt. The TMA’s entirely analogue UHF broadcast facility provided entertainment to a small but devoted audience. The agency, once considered to be the bottom-feeder of the broadcast industry, was now the only game in town. Our retrofitted 100 watt transmitter produced a signal that could only be picked up in Manhattan and even that depended on how much power ‘flywheeled’ through the building at any given time. Nathan realized that we were ideally set up to play recordings from a vast database of archived television that the agency had stored on magnetic tapes. Sometimes, we would even substitute these popular reruns with our own original programming. Given that the electric grid had gone down long ago, power had to be locally generated, block by block, building by building. Yet, despite these limitations, an old-fashioned TV antenna was all that was needed to enjoy our pristine replays of I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, or The Addams Family and if you looked out over the horizon you could see antennas fastened to rooftops across town. The Apthorp was one of a dozen communes scattered across the island and all of them tuned in to Channel 24.

Then something strange happened. The broadcasts started up again. More on that later.

Before I had been selected by lottery to join the re-supply run, my status as a resident at The Apthorp was tenuous at best. It had always been tied to my employment at The TMA, itself a clandestine branch of my father’s TV network. I completely relied on the noblesse oblige of my manager, Nathan Cohen. Therefore, the resident association outlined various chores and custodial duties I would need to perform in order to ensure my continued occupancy and to remain in good standing. During my rounds as the building’s repairman, I began to mingle with the other residents and got to know them better. So it was as a plumber, electrician, handyman or cleaner that I initially met the fab four. The unfortunate byproduct of my role as manual labourer was that I was never taken quite seriously by anyone. While others embarked on “important” artistic self-actualization, my primary concern was basic repairs. Even as I worked side-by-side with the other residents our paths were divergent. This is to say that I was something of a second-class person. I am just trying to set the tone for the cyclone-like dynamic that I was thrust into when I joined the fruitiest combat unit New York City has ever seen. And I say fruity with nothing but love.

On the night after selection, an informal gathering was held at Dreyer’s apartment. Gathering was not the right word for it. It was more like a séance—a séance filled with constant interruptions and snide remarks. The group demanded that I put down my plunger and join them at the dinner table. On that particular evening, Shellstein, Dame Sandra, Kier and Dreyer were attempting to communicate with the spirit of Arthur Rimbaud but were encountering tremendous resistance from the ghost of Paul Verlaine. Conversation was never sparse when I was around the fab four. Regardless of where they were or whatever they happened to be doing, they kept up a running debate, taking turns asserting their own expertise and subtly criticizing each others knowledge gaps, seemingly ignoring the dinner’s psychic subtext. It was in the flux of one of these ongoing arguments that I joined the party. It turns out that commingling with spirits was much like the TMA’S 24-hour broadcasts—supposedly, someone was always watching even if the signal was never quite clear. There were always barriers and obstacles to communication with other realms, whether the result of faulty electronic equipment, human error or limits on physical or spiritual penetration. 

Nathan once told me that the world was haunted by Nipkow’s Ghost. I was never quite sure what he meant by this remark but an awareness had begun to dawn on me that that there were other worlds adjacent to our own, worlds at once close but distant. I realized that I did not yet possess the insight needed to surf between these frequencies. As I sat down to the table, a plate of what tasted like cold beet soup was handed to me. I tried to make small talk while sipping from an oddly angular spoon or what could have been a spork. The strange inconsistency of the dinner, a cross between spiritual communion and late-night talk show, made me somewhat uncomfortable. It was impossible for me to keep up, dazzled by my hosts’ display of knowledge as they discussed and debated every conceivable subject ranging from the history of the alphabet to photochemistry to musical theory. At that very moment, ‘The Shadow,’ Klaus Kier, was performing the role of medium as he attempted to resolve, dramatically I might add, a lover’s quarrel that spanned a century, one that not even death could stem. Verlaine’s Ars Poetica was quoted as were selections from Rimbaud’s Illuminations. There were spontaneous recitals of duelling phrases and lines as if we were caught in military crossfire:

I am the Empire in the last of its decline,

That sees the tall, fair-haired Barbarians pass,--the while

Composing indolent acrostics, in a style

Of gold, with languid sunshine dancing in each line. 

The voice of Verlaine was quickly countered by a selection from Rimbaud:

Enough seen. The vision was encountered under all skies.

Enough had. Sounds of cities, evening, and in the light, and always.

Enough known. The decisions of life. – O Sounds and Visions!

Departure into new affection and noise!

No matter what subject they happened to disagree about, conversation would inevitably come back around to one major topic, the subject most fiercely debated, the one that life and death hinged on—Art. The group discussed the relative strengths and merit of different painters, photographers, filmmakers, sculptors, poets, writers, and musicians even as they channeled them, inhabiting them as dramatis personae or allowing themselves to be mysteriously possessed by them.  The irony was that Art was the one and only subject I could contribute my own perspective to given its inherent subjectivity but I would first have to learn the rhythms of my company, grow to understand my place at the table. My motives were hardly ulterior. I told them I needed their help. By chance or by design, I found myself among this peculiar group of people and would need to gain their trust in order to find my friends from the TMA. Together, our quirky cadre would contend with the dangers that lay in wait for us outside The Apthorp. Forces were gathering and I sensed that they were patient and impossibly cool, their movements eerily premeditated.