Page 9 - The Myth and the Moment

Morning

wired anyway; the kid would make up his own language, easily
translatable by the unseen experimenters.
I’ve certainly been making my own assumptions about translation
of The Myth and the Moment. Think of the Rosetta Stone. All those
hieroglyphs down the drain without that crucial key. But I can’t
afford to translate the bloody thing into eighty-eight languages on the
off-chance Swahili grammars will survive and English won’t. We’ve
got more stuff buried deeper than anyone, even the Russians. Yeah,
yeah, they’ve got more bomb shelters, still planning for the last war
and the siege of Stalingrad, but they lack our secret weapons:
Mormons and the IRS. Got to keep those records safe for posterity
and the next audit. And English is the lingua franca. Bit of history in
that phrase: Latin expression, originating in former French
dominance, applied to current King of Tongues. Three empires, one
tradition: speak my language and we’ll do business; otherwise, I’ll
treat you as subhuman.
Well, what if the flying saucers come, scan the planet, find my bit
of nonsense—and can’t read it! Not my fault, goddamn it. Sour
grapes: it would prove they weren’t smart enough to get my message,
anyway. Yeah. Come on, Nathan: don’t dwell on the future.
Unpredictable, science and mysticism notwithstanding. More
mythology, trying to control events by pretending to know how
they’ll unfold. Know thyself or fool thyself, impudent biped! Ah, too
bad the Nazis crushed the Viennese philosophers: just beginning to
forge logical positivism into the sword of righteousness. Forces of
good did not triumph in 1945; how could they? They were blown
away by the blitzkrieg. Well, anyone with absolute power in their
arsenal would be corrupted. Excuse me, Lord Russell; you have been
put in charge of nuclear weaponry. Oh, you want to dismantle the
bombs? Well, the Russians got their share of German scientists
during the sack of Berlin, you know; best thing is to nuke them back
to the Stone Age before they can catch up. And Bertrand says—
Hah, Doheny already. Beverly Hills is dead on Sunday morning.
But commerce, like the touch of Christ upon the cataleptic brow of
Lazarus, shall revive it Monday. For now, the good citizens are
occupied abasing themselves before altars of a false avatar,
reaffirming their faith in the goodness of a god about to ring down
the curtain on the human comedy. But, if you’re not a Manichaean

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