Mein Akzent, it’s just asking (your what, Ben wants to ask, only in order to say, O your accent!?), do you mind it? Mein research informs me zat you would find it distinguished, oder intelligent, ja…und zat anything sprached in this way would be listened to mit — Achtung, attention. In mein findings, am Ich — ach, how you say…accurate, Herr Israelien?
But instead, He begins to ask that whole what are you going to do with me shtick.
Like, why am I here?
I come in peace. I go to pieces. Be gentle, be kind.
Enough already, says Doktor Froid in a tone it’s now modulating to just east of placeless, here’s the deal…I’ll go ahead and drop the Kraut, if you stop sounding like we’re in a Spielgrob production.
Agreed?
Let’s dispense with the formalities, then…I am, I’m translating myself here, Doktor Froid, extraterrestrial.
From outer space, assigned to Earth.
To you, verstehen?
And where are we? We’re in my ship, presently hovering just above a stateline, what your nation would have referred to as the Arizona/New Mexico border — prior to the chaos to be expected of mass conversion, that is, and its regression attendant into a past that never really existed. Reactionary, actually. Fanaticism as an antidote to the modern, if you want the whole, what’s the word…spiel.
No thanks.
Where are my manners, it begins again — or are they provided for under another program?
It shifts in its seat, then asks, would you like a Schwanz? I’m quite partial to them myself…then waddles chitinous cephalopod across the office to a humidor hovering on a puff of purply pneuma as if the emanation of the very product within and once lit, produces from its perfumed innards four uniformly short and fat penises, gnaws away the leaved foreskins with a set of sharp, horny teeth, spits them with a radula’s huff to the floor, shoves three of them into any faces spare, proceeds to light their glandes with a match struck on the underfaced head from which it’s talking, then does the same for Ben as it drags, exhales slowly, savoring through every siphon.
Now then, it says, exhaling rings of smoke opening into the oblivious obviousness of the vaginal, let’s get down to business, shall we? We are collectors. Preservers. That is our nature. You with me? Ben lips His Schwanz, inhales to the corona, eliciting a fit of hack, wracks. We amass people and objects, Doktor Froid goes on, there’s no stopping it (anyway, it’s all too veiled, alluded to, tenatcularly gestured at, misted away amid the gathering smoke) — we amass things, objects, and people regarded as practically useless, worthless, superannuated, I mean obsolete; we hoard them, they’re our treasures. On our planet, which, so it’s not really a planet…but you don’t want to hear about that, more like an idea, or its orbits — we have the last locomotive, the last slice of ryebread, its last crust and caraway seed, the last sip of wine, which is dregs; the lasts even of things that haven’t yet been invented, we have: the Tushomantic Analysizer, for instance, which predicts futures according to posterior size and topography, you understand, but you wouldn’t, that’s still a long way off, give it time. As I’ve said, not just objects, though, but life as well, bioform, bio-mass, buy it up: plants and animals, endangerment, extinction, how they’re just the beginning; we have the last dodo, the last unicorn, dinosaur, dragon, the Leviathan, too, you name it, it’s ours…Ben considers the offer, then realizes this alien just likes to hear itself talk. Me me me, mine — we have the last postage stamp, the last telephone and the last television, the last atomic weapon, the last drop of oil…the final, the ultimate desinent, eschatological-wise, the caudal conterminous never.
