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Authors: Rick Moody
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who was able to do machine transliterations of Cantonese and Farsi. This young person, though increasingly physically weak, could easily have had the resources to realize that the FBS now had a futures market in “Violent Insurrection in the United States of America.”
Such simple words! Who would care! At this late stage, when all the hooting and hollering was over, who would care really if there was violent insurrection in the United States of America! Violent insurrection in the People’s Republic of China would be the kind of thing that would bring out the tremors in brokers in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Kuala Lumpur. And yet “Violent Insurrection in the United States of America” was the subject that piqued the interest of my wife, Tara Schott Crandall. She was too sickly to make love to me; indeed, we hadn’t had each other’s clothes off in so long that it was almost as if I didn’t know how to unbutton my own trousers. Did it mean that I didn’t love her? It did not . I loved her enough to overlook her renewed hours spent in front of the screen, even when, one night, I walked into her office, pulled up the shades, kissed her upon the brow, which was only a little slick with perspiration, looked over her shoulder, and saw that she was spending three thousand dollars (a not insignificant portion of our savings) betting on the futures market in the aforementioned “violent insurrection.”
“Let’s just hope it starts on the East Coast,” I said. And then: “Are you not worried that the betting will produce the result?”
I was used to a certain amount of relapsing and remitting, but this was asking too much of me, and of our homeland security infrastructure.
“Shhh,” she said. She was using the chat function of the FBS software to communicate with other dangerously obsessed bettors. One interlocutor was a person whose name, when translated from the relevant ideograms, seemed to be PiranhaYummy. Tara was attempting to convince this Amazonian stream dweller that the conditions were indeed absolutely right for the political action described on the big board. I told Tara that there had been a recent discovery of a subspecies of piranha in the Potomac. A small school of them could clean an overweight congressional representative down to the bones.
“There doesn’t have to be an actual violent insurrection,” she reminded me. “There has to be the perception of violent insurrection. Look at all the other stuff they have.” It was a villanelle of the violent, a sestina of the salacious on that screen. I could very well have written one of my short stories from titles of the betting pools on the FBS if, in the days of ministering to my wife, I was still capable: “Dismemberment of American diplomat in Islamist country,” “Spain exiles its Jews,” and so on.
“It only takes one piranha to buy,” Tara said. “Then watch the prices rise. I think I can get out before I lose my blouse.”
I mumbled something noncontroversial and backed away from her workstation, but not before I could see some of the inexplicable chatter from PiranhaYummy and his ilk. “My bicycle has never been so rusty,” he typed to my wife. “A germ has begun its replications.” Before the automated translation, he was probably saying “Let’s have lunch; my wife doesn’t understand me the way you do.”
It was in these next days that Tara informed me, over a hastily and badly prepared dinner, that large sums had been made and lost. Tears in her eyes. Ever deeper did my wife burrow into the subculture of Asian day traders in the futures markets. She claimed, among the dupes and shills she found there, to have connections in the anarchist underground in the USA; she claimed to know well the survivalist skinheads of the Rust Belt. It was a lot of bluster, but when deployed correctly, this bluster gave the appearance of knowledge, and this was enough to buffet the price of bids on the FBS.
“Violent Insurrection in the United States
Such simple words! Who would care! At this late stage, when all the hooting and hollering was over, who would care really if there was violent insurrection in the United States of America! Violent insurrection in the People’s Republic of China would be the kind of thing that would bring out the tremors in brokers in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Kuala Lumpur. And yet “Violent Insurrection in the United States of America” was the subject that piqued the interest of my wife, Tara Schott Crandall. She was too sickly to make love to me; indeed, we hadn’t had each other’s clothes off in so long that it was almost as if I didn’t know how to unbutton my own trousers. Did it mean that I didn’t love her? It did not . I loved her enough to overlook her renewed hours spent in front of the screen, even when, one night, I walked into her office, pulled up the shades, kissed her upon the brow, which was only a little slick with perspiration, looked over her shoulder, and saw that she was spending three thousand dollars (a not insignificant portion of our savings) betting on the futures market in the aforementioned “violent insurrection.”
“Let’s just hope it starts on the East Coast,” I said. And then: “Are you not worried that the betting will produce the result?”
I was used to a certain amount of relapsing and remitting, but this was asking too much of me, and of our homeland security infrastructure.
“Shhh,” she said. She was using the chat function of the FBS software to communicate with other dangerously obsessed bettors. One interlocutor was a person whose name, when translated from the relevant ideograms, seemed to be PiranhaYummy. Tara was attempting to convince this Amazonian stream dweller that the conditions were indeed absolutely right for the political action described on the big board. I told Tara that there had been a recent discovery of a subspecies of piranha in the Potomac. A small school of them could clean an overweight congressional representative down to the bones.
“There doesn’t have to be an actual violent insurrection,” she reminded me. “There has to be the perception of violent insurrection. Look at all the other stuff they have.” It was a villanelle of the violent, a sestina of the salacious on that screen. I could very well have written one of my short stories from titles of the betting pools on the FBS if, in the days of ministering to my wife, I was still capable: “Dismemberment of American diplomat in Islamist country,” “Spain exiles its Jews,” and so on.
“It only takes one piranha to buy,” Tara said. “Then watch the prices rise. I think I can get out before I lose my blouse.”
I mumbled something noncontroversial and backed away from her workstation, but not before I could see some of the inexplicable chatter from PiranhaYummy and his ilk. “My bicycle has never been so rusty,” he typed to my wife. “A germ has begun its replications.” Before the automated translation, he was probably saying “Let’s have lunch; my wife doesn’t understand me the way you do.”
It was in these next days that Tara informed me, over a hastily and badly prepared dinner, that large sums had been made and lost. Tears in her eyes. Ever deeper did my wife burrow into the subculture of Asian day traders in the futures markets. She claimed, among the dupes and shills she found there, to have connections in the anarchist underground in the USA; she claimed to know well the survivalist skinheads of the Rust Belt. It was a lot of bluster, but when deployed correctly, this bluster gave the appearance of knowledge, and this was enough to buffet the price of bids on the FBS.
“Violent Insurrection in the United States
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