The Bathtime Manager (part 4 of 4)

Part 4: Fisherman Finds The Heart of True Consterplexion

Chapter 11

The following day, Fisherman decides to take a different approach to the status meeting. First of all, he skips his pre-meeting habit of celebrating in the mirror. Then, instead of showing work and asking for review, he decides he’ll express that he’s working through “the issues,” and will update the team when he has “something” for them. Everyone thanks him. The rest of the updates progress similarly, with all of them, he realizes, showing great efforts at stalling the rushing waters all around them.

While he ignores the other updates, he recollects the dream he had had the night before; in it, he reclined comfortably in a glorious field where a torrent of carnations suddenly buried him. He felt thousands of miles underground. Just when he figured he must be done for, crushed badly or otherwise drowned in carnations, he blossomed from the germ of a golden flower towering above. The dream reminded him of the chamber deep beneath his office, where consterplexion exhibits.

After the meeting, he finds the casual doorway to the downward spiralling stairs leading far into the underdepths of Bathtime Company’s lowest levels. He watches the rotating titanium flaps curling from walls around him, their little cores hidden beneath the walls, whirring away.

Lost in thought, the footsteps that approach from below surprise him. “Oh! Hello there, Kipple.”

“Sir.”

The two maneuver around each another. Fisherman continues down while Kipple goes back up, the two spiralling apart. For another ten minutes he descends before finally landing at a trapdoor, whereupon he drops down into the soothing warmth of the multipaximation chamber.

It takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the confused shapes of a vast and curved dielectric mirror. He takes a tin of sardines and a pair of the funny mop shoes from their pedestal in the foyer, puts them on, and steps carefully toward the multipaximator, a sunflower-like structure on the tip of a pole. He leans in toward its pupil and focuses his eyes on the holographic entity that hangs out in there. This, they call Paxman.

Nobody spends all that much time with Paxman, because nobody really knows what he is or does. He’s there, though, always. He’s just the funny little guy in the middle of the multipaximator, which was a system designed to handle the excessive pressures inherent in consterplexion, the patented process central to Bathtime Company’s brand promise: “increasingly higher levels of bathtime bliss.”

“Hey there, little guy,” says Fisherman. “How’s it going today?”

“Weerp, bloooooor-bopper,” says Paxman.

“Aw,” Fisherman chuckles. He peels open the lid of the sardines.

“Gwa! Brah-blopper! Bweerp, bleepy-bleepy!” says Paxman.

“Heh, there you go, little pal.”

Paxman slobbers up sardine after sardine, somehow chomping them with formless teeth of holographic light, somehow swallowing them into his little flower hole.

While Mr. Fisherman watches the boingy-oingy shapes surrounding Mr. Paxman’s bottle spring up and back, he taps his finger on his chin several times in thought. “Paxman! You’re a genius!”

“Orp?”

“Carnation chart!”

Fisherman bounds away from Paxman’s dumbfounded glorbhole, hanging agape, giving that classic Paxman catchphrase, a long-drawn and stunned “Oowwwrb?” He heads back up the spiral stairs as fast as he can, and all the way up to the level of his office. He runs down hallway after hallway looking for the red line that leads to his door, finally seeing it three columns over. Reaching the correct column, he gallops sixteen rows and finds his door.

He opens his laptop and starts a new spreadsheet. He copies a selection of content from an intranet resource page showing the present consterplexion stress. He pops in a donut chart, repeating the clicks he’d gone through the other day to produce the diamond-like frills of his carnation chart.

He goes back to the intranet resource, refreshes it, copies the latest values, pastes them back into the spreadsheet, then inserts another carnation chart. He compares the two. “Just as I suspected,” he says.

He spends the next several hours plugging away at visualization code. “Hmmmm,” he scratches his head. “As a bathtime engineer, in order to comprehend dynamic consterplexion changes, I need to convert realtime multiplexicator readings into an animated carnation chart.” 

He chops code like a sushi chef. He gets closer. There are a few bugs in there, and he clears them out with the accuracy of a surgeon. He presses a key to build his validated code, then runs it in the emulator.

“Behold!” he says, grabbing his laptop and running back to the spiral staircase. He climbs the stairs all the way to the top and scrambles the sprawling halls, shouting, “White! White!” There are no colour markings on this level, and, as the design intended, he can’t find White’s office for the life of him. “Whiiiite!” he screams. He leans into a corner to catch his breath, and checks his laptop screen again. “Yep!”

Chapter 12

Fisherman stands again. There are three paths before him: left, middle, right. “Hmmmm.”

He starts moving to the left when a movement catches his eye ahead, down the middle path. A person? He squints and moves toward the middle path. There’s someone lurking there, making their way toward him. “H-hello?” he calls out. “White? Is that you?” Nearly in precise unison, mere milliseconds later, whoever’s there calls back to him, “White? Is that you?”

He begins to walk slowly toward the person, his nerves beginning to rattle. Why the stalking? Then it occurs to him his counterpart may be thinking the same thing, so he calls out again with an effort to sound friendly, “Hello, friend.” The man at the end of the middle way, nearly in unison, calls out in a friendly manner, “Hello, friend.”

Fisherman decides to head down the middle hall, and, it seems, the other guy down there makes the same decision at the same time, and he’s now heading toward Fisherman just as fast as Fisherman heads toward him, even synchronizing their footsteps, so that Fisherman can hear the odd strangers footsteps milliseconds after his own like tight reverb.

Is it a mirror? Fisherman waves his hands randomly, and it seems to confirm the idea. However, a mirrored image would remain small at the end of the hall. The mirrored image ahead, instead, seems to approach him, growing larger and closer as he moves up the hall. And it mirrors his sounds— mirrors don’t do that. Or, they probably do do that, but not quite as efficiently as this.

As he nears the mirror being, it becomes clear: it’s a hologram. Fisherman comes face to face with himself. “Hello?” Both say to each other. He gives himself a high five. He turns to one side then the other, inspecting his profile. “Well, this is very interesting,” he says. He begins to play around with the novel experience, saying this and that. “Be that as it may,” he says, raising one eyebrow. “Well, don’t you look familiar,” he says with a half grin, adding, “rather.” Then he goes, “Peter piper picked a pecka pickles peppers.”

“Fishermin! Leave my mirror alone!” shouts White, as he comes barreling through the projected Fisherman, jolting the real Fisherman, replacing Mirrorfisherman with a Whiteback behind a White. “What are you doing on my floor?”

“Oh, ahem! Sir! I mean, Bob! Mr. White, I mean! Sorry!”

“Are you ok?”

“Yes, fine. I have something exciting to show you.”

White sees Fisherman’s laptop under his arm. “Well, come to my office. Let’s go talk.”

Chapter 13

White navigates the columns and rows of his floor’ halls deftly, preparing himself to corner lefts and rights well before approaching their corners. Fisherman reels to keep up.

All the halls look precisely alike, all with identical doors centrally. When White slows, Fisherman bumps straight into him and almost falls, but White catches him in both arms.

Entering the office, Fisherman gapes, gasping for air and in wonder at the remarkable office. It’s like passing through the surface of a dark slow cold world into a gleaming and unimaginably free environment.

White pours two glasses of water and hands one to Fisherman. “Here you go, Glen. Now, let’s see what you wanted to show me— let me guess; something about consterplexion?”

“Erm,” Fisherman slurps the water, “Yes.” He opens his sweat-soaked laptop and clicks a few keys to awaken it. “Uh.” Nothing. He presses the power button. He holds the power button. Nothing happens. “Uuuh.”

White waits patiently, glancing around, pleased by the various decorations of his office.

“It’s not working. Dammit, it always fails me!”

“It’s ok; why don’t you take your time and explain what you were going to show me.”

Fisherman, annoyed at having to describe what would be so easily grasped if his laptop were up and running, annoyed at White’s ignorance thinking such a thing could actually be explained in words, but lacking any alternative, gulps and takes a breath. “It’s fairly complicated. See, earlier . . . well, did you ever manage to open the spreadsheet I had sent? Or read the email?”

“No.”

“Well, ok.” Fisherman tries to figure out where he can start. “I came up with a chart that does a really wonderful job showing . . . no, it makes it easy to understand consterplexion, something everyone always struggles with, thanks to how very abstracted the topic has sunken into all our systems.”

“Ok.”

“It’s a chart that looks like a flower— a carnation. It’s a carnation chart.”

“Oh, how interesting!”

“So I programmed a thingy that makes animated carnation charts out of the realtime data from our intranet resource. Not only is it beautiful to watch, but it looks so familiar. If you could see it, you’d see. See, I got the idea from a visit to feed Paxman— the animated chart looks almost exactly like Paxman’s little glorbhole!”

“A-ha,” says White.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“Not at all! How do you think Paxman came to exist?”

“What?”

“Why don’t you go ahead. Tell me how we’ll be helped by this animated carnation chart of yours.”

“Ok. Ok. . . . So, consterplexion, right? We talk a lot about the multipaxator and the multiple manifolds and multipaximation, digressing flexion and the like, right?”

“Mhmm.”

“They all serve consterplexion; they’re simply layers on top of consterplexion that keep the real issues hidden. Try as we might to solve the bandwidth issues we face at higher layers, it’s as though they simply move around. We fix a problem at one point, and a different problem emerges at another.”

“Yes, we’ve known of this for a long time. Frustrating, isn’t it!”

“Yes! It’s because consterplexion makes a force like gravity, a kind of downward swirling. When we solve a pressure point, we expect the system to flow better, but the strong pressure of complexion remains lurking beneath the surface. It’s because all the forces we manage swirl upward, and when we interact with them and send them back down to bolster the system flow toward manufacturing those beautiful curved surfaces we need for our fancy baths, the forces invert anmd, grbla—“

“Mmm. Imblerdeding. Hah, grrbrarbable!”

“Agh. Blot blouw!” Fisherman sits aghast at having to deal with the setback of a detached nose here and now in White’s office, where he’d hoped to resolve all problems he’d been battling. But when he looks up to gauge White’s reaction, he’s even more surprised to see White’s own nose sitting there on the table, his own face’s centrepiece an empty hole.

“Mblow hdoo hjou hjee?” White says.

“I campareehjit,” Fisherman says.

The two pick up their noses and pop them back on their faces. Fisherman is the first to speak. “This happens to you too?”

“Of course! It happens to all of us.”

“What? But nobody talks about it.”

“Well, it would happen to all of us, but Bobbyballs and I figured out how to protect the team — and the world, mind you — from dealing with this knowledge, from understanding how the process known to us as consterplexion works.” Fisherman gapes at White.

“You see, consterplexion leads our bodies, via our minds, into the holographic world of Paxman. But holography, of course, is a world of formless light projection. What do you think happens to the body when it starts to experiment, itself, with holography? Well, you actually know. Paxman himself, you see, was once the director of technology, but, like you, he came too close to solving consterplexion.”

“Paxman was once a man?”

“Yes. Billy Paxbill was his name.”

“Did anyone try to rescue him?”

“We did! We almost lost Glen and others to the effort. And then Paxman didn’t seem to even want rescuing. Who knows what glorious wonders he experiences in his little world there. And anyway, without him where he is, our consterplexion issues would only get worse.”

“My god. Well maybe this is the . . . ‘holographic living’ is the next evolution of humanity.”

“Could be, but one thing is certain; there is no need whatsoever for baths in a world of holographic people without bodies.” 

Fisherman considers this. “No more bathtime?” 

“No. No bathtime at all. No anything, as far as we can tell. We’d not only be outmoding our own industry; it would obsolete all industries. And nobody wants that.”

“But . . . if we were beings of pure light, we’d have no need for industries.”

“Yes. Yes, that’s exactly it.”

“No, I mean, we wouldn’t mind them being obsolete; we wouldn’t need them.”

“But then what about all this neat stuff we have?”

“So we keep expanding our systems to manage a force that we know cannot be managed? For the neat stuff?”

“Exactly. That’s precisely what humanity has been doing all along, playing around with technologies that expose various forces we can’t hope to control.”

“We’d be free of that.”

“But, then what?”

“I don’t know. Other things, I guess. Ask Paxman.”

“We’ve been trying.”

The two sit in silence for several minutes. Then White continues. “Let’s come up with a plan together to work through consterplexion issues by creating more systems around our core in ways proven to expand the world’s need for bathtime. You can use the approach to create fascinating and intricate patterns for the company to play with. Maybe we can fashion a kind of bathtub that encapsulates its own portable consterplexion. Or we can develop patterns so that nobody else will encounter the same toilsome issues of these dropping body parts that you’ve stumbled onto. Maybe we could even find some nice ways to use your flower charts—“

“Carnation charts.”

“Right, carnation charts. The point is, you must direct your efforts at more worthwhile endeavours! Your charts could measure something in proximity with consterplexion, so that instead of using the charts to bring people’s minds closer to the holograph, they’d bring minds indirectly closer, and therefor more effectively support bathtime company’s initiatives, while also shielding staff from the formlessness of it all.”

“Hmmm.”

“Worthwhile— that’s the key word. It’ll be an exploration like none other.”

An exploration like no other. Fisherman likes the sound of this, but it’s not quite what he’s thinking. “There’s really no way to come back from Paxman’s state?”

“Not that we’ve discovered.”

“Well, maybe I could work on that.”

Chapter 14

Fisherman stands before his bathtub, in one hand his phone showing an animated carnation chart, in the other a dossier about Billy Paxbill.

Which will he choose? He can direct his Bathtime Company management expertise down only one of two paths: help Paxman come back to the dimension of form as Billy Paxbill, or leave this world and delve deeper into the consterplexion of his carnation chart to join Paxman in a universe of light. If only there were another path that could bring him toward both ends.

Lila peeks through the opened door, hand on her heart. “Everything ok?” she asks.

“Hmm? Yes, dear. I’m alright.”

“Gonna take a bath, honey?”

“Mmm? Well, I’m not sure. I’m just not sure what I should do.”

Lila raises an eyebrow. “Between taking a bath and not taking one?”

“Well, let me put it this way. What if I only had two choices: take a bath, but then I will have to spend the whole rest of my life in a bath; or don’t take a bath, but then I can never take a bath again.”

“Hmm. A real toughy. If you think about it, the choice is a little arbitrary.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, taking a bath is just, ’sitting in a tub full of water.’”

“Hmm. You mean, to never take a bath again would mean, simply, never again thinking of ‘sitting in a tub full of water’ as ‘a bath’?”

“Yes. Or, if you take the other course, just think of baths as sitting in a tub of air— without the tub. You’re doing it now! No biggy.”

“Hmm, I’ve never thought of it that way. . . . Makes you wonder.”

“What about, hun?”

“Well, if bathtime is simply a tub of water, which may as well be an empty tub, or a non-tub of air, then the one who takes the bath might as well be a pile of spaghetti or some other person, or no person at all.”

“Right— so, what’s the problem?”

“Well, but I like bathtime. If bathtime is only these temporary states, these momentary rearrangements of particles and whatnot, and if, indeed, I am that too, then . . . what’s the enjoyment?”

“Well, honey, don’t be silly; that’s just consciousness. You can’t take that too seriously. It’s simply the reflection of a body in a tub of water, like a shadow or a sundog.”

“Or . . . a hologram?”

“Sure! It’s beyond us.”

“By gum, Lila. You’re a genius!” They hug. “Say, I think I’ll take that bath now.”

“Heh, ok dear. Let me know if you need anything!”

Lila returns to the living room while Mr. Fisherman prepares his bath. Once settled, he sets up his laptop and composes an email to Bill White. It says:

Hi Bill,

Prepare to catch your nose.

Consterplexion is not the heart of our systems, it is but one little abstraction on top of our heart. Our true heart is Paxbill, or Paxman, or whatever you want to name him.

In the middle of a diamond, or of a flower’s petals, or somewhere inside a kernel of corn, or inside the inside of the germ in a seed, a to-be tree, we find consterplexion. I just realized it from chit-chatting with Lila! You remember Lila, right?

Whoops! There goes my nose again!

Remember how we named consterplexion? Way back when I was a junior bathtime engineer? It was a portmanteau of concentration, consternation, and confusion, because we had all been joking around with each other, sometimes calling the buggy middleware of our factory core the “concentration core,” and then sometimes the “consternation core,” and, finally, the “confusion core.” Remember that? Hehehe.

Wuh-oh! There go my ears!

So, from right then and there when we came up with the name, consterplexion, we had lost the issue we were chasing in a facade. We made an elemental notion of a hologram out of a holographic swirl, and lost ourselves inside of it. We’re still all there now I think!

Oh no! My mouth!

Meanwhile, we went about our daily affairs, building this, tweaking that, running around and crunching numbers, like little ants building a colony around their queen. Meanwhile, Billy Paxbill must have already figured it all out. I now believe he left us with a little souvenir of himself, a little avatar in a bottle that represents life in striving. It’s not actually Paxbill, it’s just Paxman. It’s something else besides ourselves that encapsulates our own desires to live and be free.

Good thing I know touch typing— there go my eyes into the bathwater. Hey, that stings a bit!

Now, as I sit here typing, it’s all the more clear to me that this world of Bathtime Company we’ve fashioned is but one more facade, just like Paxman, just like consterplexion itself. The very notion of a manager is another good example. Each key I press adds a letter to this email, and a reader of this email won’t think of keypresses or “a manager” while they read. They won’t think of consterplexion or Paxman. They’ll simply read. The details remain elsewhere; they’re not here now in this email. Experiencing these details comes as the skin senses a bath filling with warm water, or as feet feel the steps down a deep staircase. Whether the reader draws a line between the notions — this and that, manager and engineer, Bathtime Company and consterplexion — it’s up to them! It’s not up to the notions! Do you see? The notions flood in from the one vast ocean of all things, this incredibly distracting world where we toil. We split and mush and mold the notions; we fashion rock formations that split and yoink at our flowing consciousness, forming it into rivers and falls. No matter! The water still settles all together when we settle our formations.

Well now, isn’t this peculiar! My epidermis has slipped clean off! I’m typing with the tips of my finger bones— no feeling whatsoever. The bones fall away. The physical heart goes now down the drain. The more of me falls away, the more accurately I type. The words flow without a distraction.

And, so, here I leave you. I leave behind all research into consterplexion. I leave Paxman right where he remains. I leave my bathtub and my living room, my Lila. As always, my body will find itself again, I will again find my Lila, my living rom, my bathtub, Paxman, and everything in my mind. My little book at my bedside. My little rubber ducky.

In short, please accept this as my official letter of resignation. I’ll stick around and wrap up anything the team needs help with for two more weeks. Thanks, and have yourself a good night!