that when you built the darn thing.”
“Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to me at the time.”
“But now you have the chance to do something good with it.” Don
Wong smacked his little fist on his knee.
“Oh really?” Harvey interjected haughtily, “Talk to plants? Isn’t
this all taking your vaunted multiculturalism a little too far?”
“No,” Wong said, “Lots of cultures already do talk to plants.
Indians talk to plants every day. And the things they know…boy,
you’d be surprised.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Not at all. But it’s not the kind of talk you and I are having right
now. It’s like when Christians talk to god, they aren’t actually talking
to a big guy on a cloud—they’re talking to something buried deep
inside themselves. Its the same with anything we commune with,
even plants. After all, we
were
plants once.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Really, you’d be surprised how much we have in common with
them,” Don Wong insisted. “But it’s really hard to see that. And that’s
what’s so great about your machine, Futterman. It could help even
the most jaded snob realize just how interconnected everything on
this planet is. It could help people give a damn. And it could help us
improve as a people. As a species.”
“And then we’d all be as advanced as Vlad. How glorious.”
“Ha ha! Sure, I know Vlad may seem a little light in the lunchbox,
and the members of the Order of the Fern are, at best, a bumblin’
bunch of boobs. But they’re all I’ve got. And if an idiot like Vlad can
become enlightened, then the rest of the population is sitting pretty.
You see, when that Epiphany Machine—
your
machine, Futterman,
plugs man into the wisdom of universal consciousness, I believe it’s
gonna unite the whole god-dang planet!”
“Hence, Pangaea?” said Harvey warily.
“You bet your bass!”
Harvey raised his eyebrows. “My bass?”
“What, are you hard of herring?”
“Herring? What the hell?”
“No need to get roughy with me, now. I thought we were chums!”
He peeled off his sunglasses and doffed his hat.
Harvey blinked. It couldn’t be.
“Good lord! Ling?”
The old man laughed, winking. “We’ve got a lot to talk about,
H O L Y S H I T !
92
 |
 |
 |
 |