The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

up five or six full bags of groceries. The bus had come as he trudged up the hill. The driver idled with the door open. Kierk and Alice, who had once been paired together on a project about the evolution of the neocortex in a graduate-level course, stared down at the bags of groceries. Embarrassed, finally she took them, apologizing to the driver as she lugged them onto the bus, waving to Kierk as he walked away down the hill. For a while Kierk followed the bus, as it was headed the same general direction as him, but then its blinker went on and it took a turn and he never saw her again.

He thinks about going over to talk to the girl, see what her story is, but he wouldn’t know where to start. And he’s running late anyway.

For the last few weeks Kierk and Carmen have spent the majority of time within one square mile of each other, moving about. If you tracked their movements across the map of Manhattan, they would appear like figure skaters always crossing the other’s tracks, entering a store as the other exits, taking parallel paths down neighboring avenues, making X’s of parks. Now they converge again.

“. . . because that’s exactly what we at SAAR care about. Sometimes it’s like everyone is always putting these things into boxes, into causes, that they care about. But that’s really problematic. ’Cause it’s all intersectionally connected.”

“We should have brought Alex. He’d love this.”

“He’d have died laughing . . .”

“—and so I just wanted to thank everyone here for fighting against all the intersectional institutionalized forms of oppression like animal research.”

“Wow. So amazing. I love it. Totally non-problematic. And with that I think we’ll wrap it up because we’re running over time. This was a really good meeting. We’ll pick a few of the visiting speakers that use animals. Focusing on primates like poor Double Trouble, but also like, cats and rats. We’ll narrow it down next meeting and protest those. Alright. Till next time everybody. Stay out of the heat.”

“Hey, Allen?”

“Oh yeah, excuse me, hey, Carol. And Jim.”

“I just wanted to ask: is it really enough? Just to disrupt some speakers? I mean, what about doing something more real? More impactful? Something that sends more of a statement, you know? That this kind of oppression is so unacceptable.”

“What I think we’re trying to say is that she and I are getting a little restless—”

“A little bit fed up.”

“—yes, a little bit fed up, and we are kind of thinking about how to implement something big, considering that Carol has access to the neuroscience department on campus. You grok? We’ve got an ‘in’ at the department.”

“ Really? How?”

“I’m doing an independent study with one of the professors in the building. Who’s like, a psychologist. But I have building access because she lets me work in the EEG lab. So I have access.”

“Wait—you never said you were a science student.”

“Um, no. Not at all. I’m a sociology student but I need research credits and um, it’s human psychology so it’s not that bad.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Like, obviously humans only.”

‘Uh-huh.”

“But I really do have access.”

“Hey, I mean, I can feel that you two are serious. I can see that. I think that’s great. But we’ve already got stuff covered. See, we’ve already got someone on the inside in that department.”

“You do? I don’t recognize anyone from here . . .”

“They don’t come to meetings. It’s too dangerous. Even if you were seen here, Carol, that could cause some trouble. So be careful. We don’t want it to get out that there are people in the CNS that sympathize with our cause. Who respect our mute brothers and sisters enough to keep them from being tortured. People who believe in justice.”

“Wow, that’s really great. Really great. Maybe I could help them.”

“With what?”

“With, you know, whatever it is that they’re doing. The strategy. The move. Disruption.”

“Not a good idea. You’re new. Just keep coming to meetings. Besides, we’re in serious down-low mode. We recently pulled off something big. Took a lot of planning. And there’s still no heat coming our way.”

“Is it something we would have heard of?”

“Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“Just keep coming to meetings. With your enthusiasm, I’m sure we can find a use for you. So I’ll see you next week?”

“We’ll be back.”

THURSDAY

Kierk wakes up and a murder of books slide off him, one from his stomach, another from the crook of his arm, and a third which had lain clasping his lower leg like a giant insect. They fall to the floor in successive thwacks, lying spine-broken and covers upturned—a book detailing the derivation of the laws of physics from Fisher Information, poems by e. e. cummings, and Philosophical Investigations by Wittgenstein. The noises shock Kierk fully awake and he sits up on the edge of his bed, groggily closing their covers with a toe. Stretching and standing Kierk yawns and yaws his way to the bathroom, on the way shuffling and kicking the clothes he had left lying on the floor from yesterday, then, having compiled them in a clump, picks them up and pulls them on, hopping one leg at a time to get his pants on.

It is flat and bright yellow in the sun. Occasionally it is turned over and a fresh yellow replaces the diagonal loops and small mountain ranges of black ink. Behind it are tufts of wilting grass amid dirt, the puckered prepubescent nubs of anthills. Ants in swarms like around the mouths of holes, armies amid the sparse grass. Visible also is an oblique curve, the rubber tip of a sneaker. Kierk has snuck out to lunch with a yellow legal pad pilfered from the department office because he’d forgotten his notebook at home. Pen in hand he is sitting on the grass of Washington Square Park. The pages are filled up with discrete probabilities distributions, calculations of the Earth Mover’s Distance and diagrams of causal models; some even have