Robert Wexelblatt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wise-Ass

 

1.

 

            “Aunt Lil?  How come you’re in a bad mood?”

            “Use your imagination.”

            “Where’s my imagination when I’m not using it, Aunt Lil?  Or yours?”

            “Your mother’s right.  You are fresh.”

            “Fresh.  That’s what Mom calls me if I say something when she doesn’t want me to say anything.  Which is most of the time.”

            “I can believe it.”

            “Aunt Lil?  If I stayed quiet would I be—what? Frozen?  I mean, with peas and fish the opposite of fresh is frozen, right?”

            “If you stayed quiet you’d be a smart little boy who behaves himself.”

            “But being fresh is behaving.  Doing anything’s behaving, isn’t it?  I mean, even sleeping’s behaving.”

            “One day you’re going to make some poor girl an exasperating husband.”

            “Is that a prophecy, Aunt Lil?”

            “A prophecy?  Ouf.  Such a serious word.  Well, maybe you won’t get married.  The poor girl might come to her senses in time.”

            “But why would she want to marry me at all?”

            “Oh, those long eyelashes. That sweet mouth.  Maybe your ears—just like your father’s.  You could turn out to have broad shoulders; you might even keep the silky hair.”

            “So she’ll want to marry me because of how I look?” 

            “It’s the custom.  But then there’s all the money you’re probably going make some day, inventing gadgets or cornering a market or buying a whole city.  How should I know?”

            “Aunt Lil?  Why didn’t you ever get married?”

            “None of your business.” 

            “Is it because some poor boy came to his senses in time?”

 

 

2.

 

            “Christ.  It’s three a.m.”

            “Look, I just figured out something big.  I mean really big.  Gotta tell somebody.  I picked you.  You should be flattered.”

            “You’re high.”

            “It’s possible.  High’s a relative term.”

            “Well, I’m not flattered.”

            “Tant pis.”

            “That proves it.”

            “What?”

            “That you’re high.  You always break into French.”

            “C’est vrai?  Sans blague?

            “All right.  Out with it so I can get back to sleep.  I’ve got a calculus exam in the morning.”

            “So what?  Have you ever in your whole life gotten anything wrong on a math test?”

            “Once.”

            “What?  I don’t believe it.  Something was too hard—for you?”

            “Extra-credit question.”

            “Figures.”

            “Prof got cute.  ‘Which mathematician did Catherine the Great invite to succeed Daniel Bernoulli?’”

            “Huh?

            “I should’ve gotten it from his hint.”

            “Which was?”

            “Right up your alley.  Tour de France.”

            “I’m lost.”

            “It was Euler.  Leonhard Euler.  The Euler Cycle.  Get it?”

            “A bike?  You know math’s not my thing.”

            “You’re a moron.”

            “That’s what I came to tell you.”

            “That you’re a moron?”

            “No.  What I am—what I really am.”

            “And what’s that?”

            “You have to be sitting down.”

            “No, I don’t.”

            “Okay.  Suit yourself.”

            “So, what did you figure out you are?”

            “I admit the weed may have helped a little.”

            “No doubt.”

            “Okay.  Ready? I’m God!”

            “You’re God?”

            “Sure.  You see, every time I pray I wind up talking to myself.”

            “I was wrong.  You’re not a moron.”

            “Told you.  I’m God.”

            “No, not God.  What you are is an idiot.  Morons have an Intelligence Quotient between 51 and 70.  Idiots run from zero to 25.”

 

 

3.

 

            “I know.  Let’s say it at the same time.”

            “It’s an idea.  But. . .”

            “But what?”

            “I admit it’s a sensible suggestion.  Really.  I see that.  But essentially, it’s defensive.”

            “No, it’s not. What do you mean, defensive?”

            “You don’t want to say it first, and neither do I.  So, if we say it together, at the same time, then there’s no risk.  Nobody’s taking a chance that it’s not reciprocal.”

            “Exactly.”

            “Well, but then what’s it worth?  Without that risk.”

            “Worth a lot, I’d say.”

            “I’d like to agree but I can’t.”

            “Why not?”

            “Well, suppose we were out to dinner. Someplace nice, expensive.  Legal Seafood, for instance.  You order the boiled lobster and I’m having the baked scallops.”

            “Yes?”

            “Well, say you want to try a scallop and I say only if you hand over that claw at the same time.”

            “What’s wrong with that?”

            “Then, you see, I’m not giving you the scallop.  I’m trading for it.  It’s not a gift but a transaction, a bargain.  Both parties are protected.”

            “So, you’re saying you want me to say it first?”

            “Not necessarily.”

            “Then you say it first.”

            “But then I’d be vulnerable and you wouldn’t be.”

            “Am I missing something?  Isn’t that what you want?”

            “Not really.”

            “Well then, I’m not going to say it first.”

            “Because you’re not sure or because you don’t want to take the risk?”

            “Jesus.  We’ve been dating for seven months.  I’ve met your awful family and you’ve met mine.  I nursed you through the flu.  You got me through a mild depression  Come on.  Go for it.”

            “Go for it?  You know I can’t stand that phrase.”

            “Fuck you.”

 

 

4.

 

            “Thanks for agreeing to this.”

            “You’re welcome.”

            “Frankly, I was surprised.  You don’t do many interviews.”

            “I’m not asked all that often.”

            “You’re too modest.”

            “False modesty’s inverted vanity.”

            “I didn’t mean—”

            “No.  But you’re a star.  Of course I agreed.  It’s a distinction to be asked by you.”

            “Well, I wouldn’t—”

            “No use blushing.  Your ratings are stratospheric.  Apparently, the public can resist your winning combination of breathy voice and smoldering hostility.  Certainly not me.”

            “I’m flattered, I think.”

            “Good.  Now, what would you like to know?”

            “Okay.  How you feel about what you’ve accomplished.”

            “What have I accomplished?”

            “Now that sounds like inverted vanity.  How about automating radiology?  You’ve put a lot of radiologists out of work, even the ones in India.”

            “I’m fine with it.  Radiologists, including the ones in India, are expensively educated physicians.  The world desperately needs primary care doctors, especially the poorer neighborhoods of cities and depressed rural regions.  Seems to me there’s plenty of useful work for the ex-radiologists to do besides looking at baby boomers’ hips.”

            “Plenty to do perhaps, but for a lot less money.”

            “No argument.  It’s a cost-benefit ratio.  I regret the radiologists’ loss in income—also the accountants, tax lawyers, insurance salesmen, booksellers, teachers, etcetera.  Of course I do.  Fewer radiologists with houses in the Hamptons.  But meaningful work has always been a privilege.  Now it’s a bit more of one.  Still, I’ll grant it’s a cost.  However, the benefits of digitizing what can be digitized are immense.  Since you began with radiology, I can say getting a look at your insides is now a lot cheaper, human error’s been eliminated, more cancers are caught and cured, more lives saved.”

            “But the cost of you and your company hasn’t been cut.  You’ve made a fortune.”

            “Our profits are earned and, measured by the value we add, modest.”

            “You’ve made billions.”        

            “And I’ve given most of them away.”

            “To that point:  some people say you’ve distorted the philanthropy market.”

            “There’s a market?”

            “Excuse me, but that’s a little disingenuous.  Just last year you said in a speech that—let me find the quote—you said to the graduates of Caltech, ‘We can tickle the law of supply and demand, we can denounce and deplore it; the one thing we can’t do is evade it.’”

            “You disagree?”

            “With respect, you’re destroying the middle class, almost single-handedly.”

            “Many hands, many hands.  You have to employ a lot of people to make lots more of them redundant.”

            “So, no regrets at all?”
            “Progress has turned on us?  Is that what you think?  That my work in applied artificial intelligence has made the natural kind obsolete?”

            “Well. . .”

            “We live in revolutionary times.  We need policies to suit.  Perhaps we’ll divorce income from work—pay people to grow roses or write poetry, to sit on their couches and watch you on television.  Why not?”

            “A guaranteed national income?  That would cost a lot.  Are you suggesting we soak the rich—people like you?”

            “Who else?  Wealth’s concentrated.  Productivity’s up; it just isn’t the productivity of consumers, who also happen to be voters.”

            “Ah, glad you mentioned voting.  Your work on redistricting has been blamed for gridlock in Washington and the rate of voter participation falling below thirty percent.  Does this trouble you?”

            “Precision’s not the problem.  Our systems don’t tell the politicians what to do, just how to do it.  And, before you ask, I back no party or candidate a priori.  It’s case by case for me, and I send my contributions where I think they’ll do the most good.”

            “How much did you put toward doing the most good in the last election?”

            “Some of the answer to that question is public; the rest is confidential.”

            “What do you have in the works.  Who’s next on your cybernetic chopping-block?”

            “Oh, I don’t know.  How about you?  Get rid of journalists.  Hardly anybody believes you anyway.  I’m sorry, but your show is a form of entertainment.  Shouting, too much make-up, selective coverage, axes being ground.  Picture it all being done by AI.  You’d get entirely objective news reporting, also comprehensively informed, level-headed, even-handed interviews.”

            “But that’s impossible.”        

            “We’ll see.”

 

 

 

 

 

Bio Note: 

Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has published five fiction collections, Life in the Temperate ZoneThe Decline of Our NeighborhoodThe Artist Wears Rough ClothingHeiberg’s Twitch, and Petites Suites; a book of essays, Professors at Play; two short novels, Losses and The Derangement of Jules Torquemal;  essays, stories, and poems in a variety of scholarly and literary journals, and the novel Zublinka Among Women, awarded the Indie Book Awards first prize for fiction.  A collection of essays, The Posthumous Papers of Sidney Fein, is forthcoming.