The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

A Hustle Both Ways

Previously: "One-Ups All the Way" 

Fuck just got text fr Lorzo while we taking about him, you tell Caleb.

Lol, he replies. What he want?

Wants buy book I show him today.

Don't do it man

Why?

Just don't

You scratch your nose, then call Caleb direct to talk.

"What have you got against Lorenzo?" you ask him when he picks up.

"I don't got anything against him," he replies. "Except he's an arrogant asshole."

"Anything else? Like, why shouldn't I sell him this book he wants? He's offering me fifty dollars for it!"

"What is it?" Caleb asks.

"Just this thing I picked up at Arnholm's the other day. Yeah, it was this thing I was gonna put in the time capsule, then I changed my mind. I brought it out to school with me, and I showed it to him. Now he says he'll buy it from me. Fifty dollars!"

"What's he want it so bad for? If he wants it so bad, you shouldn't sell it to him. Fuck him."

"I don't know what he wants it for. It's no use to me, so why shouldn't I sell it to him? Besides, he knows I've got it and I don't want it. I don't want to just be a jerk to him, tell him I'm not gonna sell him this book, after he does this huge favor for me for Walberg's class."

"Tell him you paid more than fifty for it."

"But I didn't, I told him I only paid two."

"He wants to pay you fifty for something that cost you two?" Caleb exclaims. "Jesus, now you definitely don't want to sell it to him. He's up to something. What's so special about it?"

"Well, come over and look at it and you tell me! It's just this old book, and all the pages are glued shut or something."

"You are living one weird, random-ass life, man," he says after a silence, "if Lorenzo Whiting wants to pay you fifty dollars for a book with glued-together pages that you bought for two bucks. Why did you even buy it if the pages were glued together?"

"I don't know! Arnholm's originally wanted two hundred for it, but—"

"Oh Jesus! What?"

Caleb listens while you give him the whole story, beginning to end, sparing no detail. But when you're done he only grunts.

"Listen, don't sell it to him, he smells an opportunity," Caleb says.

"But like I said, he knows I don't want it—"

"So tell him you got rid of it already. Tell him that I bought it from you, before you heard from him."

"You gonna give me fifty dollars for it?"

"I'm not gonna give you anything for it," he retorts. "I'm just giving you the story you can give him so he'll know why you can't sell it to him."

* * * * *

But you feel like you can't pass up the chance at fifty dollars. Caleb relents with a sigh when you tell him so, and only warns you that you'll regret it when you hear that Lorenzo has resold it to the Smithsonian Museum for a hundred grand because it's a priceless artifact.

Still, in your texted reply to him, you make a point of asking Lorenzo why he wants it.

At first he tries telling you that he's only trying to take a "pointless thing" off your hands. When you ask why it's worth fifty dollars to him to help you this way, he counters by lowering the price to five. But maybe he thinks better of goading you this way, and he calls you direct the way you called Caleb.

"I just got a hunch about it," he says. "Like, it's gotta be worth more than two bucks if Arnholms' was originally charging two hundred."

"Did you try looking it up online?" you ask.

"I didn't know what to look up," he says. "Did you?"

You don't answer, for it now seems like an obvious oversight on your part that you didn't.

"What's it called?" he asks after the silence between you has begun to lengthen.

"Look, fine," you tell him with a sigh. "You want to pay me fifty for it, I'll take fifty for it. No, wait, make it seventy."

"Don't try to hustle me, man," he warns. "Maybe I won't pay you anything."

"I'm just saying, for the price of a new game on launch day, I'll sell it to you."

He thinks a moment, then says, "Done. Bring it to school tomorrow."

"You don't want to come by now and pick it up?"

"Tomorrow's soon enough," he says.

"I might change my mind," you retort.

"If you change your mind," he warns, "don't try changing it back. Offer will be off the table." He hangs up.

You look at the phone, and are sorely tempted to change your mind despite his warning. Then: Just get the money from him, and give him this book he wants so much, you tell yourself, and then you'll be even with him for the favor he did you today. Then you can tell him to go fuck himself.

* * * * *

Still, he's got you thinking about the book, and what it might be and what it might be worth, so you do try looking it up. Summa Libra Personae seems to be the book's title, so you do a web search on it.

Not a lot of results pop up, and most of those are in Latin, which you ignore after a cursory glance over them. But among the results is one that stands out, for its oddity if no other reason. It's a post at a blog called The Precessionary Times-Picayune, and the entry in its entirety reads thus:

Commenters on this site have long impressed me with their wit, their erudition, and their patience with its owner's eccentricities, so this recent dispatch from the world of computer science leaves me serenely confident that I have not set myself up as the idol of androids:

Researchers at the University of Birmingham say they are one step closer to inventing a computer capable of thought.

... In their quest to construct a machine capable of passing the "Turing test" by fooling human interlocutors into believing they are talking to a real person, [the team] has written a software program that can emulate posters in internet forums and chat rooms.

... "Programs that mimic the behavior of paranoid schizophrenics have fooled professional therapists when put in a Turing situation," Dr. Barzun says.

... So, working with university psychologists, [the team] fashioned a program that melds many of the characteristics of several mental diseases, and came up with an artificial intelligence capable of writing internet posts that are hostile, abusive and weirdly on-topic while being completely off-point. In a controlled test involving volunteers, the program was quickly identified as a "troll" and treated accordingly.
So, when the robots finally arrive, they may turn out to be a lot of jerks?
Actually, Luddites on the internet need not fear that they are about to be rendered redundant; a patent on a mechanical calumniator is unlikely to prove lucrative. Rudeness over the internet is a perquisite that humans will likely preserve jealously for themselves.

~ ~ ~

Speaking of things that are human in only the worst possible ways, moviegoers who remember Alexander Payne's eerily prescient "Election" may be forgiven for rushing to file for political asylum in Papau New Guinea after viewing the trailer for Payne's forthcoming movie, which the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly summarizes thus:

It's Star Wars meets American Pie in next year's The Student Body, when a group of rebel aliens and their pursuers crash in a small town and body-snatch many of the teens at a local high school.

... We not only get an outsider's view of teen life, but a satire on some of its workings. "The student council gets totally taken over by the two different factions," Payne says, "and since they can't fight with ray guns they fight with something even dirtier: politics." So Democrats and Republicans are from outer space? "Yes," Payne grins. And what about the Libertarians? "Not even advanced alien science can explain Libertarians."

It is, of course, this "student council" angle that leaves me laying awake at night, plotting traffic routes that will not take me past any marquees advertising this nightmare. It's not a new idea that our politics has been hijacked by shapeshifters and things not of this world: the United States has long deserved its characterization as a nation of pious Hindus governed by an elite of atheistical Swedes. Nor is it unique to Americans. In sixteenth century Lower Saxony, we hear, a witch employed the legendary Summa Libra Personae to manufacture "simulacra" of local notables, and herself even impersonated one, in a bid to gain control of a duchy. That witch was routed, but the duke's heirs apparently found it expedient to accept a promotion to the throne of England, where repressed emotions are less likely to be taken as evidence of suppressed humanity.

~ ~ ~

Yes, yes, but what about the zeppelins, I hear you impatiently ask. It is not only for spaceships bearing the next class of House representatives that we should be fretfully scanning the skies. Lockheed this week unveiled its design for a dirigible with a "sky hook," suitable for moving large, heavy objects over and into inaccessible terrains; the specs suggest its designers sought inspiration in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Horror of the Heights." Let us not fear such things; military pilots, like Doyle's hero, who glimpse these blasphemies will know exactly what to do.

The other blog entries seem to be written in the same bizarre spirit, and you really have no idea what to make of it or its author, one "John Reilly." Still, you can't help but give the book a fretful glance after you're done reading the page. Could it really be an authentic magical grimoire?

No, of course not, you tell yourself. Like Lorenzo suggested this afternoon, it's likely nothing more than a discarded prop out of an eccentric millionaire's library.

* * * * *

Lorenzo catches you early the next morning.

"Listen," he says, "my offer still stands. But if you're worried I'm lowballing you, come out with me to Arnholm's this afternoon, and we'll ask them about the book."

That's all for now.

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"