Because the whole packaging thing’s about as dead as dead, and Gelt knows from what he’s talking — or only acts the part — done with his pacing around Ben’s towered room he’s just standing by a window like sitting down’s bad for his image. Nowadays, he says, it’s interface we’re dealing with, no options save those supplied by dream, information so instant it becomes knowledge, raw access, then faith, the here and now, am I making sense: give them what They want, They suddenly want it. BetaBen. Abrasurprise. Instantly transferable, remoldable, no, forget the mold, authenticity’s what it’s about, verisimilitude…and then the magic, the ability to fashion from pure idea, or from nothing at all, golem, am I right, Ben, am I right — anyone want to pucker on a moustache, I’ll get the boss. At any rate, and they’re so high lately (you know what I’m paying in property taxes alone? scrawls one of the respondents in the space left wilderness wasted, labeled Comments & Complaints — on what my wife calls our beach house and it’s not even on the beach, it’s in Gainesville?), adaptability’s the thing, evolution. To be protean. Choice. Any change. The mundane scratched out in itch, a rash erasure copied from the person desked one over, to either side, a bubble snub of the unsharpened tip. On a scale of one to infinity, rate how much you’d fork over to be saved in the space provided by your nonexistence, the void. All spoonfed, except exactly what to copy, what to write if not just to crumple, snowball let it rip — to tear out the eyes with the tongue; to tap the temple with pencils, which are sidelocks dipped in ink — what to answer, then, having an inkling or lead that the best answer’s only a question in return. Most correct.
The tagline’s BEN: BELIEVE (they’ve spent a hundred grand on that alone, in cigartongued copywriters, tricolor billboards, airwave campaigns on the hour), and it flits through the mind, in one ear never out the other, stuck in the middle as if a malignant lump, to further dull the gray to submission. Why, because one day the world will end, and you’ll need Him, says taskmaster of ceremonies John Johannine, a tall, straight, imperturbable corpse or undertakermaterial he’s bald with strong jaws, whom you might remember from such programming as — announcing an overly processed approximation of divinity into the microphone, his chazzano profundo echoing specially effected with much reverb superadded to age the voice deep into the gaping mouth of the miraculous past, to fill with its bass and one true faith conviction Madison Square Garden, at capacity crowded two to a seat then ten across the aisles soldout. He’s introducing Ben cued off the cards a nubile intern holds aloft in the interest of career advancement. There’ll be others, Johannine stalling, stretching, raising the pitch as Ben Himself rises: slowly up from below the stage on a horned altartype platform pistoned amid the hiss of whitedry ice, flashpot pop, and the dazzle of strobes…others upon others, smothers schmothering forever, Johannine contorted breathless to a grimace as if he’s had one too many whiffs of the sour breath of his own business, but know this: they’re only pretenders to thrones, intoning impostors, the fakiry fake; don’t be fooled, don’t be led astray sheepish, there’s only one, there’s only one Him…who else are you going to turn to when the going gets tough, he gets the nod from Mada in the wings:
