Ice Cream Aloha

The System

   She goes to the window at the far end of the lab station and, with an eye for some bright color, looks out across theJungle. A radioactive field of beauty—that which cannot, anymore, be openly experienced by the force field of touch and shows no disenchantment—comes into view. Beyond the forest is the ocean of a bluish, lime-green color, with its sheen of useful operator intact, its refusals to disappear as a totally defunct world player. Suzi returns to her workstation. 

DrCooper's mind, its carriage of the outmoded and the meaningless, its emphasis on freedom and structured belief systems, bears its presence on her workbench in the form of little scientific method machines set forward in a steady, perpetual motion for the grandiose purpose of ... what? 

“Beautiful view,” he says.

“Forests are so relaxing to look at.”

She looks at him, sees the insoluble plots inside his mind. Standing with him in friendship, she can feel the authentic urges of his being. His thoughts maintain (housed as photo shots and images in language clouds) a cute rejection of values defining the outside world. His thoughts, too, are devoid of epic narratives of the 20thCentury (though he still wonders about those endangered species) and less so, happily are still creating their own value system, his own depiction of good and evil.  

  DrCooper's belief system, in fact, is infected with opportune moments; or, maybe, it is a system of something that has allowed things to get far out of hand, has allowed the battle between duty, integrity, and professionalism to ensue for such a long time that the lines between the mundane and the imaginary are surely blurred. The system—innocent acts of rebellion against establishment conventions—is a blind advocate of his personal freedom. It is held together by ideas of a narrative, quest-filled, pastoral (yes, this is the best part), as if knowledge had a hero and it was universal peace. Its operator is the technology of function always looking for a new slant on lowering operating costs. Its fluidity is addictive—little promises of adventure—not only for personal pleasure but for the pleasure of living dangerously to acquire more data; data to beat the more widespread system of the routine boredom of the security of previous multiple roles. The system feels like a ledge, a jumping-off point; it feels like freedom. If it were removed he would not continue to exist. DrCooper would be the first to tell you how absurd that would be.