Something to assure us our faith wasnât some sort of self-deluding complacency. Something to assure us of the holy truth of our story. Something as earthshaking in its way as Auschwitz and Dachau. So what would that be? I went into some possibilities. A mass exile? A lifelong commitment of millions of Christians to wandering, derelict, over the world? A clearing out of the lands and cities a thousand miles in every direction from each and every death camp? I said to them I didnât know what the proper response would be. . . but I was sure Iâd recognize it if I saw it.
Thatâs what you said?
For starters.
I see.
Yeah. That was the doozy.
âThe simplest digital invasive techniques deliver the husbandâs brokerage and bank accounts, insurance policies and medical records, mortgage payments, school and service records, credit ratings, political contributions. All available for study and eventual confiscation. His support services, legal, accounting, investment counseling. Who and where they are. Means of communication with. Handwriting analysis. Voice analysisâan easily rendered Philadelphia twang. Analysis of a typical monthâs credit card and phone bills for the secrets in his life, a girlfriend, a dependent mother. Nothing. No undue trade with jewelers, florists; the husband is a squeaky-clean narcissist, the only affair, though all-consuming, is with himself.
Some ten or fifteen years older than either of them, the husband is something of a corporate wonder, the CEO of a computer manufacturing corporation, who is being courted by a Japanese conglomerate with international holdings in satellite communications, electronics, and the soft drink industry. The lover understands that at this level, effective management does not require any special knowledge of the nature of a business. He instructs his mistress to persuade her husband to accept the challengeâlife in another city, regular trips to Japan, new fields to conquer.. . . This is done. Then, while the husband is busy wrapping things up at his old job, taking care to maintain cordial relations, even advising the board on his successor, the essence of corporate life being volatility and no bridge ever being burned, the wife/mistress travels to the Pacific coast in order to familiarize herself with the lay of the land, find a new house in the right neighborhood, and so on.
The lover flies with her to the new city, chooses the house, the furnishings, everything down to the smallest detail. At this point in her mind she is so in thrall to him that everything they are doing seems entirely natural and normal.
She has come up with several photographs of the husband, from snapshots to formal corporate portraits. The lover flies to Budapest with the digitized photographs translated into holographic representation for a cooperative surgeon he knows from the old days and, without representing that he is still with the intelligence community, lets the surgeon think he is, so that the code of ultimate discretion will be in force. You are not that far apart, the doctor says, studying the holograph. And itâs true, thinks the lover: After all, her attraction to me had to have been somewhat directed by our being more or less the same lean morph type, both of us having called up in her mind someone she loved as a child. I donât mean oedipal governance necessarily, all of us look for reprises of the pure attachments installed in us in our unconscious youth. There are transferences even then in those tender ages when model people imprint themselves as lifelong loves so deeply indelibly that you are heliotropic in their presence.
My nose will be broken and enlarged, the hairline brought down via transplants to a widowâs peak, I will have to keep my hair close cut and grayed at the temples to add ten years or so. The jaw will be widenedslightly with implants. I will have to gain about twelve to fifteen pounds, wear a shoe lift.. .
Thatâs what you said?
For starters.
I see.
Yeah. That was the doozy.
âThe simplest digital invasive techniques deliver the husbandâs brokerage and bank accounts, insurance policies and medical records, mortgage payments, school and service records, credit ratings, political contributions. All available for study and eventual confiscation. His support services, legal, accounting, investment counseling. Who and where they are. Means of communication with. Handwriting analysis. Voice analysisâan easily rendered Philadelphia twang. Analysis of a typical monthâs credit card and phone bills for the secrets in his life, a girlfriend, a dependent mother. Nothing. No undue trade with jewelers, florists; the husband is a squeaky-clean narcissist, the only affair, though all-consuming, is with himself.
Some ten or fifteen years older than either of them, the husband is something of a corporate wonder, the CEO of a computer manufacturing corporation, who is being courted by a Japanese conglomerate with international holdings in satellite communications, electronics, and the soft drink industry. The lover understands that at this level, effective management does not require any special knowledge of the nature of a business. He instructs his mistress to persuade her husband to accept the challengeâlife in another city, regular trips to Japan, new fields to conquer.. . . This is done. Then, while the husband is busy wrapping things up at his old job, taking care to maintain cordial relations, even advising the board on his successor, the essence of corporate life being volatility and no bridge ever being burned, the wife/mistress travels to the Pacific coast in order to familiarize herself with the lay of the land, find a new house in the right neighborhood, and so on.
The lover flies with her to the new city, chooses the house, the furnishings, everything down to the smallest detail. At this point in her mind she is so in thrall to him that everything they are doing seems entirely natural and normal.
She has come up with several photographs of the husband, from snapshots to formal corporate portraits. The lover flies to Budapest with the digitized photographs translated into holographic representation for a cooperative surgeon he knows from the old days and, without representing that he is still with the intelligence community, lets the surgeon think he is, so that the code of ultimate discretion will be in force. You are not that far apart, the doctor says, studying the holograph. And itâs true, thinks the lover: After all, her attraction to me had to have been somewhat directed by our being more or less the same lean morph type, both of us having called up in her mind someone she loved as a child. I donât mean oedipal governance necessarily, all of us look for reprises of the pure attachments installed in us in our unconscious youth. There are transferences even then in those tender ages when model people imprint themselves as lifelong loves so deeply indelibly that you are heliotropic in their presence.
My nose will be broken and enlarged, the hairline brought down via transplants to a widowâs peak, I will have to keep my hair close cut and grayed at the temples to add ten years or so. The jaw will be widenedslightly with implants. I will have to gain about twelve to fifteen pounds, wear a shoe lift.. .
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