Instruction

Five thousand three hundred and twenty nine spectators lost. That was in a small New Hampshire town. Now, if there were twenty eight dwellings per block, some of them multiple, tri-multiple, and quadri-multiple, squared and cubed, and you lost the same number from them as you did from the small New Hampshire town, well, in say a radius of two or three or possibly four blocks, I mean in a city, I bet hardly anyone would notice. Would you like to know how not to become five thousand three hundred and thirty or five thousand three hundred and thirty one minus one or five thousand three hundred and thirty two minus …

Pelican

Don’t eat the enclave!

Instruction

Excuse me. My teeth are a nuisance sometimes.

Pelican

Don’t mention it!

Instruction

It is too bad this is not a city. For instance, I could tell you exactly in which block or set of blocks the citizens would begin to be lost and if you were in one of those blocks, I could make a recommendation …

Pelican

… that could have been researched in a manual. I have what we’re looking for in my pocket. Look here, file five thousand three hundred and thirty point zero two’s topic is, “We dream of each other’s EARTHQUAKE.” Your numerical FUTURES are not mentioned. Therefore I reject your recommendations. And explanations. And what precedes them. And what has already been explained. Now the product pops out!

At this very moment Fish appears on her porch. In a mechanical fashion she sets out a chair between her house and Pelican’s and signals Instruction to be seated. The unnerved Instruction seats himself. While Fish speaks, Pelican tries to open the cash box. It is stuck. His discrete attempts become ferocious as time passes.

Fish

In the beginning, there was nothing. No cattails, no wigs, no paws. There was no doom. No lavender or shirt sleeves. No burn no yellow or rest. Neither was there beginning. No light went out. No one held her own against an array of misshapen events. There were no chains. There was no writing or speech. There was nothing to shave, nothing to swim, and nothing to cut. Clouds were not clouds. Silence was neither dominant nor peaceful nor silent. There was no salt or smell. No twisted seaweed. Or any buoyant flowering possibility of an ambiguous growth. There were no killers and fleeting lives. There were neither chains of events nor metaphor. There were no stories or bones. No mulch or cocoons. No lizard, pelicans, or fish.

In the beginning, there were no instructions and nothing was abstract. There was nothing to identify. And no revision or modification of the description of the thing identified. Neither were there eyes nor touch. There were no millipedes. Earthworms did not nurture the soil. There was no nurturing, no soil, no worms of any kind. There was no inferno.

Sound, word, rhythm, pucker, loss, organization, and signature were nothing. There was no distance. There were no tornadoes and no change in the atmosphere. There was no atmosphere and no alteration. There was no heat, or hint of the future, no possibility of Dante. For hints, futures, possibilities did not exist. There was no extinction.

There were no keys or clues. There was no DNA. Nothing squeezed. There was no singularity or multiplicity. There was no red.

In the beginning, there was nothing to hold and nothing to hold in mind, since there was no beginning, no nothing, and no mind. The end also did not exist. Nothing stopped. There was no gender, no extremes, no image or lack of image and no money. There were no pencils. In the beginning, there were no names.

In the beginning, there was no apoliticized moment of the absolute and no political critiques. Neither was there the hibiscus flowering bearded orchid cunt juices or a male suspect. Neither black nor brown nor white. No maiming and nothing to maim. No future and nothing to preserve.

Instruction

When the speech ends the cash box opens. Pelican peeks in.

Pelican

I am not as pleased as I thought I would be with the results.

Fish

Oh, crude ambivalence. Who wants to drop my song in a little pocket bulging with product of shmoozment? Would you like me to try again? Do you prefer endings to beginnings? Or positives to negatives?

Instruction

If you are a talented young person who can add subtract multiply or divide, I can recommend an iced cube.

Pelican

Don’t listen to him, Fishy. You are on the right track but a product needs a little more theater. For instance, relax the robotech number. Shrink your thesis to the melt down point. Do not imply anything. Instruction, now is the time for you to listen and remember the instructions so that you can deliver them later.

Instruction

You mean I’m hired? I’ve got a job?

Pelican

Not yet, but you’re getting there. You too Fishy, we have to make this work together. What else can you remember?

Fish

My children have to get ready for school.

Pelican

Not that.

Fish

I’ll be back.

Instruction

She’s gone.

Pelican

She’s not gone because she was never here. When she comes back, you’ll see, it wasn’t her at all the first time. The thing that’s really bugging me is that I’ve misplaced a very large toy, my Miltonic Humiliator.

Instruction

Do not infer anything.