Saturday, February 19, 2005

Of the fluttering, stamped-paper insects, give me moths to butterflies. In their mechanization, though, both are valid, both attractive, though by nature of very different character and element.
There was a man, once, noted somewhere in the files, who spent his lunch hours making butterflies and moths of plastic and cheap, modified electronics and one day made his masterpiece. It bred, stealing cuts of saranwrap from deli sandwiches, bits of copper and diode from Walkmen and cell-phones, making bodies of aluminum foil, abandoned styrofoam, bits of pen. The offices were inhabited by the children of the man, feeding off solar beams and unattended electrical outlets, half-glimpsed in moments of paperwork distraction or unplanned furniture migrations.
Some of the office-workers discovered, by accident or gossip, where the trashman moths congregated. They fluttered in malfunctioning vents, the shadows of peak-work breakrooms, swarmed by the antenna field on the roof where the wind broke on accessway, AC, and the mysterious green metal boxes that emerge from office-building roofs. In these places, the paper-pushers and sub-managers claimed, the moths danced to microwaves, radio broadcasts, all the strange melodies that leaked from transmission and reception.
(The man who made the first was proud, happy in what he had made, and moved on.
They say he's making lizards now, something like them anyhow.
Something quadrepedal and short that watches the night janitors, steals permanent markers, and leaves cryptic marks of its passage on A-36 forms and dry-erase boards.)
(It's all a story. Just an urban legend that spread out of the mail room. I don't buy it. Like sacrificing chickens to recover corrupted files. Complete cargo cult.
If you'll excuse me, I have a meeting to go to.)

Hope that clears up your question.

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