On this dark foggy and very early Saturday morning Metronome does that thing where he closes his media feed, then reflexively re-opens it. A tablet which he manipulates with one limp-wristed index finger is propped against a stack of nice hardcover lit mags he'll probably only read the first couple pages of. Online the people he went to college with are doing fun things with disposable incomes. There is a selfie of an old roommate with his back to the sunrise on top of a mountain, somewhere; a blonde he sat next to in lower-division math is drinking mimosas in a gondola supernavigating some famous dam or gorge; a guy who paid Metronome to write his economics papers is bungee-jumping Victoria Falls on PTO.
Looking into the tablet's camera, Metronome contemplates posting a picture of himself eating raisin bran in pajama pants, hair sleep-matted and face slick with nocturnal grease, but his social instincts tingle in an unpleasant way.
He closes the media feed again, with superextra intention this time, really jamming the touchscreen, but hesitates at the blank home screen, finger hoving, and recalls a story he just read about an orangutan raised in captivity that had a cardiac event when a zookeeper forgot to lock the enclosure's door.
Okay, it was just a lengthy headline. Which he skimmed.
He knows he should be writing, but a lack of dialogue has him discouraged. The editor of a certain local arts zine has a new policy whereby she won't print anything that's less than two-thirds dialogue. (She's trying to do this for a living, you know, and she's got to consider her audience, college students aged eighteen to twenty-five who don't want their stories muddied with tedious paragraphs of abstraction.)
Metronome, via text, with palpable disgust: "That's basically a screenplay. Who wants to read a screenplay?"
The editor, icily: "Most people." She's a pragmatist, the editor, a lip-pierced twig with latte and hipster glasses. They'd been partners in a miserable biology lab a few years back, united in their contempt for objective science, the disciples of which Twig ridicules in her weekly editor's addresses; she proofs their hate mail with red pen and pays extra to publish glossy and in full color. Honestly, Metronome buys the zine just to chuckle at their many tense errors and homophonic confusions. It's petty, he knows, but in periods of self-doubt he sustains himself by ridiculing inferior people for perspective-dependant shortcomings. It wouldn't be so bad if his criticism weren't so sharp — he's always slipping, cutting himself, and feeling like shit while his ego tries to reknit itself.
Under the table, his dog, Mickey, a slothish rottweiler, farts, long and pinched, and Metronome becomes aware that his media feed's back on his tablet's screen — how'd that happen? He's scrolling again, eyes jumping vertically to track jetsam in the stream of information. At this rate there's no way he's getting to any of his actual paid work; first he must clear his head. Metronome, a deflated balloon at 6am on a weekend: "Mickey: walk?" Mickey, frantic, barks, scouring the parquet floor with his blunt doggy nails. If anything could make me that happy, Metronome wishes, inserting himself into his parka, attaching a leash to Mickey's collar, feeling vicarious joy by his pet's squirming nub. Great animal, the dog. Emotion minus self-doubt, vitamin D in deep winter, a guideline out of his life's cave.
They go down to the street and get in a car. The driver likes dogs and says so, several times, in brittle English. He finds himself reaching for his phone but makes a conscious decision to leave it in his pocket, choosing instead to listen as the driver talks at Mickey in formal-sounding Pashu.
They exit the vehicle at the boundary of Central Park and proceed into its wooded heart. Mickey is straining the leash and barking at nothing. The fog is so thick it accumulates like fine spray on Metronome's unshaven face. While fumbling to give the driver five stars Mickey yanks the lead from between his fingers, gets loose, sprints off barking and trailing leash. Interspersed between dog noises he hears a woman's distant screams, dampened by precipitation.
Metronome, shouting, a little panicked: "Mickey! Mickey!" Is he worried about the woman or his dog? The sounds seem everywhere but he moves towards his best guess, through trees and then bushes, pushing back into the city's rural core. Finally it becomes obvious that he is close. He sees dark shapes thrashing around in the cover of a Himalayan pine. The woman is curled on the grass. A man in a knit hat is shouting incoherently, trying to escape into the trees, but Mickey has his teeth in him.
The woman, crying: "Call the fuckin' police!" Metronome obliges. Thank god he has his phone.
Before presenting the medallion, the administratively fat lieutenant gives a fifteen-minute speech reiterating the department's stance on rape. They do not condone rape; they don't support it at all; there's absolutely nothing about rape that they like; they would be very pleased if rape never happened again, ever; also please note that this award does not imply any association between the recipient and the NYPD, nor does it grant the recipient any special authority or privilege; the medallion's approximate value is $0.01; it cannot be sold or exchanged for goods or services; etcetera.
The lieutenant: "There's quite a bit more here, but we're just going to post this on our digital bulletin board, if anyone's interested." He bends. The medallion's ribbon goes around Mickey's neck. "Perhaps it is no surprise that man's best friend shares man's sense of justice. Without Mickey's heroic intervention, a rape might have occurred. Though it is possible that one of my officers would have shown up moments later. In fact, some might say Mickey was channeling the spirit of the entire NYPD when he heroically bit the rapacious vagrant's left calf. Hard to say, exactly, who is and is not responsible." A woman in jogging shorts nods from a folding chair. Mickey pants, gazing half-lidded into an empty middle space. Someone's secretary reaches onstage, trying to get him to hold a bunch of bodega flowers in his mouth, while an observing photographer makes encouraging noises. Mickey tries to amble off the stage, but a boom operator prods him back to his spot by the podium.
The lieutenant, bolding improvising: "In a way, we were all there. All of us. All of humanity," gesturing for the collected reporters to start clapping. There is no audience, or even anywhere for an audience to sit, but the newsmen know the implication of stages and podiums, and have the cameras positioned to encourage certain conclusions. The lieutenant, spent, abandons his post, and a pair of deputies begin disassembling the stage. Metronome figures it's time to reclaim his dog.
The reporters, intercepting: "You're the owner? Care to comment?"
Metronome: "Is that camera running? Oh, god. I'm, um, truly thrilled — truly thrilled to be able to — um, have the opportunity, to make such a difference, by making this contribution, for the good of — um, society."
"How long have you had Mickey?"
"I have been Mickey's owner — uh, that is, I've taken personal responsibility for his care and maintenance, in keeping with the standards put forth by the — uh, federal government's, uh, Animal Welfare Act — since you can't really own an animal, of course, they're, uh, free agents in this, um, multilogue, uh, and I am of course grateful that he — um, allows me to take care of him — I've been doing the, uh, aforementioned action? — for, um, about the duration of four years — or so."
The reporters, yawning in perfect sync, trudging towards a decaled news van parked in the bike lane: "Calm down, kid, it's just the news." Mickey wags his back half, and Metronome, coldly sweaty, kneels to examine the medallion. Official Honorary Unofficial Non-Human Associate of the New York Police Department is circumscribed around a seal that looks like a seal balancing on its nose a sealed envelope printed with New York's state seal. Dried saliva and tooth-sized divots indicate that the medallion has spent an appreciable amount of time in Mickey's mouth. Mickey snatches the medal from Metronome's hand and swallows with finality.
Metronome: "That's a bad dog, Mickey."
Mickey, growling: "You disgust me."
"A woman in Guatemala or someplace whose taps start running red after she kills her son's goat to spit-roast for a wedding. She's obese and wearing some ripped-up secondhand clothes and in one hand she's dragging a limp kid and in the other a cracked bucket full of what looks like computer or radio scrap. She's being followed by a filthy and uncollared mutt bitch with good teeth and attractive hip dimensions. The woman is shouting in Spanish that the grainy red water bubbling from the one single tap she's got sticking out of the cracked cement wall of the bare room she calls her kitchen is the Blood of Christ send from God as a punishment for the goat, which wasn't hers to kill. What is Christ's Blood? What does it do, and exactly how is it a punishment? Can you drink it or will it kill you or what? The woman is furious and scared. She's got a dirt-lined creases in her face, is missing all of her front teeth, has a lazy eye, and this all juxtaposes strangely with the boom mic you can see jostling above her as she marches through the red mud of the rain-channeled road with her child and scrap and dog. As the screen fades out a voiceover asks Will Maria Find A Way To Get Rid Of The Blood Of Christ? Now we are being told to buy precious stable gold. Now a commercial for some device that does something with magnets. Now Eat at McDonalds, it's good food, it's healthy and nourishing and tastes good, also it's cheap. Now we are being told to sell all of the nasty old gold we have lying around the house. Now we are being told there are good and affordable alternatives to denture paste which you can purchase by dialing this number. Now a self-referential bit about how people who drink Starbucks are too clever to fall for something as obviously self-serving as televised advertising. Here's Maria again. The voiceover's telling us now that it actually wasn't the Blood of Christ after all. They just now checked, just now while we were away watching the other shit, and it turns out that the red was just rust. Oh my god. It was just rust after all. I can't believe it. This is literally hell. I cannot believe people put themselves through this. All that shit they said in the previous half-hour about Will Maria Get Rid Of Christ's Blood was abject nonsense invented and forcibly inserted as a plot device. How did you not see this coming?" Mickey says, panting.
Metronome, peeling back the plastic film on his microwave dinner: "You need to chill, Mick. Hey, how about some video games?"
Mickey, sniffing at a homeless: "You debase yourself! Why participate in a system that treats you so poorly? Society says it is shameful to be without possessions, but what good has society done you? Cast-off burgers? Secondhand clothes? Pervasive advertising? You can bear your poverty with pride! To the wilds with you, lad!"
The homeless whimpers and retreats further into a sleeping bag. Metronome tosses an apologetic dollar and drags Mickey into the veterinary hospital, located between an As Seen On TV store and a cafe that sells gourmet dog food that looks like human food.
The waiting room is oddly crowded for eight am. Several people and their animals swivel their heads in Metronome's direction as he enters. A man with a parrot sneezes. The parrot: "Gesundheit," and Mickey's eyes blaze.
Metronome, to the receptionist: "No appointment."
Her, peering over the counter at Mickey: "An emergency, then?"
"Yes. He talks."
"We've never seen a talking dog before. Are you sure that counts as a disease? It isn't an emergency, anyway. Take a seat."
There's one empty spot next to a guy with pattern baldness and a sleeveless shirt, who leans in conspiratorially, gesturing with his chin: "Ignore her. She's not a doctor. She can't diagnose or prescribe. My rat Eddie's dying of stomach cancer. All he wants is a little medical pot. To ease his passing. She says they don't prescribe medical pot for animals. But they gave him ketamine a couple weeks back. He went through it too fast and now they've got him flagged as drug-seeking. But all he wants now is a little medical pot." A normal-looking white rat emerges from his enormous and sweaty blue-collar palm. "It's a travesty. I'm starting a petition as soon as I get home. So many suffering rats in this city, but do they care?"
A man in blue scrubs, calling from a pair of swinging double-doors: "Mr. Marino? With Eddie the Rat? Hello, Mr. Marino. How are you."
"Could be better, doc. Really could be better."
"Where's Eddie? Do you have him with you? Mr. Marino, this isn't Eddie."
"What's that?"
"Mr. Marino, this is not our regular patient. Eddie is a distinctive tortoiseshell."
"That's absurd. I know my own rat."
"Mr. Marino, is Eddie dead?"
"Does this look like a dead rat to you? You're totally incompetent. You need to be reported. They should take your practice."
"Did something happen to the terminally cancerous Eddie, and so now you're bringing us an imposter, Mr. Marino?"
"He only wants a little medical pot. To ease his passing." He holds out the rat in the beggar's bowl of his hands. The creature flicks its tail and grooms itself.
Mickey, irrelevant, at nobody in particular: "You do things for money only because you were raised in a system where things are done for money."
The conversation about the rat stops. The vet, staring, chewing his pen: "I've worked with talking animals before, you know. Psittaciformes and the like. You'd be amazed at what they absorb. I had a lady in here with a budgie that wouldn't stop saying Make America Great Again. It used to just chatter prettily about the weather, but suddenly it's saying Make America Great Again, Make America Great Again, Make America Great Again. The first time it said it was in the middle of a tupperware party, which was understandably hilarious, but when she realized that it wasn't going to stop she brought it in to have its vocal folds destroyed. Any time it heard anyone else talking it would start saying Make America Great Again. On the phone, answering the door, sitting down to dinner. Middle America was squatting in her living room, she said. They'd mind-controlled her dear budgie in an attempt to destroy her social life, which was healthy for a woman her age. Of course people stopped answering her calls, or they'd hang up outright when they heard the budgie cackling in the background."
"How much does it cost to destroy some vocal folds?"
The vet, ignoring: "I've never seen a talking dog, but that's the least interesting part, really. Dogs don't tend to have opinions on things. What would a mere talking dog say? BIRD! BIRD! BIRD! SQUIRREL! SQUIRREL! SOMEONE'S AT THE MOTHERFUCKING DOOR! SOMEONE'S AT THE MOTHERFUCKING DOOR! No, this dog here is something else entirely. That's my pro-bono professional opinion."
Metronome, clearly exasperated: "I just want it to stop."
The vet: "Why don't you try empathizing with him instead?"
Mickey, loudly: "I shit in the streets, and it suits me fine."
The vet, furrowing: "Is it always holier-than-thou one-liners?"
Mr. Marino, with armpit stains: "So, about Eddie, then."
The late-nite producer, Alice, pronounced Ahlees, six-two brunette with bold haircut, watches the ocean from the window of her thirtieth-floor office. She's dialing the phone and thinking hard about the talking dog. Great animal, the dog. Phenomenal appeal. No better talking animal. Rottweiler, not ideal. Lab or retriever would be better. Still, it'd be negligent not to capitalize on it. Zero coverage so far. Certified fresh. Doesn't really fit the brand, interviewing an animal, but hey — a fucking talking dog. Possible world-first exclusive. Didn't make it this far playing safe. The sheer spectacle! A talking dog! Tens if not hundreds of millions. Bigger than the Super Bowl. Once in a lifetime. A talking dog! Possibly a hoax. They say the video hasn't been edited, but who the fuck are they? Everything's fake these days. Probably a hoax. A talking dog!
Alice, into the phone: "Is this the owner of the talking Rottweiler? Fantastic. I represent a certain late-nite program. We want your dog on our show. Let's talk money."
Metronome, apprehensive: "Mickey's not really interested in money."
"The dog told you this? So he's very communicative? He's got a lot to say?"
"I mean. Yeah, I guess. He's not very good at plain social stuff. He doesn't ever just ask how your day's been or anything. Hey man, how's it going. How's life. You doing okay? No, it's always another hypercritical rant about how I should completely redesign the way I experience life."
"Yeah? And how is he with pop culture?"
"We've been hanging out, but it feels like he isn't even here. He won't just watch TV or just sit and watch me play video games. Distraction this, distraction that. Everything's a distraction, a crime against the natural human condition, throw out your silverware and eat with your hands, wearing shoes makes you dependant on shoes. Etcetera."
"He's not good with shoes?"
"He really hates shoes, and money. He ate my trainers and my billfold, plus like two bucks in change. He calls it an artificial representation of value. He says it will destroy the world."
"Thirty percent of our ad revenue's in shoes. We can't have him coming on telling people not to wear shoes."
"I'm with you there. I've got to find him a canine psychiatrist. Get him sedated. We can't go anywhere together anymore. Any kind of commercialism puts him in a fit. You blind yourselves with phantoms, you lure yourself from true joy! Anything. A billboard, a loose flyer. He's off the rails."
"If we come at it from the right angle, maybe. Cast him as a sort of eccentric genius. Too Smart For This World. Look at the crazy shit he says oh wow that kind of makes sense but let's not think about it for too long or we might end up like him. I'm thinking a sort of David Rottweiler Wallace. An incomprehensible force of good so intense it leaves you blind and deaf."
"You'll pay me for it?"
"Of course we'll pay you for it. A reasonable amount. It's just a talking dog, after all. It's not like anyone's cured cancer here. We're not down the barrel of a paradigm shift. He's a novelty. He belongs in a zoo. But until then—"
"You can put him on your show, but with one condition. Afterwards, you have to find me someone who can make it stop." "Now that's an exclusive!"
"I want it to be like castration, but for the voice."
"Castration, but for the voice. I'm writing this down exactly as you say it. We'll write up a contract. Wait — can he read?"
Mickey, howling: "You are a leaking bucket! In escaping discomfort, you escape your humanity! You feed an insatiable hunger!" The downstairs neighbor pounds on the floor with a broom handle, and Metronome turns up the volume on the television. On-screen, in a tense moment, the protagonist sips a branded soda. Metronome wonders if he'll be able to put off the report he's supposed to be writing, a year-end budget for a nonprofit gifting proprietary touch-screen tablets to rural Kenyan schools. The CEO had expected to fund expansion with microtransactions programmed to "fix" the tablets' rapid planned obsolescence, but rural Kenyans were proving hesitant to microtransact, preferring instead to salvage the hardware for its useful components. The CEO, enraged, was sending e-mails littered with verbiage that would clinch multiple resignations, if leaked — "Do these goddamn ******* know what PROPRIETARY means?" — and now the CFO wanted to file the entire project as a capacity-building expense, which he claims will look better on grant applications. Metronome's floundering in a third revision, trying to gracefully insert a poorly-written "success story" about a nine-year-old Kenyan girl named Tuesday Glorious Mkwabe getting a high score in some app called Bojarggled between Meals and Transportation. Bored, Metronome opens a new window and navigates to the Wikipedia page for dogs. The domesticated dog, of the genus Canis, is a mammalian quadruped, and the most widely-distributed carnivore in existence. The dog was the first species domesticated by humans, and as such, humans and dogs have evolved alongside one another for thousands of years. Domestic dogs have been selectively bred for most of their history, resulting in an extreme diversity of size, shape, color, and temperament across hundreds of discrete breeds. Due to recurring human-facilitated inbreeding, domestic dogs suffer from a variety of genetic diseases, including hip dysplasia, patella luxation, epilepsy, degenerative myelopathy, and brachycephalic syndrome; many domestic breeds are intentionally bred to produce offspring with brachycephalic traits, in spite of the potentially life-threatening respiratory complications it causes. Dogs suffer from many of the same diseases that humans do, including obesity, diabetes, cancer, and arthritis. The average dog lives for ten to thirteen years. Due to their close proximity to population centers, domesticated dogs are the most common vectors of rabies to humans. Fredrik the Great of Prussia coined the term "man's best friend," referring to one of his Italian Greyhounds. Dogs are commonly used as household pets and therapy animals. Dogs are among the most commonly sterilized and euthanized animals. Experiments performed on undomesticated canines demonstrate that domesticated dogs are poorer problem-solvers than their wild ancestors, indicating that, by aligning themselves with humans, domestic dogs have lost some portion of their inherent problem-solving ability. Dog meat is a regional cuisine in parts of East Asia. Canine copulation so often involves unreceptive females that the canine penis has a structure called the bulbis glandis, which swells upon penetration, locking the animals together, preventing a distressed female from escaping insemination. Metronome looks at Mickey, who's parked lapping his genitals in the radiator's warm aura, and feels a bit sick.
Mickey, during a brief pause: "Behold! I've bought you a man!"
There is a knock at the door. Before Metronome can answer it two men in plainclothes push into the apartment, taking Metronome by the arms and forcing him into his recliner. Mickey menaces them from the corner with a few words on all of life's obstacles being self-imposed.
Metronome, calmer than most hostages: "Who are you guys?"
The men: "Ex-FBI. Agents for hire. Where's the medal, Metronome?"
"How do you know my name?"
"Welcome to 2018, kid. We know your name, address, SSN, blood type, prescriptions, sleep schedule, driving record, account balance, credit history. We know your favorite pizza spot and preferred brand of laundry detergent, what TV shows you follow, how terrible you are at first-person shooters. We know that you read the New York Times on the toilet and that it takes you less than a minute to get off on PornHub. We know your username and password on Amazon, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit. This is what happens when you live on the internet. It's not like the real world, where you can sometimes get away with peeing in an alley. Everything is valuable: the merest individual mouseclick or keystroke, when parsed in aggregate with billions worldwide, can identify previously unknown facets of human behavior, which can be sold to corporations that exploit them for profit. You are a cow, Metronome — a dumb coerced animal that milks itself daily. Not one drop is wasted. Now, again: where is the medal?"
Metronome, unfazed, gesturing towards his dog: "He ate it."
The men: "Oh, god. Our client's not going to like this. I guess we're taking the dog, then."
Metronome: "Want his leash?"
Later that evening, on Metronome's television, with loud music and the cheering of a live studio audience: "Father, self-made billionaire, respected academic, and decorated veteran of three wars, the magnificent talking dog and leading 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate, Mickey the Talking Dog!" Metronome watches, totally confused, as Mickey enters from offscreen, bounding healthily, sort of smiling.
Talk show host DJ Thrill Kill, kneeling: "Who's a good boy? Who's a good good boy?" and being licked with dignity. He guides Mickey to the couch, and Mickey sits on it, gently panting, well-lit.
DJ Thrill Kill, teeth aglitter: "So Mickey, what's good?"
Mickey, without human expression: "A woman asked me the other day if I thought the war on drugs was underfunded. I said absolutely, absolutely the war on drugs is severely overfunded."
"What's up with this running for president shit I heard."
"As a family man, a proud married father of four beautiful girls, I can't believe the bad shape of this country's system of education. We need to focus on the future by investing in oil and pharmaceuticals."
"And what about shorties' rights?"
Mickey, tongue lolling: "I'm not calling my opponent a white supremacist, but I certainly wouldn't vote for one."
The live studio audience erupts. Streamers, confetti, and several bouquets land in crumpled piles on the stage. The two then play a game where Mickey jumps and catches tennis balls in his mouth while answering trivia. He gets every ball but misses every question, opting instead to drop choice pop references that Metronome will see circulating as gifs for the next several months.
DJ Kill Thrill, ending the segment: "Shit's lit, Mick."
Mickey, frothily barking: "USA! USA! USA!"
Submitted September 26, 2018 at 07:21AM by Bradley__ https://ift.tt/2Obp601
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