 
The Story of "e"

Mel C. Thompson

Copyright © 2018

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Cover drawing: "Two sketches of Krishna playing a flute," by Theo van Doesburg, 1916, a public domain work.

1. His Continual State of Pent-Up Rage

Incel was combing the information networks of the world trying to justify his continual state of pent-up rage when a knock came at the door of his subsidized apartment. (The subsidized apartment thing was kind of an embarrassment because he spent a lot of his time writing and publishing articles about how taxes and social programs were tantamount to simple theft; but Incel had compartmentalized this by claiming to himself that the help he was getting from the government was only a temporary thing and that he would soon be joining the ranks of perpetually-angry tax-payers as a full-time worker who was fully self-sufficient.) Of course he had no way of knowing the person knocking on the door would see through virtually all of his illusions, and so he impatiently pulled the door open and said, "What?"

The entity who faced him seemed to have a male form, although one could not be sure if the humanoid figure had any gender at all. By all accounts, one would reasonably presume there was a normal person underneath the garb, but such a guess would be purely speculative. This being had two arms and two legs, a torso, a neck and a head, but they were all covered by a pure-white whole-body suit. The "man" began to speak very clearly although his entire face and form, (if indeed there were a face and form behind the white cloth), was completely covered. Somehow this covering did not muffle the sound in any way. It was as if his voice were emanating through the entire surface of his body. The only distinguishing mark was a large letter "e" in the center of what would have been the "shirt" portion of the body-suit.

Incel jumped back and exclaimed, "What the hell? What is this — some kind of joke? What do you want? Why are you screwing with people this way? Don't you know this is a rough neighborhood? You could get shot or mugged wandering around a place like this alone in a costume like that. Why don't you try this stunt in the Art District where people will at least be ready for something like this?"

The person spoke. "You are Incel?"

"Yes, but who told you about me? Did one of my hostile readers put you up to this?"

"No," replied the entity. "I have been sent by Nature. There are some things you need to learn. I was sent to impart those things to you. You will be free to share, or not to share, the things I must show you. If you do opt to share your story, some people will believe you and some won't, and some I won't allow to hear you. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The main thing I came to tell you is that Nature may, or may not, help you with your loneliness, but it has empowered me to show you the source of your loneliness. Nature has not failed to reward you in the ways you were seeking to be rewarded because of any personal enmity toward you, but rather because rewarding a person like you too much would create a risk of violating all of the laws of Nature, and Nature takes its laws pretty seriously. The laws of Nature, of course, are plain to see, but your survival instinct forbids you, and almost all people, from seeing them. In any case, it was Nature's determination that if you knew the cause of your suffering, you would take your sufferings far less personally and perhaps you would hate humanity far less than you do now. That is the only reason I am here."

"Oh great," sneered Incel. "You know, it's socialist-infiltrator nut-cases like you that make the Men's Rights Movement seem even more fucked up than it already is. Everyone already sees us as desperate wankers and freaks, and now you have to come and make our job even harder by parading around in some glorified jump-suit claiming to be a prophet or some such thing. And anyway, I don't like the way you're using the word 'Nature.' It sounds like some kind of religious prattle; and while half the people who read my editorials may think I'm some impotent loser, at least I don't need the crutch of some New Age goddess crap to keep me going. I may have to live alone because of what I believe, but I'm never going to knuckle under and go in for any mystical sissy shit. So, if you will excuse me, I'd like to go back to making my gourmet dinner for one, dinner for one forever. My life is hard enough without some liberal performance artist creep stalking around my door trying to convert me to some wimpy Taoist garbage. If you have anything serious to say, you'd better say it quickly and you'd better say it now, or I'm slamming this door shut. That last thing our movement needs is another bipolar fruitcake like you!"

Incel went to shut the door, but found that not only could he not shut the door, but that the door was coming all the way open and the creature "e" was stepping straight into his one-person micro-palace. Incel tried to speak but found he could not force any words out at the moment. Incel then turned to see that "e" was lounging quite leisurely on his overstuffed, brown, leather couch, (a couch he could never afford on his own but which was inherited from one of the long series of prematurely-deceased people in his semi-undergrounder world).

As Incel wrestled a bit with being tongue-tied, "e" noted, "You must forgive me for the stereotypical manner of my intrusion. Having read some of the literary criticism you intersperse with your woman-hating, reactionary political screeds, I'm already aware of what you'd say about this situation, that it's the lead-in to every inept screenplay and every first novel written by anyone destined to remain anonymous in perpetuity. And thus you would discredit both my performance-art costume as well as my forcing my way past your door. Well, I wasn't sent to bring you literary pleasure or to suit your aesthetic ideals. I'm simply a conveyor of information, information in the form of a double-helix code, to be exact. Whether or not that seems cliché to you is beside the point, since I will prevail however threadbare and prosaic you may think I am. Nature told me that I am to always win every dispute in perpetuity. And so, you see, your opinion of me can't ever matter."

Incel stared straight at what would have been the eyes in the all-white figure, and having glared in indignation for a moment, turned away, and, regaining his voice, said, "Screw this. I'm calling the cops."

As he pulled out his mobile phone to call the authorities, a text flashed across the screen saying, "Even if the police come, they won't be able to see me."

Incel threw his phone on the floor and went into the kitchen to cook. Having hallucinated before when he was quite young, he knew not to take situations like this too seriously. His psychosis was only intermittent and so it wasn't even worth getting on a regime of full-time meds when, by the time he even got an appointment with a psychiatrist, the episode would be over. His general physician described it as a mere genetic fluke that popped up now and then, nothing worth risking a lifetime of involvement with the horrifying mental health system in California. He figured that by the time he was done cooking, the whole episode would conclude.

He swigged back a few shots of Kentucky rye whiskey and followed that up with a few blasts of tawny port, a tonic that was more consistently effective than risperdal or stelazine, (and yes, his doctor told him that even though the ultra-puritanical California medical authorities would have yanked his medical license in a minute if they knew he'd broke ranks with them and all their punitive, small-hearted regulators, and let the truth out). His seeming hallucination was likely to go away soon since he had some pleasures to render to himself tonight. It so happened that his local market had fresh Icelandic cod on sale along with a solid Bordeaux white. He already had some purple potatoes in stock along with some oyster mushrooms. It was going to be a one-man feast, and that was reward enough to stabilize his otherwise pleasure-starved body-mind complex.

After he finished cooking, he headed back toward the living room to set up his meal on the coffee table between the folding chairs just opposite the now-accursed couch where the apparition named "e" had been sitting. He sat down on one of the folding chairs, placing a single glass of wine and his first serving of food on the coffee table. He looked up, and, to his displeasure, the entity "e" was lounging, arms outstretched and legs spread casually. Seeing this, he arose and went to the kitchen and filled up another plate with food and filled up another wine glass for his uninvited guest. He set them down rather harshly, stopping just short of slamming them down, in front of "e" and said, "Well, eat!"

Complying with his unwilling host's orders, "e" absorbed the food and wine through the white cloth-like membrane that surrounded him, and, out of seeming politeness, he did so in an area where a mouth would have been, had "e" possessed a standard mouth.

"So?" demanded Incel.

"You are a good cook," replied 'e.' "If you are also a good masseuse, I think perhaps more women than you know would be prepared to overlook both your ill temper and your indigence."

Incel suspected this assertion was true, but quickly put the thought out of his mind as he was not in the mood to "go soft," especially in front of a stranger. Besides, he thought, "I could see such a situation turn into some kind of white-knighting or codependent simping, and frankly, I'd rather die first."

As he ate some of his cod, he looked up at "e" who was staring at him and realized instantly that "e" had just seen what he thought. As a defense mechanism against this, Incel turned on what he called his "semi-compliant mind," a thing he only did when he saw he was in trouble or had no way of winning an argument or debate.

"Okay, Mr. Mind Reader," said Incel as he took a few bits of purple potato and a couple more swigs of sauvignon blanc, "you might as well tell me your name; and you might as well speak your peace, since, apparently either you're for real or I will need to be checking into UCLA psych ward tomorrow morning."

Sitting up straight, and taking on a more respectful pose, "e" said, "You may trust me when I say that it will not be necessary for you to visit the hospital anytime soon. You have, such as they are, all your faculties in operating order. My name is Evolution, and I came here to promise you that nothing whatsoever is wrong with the world nor with the relations between the sexes. In fact, Nature asked me to tell you that no mistake has ever happened in the entire history of biology or physics. Every cell and every atom have performed their duties 100% perfectly within the sets of laws they were given to operate. Since all entities are, by definition, experiments, none of them can 'go wrong,' per se. In fact, your personal misery is precisely built in to the structure of this universe. And, (if you will forgive me again for sounding religious), all of the torture living beings go through is perfectly divine. There is nothing much I have to add to that unless you have any questions."

After concluding his short sermon, "e" said, "Since my priestly duties are now completed, I ask that you kindly bring out that nearly-full bottle of tawny port you were drinking from before you came in here. I think I might like to absorb a lot of it. I have not assumed this form in a very long time, but Nature informs me that while I'm here, I should, (and these are her words), 'check out Incel's radical porn collection.' I admit to having not quite attained omnipotence, and so, in spite of my lofty language of a moment ago, I confess you'll have to educate me on this detail of human existence."

Incel, without replying, reached to the far end of the coffee table and picked up a remote control device. After pushing a few buttons, he pointed the remote control, like a large finger, toward a 64-inch flat screen television which suddenly popped on. "e" and Incel stared at that screen without further comment until shortly before dawn.

2. On The Increasing Disposability of Men

As Incel sat alertly at his table at a somewhat exclusive café in North Hollywood, he gulped down imported black tea which was so strong that it was stronger than black coffee. In this way, the full depth of his caffeine addiction was masked from the coffee drinkers around him, although the café workers, who knew better, stared at him disconcertedly, wondering why Incel's skull did not burst from such an onslaught of liquid stimulant.

It was Incel's ritual to retreat to this particular café precisely because he was so relatively unimportant there. His very-low-paying writer's fees, which left him nothing to donate to the pleading Doctors Without Borders girl near the Metro station, were such that he was penniless and on several types of government assistance. Notwithstanding this, several thousand people per week read his works in one venue or another, (and most of those readers were in Los Angeles and they hated him); and so he did have to take some minimal measures to evade unpleasant encounters. He finally settled on a strategy of going into bars, restaurants and cafés where he was, by far, the very least-known person. In this way he could be totally ignored, which was what he needed in order to get through his day without any unnecessary drama beyond that which his "writing work" created.

It so happened that this particular location was frequented by lesser-known, but significant, movie producers and slightly-famous, but struggling, actresses who'd had enough film credits to keep working at the margins of stardom until they really made it big or at least found some pretext to sue any corporation or mogul they could in order to make sure old age didn't find them homeless. This café not only served as a kind of refuge for Incel, but also as a fount of irrefutable intelligence which was, by class-wide honor-bound agreement, "kept from the little ones who would freak if they knew what we were doing and knew how easily we got away with it." However, the upper-middle-class, like members of every racketeering organization, were always getting too confident, and over-confidence always ended up in sloppiness. Falsely presuming the establishment had barely a single loser in it, and seeing few people around them who weren't in a thousand dollars worth of clothes, they used this establishment as a kind of public confessional, thus accidentally handing Incel, on a golden platter, as it were, far more evidence than he could have ever even prayed for, evidence which added a nasty sting to his articles, articles that fundamentally-dishonest people were glued to with a rabid and morbid curiosity.

One unspoken, iron-clad rule among the perilously upper-middle-class of Los Angeles was that, should the bottom ever fall out, "God will forgive you for suing innocent entities as long as the company or person in question is solidly white, incredibly wealthy, and crypto-conservative." And Incel's article about this phenomenon was itself a mini-hit, netting him a rare $300 payment from the grateful editor of a sex-industry-related business magazine. In fact, it was in this very café, a place where eavesdropping was shockingly easy due to how loudly egomaniacs spoke, that a waify redhead whose only talent was playing herself in cameo roles, plotted just such a book-tour-securing, retirement-fund windfall with a beta-male orbiter who hung on her every word and dared not question her ethics, hoping against hope, that he might one day escape the friend-zone if he was obsequiously compliant enough, (not realizing, of course, that obsequious compliance was the character trait that landed guys into the friend zone faster than any other singe factor).

This café was a godsend for Incel's writing. Incel, being a world-class paranoid who had the typical paranoid's interest in corruption, game-rigging and insider trading, noted that, for reasons he could not comprehend, no gangster-at-heart could resist bragging about what they'd done; and this made his job all the easier; and he was all the more hated because virtually all of his articles were based on blatant confessions he'd heard without even having to sneak around in the traditional ways. The fact that so many "bad editors" of "tasteless publications" kept indulging him by publishing him, (usually without pay), made a sizable number of people in the San Fernando Valley murderously furious at him. For this reason alone, no woman who expected to keep any friends, employers or landlords, could possibly date him. For some reason it made his vengeful audience even angrier that Incel's recent essays, in response to questions about his "involuntary celibacy," spoke of its "surprisingly array of fascinating advantages for my writing life."

The people he knew, and he had known dozens, who treated addicts in recovery, or were getting in their 3,000 hours to become therapists, or otherwise in some kind of religious vocation, despised the fact that Incel was a complete reprobate whom they would have loved to convert to what he called "sincerity-ism," except that he had dozens of hours of ready-to-hand first-person testimony against virtually every goody-good idea they tried to convert him to. (It goes without saying that Incel found "humble gratitutde" to be the most sickening of those ideas which formed the core of the fundamentalism of sincerity-ism. Of course these professionals all knew Incel was technically-correct, but their professions all had strict guidelines as to what economic dropouts and wing-nuts were permitted to believe, and, without coming out and saying it, they all, to a person, believed that all bad-attitude punks simply must somehow discredit what their own eyes and ears had told them. They absolutely had to be ordered to believe "helpful things." Anyone who spends much time in the environments of failures tends to come to the conclusion, with the full support of the institutes they work for, that as long as bitter losers cling to what is "true" versus those things "mentally-healthy people believe," they'll be incurable.

Since low-income, semi-unemployed, rebel weirdos have problems with authority, social convention dictates that the only way to deal with them is to simply starve them of human fellowship until such time as they "buckle under and get with the program." As of Incel's time, no system of rehabilitation, parole, or therapy, existed where the unrepentant blasphemer and the professional helping him were allowed to admit to all of the rot existing within the authority figures around them. It was their finding that the loser must be obligated to mouth positive things about the economic and romantic systems around him, and just keep chanting those things until he believed them, or else all would be lost.

The other non-negotiable key to sincerity-ism is the doctrine that the "patient" must proclaim that all problems with his life emanate 100% from his own wrongdoing and wrong thinking and from no other source. The idea is that if the sinner had someone, or something, other than himself to blame, especially anyone more socially elevated than him, he would latch on to that immediately and, with righteous indignation, refuse to reform until the people above him did. It's not that the professional helping class would mind it if those above the reprobate would reform themselves, but, to a person, they all knew that the upper-middle-class system of evil is more insidious than the more simplistic evil of bloody tyrants and mob bosses, and thus the hope of reform coming from that quarter hovers quiveringly just above zero. Therefore all of the weight of making the world right, 100% of it, must be fully and finally and exclusively made to fall on the shoulders of the low-level failure, period.

Incel could indeed have perhaps been bullied, isolated or sweet-talked into sincerity-ism had he not recourse to this café, wherein, within thirty minutes of his arrival, replete with stacks of Jonathan Franzen books and cloth-bound writing journals, some accountant-to-the-stars would quite volubly instruct a "Valley newbie" as to where everyone laundered their money and which tax lawyers aided the good souls of Los Angeles in evading the lion's share of the taxes they would otherwise owe.

Such accountants sometimes had with them what was erstwhile called "the guilt list," a name that stuck until another name superseded it. This was a list of feel-good charities that helped people far, far away, ideally in Africa, (because helping anonymous people in Africa cost just pennies on the dollar compared to helping real homeless mental patients or addicts asleep near a freeway onramp). An accountant who was seated across from another accountant, discussing this very topic, said, "Why not just call it The Africa List?" which elicited a burst of involuntary laughter from a group of trust fund managers in the table across from them who were, of course, also eavesdropping. After that point, "the guilt list" nomenclature disappeared ans was forever replaced by "The Africa List." CPA's would bring out The Africa List just as the expressions of their new clients began to fall due to the guilt involved in both not aiding U.S. social programs and simultaneously stiffing any feckless relatives of theirs who were floundering. The Africa List guaranteed that for every American loser they didn't help, three young African kids would greet them as beneficent saviors of humankind. The very non-racism of that would surely wipe out any vestige of bad karma implicit in their insatiable and rabid hoarding, so they eagerly hoped. Aiding them all were conservative pastors, imams and rabbis who, in exchange for a highly-prosperous future, tacitly agreed that all their sermons should evade all those parts of the scriptures that went so far as to insinuate that those who did not sufficiently share their wealth or pay their taxes might go to Hell for eternity, because Hell for eternity was just not the kind of topic polite people, if they had any class at all, brought up.

Although Incel was anti-religious, he did slip up and use the phrase "offering from the gods" when incontrovertible testimony for a story that an inattentive reporter for the mainstream media would have ignored, was just dropped into his lap by what he called "the faithful parishioners" of his favorite café. And today's offering from the gods came in the form of nine women seated around a table bonding over bubbly. They were coworkers at a company with a very low turnover rate, meaning that many of them were best friends with their coworkers and partied with them after working with them, and even stayed over at each other's houses after partying. It was something on the order of a nine-way marriage in which everyone was obligated, (but only after becoming drunk enough to deny everything later by pleading intoxication), to discuss in precise details the most strategic decision-making processes of their lives.

The nine women discussed many almost randomly chosen items and bantered around in what seemed to be an almost unplanned and haphazard way, making bystanders wonder if the conversation would ever get anywhere. Most of the eavesdroppers simply didn't have the patience or "faith" that Incel had, and seemed to tune out. (Any police interrogator knows this rule: Just keep them talking and they will incriminate themselves. A short conversation is a bad conversation. The longer it goes, the more certain the victory for the interrogator.) And sure enough, the topic "accidentally drifted" to low-income men and how to get rid of them. Interspersed between comments about that topic were comments about the even more forbidden topic of lies that men have to tell when they're breaking up with women because of their weight. But as the extremely-attentive waiter never missed an opportunity to refill an even half-empty bubbly glass, the women soon lost all self-consciousness and began to boisterously talk about how to recruit, and use, a non-sexual harem of men for the purpose of having those men streamline every discomfort in life in exchange for virtually nothing. Additionally, and critically, they detailed key tactics used in getting rid of an orbiter once he lost his usefulness. Incel, a formerly-ardent beta-male orbiter listened intently.

At that point the assistant manager made a rather grave expression toward the leader of the officemates, a woman whom he knew well and treated with respect since she ultimately decided which establishment would get the hefty income from such nights of debauchery as she orchestrated. Upon looking up and seeing the darkened, serious face of her friend, she urged the women to hush their tones when speaking a certain way. After that, while one could not hear the contents of the conversation the women were having, one heard interspersed bursts of laughter, the non-specificity of which was fine by the assistant manager, after each woman had "scored" an even deeper debasing of men than the speaker before had. And while their competition to debase men was fierce, it was, it must be added, extremely friendly and no hurt feelings were noticed in any of the women's faces.

Incel formed the title of his next major article, based on what he had just heard: "On The Increasing Disposability of Men" when suddenly his smartphone gurgled out the sound it made when the increasingly-authoritarian smartphone OS was adding new apps against the user's will, apps he would have to just passively accept or consciously work to delete.

3. Incurring The Wrath of The Patriarch

One of the new apps, after it self-installed on Incel's phone, beeped and beeped again. Irritated, Incel stopped his writing and tried, over and over, to launch the "uninstall all new apps" function, but alas, the mass-uninstall feature was failing, meaning he would have to go through a list of new apps, one by one, and uninstall the unwanted one that was beeping over and over for attention.

Finally he just left the restaurant and went home to clear the junk off his smartphone and start writing again. As he cleared away new app after new app, he noticed one would not delete, not even when he tried to "manually" delete it. He put on the stronger of his two pairs of bad glasses, one which magnified too little and the other which magnified too much. (Optometry of the sort his Medi-Cal covered was so bad that it verged on being dangerous, meaning he went years between appointments with "real optometrists.") After putting on the stronger pair of glasses, he looked closely at the persistently offending app, it was displayed as a white circle with the letter "e" in the middle of it.

This was the last straw. This "e" hallucination had gotten out of hand. Clearly it was time for him to go on "real meds," since this particular "e" hallucination was now becoming "a thing."

*

Because Incel did not want to go to the giant, depersonalized emergency room at UCLA, he would go to the Medi-Cal default clinic in East LA. Finally there was a Metro Line that went there, so he didn't have to borrow a friend's car to see the doctor there anymore.

Any part of California anywhere within a hundred miles of the coast was now so economically unlivable that there was virtually no psychiatrist available to 90% of the people who needed one. This meant that one psychiatrist would often preside over a hotline that serviced ten or fifteen clinics full of doctors not quite qualified to give out meds any stronger than Wellbutrin or Valium. So when the "high-end crazies" came in with nowhere else to go, the Medi-Cal clinic doctors would interview them as best they could with the limited skills they had in a field they never meant to practice. Then, desperately, they'd wait in a telephone cue until the overwhelmed psychiatrist picked up the phone and decided the next of the dozens of fates he might decide that day. Whatever that phone consultant told the doctor to do, she did. After writing the prescription she was instructed to write, she'd have the clinic secretary interrupt the patriarch's work and pester him to rubber-stamp the prescription the phone consultant had given. (And the patriarch, while not a qualified psychiatrist, did take several elective courses in psychiatry in medical school, which made him even more arrogantly authoritative toward his subordinates regarding such matters. He rarely differed, however, with the phone consultant; but if he did, he interrupted his current patient's appointment to personally see the psychiatric patient in question and "straighten the matter out.")

The people at UCLA didn't know Incel, which meant that they didn't hate him, because they were too important of an institution to take note of an almost-nobody like Incel. However, in the East LA clinic, very few ultra-low-level celebrities came in, and so they'd already Googled Incel and found out he was an infamous misogynist somehow kept alive by a combination of welfare and unreliable patronage. And hence, unlike UCLA, they deeply disliked Incel and wished he would never come back, but alas, he kept returning. (While the clinic did have one evil patriarch M.D., Incel failed to take note that every other doctor willing to work in this dangerous and underpaying part of the city was female, meaning that he owed his medical survival to women. Due to the laws of cognitive dissonance, it did not occur to him that perhaps females continually saving his life, and the lives of countless others, might be a mitigating factor in favor of the gender he planned on making a living dehumanizing.)

Dr. Lindsay was the doctor who usually got stuck having to see Incel, a duty she dreaded with all her smugly-white ultra-upper-middle-class Santa Monica soul. And today was no exception. She approached the incoming-file bin just as the receptionist was retreated from it, having dropped off another hopelessly-thick batch of downwardly-mobile case histories. She grabbed the next file and saw Incel's name on it. Having already had a long and discouraging day, she threw the file down and issued a string of curses which slightly traumatized the almost genderless, brittle, bespectacled male at the billing desk behind her. He wiped back his thick, brown forelocks and stared sternly at the doctor. The doctor issued an equivocal kind of half-apology and ducked away with Incel's file.

She entered the examination room where Incel was waiting and thumped the file down on the counter next to the sink and stood, arms crossed, and said, "The letter 'e'? The intake nurse says you keep seeing the letter 'e'? Do you realize we have people here with late-stage cancer and incurable diabetes and completely debilitating rheumatoid arthritis? And now I'm supposed to waste away my day trying to figure out why you see 'e' on your stupid phone?"

Dr. Lindsay often spoke harshly to Incel, but Incel knew not to react to the hardened affect that she put on. It was his firm belief that she would not toss him out until she reached some diagnosis or came up with some recommendation regarding whatever his "problem of the month" was. (Dr. Lindsay, an orthodox 3rd Wave Feminist, was further irritated by the fact that almost all of the misogynist, involuntary celibates she saw were world-class hypochondriacs who, on top of spreading their toxic message of hate around the world, had the habit of clogging her already overrun practice with endless reports of nonexistent medical conditions.) Incel pretended as if he didn't notice his doctor's impatience and pulled out his cell phone. The text on the cell phone read, "Your doctor is not permitted to see me."

"Alright, give me that stupid thing," said Dr. Lindsay as she impatiently pulled the smartphone from Incel's hand. "Okay, so there's no 'e' app on there. So now what do you want me to do, commit you to a hospital? I'd just end up sending you back to UCLA and they'd bounce you out of there in 48 hours over such a small-time hallucination."

After a few minutes of this tense type of discussion, Incel prevailed on Dr. Lindsay to call the psychiatric consultation line which he had heard all about from the time he ran into the billing clerk who stared reprovingly at the doctor whenever she slipped up and resumed her bad habit of cussing at work. The billing clerk, seemingly completely asexual, was taking his lunch at a burrito stand just a block from the clinic when Incel spotted him as he went in to place his own order. After Incel took the liberty of taking a seat beside him, the billing clerk told him all the ins and outs of the clinic and how to "max out" all of its potential services. Dr. Lindsay didn't know how Incel knew about all of the services that the clinic tried to reserve for "truly deserving" patients, but it irritated her that Incel always managed to create far more work for her than she thought he was worth.

Just to humor Incel, and to hopefully get him out of her examination room, she called the usually-busy psychiatric consultation line; but much to her surprise, the line was not only not-busy, but the consulting psychiatrist picked up the line on the second ring. Dr. Lindsay breezed through the "letter 'e' controversy" quickly and expected the call to end quickly. But, to her surprise, the usually-rushed consultant keep piling on question after question, wanting to know everything she knew about the personality of Incel. By the time the call was over, the doctor gave her an opinion which startled her: "Your patient has a profound and incurable mood disorder. I want you to put him on Depakote short-term until UCLA can test out some more sustainable medicines for him. He won't be getting better in this lifetime. This is a palliative-care case from now on."

*

The receptionist burst in on the patriarch and his patients, thus incurring the wrath of the patriarch, at least a dozen times a week. She knew from years of experience that the patriarch, when he was seeing a patient, however trivial the matter at hand might be, would never respond to her knock. She'd had it with standing at the door knocking gently and being made a fool of as she stood there helplessly with a prescription for him to rubber-stamp. She was too proud to quit the job and too proud to properly subordinate herself to her employer. If the patriarch wanted to, he could fire her, but each time he threatened to, the clerk shot back with, "and the temp agency will be sending you replacement clerks for two years till you find someone who wants to stay here and put up with this."

Of course the receptionist was right, and so the patriarch grabbed the prescription from her hand each time, signed it angrily and then slammed it hostilely on the counter, turning away coldly to again address the patient he was seeing. The receptionist, with an evil grin, would whisk the approved psychiatric prescription from the counter and rush it in to Dr. Lindsay or any of the other staff doctors who happened to need her help.

For some reason, today, when the receptionist knocked, the patriarch said, "Come in." He was with a favorite patient who liked golf and fishing every bit as much as he did; and the patient, although well off, chose to live in East Lost Angeles and chose to go to this clinic, a fact which made the asexual billing clerk stare with incredulity when he processed the claims involving "a guy with real insurance." Hence the patriarch was momentarily a fulfilled soul, getting, however briefly, to commune with his own kind.

As she slid the prescription to him, he said to his patient, "Jim, hold on just a second. This is just another rubber-stamp deal. After I sign it, you'll tell me a bit more about the marlin-fishing you were doing in Cabo. I can't get enough of that stuff."

The patriarch put the prescription up against a cabinet to sign it, assuming that is was just another antidepressant or anti-anxiety "scrip," things which he referred to as "candy we hand out to the kids who can't handle the pressure." And just as he began to gleefully sign it, he stopped and scowled reprovingly. He looked up at the receptionist and said, "This is bullshit! God damn it! Hold on Jim. I'll be back with you in a minute. This is just bullshit." It seemed that Dr. Lindsay had also incurred the wrath of the patriarch this week. The receptionist just looked at the patient, smirked and whirled away to her desk.

*

The patriarch, in a rage, flew into the exam room where Dr. Lindsay and Incel waited for his verdict. He slammed the prescription for Depakote on the counter and said, "What the Hell is this! Depakote? No, no. This kid is a self-pitying, low-level neurotic who can't get laid or hold a job. I'm sorry, but that doesn't qualify him as a psycho. Now, I don't want this wanker on Depakote. That's serious stuff for serious cases."

When Incel and Dr. Lindsay tried to explain the mysterious "e" on the smartphone, which only Incel could see, the patriarch grabbed the phone and tossed it unceremoniously into the sink, causing a loud rattle and thud. "Now," said the patriarch, "other than your little telephone hallucinations which every tenth weirdo on the planet seems to have these days, what have you got for me?"

It was then that Incel narrated the entire evening he had apparently hallucinated with the entity "e," including the part where he sat up till almost daybreak watching porn with that entity.

Dr. Lindsay and the patriarch stood there transfixed until at last the patriarch bowed in mock humility and said to Dr. Lindsay, "It appears the good telephone counselor has defeated me. Our patient is indeed a madman." And with that, he turned back to the counter, signed the prescription for Depakote then put his hand on Incel's shoulder. "It's gonna' be a long, hard road, kid. You try to hang in there, buddy, okay? Just try to hold on somehow. We'll try to take care of you the best we can. I don't know that our best will be good enough, but that's all we've got to work with, for now." He winked confidingly at Incel and slipped from the room, seeming almost wounded.

There was a gentle side to the patriarch after all, but that gentle side only came when the news was hard for him to take. Beneath his bullying exterior, he was "a man of many sorrows."

4. Two Hundred Million Perished

Incel woke up the next morning practically marveling at his state. For the first time in years, he slept eight hours straight without seeming to wake up even once. The sun streamed through the cracks in his dilapidated shades as if it were liquid cocaine. He sat up in bed and felt like a normal person who could actually handle a normal job. His whole body felt as if he were receiving a warm hug from someone, as though he were bathing in the sort of endorphins that socially-acceptable people had access to.

The problem with all this, of course, was that Depakote, Dr. Lindsay said, was not a good long-term solution because it had the potential to pose a lethal threat to vital internal organs if used in high doses for too long a period. Other doctors disagreed with that, and some people seemed to be okay taking it for decades. However, Dr. Lindsay had prevailed on Incel not to get his hopes up about ending up on any long-term drug that would have the stunning short-term results of Depakote.

There was always Lamictal, but Lamictal had really scary, even if exceedingly-rare, side-effects. Upon reading that list of side effects, many paranoid people who believed they had such bad luck that the gods had cursed them, would often refuse Lamictal in spite of their disapproving doctors looking at them like they were irrational cowards, the doctors not thinking through, as it were, the obvious fact that mental illness often came precisely with irrational cowardice.

In any case, Incel was thinking that he'd delay his appointment at UCLA for a month in order to use up the whole thirty-day supply, just for the purpose of experiencing what it would be like to be "a real person" for a whole month. But this line of thinking was interrupted by the sound of a flushing toilet, (a very scary sound to a person who believes himself to be alone in his home).

His heart pounding, Incel got up and crept to the bathroom only to see "e" tossing the empty bottle of depakote in the trash. The toilet had been flushed because "e" had flushed the entire month's supply of Depakote into the sewer system.

Incel grabbed his head with both hands and shouted, "What are you doing? You just flushed the best thirty days of my life down the toilet!"

"Depakote," replied "e" rather condescendingly, "is a drug for people with profound mood disorders. As for you — you would have been fine on a low dose of Prozac and a conventional sleeping pill."

"But I'm hallucinating your existence right now; and that alone qualifies me for something more extreme than nervous-housewife medicine."

"You may think so, but that also would be an error. You have not hallucinated anything since our first night together. The only reason other people cannot see evidence of me is that knowing fully of my existence would ruin the narrative of their lives, a narrative that has far more than selfish motives, but rather a narrative that permits all of my work to proceed without serious interruption."

"But I have a follow up appointment at UCLA scheduled. What shall I tell them are the results of my experiment with Depakote?"

"You won't tell them anything because I erased that appointment from their database."

"But what will I say to Dr. Lindsay, who'll want a follow-up appointment with me to see how the appointment at UCLA went?"

"No, she won't be curious about anything of the sort, since I already erased her memory of your last visit with her, and I've arranged for the rest of the office to forget you were there also. The next time you see her, she will only ask about your long history of psychosomatic pains."

Incel turned from the bathroom and went and sat dejectedly on his bed wondering what he ought to do next, but just as he begun to indulge in a deluge of self-pitying thoughts, "e" appeared at the threshold of his bedroom door and advised him to engage in whatever his daily grooming ritual was because they were to go on a field trip together to Griffith Observatory Planetarium.

*

"e" had rented a car, or rather, he had simply taken a car from a rental car parking lot and drove off with it. The theft was reported to the police and the police, true to form, appeared to do next to nothing about the theft and seemed profoundly disinterested in investigating the matter further. When the owner of the rental car franchise pressed the police about why they would not investigate the car theft, the shift captain merely advised the franchise owner to fill out any additional details about the alleged incident on an online report form. The only work the police seemed willing to do was to enter the missing vehicle into their data base of possibly-stolen cars.

As "e" and Incel drove along the freeway, and down side streets, sirens and lights were erupting and flashing behind them. This was because "e" was driving while wearing a disguise which was completely concealing his identity, or so they thought, and thus the various police cruisers called in the license plate number only to find that indeed the car was believed to be stolen. However, in succession, each police car that attempted to follow them seemed to become lost and lose the trail. This made no sense to Incel considering that "e" made no evasive maneuvers. Incel would ordinarily have refused to ride along with anyone in a car that was stolen, however, at this point, Incel was thinking he might greet an arrest with relief as somehow being taken into custody might cause the "e" hallucinations to go away or at least recede. In short, either way, he felt he had nothing to lose by going along with a criminal or being arrested as a criminal, whichever would turn out to be the case.

Eventually "e" turned the car up the winding road toward the observatory. In the distance one could see the Hollywood sign and the Greek Theater. Finally they arrived at the parking lot of the observatory and parked the car. Suddenly a police car came roaring across the parking lot and the officer got out and rushed toward the vehicle. "e" and Incel got out and walked past the policeman who appeared not to notice them. Several other police cars surrounded the stolen rental car and took possession of it. No one even looked toward "e" or Incel and they walked around the grounds of the observatory.

"I suppose," said Incel, "we won't be taking the car back home.

"No," replied "e."

"Then how will we get back to my apartment?" pressed Incel.

"I won't be going back to your apartment today."

"Where will you spend the night after you leave here?'

"e" laughed and said, "I'll be sleeping in everyone's house at once."

"That doesn't make any sense to me, but anyway, how do you expect me to get home?"

"Just walk down the hill and catch the train at the Glendale Station."

Just moments later Incel and "e" appeared near the doors of the planetarium, a place where the entire domed ceiling and part of the walls comprised one massive screen that came down low enough to make the viewer feel surrounded by whatever phenomena was being depicted from the advanced 360-degree projection system.

There was yellow tape across the doors and three unarmed security guards milling about. "e" led the way as he and Incel walked straight past the guards who were demanding that they stop. "e" simply tore the tape down and began pulling open the doors even though they were locked. The guards shouted that the theater was closed due to maintenance work and that no one was allowed inside. "e" indicated that he was aware of that and opened the doors as though the locks on them hadn't existed. The guards kept grabbing Incel's arm as he walked forward into the main auditorium with "e," but somehow their grip seemed to slip away as they continued toward some seats near the end of an isle. The maintenance workers shouted at "e" and Incel to go away, but Incel mindlessly sat down next to "e."

In a moment the husky lead guard was towering over them, looking awkward in his ill-fitting black polyester suit. The guard's skin was unnaturally tanned from standing outdoors all day and his forehead sweated profusely.

"What are you freaks doing in here, and why did you ignore our orders and trespass. I should have the cops drag you out of here right now."

"I believe," said "e" calmly from his seat, "the police are busy in the parking lot taking possession of a stolen car. They won't have time for a petty trespassing case."

"So," pressed the lead guard with his two rather sallow-looking assistants standing behind him, "what do you hope to accomplish? Are you homeless and just wanting to use these seats as a place to crash?"

"Not at all," said "e." "In fact, a very short film will be starting momentarily. Since it will only be several minutes long, you will only be inconvenienced by our presence for a minuscule amount of time. By the time the police dispatcher took your call off hold, this little convocation will have already broken up. And you'll not get the police to interrupt their day to apprehend a trespasser who appeared momentarily and then voluntarily left. In any case, the film not only applies to my friend here, but specifically, it applies to you and your coworkers here who are low-income men. These few moments will prove to be most informative and, I might add, conducive to the reduction of your future suffering. Please, have a seat, and spend just a few moments watching the film with us.

One of the sickly, skinny guards with crooked, coffee-stained teeth and taped-together glasses stood forward and interjected, "You're a crazy man. You look like a lunatic in that white cover-all suit. Anyhow, I just patrolled the projection room area fifteen minutes ago. The room is dark. The equipment is turned off. The workers have the day off due to the repairs going on. There's no film scheduled. There's no one here who would even know how to turn the projection equipment on."

"e" stood up and produced three $100 bills and said, "Let us all agree that I, in my white suit, am a crazy man, as the guard says. Very well. However, if you will each take a seat for just seven minutes and pretend with me that a film will be showing all over this dome, I shall pay you each $100 for your inconvenience. If, after seven minutes' time, there is no video projecting onto the dome, I shall surrender my seat and me and my friend shall exit the theater without further struggle."

Before they could accept or refuse these terms, "e" had already forced a crisp $100 bill into each of their hands. The guards looked quizzically at each other for a moment until the lead guard said, "Well, you heard the man. Have a seat. I'm setting the alarm on my smartphone to go off in seven minutes. After that, we all go back outside and pretend this never happened."

*

Suddenly all of the lights in the planetarium went out, eliciting another cry of disapproval from the maintenance workers who were sill unhappy that the intruders hadn't been summarily kicked out by the security guards. Shouts came from all around, "What the hell? Hey, turn on those lights? We've got work to do in here! Stop fooling around."

Since no one had gotten up to turn off the lights, the guards were terrified; but before they could get their bearings, the entire dome glowed ever so slightly and Mahler's 5th Symphony blared through the gigantic sound system. Now the workers too were all looking up at the dome wondering why a projection-room technician was running a test while they were trying to do repairs and upgrades. As the maintenance workers and the security guards looked on, suddenly a glowing egg, a human ovum, started at one end of the planetarium and moved toward the center of the dome, growing ever large as it rose and migrated, settling about thirty degrees shy of the top of the dome and assuming the visual size of a large planet.

"This is impossible!" declared the sickly, thin guard. "There's no one here to run that video!"

The lead guard lifted up a hand calmly to silence the subordinate, and said, "We're being paid to watch now. We can ask questions later."

From the other end of the dome behind them, came an endless stream of countless sperm. Like a frantic school of fish, they filled every inch of the planetarium's dome and walls, even swimming all across the floor. In every possible formation, and from every possible angle, they competed for the chance to be the first one to penetrate the egg. Suddenly, the video went into rapid time-lapse mode and showed the full merging of the victorious male reproductive component and the ovum. As the time-lapse speeded up, one saw the fates of the unsuccessful sperm, many never making it to the fallopian tube, countless others going in wrong directions and end up lost, and countless more being killed off by white blood cells. As the video was ending, a stream of words came across the dome that read, "One survived. Two hundred million perished."

Precisely seven minutes had passed and all the lights of the planetarium went back on. The lead guard stood up as the maintenance workers stared incredulously at him. "Listen fellas, I'm sorry for the inconvenience. We got a call from some of the higher ups and they wanted to do a test run of this for some future show. We're all on our way out. We won't interrupt your work again today. Sorry if they forgot to notify you, but the whole thing was only severn minutes, so let's just all go back to our work."

The maintenance workers were divided, some thinking that the short break from their work day was interesting while others were impatient to be about their business. Noting some of the maintenance workers grumbling, "e" assured the security guards, "I've arranged things so none of those maintenance workers will remember any of this."

The lead guard shrugged as if to say, "I've had weirder things happen on this job." And as the guards, "e" and Incel went to head back outside, another security guard, also dressed in black, stood with her arms crossed, smiling in such a way as to leave doubt as to whether she'd become confrontational or laugh off everything she'd seen. Her hair was sandy-blond and cropped, but not overly so, and her uniform fit perfectly snuggly. Her face was rather roundish, but not pudgy. One could not say she was either overweight or slender. She was a perfect blend of masculine strength and feminine flexibility; and Incel immediately felt a twinge of attraction toward her that he'd not felt toward any woman in months. This made him blush with shame. Of course the female guard noticed this and smirked, neither approving nor disapproving, but merely acknowledging her awareness of Incel's thoughts.

Seeing something wrong in Incel's expression, the lead guard said, "Don't trip dude. She's the coolest dyke we ever had here. By the way, I figured out who you are. Someone leaked a photo of you on the web. You're that writer guy who's always hating on chicks. But don't worry. You see, Samantha here, she has to try to date women too; and she can't stand them either. So, it's all good. She could tell you stories."

Samantha gave a strictly-forbidden and unprofessional hug to the lead guard and then laughed. Then they all went out to walk around the grounds of the observatory under the guise of doing the mandatory "perimeter patrol," the part of the job that gave the guards there some privacy and some dignity for the better part of a half hour, every hour.

Knowing Incel was chronically short on friends, "e" permitted the guards to remember the evening, and they agreed to let Incel hang around the observatory for free whenever he was feeling lonely. As they parted "e" walked further up the hill to sleep "everywhere." The lead guard casually noted, "That 'e' dude is a real freak. Sometime, when we have more time, you'll have to tell me what the dude's gig is." Incel agreed as he shook hands with all of them and excused himself to walk down the hill to Glendale to take the train home.

5. A Fanboy To That Misogyny Channel

Victoria-Elizabeth La Seine was in the printer room pulling some hard-copy off the continually-churning Hewlett Packard M402 when her famously-creepy employer bowed facetiously toward her and said, "If Your Majesty would be so kind to have a word with me in my office, I would be much obliged."

Her employer and publisher, Roger Allen Woods, was a bit of an anglophile and could not get over the fact that one of his star reporters was named after two English Queens. (The story behind her French last name was lengthy and convoluted, and so she simply tried to evade the topic whenever it came up.) Although everyone else knew her as Liz, he never ceased calling her "Your Majesty," even when he was displeased with her.

As Roger Woods turned away to go back to his office, Liz exclaimed, "Screw you!" Woods ignored this insult as though it had never been spoken and loped confidently toward his desk. The whole world was continually trying to hurt his feelings, but he was impervious to all attack and had no shame whatsoever. Furthermore, he knew Victoria-Elizabeth was hopelessly conscientious and unable to bring herself to do a bad job however much she might despise her employer. He also had the added advantage of knowing his employees were essentially trapped and finally unable to really pull off a rebellion of any significant sort. Hence, he never took anything said to him personally.

Like many of the emancipators in the civil war, and many who worked for the traditional civil rights movement of old, he was simultaneously a bigot, on the personal level, and a full-time warrior for civil rights, on the professional and policy level. He was infamous for his saying, "We don't have to like you to fight for your right to exist." When confronted by the press about this, he openly said, "The reason you liberals can't get your people free is that you're waiting for everyone to love you first. Nobody owes you love. We owe you a home, an education, a job and a raise. And to do those things, we don't have to like you at all. And I, for one, don't like hardly any of you."

And because it was true that most civil rights activists didn't know anything about legislation, or even that legislation was they key to improving people's lives, they hated him all the more. The liberals of Los Angeles not only could not change the world of human rights, but they couldn't change a lightbulb. Beyond being perpetually offended, and beyond destroying people's careers, they had virtually no plan for the poor, no plan for the homeless, no plan for the mentally-ill, no plan for drug addicts, and no plan for those caught up in the prison-industrial complex. They knew how to destroy people and institutions, but as for building things that helped anyone, they were at a complete loss and they knew it. Roger continually mocked their legislative impotence day and night while doing several times more than all of them to move the legislative process forward. He was, in short, a real progressive; and his enemies, the ocean of politically-correct purity-testers and twitter mobsters, were, in fact, as phony and loveless and useless as the Los Angeles summer days were long.

When the #MeToo crisis hit, Roger Allen Woods was ready. He'd known several divorce attorneys in his extensive travels and had been warned that "mass vengeance" was coming. Knowing as she did that Roger was a remorseless playboy and sexist, one attorney said, "Roger, when they come for you, I don't know how you're going to make it." Roger put a strictly platonic hand on her shoulder and replied, "I'll be more ready than anyone in Los Angeles."

Years before the crisis erupted, Roger, formerly a billionaire, put one hundred million dollars into a separate legal trust; and that trust was then made a separate entity which was not legally an asset of his; and the trust itself was off-shored behind the almost impenetrable wall of the Luxembourg banking bureaucracy and legal system, which, while claiming undying fidelity to the legal system of the United States, turned out to actually be completely hostile to it. That trust had only one real purpose that anyone could detect, (in spite of its vaguely-worded charter), and that was to defend Roger against dozens of simultaneous lawsuits lasting several years each, should such an "unlikely set of circumstances occur." Additionally, he liquidated 100% of his personal fortune and put all of its liquid assets into multinational charities that pledged undying loyalty to Mr. Woods in ways that would not be allowed in the United States, but were easily allowable in certain extremely obscure and small nations which the average citizen in America had never even heard of. He continually let every person in the press, and every potential employee and-or potential romantic partner, see the unofficial plan of the trust, (a plan which the trust spokesman himself officially denied, for the time, but which would become apparent in the event of any protracted legal conflict). This trust was examined by a well-known attorney not affiliated with the trust who typed out an "unofficial interpretation not necessarily reflecting the views or intentions of the trust or Mr. Woods." This unofficial interpretation was the one Roger circulated to everyone who might even distantly be associated with him. It consisted of one huge and ominous paragraph:

"As I interpret the vast and overwhelming capacities of this trust, it appears to me to exist for the sole purpose of defending Roger Allen Woods and all enterprises related to him against any and all allegations of sexual misconduct or employment discrimination. The trust appears to have the assets necessary to defend Mr. Woods, and all entities associated with him directly or indirectly, at any cost for any length of time whatsoever. Furthermore, the trust seems to have the capacity to engage a virtually unlimited staff of attorneys and private investigators for the purpose of counter-suing each plaintiff in question for libel, slander and defamation, in the event the Mr. Woods feels the aforementioned potential allegations are false, (and he has already said publicly that he believes that any such potential allegations against him are all false), and to pursue each matter at litigation for as many years as it would take to attach all future wages, assets, properties, earnings and income for the remainder of the natural life of each plaintiff who had been found to be at fault in a court of law regarding any or all of the aforementioned torts. Additionally, the trust seems to also have the added capacity to pursue each corporation, governmental agency, or charitable institution, appearing to have aided the plaintiff in furthering said libel, slander and defamation. Mr. Woods, at a press conference, once summarized the matter this way: 'Starting today, I'd be happy to spend the rest of my days on this earth in court defending my honor and hunting down all who would besmirch it. I would be pleased to have that become the celebrated and primary cause of my life from this moment onward, in perpetuity.' The reader would be also well advised to note that upon detailed investigation, I find that Roger Allen Woods technically possesses no assets of any kind at this time and has a net worth of exactly zero dollars and zero cents. The media outlets he controls are technically penniless, and all buildings, equipment and furnishing they appear to possess are actually all rented, and thus these outlets can be simply disbanded and reincorporated under other names instantly. All media outlets affiliated with Roger Allen Woods are technically headquartered, on a continually rotating basis, out of nations which share no extradition treaties with the US and which have no financial transparency laws with regard to foreign courts."

An email sent from this attorney to a close friend in the legal community was "hacked" and ended up in the public domain, at which point the contents of the very short email were tacked onto the end of the more analytic-sounding analysis. That email said:

"I don't know about you, Carl, but, based on what I've read, I think I'd advise any client of mine to stay the fuck away from Mr. Woods, his employees, his media outlets, or any other enterprise even loosely affiliated with him, presuming they were hoping to have anything like a happy life in the future."

In fine, he was, legally, almost nonexistent, and he could not be shamed or bullied in any way; and he would not apologize to anyone at any time for any reason nor engage in any guilt-ridden tours of self-denunciation. This so ruined any fun in going after him, and made any accusation against him so personally dangerous that, even though he made no effort to hide his playboy lifestyle or his personal sexism, his very existence simply drove typical feminist activists insane. He simply ran a more successful progressive media empire than any of his feckless metrosexual rivals could, and he specialized in taking all of the joy out of the prospect of making any false accusations against him. Once the profit motive was taken away, and once the possibility of actual losses were faced, almost no one had "the courage to come forward."

The fact that Roger was not guilty of any crimes, and the fact that he did not discriminate in the hiring, pay, or promotion of women or minorities, might also have played a tiny role in the mob's reluctance to go after him, although, in the case of any innocent man unable to defend himself as well as Roger could, the rest of the media was happy to help destroy that person if it would generate more publicity and momentum for "the cause."

Roger's resolve to oppose #MeToo was solidified one day when he signed on to Twitter and saw Emily Linden say: "I'm actually not at all concerned about innocent men losing their jobs over false sexual harassment allegations. If some innocent men's reputations have to take a hit in the process of undoing the patriarchy, that is a price I am absolutely willing to pay."

And while most feminists in California and New York publicly disavowed any sympathy for this quote, privately, the majority of them agreed, and everyone knew it. Had she said something more evil, but less true, no one would have paid much attention, but the fact that she let the cat out of the bag — that was unforgivable.

And so, as things stood, Roger Allen Woods still ran the largest progressive media outlet in the world, and, at last, anyone who wanted to reach the largest audience with their reporting, however much it sickened them, would end up having to work with Roger. (On principle, he paid his women reporters precisely twice as much as could be gotten from any competing outlet. This meant that reporters at the top of their game, like Virginia-Elizabeth, simply held their nose and took the dive and signed on with Roger.) For many reasons, Roger knew his workers would, in impotent fury, try to insult him, however, he simply dismissed all insults directed his way and proceeded to demand the most professional performance possible from his workers. This strategy simply worked better than anyone else's strategy in the industry.

Roger loved insulting the rest of the progressive media by never firing a reporter for anything privately captured on a hidden smartphone, nor did he penalize his workers for incriminating emails or texts leaked by jilted lovers and ex-spouses. He never fired anyone for what they believed, no matter how offensive it was; and he never fired anyone no matter what sexual scandals dogged them or which politically-incorrect things they had been caught saying. The entire enterprise did its job of presenting progressive news to the world as if #MeToo and identity politics never existed. This made Roger's fellow progressives boil with hatred.

Roger's stance on these matters caused him to win the favor of many conservative men who tuned in to watch the broadcasts emerging from Roger's empire and to read the websites his companies produced. Many of those conservative men, after sufficient exposure to the economic information Roger's media outlets produced, found themselves becoming real progressives, that is, politically-incorrect people who now believed in fighting for the poor, the poor who were continually neglected by the upper-middle-class Democrats of California and New York. These coastal Democrats could never accept being called Republicans, although they were really economic conservatives, and so they resorted to the moral-high-grounding of identity politics in hopes of muddying the waters enough to obscure the fact that they absolutely despised poor people with a revulsion so deep that few Republicans could match it. And Roger knew for sure that they hadn't lifted a finger regarding the homeless crowding their streets, the mentally-ill dying in plain view of the public, and the addicts abandoned by their allegedly-Democratic families. Frankly, those issues were just too ugly for the beautiful and perky people of the San Francisco and Santa Monica to stare at for long. So, as Roger had found out, they swept it all under the rug and found racial and sexual crimes, real and imagined, to rotate their whole political lives around. But Roger never let these coastal upper-middle-class people wiggle out of the money issue, that one issue so dear to their hearts that it made their alleged liberalism all the more transparently fraudulent to Roger, and, increasingly, to the viewing and reading public.

*

Roger Allen Woods was startled out of his YouTube-induced stupor by the voice of Victoria-Elizabeth:

"Hey wanker! Could you please stop binge-watching Sandman and talk to me."

Instead of turning around immediately, after experiencing a moment of perturbation, he looked down, grinned peevishly, looked back up at the screen with an expression of deep longing, and then, assumed his "official tone" of completely unflappable, yet somehow generous, neutrality.

"Your Majesty, how may I be of service to your august personage."

"How can you be a fanboy to that misogyny channel?"

"That's easy. All I have to do is think about how little I like you, and then suddenly Sandman makes sense again."

"You don't like me?"

"Oh, I like you, just not very much."

"You stole that line from Nash Rivera."

"How would you know about Nash Rivera?"

"I know about every moment of your life that can be found out through public and private means."

"You've been stalking me."

"Not because I love you."

"Why then?"

"To see how it is a monster like you is made."

Roger Allen Woods leaned back in his large leather chair and smiled in a self-satisfied way.

"In that case, I approve. Stalk on."

"Roger, do you care about us, or are you just toying with us?"

"Victoria-Elizabeth, I love you. I will always love you. Of course I disapprove of you, and I don't like you. But liking you and approving of you — those things are totally separate from the fact that I'm certain that I love you."

"Roger, I think you need to be in therapy."

"But, I am in therapy."

"So you're incurable?"

"The best mental health professionals that money can buy can't seem to find a cure."

Victoria-Elizabeth sat puzzled for a moment. There was a moment of silence as she pondered herself, Roger, and her world. She could make no sense of it. The silence was not awkward because Roger, like all truly impressive CEOs was not even slightly intimidated by anything, especially silence. He merely looked on as if to wordlessly say, "The floor is yours, madam."

Then she asked, "Roger, why did you call me in here?"

"Oh yes, well, there's the matter of this little $300 bill that seems to keep appearing on your expense account credit card every couple of weeks. I myself wouldn't be upset if that was all you had to steal to make your lifestyle work, but you must be aware that many highly-trained accountants are poring over ever dime that goes in and out of this place. Just like you, they have no fear of me, and so, wouldn't you know it but that they actually raise their voices when they don't understand the numbers they're seeing. So, you see, I am forced to ask you about these bills coming in, unless I want to face more of their wrath."

"Ah that. Oh yeah. It's the Incel, you know."

"All this time you've been taking the Incel out for fine wining and dining sessions?"

"He's the best source there is. He's been around the manosphere for a long time. He can fill me in on anything and anyone I want to know in that wold."

"The thing that always puzzled me about this situation is this: Why would he permit you into his presence so regularly? Of course I've never let you write your dogmatic feminist drivel here, but he surely would have seen the work you contribute to the other mainstream media outlets. You're the enemy. He could lose his street cred if he got caught with you."

"Exactly, which is why I have to bribe him? How do you think I've been getting such great inside information on the manosphere for the last year. I take him out to any restaurant he wants, once every two weeks. And it's not just factual information about the people and the scene, but he's gotten to where he talks to me as if I were a misogynist guy who he could confide in. It's like being inside the minds of everyone I despise and hearing exactly how their thought process works."

Victoria-Elizabeth had been writing a year-long "exploration of the manosphere" for Woods' media outlets. People on both the left and the right were clamoring for more information from "real insiders" about who these MGTOWs, TFLs and Incels were and how they operated, and, most importantly, what motivated them and how they ended up in their current condition. One of Woods' top editors proposed the idea and Woods agreed to the huge project, but only on one condition, that the writing and the presentation of the series be absolutely as neutral as humanly possible. He had hired an extra part-time editor to watch Victoria-Elizabeth like a hawk to make sure "not even an ounce of that 3rd wave nonsense creeps into the series." Roger set out this condition: "There will be no flattering these guys and no insulting them. Just tell their story, nothing more."

The project was now dear to his heart and so he assigned Victoria-Elizabeth to spearhead it because she was simply the reporter that he had most confidence in. She agreed to take the assignment although her mailbox was full each week with feminists who said that she'd sold out by being "morally neutral towards fascism." However, because she was protected by Roger's empire, she couldn't be hounded out of her current job, and Roger would sue anyone who tried to impede her from getting another job if she ever wanted to move on. In this way, the Twitter mob could do nothing to any of Roger's people, unless they wanted to spend the rest of their entire lives in court.

Roger again leaned back in his chair and exhaled, "Impressive. Excellent."

"So then you approve of my expenditures?"

"Yes, yes. I'll tell accounting. If they whine about the IRS, I'll get the foundation to pay for it. It's not like we're short on money. But let me ask you something."

"What?"

"Do you ever get a crush on him?"

"No."

"I'm serious, because it seems to me that spending that much time with crazy people tends to lead to things."

"You mean like a kind of Stockholm syndrome?"

"Precisely that kind of thing."

"Okay, I'll give you a good laugh."

"I'm all ears."

"So I don't have a crush on him, and I don't find him very attractive. But I was curious?"

"You made a move on him! Really? You're blowing my mind."

"I did."

"And?"

"Wouldn't you know it, but he turned me down."

"That's not possible."

"It is. He said he was going 'monk mode.' The manosphere is now hot for celibacy, if you could believe that shit."

Roger shook his head with mild wonderment.

"Well, Your Majesty, you're my best reporter because you really will do anything to get your story."

"I know, right? And he holds up his hand and says to me, 'Just friends, okay. Just friends.' Is that crazy, or what?

Roger just shook his head again in bewilderment and said, "But he admitted you're his friend now? That's pretty far out. So you just have these big platonic dates every two weeks? Wild."

"That's it. It will have been two weeks as of tomorrow night. I'm going back there tomorrow."

Roger folded his hands and seemed to fall into a ten-second meditative trance, before looking back down and saying, "But, since he turned you down, then he's not really an Incel, is he?"

"Roger, don't nitpick. This series is going well, and we started out calling him 'The Incel,' and that's his stage name, so we all just have to go with that."

Victoria-Elizabeth's employer just gave a mildly sanctimonious nod and grin, then said, "Yes, Your Majesty."

6. A Crime of Aggression Has Been Committed

"I still don't get it," said "e" as he absorbed yet another beer and then resumed watching the football game.

Incel replied, "It's going to take a long time for you to get it. The logic behind it would look primitive to you."

"Is it indeed primitive?"

"Probably so."

"Then tens of millions of men, in addition to ourselves, are willingly drinking an inferior form of alcohol while they watch men violently colliding with one another?"

"Yes, I'm afraid that's the plan."

"e," cooperatively absorbed yet another beer in an attempt to understand. "But you do acknowledge that wine and whiskey are superior forms of beverages?"

"Yes, I've already said that I do."

On the large flat screen television, one could see that two men had hit each other at an unfortunate angle, leaving an important player on one of the teams severely injured.

"I still confused," continued "e." "It appears to me a crime of aggression has been committed and it has led to a serious injury."

"We've been over this. I told you it's not a crime."

As time passed, "e" was realizing that wider and wider gaps were opening up between his understanding of life and that of Incel. "e" was further mystified as to why he and Nature had not been taking certain phenomena into account, although they appeared widespread. But his meditations were interrupted by the loud ringing of the doorbell and a rapid-fire knocking on the front door. "e" turned his head to Incel as if to ask, "What is this interruption?"

Incel replied, "She's here."

*

Victoria-Elizabeth, as per usual, stormed into the room, cleared away a pile of paper on the table and put down a bottle a chilled white wine. She then went over to Incel's cheap, laminate kitchen cabinets and pulled out a wine glass. She sat down and poured herself an impolitely-full glass of chardonnay and then addressed Incel.

"My boss Roger has been a pain in the ass this week, so I'm having a drink here to calm myself down before we go eat."

"Have you asked Roger about publishing my article?"

"Yes, I did. But, as you know, he feels it's too conservative for us to print. He doesn't mind me doing neutral stories about your life, and lives of people like you, but he's not keen on being your publisher. He wants to maintain some semblance of liberalism, despite what a redneck he really is. And anyway, people are going to start seeing through the fake name we're using for you; and they're going to figure out who you are eventually. Then maybe you can finally be famous enough to get enough money from your writing to get off welfare."

"I didn't like the sound of the way you said 'welfare.' That doesn't seem very liberal of you."

"Okay, so the idea of men on welfare disgusts me. Okay?"

"But it's okay for women to be on welfare?"

"Oh, would you stop with all your libertarian logical consistency shit for once and give me a break?"

This actually made Incel chuckle. This was why Incel tolerated Victoria-Elizabeth's intrusion into his life, because she struck him as funny somehow. When she was angry, he felt that her sense of humor came out, and from that issued little gems that he would later remember and smile about. If he'd not vowed to go into monk mode, he'd have felt a strong attraction to her. But, per that very libertarian logical consistency, a vow was a vow. No "funny business" would be permitted, period.

Incel got himself a wine glass, cleared away another pile of paper in front of him, and sat down to join her for a glass of wine before their bi-weekly dinner / interview ritual began.

"e" was watching them from the living room and now objected. "Why are you now drinking the superior form of alcohol while the game is still on? How am I to follow these customs when the rules keep changing?"

"I'll explain later. Just absorb another beer, and I'll get into it with you the next time we get together."

Victoria-Elizabeth, alarmed, said, "What the hell? You're talking to empty chairs now?"

Incel shrugged. "What can I say? I went insane, and now I see this guy 'e' a few times a week. He's invisible to everyone in my life but me, but sometimes people who don't know me can see him. It's crazy. He claims to be evolution itself, here on some mission to get me to understand life or something, claims to be working for Nature with a capital 'N.' And yes, I already went to the doctor, but 'e' threw my pills away, so I'm stuck. Sorry."

Victoria-Elizabeth replied, "So that's why your pupils are dilated like a crazy man's, because you're hallucinating."

"You got it."

"Can I include this mental breakdown in my next installation? It's too good to be true. I can't make this shit up."

"I don't care. Yeah, you can include it."

For the next forty-five minutes Incel told Victoria-Elizabeth the whole story of "e" up till that point, including the attempt to teach "e" to enjoy watching football and drinking beer. Victoria-Elizabeth just switched on the voice-recorder app on her smartphone and looked on with impatient interest, until, at last, the whole story complete, she switched off the voice-recorder app.

"Okay, that's good. Let's go to dinner. You earned your pay this week."

Turning to "e," Incel added, "And don't erase all her work this time like you did with everyone else."

"e" replied, "But I feel I must object to this work, this collaboration between you two. I'm afraid of what come of it."

This time Victoria-Elizabeth's ears perked up. "Wait, I heard someone answering you! I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I heard someone talking. Are you hiding someone here? Are you playing a practical joke on me?"

Incel noted: "Didn't you do a year at the Psychic Institute?"

"Yes, but that was all bullshit."

"I'm not sure about that. Maybe some of that hocus pocus is real. Maybe you're picking up a signal or something?"

Victoria-Elizabeth stood up and took in a deep breath and looked around the room, though not directly at "e" whom she still could not see visually.

"I think you're right. Yes, I can feel it. Someone's here. You know what? Let's just go. This is a lot to take in for one evening."

"So you believe me?"

"Not exactly."

"But you admit I might not be crazy?"

"Maybe."

Incel turned to "e" and said, "Okay, time to wrap this up."

"e" got up first and headed toward the door as Incel and Victoria-Elizabeth also got to up to head toward the door. They all went outside, but Incel stopped to watch "e" walk off.

"He's leaving. I can feel it," added Victoria-Elizabeth. "Where's he going?"

"He's going to walk up into the hills and then go to sleep for the night."

"Where exactly does he sleep, after he goes up on the hill?"

"He sleeps everywhere."

"Everywhere at once?"

"Yeah, something like that. I don't understand."

7. If Men Were To Opt Out of Debasing Themselves

"e" stood at Incel's desk, put his hands on the top of it and absorbed all the information in the drawers and all the digital information in the computer, and all the information stored in the cloud by the computer. Incel just watched this process for a moment and then turned back to the kitchen to get more beers and pretzels.

After he finished absorbing all the information in Incel's literary world, he sat in his usual chair in the living room and resumed his usual staring at the television screen.

When Incel sat down in his chair across from "e," and began to swig down more beer, "e" said, "I don't want you printing that story with Roger."

"Roger already said he won't print it. That's what Victoria-Elizabeth says."

"I can already sense that Roger will change his mind and print the story. Victoria-Elizabeth will prevail on him over time. She feels she's owes it to you for all of the intelligence you've given her about your people, The Incels."

"Why don't you want the story to go out?"

"It will be detrimental to the cause of evolution, and, as you know, I am actually evolution, so that affects my mission personally."

"I don't see how that could be true?"

Just then the television blinked back on by itself and a series of short video cuts of nature films came on the screen. At first one saw three hundred male bat rays swimming after a single female in prime mating condition. Then one saw two male Himalayan mountain goats bashing their heads together until one of them backed down. After that one saw two massive sea lions fighting with insane furry to control a harem of female sea lions and their children who stared on impassively, unconcerned as to whether their mate or father should perish or lose his status and be forced to wander the ocean alone. In each video one saw the female of the species just watching, or running away, as the men heroically humiliated themselves, risked their lives, or strenuously fought for the privilege of mating with that female. They could be led on wild goose chases, forced into battle against dozens of other competitors, or obligated to work themselves to death in some manner. In every competition, only a select few males both survived the ordeal, beat their competitors away, and then finally managed to mate. After about five minutes of these displays, the television blinked off again.

"You see," added "e," "if men were to opt out of debasing themselves, ruining themselves, or exhausting themselves in order to mate, and if men discovered the willpower within themselves to demand that each romantic encounter include profound respect for the dignity and humanity of the man in question, well, any loser whatsoever could end up reproducing. Already too many weaklings are mating due to modern medicine. The last thing evolution needs, the last thing I need, is someone like you telling men to call off the competition and wait passively like Zen monks for the universe to bring them a love that is flattering to their sense of what their human rights ought to be. I see that your heart, as you humans say, is in the right place, but I have to answer to Nature, and she's starting to lose her patience regarding this matter. Many articles like yours have been written, but I sense a danger in this one. Somehow it will serve as a catalyst, a lightning rod, a turning point. No, it's just all too risky. I can't have it. Nature won't have it either.

Incel was preparing to wage a vigorous argument against "e" on this matter, but the door swung open and in walked the building manager, Vladimir, with an old Belgian assault rifle slung over his shoulder. He stared for a minute at Incel, then at "e," then sat down in another folding chair in the living room. Since there were only four folding chairs in all, the living room was feeling rather full. For some reason no one, including Incel, wanted to sit on Incel's couch.

Vladimir opened a bottle of Finlandia vodka and started knocking back swigs of it.

*

"Vladimir, how come you can see 'e' when other people can't?"

"We Russians are allowed to see everything. We are not like you Americans. We're allowed to see all of it, the spiritual world, the human world, everything. But surely I am not the only other person who sees your friend."

"That's true. Some other people see him. The guards at the observatory could see him."

"I know the lead guard there. He is Mexican."

"So?"

"Mexicans are also allowed to see."

"Vladimir, what's wrong with Americans?"

"I don't know. There is something that prevents them from seeing. I don't know what it is. I think, maybe, they are afraid of the world. The world is very big you know. The truth about it could frighten a man. The American truth — it is like a children's bedtime story. There is something too simple about it."

"But the other guards weren't Mexican. How did they see?"

"There is much Russian blood in them."

"I don't understand."

"You must understand something, otherwise this spirit would not allow you to see it."

"Do you see spirits often?"

"Not so often. You see, they do not come around so often; but if they come around, of course I see them. It's only natural."

"What do we do now?"

"There is nothing to do. We are human. The other guest is a spirit. If he will drink with us and watch television with us, why trouble yourself over it. The others can't see. That is their own problem."

"e" turned to Incel and said, "Why is our guest not following the commands of your ritual. He is drinking a superior form of alcohol. Television night, as you explained it to me, is for men to drink beer."

"He can't help it. He's a Russian. He prefers vodka. You and me will drink beer and he will drink vodka."

At that point Vladimir handed the remote control to "e" and motioned that he should choose the entertainment.

Incel turned to Vladimir and said, "but 'e' can just control the television with his mind. He doesn't need a remote control."

"It is in bad form for a spirit to show off in front of mortals. If he is to be a proper guest, he will use the remote control like we do."

"e" nodded in agreement with this postulate and turned on the television. The first channel was a boxing match. One man was being beaten badly and blood had begun to come out of his mouth. The referee signaled that the match was to be forced to a close in order to prevent further injury. The demoralized boxer went to his corner, appearing to be on the verge of weeping. He was comforted and tended to by his manager, his trainer and his doctor.

"e" pressed the "up channel" button and an antique car show came on. Various men of a kind of sturdy sort were milling about, each taking a turn describing the process by which they had restored ancient cars to new condition.

The next channel featured men on Fox news complaining about how evil they believed poor people were. The called the poor lazy, irreligious, immoral and criminal. They carried on at length repeatedly emphasizing that "taxation is theft."

The sports channel was featuring a kind of video swimsuit edition which showed short video clips of several different bikini-clad women in various surroundings.

The contents of each channel, for different reasons, seemed illogical to "e." Although having two hundred channels was driving Incel to the verge of bankruptcy, it was, for the moment, interesting to all three people in the apartment to watch "e" not understand each of the two hundred channels. Vladimir and Incel each took turns attempting to make "e" see why humans believed the phenomena on each channel was somehow important. This project went on till shortly before dawn.

The next day, after both Vladimir and "e" had gone home, Incel woke up and waddled out to the front porch in his bath robe at about 3PM to pick up a copy of the daily paper. (His friends mocked his sentimental attachment to print news, describing Incel as "old before his time.") Underneath the rolled-up newspaper was a short note from Victoria-Elizabeth: "I finally talked Roger into running your piece."

8. Nothing Ever Happened

Underneath the newspaper and the note from Victoria-Elizabeth was another note from "e" saying, "Please meet me at the beach at Malibu at sunset."

Incel took at least an hour to comb through the Los Angeles Times as he sipped his extremely powerful black tea doused in far too much cream. Were not Incel terribly depressed, the sheer strength of the tea, which was simply given to him in loose-leaf form by Vladimir, would have sent the average person into an anxiety attack. It was called Russian Caravan, and the potency and abrasiveness of it caused Peets to, more than once, remove it from the shelves of their retail stores. But Incel was, in his baseline condition, so depressed that this megadose of caffeine was just precisely enough to wake him up and give him that tinge of motivation that made life on the verge of being worth living, although not quite.

Before traipsing to the shower, he again gazed at the two notes that were tucked underneath the morning newspaper, one promising publication on a scale he'd never had before, the other one issuing a totally inconvenient and seemingly superfluous order. He crumbled up the one from "e," figuring "e" would show up soon anyhow, if he was even real, and the other, from Victoria-Elizabeth, he put gingerly in the side pocket of his bath robe before lumbering off to the bathroom to do his daily grooming, such as it was.

*

He got on a long-haul Los Angeles Metro bus about forty minutes before sunset. It was a balmy evening and the sun was already shining through the iconic red, purple and brown haze of the Los Angeles coast. His goal was a pathetic one. He was to go to Culver City and sort of mull around the neighborhood where a woman worked, a woman who was way out of his league and would never date him. He had deceived himself into believing he did not have a crush on this woman, because such a state of being would violate all the rules of the manosphere, but he persisted, almost unconsciously, to stalk her anonymously, never quite having the nerve to actually approach her or contact her. Had any credible feminist caught him wasting an evening this way, she would have mocked him and discredited him to his peers. But, as things stood, no one had caught on yet, and this particular part of town, like the part of North Hollywood he also hung out it, had too many rich and beautiful and famous people in it for anyone to take notice of Incel. He secretly harbored fantasies of one day having the guts to approach her, but his fantasy was not to meant to be and would never happen in this particular three-dimensional space-time continuum, as he would soon find out.

At first the bus headed, in its usual fashion, toward Culver City. Seeing that all was going as usual, he ducked his head down into a fat paperback tome entitled Vanity Fair by William Thackeray and settled in for the long drive. At some point in the ride he looked up and noticed that the bus was going much faster than usual. Strangely, it had gone off course and was surging up the 101 Freeway. He went up to the front and asked the driver why the bus was going so far off course.

"I'm sorry, son," said the bus driver, "but you should have looked at the sign on the front of the bus. This is a Malibu bus."

"No," protested Icnel. "I'm certain that I specifically read that this was a Culver City bus."

"Can't help you, man," said the bus driver with a sad resignation in his voice. "Next time look more carefully before getting on the bus."

"This is bullshit," said Incel, "but just let me off at the next stop and I'll head back the other way."

"Whatever," replied the bus driver.

Incel decided not to make a scene, and instead resumed reading his book. At one point the bus pulled off the freeway and onto Topanga Canyon.

Incel looked up and pulled the cord to request the next stop, however, the bus kept going.

Again Incel came to the front of the bus to protest.

"Sorry, sir," said the bus driver more firmly, "but this is an express bus. We don't stop till Malibu."

Incel slumped down in his seat, realizing that "e" had again trapped him into some kind of adventure or other, and that he would have to see it through. His creepy stalking adventure would have to be postponed for another day. It was already getting dark and the Culver City eateries would already have waiting times. Again outmaneuvered, Incel simply sat through the seemingly-endless ride through the canyon on a bus route that didn't, on normal days, even exist. Why no one else on the bus noticed this would remain a complete mystery.

*

Knowing that "e" would meet him wherever he went, he got off the bus at Malibu and headed straight for the shoreline. It was a dark, but extremely clear night. He could see the whole Milky Way Galaxy stretched out before him. It was supremely beautiful, and, for a moment, Incel forgot all of his problems and his petty hatreds and his own sense of having suffered injustice. The moment brought a rare sense of spiritual transcendence into what was otherwise a very agnostic life.

A voice behind him said, "That's where I sleep every night when I walk into the hills."

"The whole galaxy?"

"Yes, this one and every other one. Of course they all have life, and all of it is constantly evolving, and I am, as you know, evolution."

"Well, this is very nice and all, but I ought to get back home and work on my article, since I guess I can't be spying on anyone in Culver City now. Roger says he's going to run my piece after all. I got a note from Victoria-Elizabeth this morning."

"Yeah, you see, that's why I called you here today. I can't let you run that story. It will be the start of too much going against Nature. It will throw a wrench in evolution. We just can't allow much more of that kind of thing. We have to put a stop to it now."

"Hey man, this is my big break. I can't pull the story just because you say so. I still don't really know who you are."

"e" put his hands on his hips in an authoritative way and said, "Sorry, but you can't go back home ever. And anyway, I already erased the story from your computer and from the cloud and from your hard-copy files."

"You can't just go around erasing everyone's memory."

"You're right about that. I've already interfered with the natural world too much. That kind of intervention into ordinary physics is frowned on by Nature. Really, the rules are that it's just not ever supposed to happen. Miracles are allowed, of course, but they must never transgress the physical laws of the universe. Nature allows miracles, but forces them to be merely a logical string of physical events. This thing of me just erasing stuff — it's got to stop. You're right."

"If you stop erasing things, I'll just retype my story. Even if you make me forget it, Victoria-Elizabeth and Roger will remember and remind me. Either you keep walking around acting like a god, or that story gets printed."

"Right, that's why I called you here, because you and I, we're going to trade places, as the movie says. Tonight, you'll be sleeping where I used to, everywhere, in all of that you see in the sky above, and in all this you see in the world below. For now, I'm staying in your apartment. Starting tomorrow, there's to be a lot less hocus pocus and lot more 'real world' stuff for me. I'm sticking around to learn certain details about human life, about love in particular. And you, you'll be learning how to be evolution. Once you see my job the way I do, you'll see there's really nothing wrong in the way things are going."

"You mean you're going to do away with me? Were you sent to do a hit on me?"

"Didn't Krishna say that none are slain and none are slayers, that we have always been, just like this. My friend, you see, you were never truly born. You can't ever truly die. That's because, the universe, all of it, is always happening. There's not even really anything like what you call time. In truth, nothing ever happened."

"Where do I go now?"

"Let's do a little ceremony this way: You just start walking out into the water. After a while you'll notice you're a bit above the water, like that guy Jesus, right? Then after a while you'll be up there, inside of all of it. Really, you'll practically be all of it. It will be like being almost everything."

"That's why you say every night that you sleep everywhere."

"Yes, that's why I say that."

9. Maybe Someday You Will Understand

The next morning, after Incel didn't respond to the good news, Victoria-Elizabeth got worried. She had a sense of foreboding, like something was terribly wrong. She was tensed up and ready, if necessary, to kick in the door and see what was wrong. But when she got there, the door was cracked open. She didn't even knock. Somehow she knew to simply push it open gently. As she strode into the living room, there was Vladimir, and "e," now completely visible. They were both slouched on folding chairs and staring mindlessly at the screen, as channels rolled forward, changing every ten seconds in rotation, silently. The volume was off, and Incel and Vladimir faced her, each with Beligian assault rifles in one hand and shot glasses of Findlandia vodka in the other. No beer was to be seen anywhere.

Victoria-Elizabeth clenched her fist violently and said, "Where is he! His story is due at the editor's desk tonight!"

"e" replied, "Incel won't be coming back to this apartment."

"So you shot him?"

Vladimir laughed and said, "Don't be stupid. People just go away sometimes. You were a psychic at one time. Surely you know that."

"Who told you about my psychic training?"

"Of course Incel told me everything."

"Did he leave the story with you? I have to get the story."

"e" set his assault rifle on the table, poured himself another shot glass of Finlandia vodka and said, "The story he wrote is gone also. It was found by Nature to have a counter-evolutionary message."

"Where is Incel now?"

"e" did not answer, and so Vladmir swept his hand in the air broadly and said, "He is everywhere, of course."

Victoria-Elizabeth stood up in a fury and grabbed an empty wine bottle sitting on a shelf and threw it against the wall. It smashed into pieces and made a great noise. Vladimir stood up and pointed his assault rifle at the guest and ordered her to sit down.

In resignation, Victoria-Elizabeth collapsed into the third of four folding chairs and said, "What am I gonna' do?"

Vladimir did not answer, but poured two shot glasses of vodka and set them firmly down in front of Victoria-Elizabeth.

She chuckled and shook her head in dismay. "I'm screwed. Now my series on Incels will be interrupted till I find another source as good as he was, if I can even manage that; and now Roger will be pissed that I bothered him continually to print a story that now doesn't exist."

"e" tilted his head and noted, "Because me and Incel have traded places, I am no longer psychic in the way that I once was. A sort of deep empathy remains behind, but I am left with simple vision and hearing, in almost an ordinary human way. Be that as it may, I sense that your career is in no danger whatsoever. I sense only success and acclaim coming your way. My guess is that this setback will only be momentary."

"So then," she asked, "you're going to be a regular person and Incel is like a god or something?"

"It's more complicated than that," said "e." "The states we all live in, whether human, or gods, as you call them, or, for lack of a better word, inanimate objects — all of that, all of them — they exist in a different way than you could ever imagine. Maybe someday you will understand."

Vladimir smirked and said, "Or maybe in your next life you will be born Russian, or Mexican, then it will all make much more sense."

"But now," interjected Victoria-Elizabeth, "now that you're almost human, where will you live? You can't sleep everywhere anymore."

"I will stay here," replied "e."

"How will you pay rent?" protested Victoria Elizabeth.

Vladimir again smiled and said with an absurdly ostentation bow, "He will be my guest, compliments of the house."

Victoria-Elizabeth had already had five shots and she was getting drunk quickly. She laughed and said, "Well, I guess I'll have to take Lyft home, since I can't drive now."

Vladimir said, "You and 'e' are both fine physical specimens. 'e' shall walk you home. It's only four miles."

10. Unconditional Love

When "e" and Victoria-Elizabeth got outside, the sun had retreated behind some clouds. A light breeze had made it inland. It was fine walking weather.

Victoria-Elizabeth looked down the long boulevard and said, "I'm not sure I'm strong enough to make it home."

"e" replied, "Although I'm only partly, as you say, supernatural, and mostly living within human limitations, I believe, for a being that is almost human, I'm extremely strong."

"How strong?"

"I could carry you home if I had to."

"What do we do?"

"Lean on me with all your weight and you will walk almost effortlessly."

She took "e" buy the arm and leaned on him as she walked, still very woozy from the excess of Finlandia vodka she had consumed.

As they started on their journey, she asked "e," "Why are you trading places with Incel?"

"Even though I was all of evolution, Nature perceived that I only partially understood what it was to be human."

As she teared up, Victoria-Elizabeth said, "I don't think any of us know what it is to be human."

They were silent for a while as they walked on. While Victoria-Elizabeth did not outrightly cry, "e" felt something profound was happening, something he couldn't understand; but then there was so much to understand.

"Regarding Incel?"

"Yes?"

"Did you hate him?"

"Yes, I think I hated him?"

A couple of seagulls had wandered inland, having learned how to feed off of human refuse like pigeons do, and as they flew over "e" and his walking partner, they cawed. The two walked past several bus stops, but did not board a bus. Victoria-Elizabeth was still leaning on "e" as they continued forward toward her house. The boulevard was already crammed with traffic, but somehow the traffic jam was not as noisy as usual.

"e" ventured another question: "Did you love him?"

"Incel?"

"Yes, did you love him?"

"Yeah, maybe I did."

"Maybe?"

"Maybe."

"So you hated him and you loved him?"

"Yeah, sure."

"e" was silent. He felt something awesome come over him, something large, something he'd never felt before.

"Victoria-Elizabeth?"

"Yes?"

"I think you have taught me something very sacred."

"What is that?"

"That for humans, love and hatred are almost the same thing. This is a vast mystery."

Victoria-Elizabeth, still holding on to "e" by the arm said nothing for a moment, but raised her head and smiled ironically.

The sidewalks of the boulevard began to fill up. It was getting crowded and so Victoria-Elizabeth leaned into "e" more closely as they continued on.

"e" said, in a thoughtful tone, "Could you teach me how humans love?"

Victoria stopped and faced "e" and said, "That's ridiculous. You don't even have the proper male anatomy for making love. I'm afraid, my friend, you'd have to grow some extra parts for that to work out."

After a while they reached Victoria-Elizabeth's apartment. The wind was now picking up and an unseasonable fog was rolling in.

As they stopped at her door, she said, "Look. You're very nice. It was nice of you to walk me home. I suppose I would kiss you on the mouth, but you don't have a mouth, or a face. You silly man. So let's just say I give you a hug and let's call it even."

"Even?"

"It's a gambling thing."

"Gambling?"

"Yes, I'll take you gambling sometime. I'll sit there and watch you stare at how stupid it is, but we'll go gambling, okay?"

"I look forward to human gambling."

"But 'e,' tell me. I'm serious. How will you learn about human love without having sex?"

"e" replied, "I only know one kind of love right now. Only a small percentage of human know of it, so I have been told. I have known of it forever. When we hug, I will show you that other kind of love."

"Okay," said Victoria-Elizabeth. "Whatever. Just give me a hug. It's getting cold out here and I have to go in."

"e" embraced her, but when he did, his body seemed to almost meld with hers, as if they were both mutually inside of each other. She could feel "e" occupying the very space her heart was in. Suddenly all of her insecurities seemed to fade to almost nothing. She pulled back.

"I know what that is. That's not romantic love. That's unconditional love."

"Do you not like unconditional love?"

"Oh, it's not bad, but I think it might not be right for me to get hooked on that."

"Why?"

Victoria-Elizabeth smiled with a flash of insight and said, "You want to know why, mister? I'll tell you why, because it would interfere with evolution. Remember, you're 'e,' right? Now it makes sense, 'e,' evolution. Duh. And that's why you sent Incel away, he was on the verge of fucking up evolution, right?"

"e" stepped back and hung his head in a guilty way and would not answer.

"Don't just stand there. Tell me what you did."

"It wasn't just me. It was Nature too."

"Who is Nature?"

"My boss."

"If you were everything, how could you have a boss? That makes no sense."

"I don't fully understand how that works. Only Nature knows. She doesn't tell me everything."

"She?"

"Yes, she."

"God is a woman?"

"Not that kind of woman."

"What kind of woman then?"

"It would take too long to explain. But one day you will see for yourself. While you are in this kind of world, I can't tell you."

Victoria-Elizabeth's eyes narrowed, and she said, "'On The Increasing Disposability of Men.' Yes, the that was the title, or something like that."

"e" raised his head and faced her, "We could not permit the males to know."

"To know that they're disposable?"

"Yes, that is forbidden."

"Because men would stop chasing women if they knew; and if men stopped chasing women, the jig would be up. I get it."

"e?" she continued.

"Yes, Victoria-Elizabeth."

"Before I go inside, would you give me one more of the unconditional-love-style hugs?"

"e" again sank his whole body into hers. And Victoria-Elizabeth felt herself being born into this world and going into the next world. She felt, for sure, that it was all one world. She held on tightly. She flew like a bird. She was, for a moment, free, absolutely free. For that instant, she was no longer disappointed in her parents, no longer disappointed in her boss, no longer disappointed in her parents. For once, it was all okay."

She then held out "e" a foot from her and said, "Speaking of evolution, let's make a deal. Let's you and I not see each other very often. I'll come by Incel's old apartment, maybe once a month. You and me and Vladimir — we'll watch television and get drunk on vodka, but we won't do much more of this hugging, not very often anyway, okay?"

"You feel that too much unconditional love would be unhelpful for you?"

"Yes, very unhelpful, sir. In case you forgot, most of us humans want kids. How will I be motivated to find a man to have a kid with if I get too much of that stuff you've got."

"But I can email you?"

"Yes, as often as you want."

"And you will answer my questions about the other kind of love?"

"Yes, we can talk all you want about that kind of love. When I tell you how silly it can be, you won't believe me. But just ask anyone, and they'll tell you what I say is true."

"e" again hung his head down in dejection and said, "It is not suitable for me to procreate directly."

"Did Incel show you his porn collection?"

"Yes, but I still did not fully grasp it. Somehow I created sex, but I don't understand it. I think Incel understood it somehow."

"Yes, Incel knew, but he was trying to become like you, not dependent on sex. That was his dream, I think. He turned me down, you know, when I tried to make a pass at him."

"The Universe is always learning about itself. Somehow the Universe can never quite keep up with itself."

Victoria-Elizabeth gave "e" a very platonic peck on the cheek, smiled and said, "Go home 'e' and try to get some rest, human rest, in a bed, not everywhere, like you used to."

"I will retire to a human bed tonight?"

"Yes, and 'e,' I'm giving you a little homework. Even though your mating equipment isn't really there, yet, I'm assigning you the task of trying to talk some woman into laying down with you in that bed. Then you'll learn much more than I can teach you just by talking."

"e" turned down the long boulevard and walked all the way back to his new apartment.

*

When "e" returned home, Vladimir was still sitting there, gun in one hand, vodka in the other; and the television still rolled on.

"Well?" Vladimir inquired.

"She can only see us once a month," replied "e" drearily as he sat down.

Vladimir smiled, "Then you have a crush on her. That is why your heart is so heavy."

"A crush?"

"Yes, you will feel sorrow for a time, but you will recover, and then get a crush on someone else."

"This will keep happening?"

"It is inevitable, my friend."

11. Evolution Was Moving Quickly

A month later Victoria-Elizabeth sent an email to "e" and Vladimir telling them that she would be coming over for a reunion. She stopped by Trader Joe's and picked up some snacks and beverages and drove on over to Incel's old apartment.

When she got to the door, it was again cracked open, like it had been a month before. Again she pushed on it and glided into the room to see her new friends, but only Vladimir was there. But this time the television was off. The ancient stereo was playing vinyl. It was the Moscow Symphony playing one of Shostakovich's works. The assault rifle was on the table and Vladimir was in the kitchen pulling some piroshki out of the oven. A card table was already open and a small kettle of Russian coffee was simmering on it.

Victoria-Elizabeth took a seat on one of the folding chairs and asked, "When will 'e' get here?"

"My dear woman," said Vladimir as he put the entree on the table, "I'm afraid our friend will not be coming back here to this apartment."

"Now he's gone too. Both 'e" and Incel are gone?"

"I did not want to tell you over the phone, so I waited till you got here."

"Why did he leave?"

Vladimir sat down and exhaled in a melancholy way, "Ah, but I am afraid the pain of human existence proved too confounding for the dear fellow."

"So what? Did he get a crush on every other woman he saw?"

Vladimir smiled and said, "I think it was something just like that."

"Did he ever hug you?"

"No, but he hugged my wife."

"Did she feel the unconditional love."

"Oh yes, she remarked that she felt it strongly."

"Have you ever felt it."

"Oh yes, you know. Me and my wife have always felt this way."

Victoria-Elizabeth took a hearty bit of the piroshki and liberally swallowed down some of the black coffee she'd poured into a small ceramic cup.

"How did you have children with her then?" Victoria-Elizabeth asked.

"This was a problem in the beginning. You see, we knew that we loved each other and wanted to stay together, but we were not so motivated to have sex. And our Russian Orthodox priest — he did not want to discuss the matter."

"How did you resolve the issue?"

"We had heard a rumor from the people of our village that there was a saint, a rabbi of an unusual Jewish sect. It was said he had a magical way of resolving such matters, a mystic practice of which no one was permitted to speak publicly. One must see him in person, so we were told."

"You went there?"

Vladmir winked, then chewed some piroshki. He poured some of the black coffee from the kettle into a tin cup and swallowed several gulps down.

"Yes," replied Vladimir. "The problem was solved."

"Can you tell me what the magic formula is?"

"No, I can't. There is a curse on anyone who tells without first consulting the rabbi."

"I must go to Russia to find out?"

"Oh, I'm sure," said Vladimir, "that some saint like that must be here among you in Los Angeles. You will find him when the time is right. By the way, do you mind if my wife joins us?"

"Not at all," said Victoria-Elizabeth.

"She does not talk much," explained Vladimir. "In fact, to be honest with you, in front of strangers, she does not talk at all."

A moment later a rotund woman with a black bonnet over her hair, wearing a lose dress and a knit sweater came in. She partially bowed and was able to say, "Hello, hello, oh hi," before sitting down to join them for dinner and coffee.

After some time of almost-silent eating and drinking coffee, Victoria-Elizabeth got up to excuse herself. Vladimir saw her to the door and came outside with her, pulling the door gently shut behind him.

"Before you go, young lady, I was instructed by 'e' to privately bring up one small matter with you."

"Of course."

"Have you," continued Vladimir, "been to the beach at Malibu on a clear night when all the stars are out. Have you seen the whole galaxy there as the sound of the waves rolls in?"

"Oh yes, many times. Everyone does that eventually."

"Very good, then next time when you go, they will meet you there."

"You mean 'e' and Incel?"

"Yes."

"Do you mean they will reappear?"

"Not in that way. But, you do recall your psychic training?"

"Yes."

"They will appear to you that way. You will feel them. You will know it is them. We are never without them."

Victoria-Elizabeth did not reply to this, but merely nodded. She drove away and resolved not to go back to Malibu. She resolved to return to being a sensible girl. She gave in to temptation a few months later and went back to check on Vladimir and his wife, but they had moved back to Russia quite suddenly and inexplicably. Evolution was moving quickly to cover its tracks.

*

A few weeks later, Victoria-Elizabeth barged in on Roger and said, "You know what? Screw this political stuff. I'm not getting any younger. I need to get out of California and do something normal, whatever normal is."

Roger had seen more than one reporter burn out on political and cultural things; but his empire was big. It had many offices and many job openings.

"I'll tell you what, why don't we send you to the London office to work at the economics desk. Would you be opposed to presenting the nightly business news?"

"Great!" said Victoria-Elizabeth. "I love a British accent in a man. Maybe I'll meet a good British fellow and settle down there. Who knows?"

"The only problem," he added, "is that there's been an emergency and the post is suddenly vacant. Can you sublease your place and move quickly?"

"That's not a problem at all. Thanks! You're a man with quick solutions to complicated problems."

"Always glad to be of service to you, Your Majesty," said Roger with a polite nod as she got up to leave the office.

"Screw you, Roger!" exclaimed Victoria-Elizabeth with a laugh as went down the hall to clear out her desk.
