Today I drove to an old brick building a few miles west of here and quickly found a large, tennis-court-sized room on the third floor complete with a few dozen chairs, a projector, a lectern, and a screen. I proceeded to arrange those chairs in rows, sure to leave a space for the projector and its screen to orient themselves to one another, complete with an unobstructed beam. I had some extra time, so I rearranged all of the rows so that the rows would alternate between an even and an odd number. I also straightened the rows, in careful correspondence to the hardwood panels of the floor, and collected bits of random and disorderly materials and threw them in a cardboard box in the corner. I then fiddled with the light-switches to be sure which did what. Then I sat down in a chair toward the back and drank water from a bottle of mine.
A few minutes later, a man in a tie came into the room and introduced himself. We made small talk about projectors and how they work. He fixed a slide carousel to the projector I had positioned in the room’s center. After about five minutes, several adults began to show up, most either silent or taking in small groups, and all very serious. Once everyone was situated, I flipped the overhead lights and the man in the tie began to talk about how he was born in a certain hospital in Virginia. From there he moved through slides of several sketches, architectural models, and paintings he had done of that hospital. In a similar fashion, he described his discovery of the childhood home of Steven Spielberg, and then accounted for the months of research he devoted to recreating an architectural model and subsequent paintings of that house, which is now destroyed. This presentation, which also visited points elsewhere, lasted about forty-five minutes, during which several of the adults made moaning noises that were meant to depict their interest.
While the man in a tie spoke and the other adults listened, I thought of how deep sea rivers will rush through unknown canyons next month just as they do today, regardless of whether or not I succeed at any of my current endeavors. I also thought of how there’s only one girl I ever kissed that did things right, like with her tongue I mean, and how British Petroleum’s nozzles, with the black rubber slinkies, just plain suck. The presentation ended with the man in a tie pushing play on a large tape recorder that was cued to NASA’s audio segment of the English language, which contained the voice of a child reciting the words “Greetings from the children of Earth.” The man in the tie explained that this segment was included with statements in every single spoken language on a recorded file that was packed within Voyagers 1 and 2, back in the late nineteen-seventies. So that if the probes were somehow recovered by extra-terrestrials, they might know who we are.
After everyone left I stacked the chairs in neat stacks and put the projector back on its shelf. I left the building immediately and returned home for a turkey sandwich.