NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
The Macadamia campaign is having a post election rally led by Albrecht Intaglio at the Tentacle Coffee Bar where I met Liberty trip back in 2010. Their sign is familiar. The huge ‘T’ in the word ‘TENTACLE’ is tilted as if to support the words Coffee Bar in smaller cursive next to the long vertical.
The bar must be under new management. The walls are painted with murals of an outdoor cafe in the right hand corner and a panorama from under the ocean called, “The Octopus’s Garden”, (http://www.jango.com/music/The+Beatles) behind the bar on the left. A huge tentacle emerges from the near end of the image and arches over the bar with tiny colored lights flashing from the suction cups. The artist, Enid Starkie, signed her name on the front of a treasure chest embraced by an octopus near a cave on the seabed.
The front of a tour bus is skillfully rendered behind the small bandstand at the back, magically filling the wall facing us as we enter. It feels as if it will run right through us. The huge windscreen partially reflects the front of the café and in addition one can see mysterious passengers silhouetted in the front seats. The driver’s hand is raised, saluting patrons in the coffee bar. The saluting hand’s little finger touches the base of the tilted ‘T’ in the sign in front of the building, as if he has knocked it off balance.
“Who’s that kid waving to us over there, Fred?”
“It’s Serge, Steve.”
“Oh is it, and who is Serge?”
“You remember Steve, Derwent Sloot’s grandson?”
“Right, and that’s his mother Rosalba with him Steve.”
“I wouldn’t have recognized them, bel.”
Bel points out through the tall windows behind Serge and Rosalbaas we walk across the room towards them.
“Look at that!”
“The biggest murmuration I’ve seen around here!”
Serge has turned around to look.
“Check the coordination! They are way ahead of us!”
The oval cloud of starlings seems to turn inside out and changes from an oval to a stream heading out of sight beyond the window.
We met only briefly several years ago when he was a young boy, yet Serge recognizes me, and I remember his precocity. Now he beckons, as we walk over to them in the window seats. Rosalba sits next to him on the red banquette at a trapezoidal smoked glass table.
“Fred!”
Serge’s voice has broken.
“How are you doing Serge?”
“I am doing my junior project on technology and the Macadamia Campaign.”
He shows me his video camera with sound system hooked up to his laptop, which displays the picture and sound levels and more I can’t identify.
“See, I want to capture some of this event.”
He greets Steve and bel with bright smiles and the easy familiarity of an adult.
There can’t be more than twenty people here, including Steve Strether and bel. They drove me over, and have been following Albrecht and Boyd’s rise in the movement without being a part of it themselves.
We push two blueish gray tables together. Bel stands behind the chair opposite Rosalba.
“Hi there you two, are you Macadamia supporters?”
“My son is”
“Rosie, are you still doing pastels?”
“I’ve been doing some portrait miniatures.”
Bel puts her hand on Rosie’s shoulder.
“Congratulations!”
Rosie takes bel’s full length down coat from her and piles it on top of her own on the windowsill behind her.
“Too bad about Trump, Macadamia would have been a brilliant president.”
“Really Serge? Why?”
“For one thing he ran his campaign on line which is where the future is. He knows the score!”
“Well, Serge, I don’t think all voters have caught up.”
“They are going to have to! I mean I was teaching Tatiana’s Mom how to code over Christmas.”
Rosalba pushes back her brown hair and its highlights tumble around her ears. “That’s his girl, bel.”
“Yeah, she’s in Europe this week, and I can’t go…Bummerrr!”
Steve takes off his watch cap and black bomber jacket and lets it fall over the back of his chair. I sit next to Serge on the banquette.
“Serge, I think you’re a little premature!”
“Can’t argue that.”
Boyd Nightingale is standing at the microphone on the small bandstand at the far end of the room.
“Testing, Macadamia, one two three, testing Mac…”
The sound is clear. Serge taps his laptop, looking at the video image.
Boyd puts the mike on its stand. Albrecht comes forward and takes the mike. His hair has grown enough to be combed straight back from his forehead. His side arm is different too. Now the long barreled revolver he carried to the Guild Nominating Committee, years ago, is replaced with a small automatic, plain to see in his shoulder holster. He looks around the room. As Boyd turns to step down, his own automatic is evident under his belt in the small of his back.
“Welcome everybody! So glad to have you here bringing life and atmosphere to this occasion.”
Loud whistles and cheers rise from the audience.
“We are live at www.Macadamia.cybercarry.org
There is a murmur in the room.
Albrecht pulls at the collar of his open neck white shirt.
“Folks we have a new President elect…”
He is interrupted with booing and some one yells out,
“TWEET TWEET, TWITTER, TWEET”
Another voice shouts, “The bird brain speaks!”
A man with his gut hanging over his belt tosses a red Trump Campaign cap up on the bandstand and shouts out. “Wear that, Mother Fucker!”
Albrecht is smiling.
“Okay! Okay! Welcome, Welcome, Supporters and detractors, alike.
Welcome to a new presidency!”
“Yeah!” Shouts a voice.
“It isn’t liberal!”
“Who knows what it is Albrecht?” says a man with a shaven head leaning against the wall under a framed portrait of Ringo.
“Obama is gone!”
Big cheer from the audience.
“Right on” says Albrecht raising both arms. Then he picks up the red Trump campaign cap, and holds it in front of him.
“This guy is our president. Respect the Office!”
People start arguing with each other. Albrecht gives them a few moments while he hangs the cap from a knob on the mike stand and, and then says loudly;
“OUR MAN LOST. Okay?”
“Booooo” from the audience.
Albrecht pauses again; “So let’s deal with it!”
The heckler has left his seat and is now standing by the stage with his back to the audience silently giving him the finger.
“Sit down asshole!” shouts a big woman with multiple piercings.
“Stick it up your ass John!”
Albrecht goes on, “OUR Rights,” he pulls out his automatic and holds it up for emphasis. The heckler sits down at a chair by the stage Boyd was using earlier.
“Our initiatives, and our technical ingenuity are all ALIVE and well right here in this room. Let’s hear it for Net Neutrality!”
“Fuck the ISPs!…Stop filtering!…”
Albrecht gives the time out sign with his hands.
“Okay, Okay, I hear you, but you know, Comcast and Verizon, Google, you know, they run dedicated computer servers deep inside these ISPs, folks.”
“Booooooo. Fuck ‘em all!”
A young woman stands up in white turtleneck with a thick blond braid. She holds her rifle aloft and shouts;
“Listen! The big ISPs are getting bigger and that’s a problem. We can’t get into this now…Gun Rights! Play the video Albrecht!”
Albrecht smiles.
“It will be OUR twenty first century!”
More cheers and whistles. “Get the NSA out of my internet!”
Several others hold up their various guns in solidarity.
“We will…” Albrecht is drowned out…
“Pardon Ed Snowden!”
“Shoot the bastard!”
Albrecht goes on. “We WILL be playing the video. Boyd is getting that together, right Boyd?”
Albrecht looks down from the bandstand to his left at the heckler where Boyd was sitting and now Boyd appears from behind a curtain.
“Come on up here Boyd.”
Boyd hops up and stands next to Albrecht, both in white shirts and black pants.
“Lets give it up for Boyd Nightingale, ladies and gentlemen.”
The headlights of the bus rendered on the wall behind them are real and they flash brilliantly.
“WHOA! WOW! The man who threw the Trump cap on stage interrupts applause.
“FAGGOTS” he shouts, and he walks toward the door kicking a chair over shouting, MACA.FUCKING.DAMIA! FUCKING NUT CASE! He goes out the door.
Albrecht says, “So long fella,” in a low voice, and takes Boyd’s hand and raises it up with his own.
“Okay, let’s move on and get to our future with Macadamia in Liberty Through Technology!”
Serge looks up from his lap top and stands to cheer, as do a few others.
I notice a lot of other people are busy with their laptops, and turn to Serge.
“Serge, are you a big gun rights supporter?”
Serge is distracted, looking at his laptop.
“Excuse me, there is a lot more going on over the net than in this room!”
“What do you make of all this?’
“Kind of mindless…WHAT? Ohhhhh…
He taps his keyboard.
“My god, the site crashed!”
He looks up.
“Well Fred, I think we should all have that right, but I don’t plan on buying anything myself.”
“I am so glad to hear that!”
“Bel, I am convinced that we can’t move into our digital future too soon. The old world is holding us back, blinded by industrial pollution, and threatened by the consequences of global warming and worst of all, is ignorance. My project is about finding the way to reach escape velocity! Macadamia is the guy who has started the really big move. I am sending my material to the media lab at MIT. See if I can get him some help from there.”
Rosalba watches her son closely and then puts her arm around his shoulders.
“Serge went up there last summer. You know, on a special program for high schoolers.”
“Congratulations Serge!”
Some one in a wet suit is standing by our tables. They are wearing tanks and speak in a synthetic electronic voice through a modified facemask.
They produce plastic cups from a spring loading cylindrical holder worn on the hip. Another plastic cup comes out with each click of a small lever.
Serge takes a cup. “Cool!”
The person behind the facemask offers us coffee, which they pour from a hose extending from the tanks on their back. There turns out to be more than one hose. Of course! There is more than one tank. One has hot milk for café au lait, and a third tank produces cappuccino, which froths forth into Steve and Rosalba’s cups.
I get my wallet out. The diver moves on with a cloud of steam condensing from a valve on the cappuccino tank.
“You have to pay by phone Fred.”
I don’t have a smart phone.”
Steve has his in hand.
“I’ve got you covered Fred.”
“Was that male or female bel?”
“Female of course!”
“How can you tell Serge, with all that gear on?”
“The shape of the hips Fred. The hips are largely unencumbered.”
Steve leans forward and pats Serge on the shoulder.
“What a discerning fellow!”
Now the stage is empty. Music is growing in volume.
“You know what that is Fred?”
“Ah…no.”
That is, Formic Acid Blues, by you know who!”
Rosalba nudges Serge, “Oh come on, tell us!”
“Its our very own Toxic Blob, that’s what they played while Liberty released the ants at PU! I’ve got the vid.”
Steve and Serge do a high five across the table.
The barista behind the bar moves to the beat wearing a facemask and snorkel. Her breasts jiggle under a tight fitting gold turtle-neck, like iridescent fish scales.
Boyd and Albrecht are standing in front of the curtain talking to Frans Banning Cocq, the Militia leader. His rifle hangs by its strap from his right shoulder. His thin straw blond hair is flying out from his bald patch in a frizzy star shape. Beyond our window seats, I can see an outdoor café rendered by ‘Chaz Baudelaire’ in the corner of the wall. He signed his name on the awning as the name of the café. A display window by the entrance is drawn on one side of the corner. Outdoor tables and chairs are pictured on the other side. I can see the diver serving four Seahorses seated in the picture like customers.
“So these are the gun and Militia people huh?”
“It’s the cyber freaks too, Steve.”
“Well some of them are sort of futurists aren’t they Serge?”
“Mom, most of it is online.”
“How many meetings have you been to Serge?”
“Went to one with Tatiana last semester up in New York. That’s the only one I know of. We don’t meet in person.”
“How many were there?”
Serge is focused on his laptop and seems to have lost interest in the Rally. He doesn’t look up.
“Five or six in somebody’s loft.”
Rosalba is watching a couple, who have just come in, take off their helmets and motorcycle leather.
“Macadamia, brings some odd birds together!”
Illusions color the occasion, fixed on the wall and now flickering there. The café’s picture window in the mural, is now a video screen showing the Macadamia gun rights video that Albrecht had promised to the woman with a blond braid and rifle.
“There is no sound on that vid.”
A young woman is crouching on her bed pointing a pistol at a big intruder. He suddenly falls back revealing a dark face under his hoodie, and I can see the recoil lifting her arms.
Steve looks at bel, who is shaking her head.
“Mom, you need your phone for that.”
Serge offers his mother his phone.
“Why don’t they supply any sound?”
“Look around Fred, there’s four different vids playing. You couldn’t hear anything if they all had sound on.”
“Look at the treasure chest in the Octopus’s Garden.”
Bel points out another video appearing as if it were the treasure.
The rendered window of the tour bus has also become a flickering video screen.
Serge is looking up at the ceiling.
“Check the ceiling bel.”
At the moment there’s a high altitude view of Washington sweeping across like a city falling into the sky.
Bel looks up.
“How come I am looking up to look down?”
Steve is laughing.
“That’s politics honey.”
