New Year's Eve has never been a happy time for me. I don't drink, dance, or look forward to the next day's bowl games. What I end up doing is catching an early movie, curling up in bed with my dogs, and reading a book - and cackling at all the silly people out there freezing their butts off in Times Square.
Despite my temperance, I often have nightmares on New Year's Eve. Last year's was a hummer. I dreamed that William Bennett, the man the media calls our virtues czar, and Edgar Bronfman, CEO of MCA owner Seagram, were together deciding what sort of music the rest of us should listen to. It was bad. My wife shook me and slapped me hard across the face. "Snap out of it, for God's sake!" she yelled. Drenched in sweat, I sat up. It was OK.
But this year, it was worse. I had a dream beyond a dream.
It took place sometime in the future:
It turned out the Cassandras had all been right. We'd become a nation of screen-addicted zombies. Several generations of college kids had forsaken beer and sex to sit for hours in front of flickering monitors, just like The New York Times warned us about back in '96. Literacy was the name of a hip hop group, but had otherwise vanished as a concept. Civics was the name of an android engineer in Star Trek XV, but had no other meaning. The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History displayed a few violins and batons, an opera ticket stub, and a few books to remind us of our past.
Geopolitically, North America had been rearranged. The techno elite had clustered in the West, in a prosperous, beautifully landscaped but heavily fortified compound known as the Wired Sector. Their leader was Louis Rossetto. The residents had lots of great stuff and used it freely. They treated one another harshly when they came face-to-face, which happened infrequently, but were OK if left alone.
As in so much late '90s cultural-demise hysteria made real, in the East were masses of impoverished, angry people with no work and no prospects. And no cool stuff. This world domain was ruled by Snoop Doggy Dogg. They spoke an elaborately profane language, and were a violent and cruel people.
In the North was the fabled Microsoft Nation, led by Bill Gates. Every household there had software that turned the bathroom showers on and off, and made babies stop crying and adolescents genial.
Everything else was the Wal-Mart Nation, ruled by William Bennett, where Bennett's collection of moral tales was a sacred text. All the culture in this world was blessedly wholesome and uplifting. The TV shows, movies, CDs, and books were about hard-working bumblebees and froggies - but there was a flourishing market in guns and knives.
By and large, the four sectors ignored one another. But one day, Wired's sensors - a new and very expensive but way - cool technology using massive amounts of RAM - picked up signals showing an alien invasion gathering on the far side of the moon.
The four sector leaders, none of whom had ever spoken to one another, were panicked and agreed to meet. There was no public building large enough to accommodate the four egos. Yankee Stadium and the Rose Bowl proved inadequate.
So they hit on the only place with room to spare - the new Manhattan Wal-Mart, which ran from Wall Street to Connecticut and sold every consumer product in the world (except for CDs from the Rap Sector), with discounts for customers who pledged never to curse or watch violent TV shows.
Surrounded by their bodyguards, the four converged on the giant store as thousands of chipper if clueless Wal-Mart employees in colorful vests looked on cheerfully.
Since the four couldn't agree on the shape of a conference table, each had brought his own means of communication: Rossetto via PC-Web-Meta-TV modem, Dogg by microphone, Bennett via press conference, and Gates through his Microsoft Platform Nerd Projector. If none of the four could speak directly to the others, at least each could hear what the others were saying.
"What are we going to do?" asked Rossetto bluntly. "From my POV [translation: point of view], it seems to me that this is the end of the industrial meta-state as we know it, a meme's end. That's what nobody gets. But how could you? You're all parts of a dying order!"
"Shit," said Snoop Doggy Dogg. "Those motherfuckas put one toe down in my sector, and I'll stick my foot all the way up their asses."
"Now this illustrates the problem," said Bennett angrily. "You're talking filth. Utter garbage. You're a bad example. Have you seen my latest book, Mr. Dogg? It's only [US]$150, and you'll be especially interested in the story, 'The Foul-Mouthed Rapper Who Stopped Talking Dirty, Bought A Suit, and Became Respectable.'"
There was a chuckle from the back of the vast room. Gates himself never laughed, but he had a Chuckling software program that did it for him. His giant face materialized on the Nerd projector. The Wal-Mart employees ooohed and aaaaahed.
"Have some vision," he said. "I foresaw this in l996, as I told the New Yorker then, off the record. We've been working for years on software that will translate Martian into English, auto-operate their spacecraft, and create habitable environments for them here. Talk about Windows, heh-heh. We've already signed $16 billion worth of contracts with the aliens. They won't take one webbed step without using a Microsoft product. Look, I have to get back to my sector now. I'm not used to this much interaction with people, and I have some memos to email everybody. Besides, I've got to oversee the new addition to my 612-acre dining area."
Dogg laughed out loud.
"Shit, that's nothing, man. I've already sold the bastards 12 million copies of my new CD, including my hit single, Screw U Alien Motherfuckas."
Bennett cleared his throat. "You all think you're so smart. In l997, I created my Alien Empowerment Foundation. And I dashed off a little something called The Book Of Alien Virtues. The first story is about a Martian who wanted to conquer the earth, so he got up every morning at 4 a.m. for seven million years to build a ship that could travel here. I've got 100,000 copies in the warehouse ready to ship. Sort of an uplifting thing. I hit the Today Show Monday to talk about giving these creatures some values."
Bennett sat back, put his hands behind his head, and guffawed. "Yessir, extraterrestrials need inspiration too. And like I told my agent, there's probably a zillion of 'em."
There was quiet in the room, except for the sound of a keyboard clacking. Rossetto was furiously typing away. "I feel like ROTFLing [translation: rolling on the floor laughing]. This is the reflexive twitching of the postindustrial, premillennial order. None of you gets it."
He turned off his laptop.
"OTOH [translation: on the other hand]," he said quietly, "do you think these Martians might be interested in investing in a hot new company with infinite prospects?"
I woke up in a sweat. I came downstairs to be with my family. There was no Snoop Doggy Dogg. No Rossetto. No looming face of Bill Gates.
But William Bennett was on Good Morning America, talking about his plan to empower America.
