March 9, 2020

US Coronavirus cases: 605

US Coronavirus deaths: 25

"I'm doing fine" - Rep. Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.)

"They gathered us in a lecture hall and this guy in a white collared shirt just said that’s it.  And we all looked at each other and were like, uh, we got midterms coming up what does he mean?  And the guy was just like, you got to go.  And we were like, okay.  And since my parents are dead and I’m effectively an orphan, I asked VR here if I could bunk with his family.”

The man in the bathrobe with shoulder length hair, glasses and a patchy black goatee crossed his arms above his generous gut and looked at Viral.

Picking up where his roommate Lron had left off, Viral said, “And, uh, yeah...then I, uh, called my mom and told her that the school was sending us home and that I needed a ticket for a flight back.  But she said I couldn’t come because my dad wasn’t feeling well and that the doctors told her that they had to admit him and that she couldn’t leave the house or have anyone visit for 72 hours.  And, uh, I was like, mom, I’m not a visitor.  I’m your son.  And she was like yes, you are, but you’re also potentially a carrier of whatever this virus that infected your father is.  And if you travel with it, well, that’s just irresponsible.  And even if you don’t have it, you could pick it up en route and deliver it to me.  And you could be the source of what kills your own mother.”

The man in the bathrobe widened his eyes and let out a long breath.  “Shit, that’s heavy.”

Viral scratched at the back of his head.  “Yeah, I guess,” he said.  

“So, anyway, that’s why we rolled over here,” Lron said.  

“Cool,” the man in the robe said, turning  from his door.  He sauntered back into the shadows of his loft.  

Viral and Lron followed him to a sitting area and put down their bags.  “And who are you again?” Viral asked.  

The man grabbed a banana from his kitchenette and touched its tip against his chest.  “Tyler,” he said.  

Viral waited for elaboration but none came.  Lron had already settled on an armchair and was unlacing his boots.  “And you’re a student?” Viral asked.

Peeling his banana, Tyler said, “Oh hell no,” and dropped himself on the sofa.  He nodded his head at Lron and pointed toward a group of shelves mounted into the brick above a bike rack behind Viral.  Lron seemed to understand because he started pulling clothes out of his Samsonite roller.  

“So, like, what do you do then?” Viral asked.  

Tyler chewed his banana and pondered.  “I’m like a scientist," he said.  "But like a detective, too.  And a crusader. Not for Christians, but like, for good.”

Viral wasn’t used to putting so many disparate pieces together during an introduction.  “So that means you’re like a doctor?”

“Well, yeah, but no. Like, if a doctor in your assumption deals with only biological entities, as such, then no.  But, if, again in your assumption, a doctor works with the structures that govern the principles of those entities then, yeah, you could say I’m kind of like a doctor.”  

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Viral looked over his shoulder at Lron who was stacking his wardrobe according to garment on one of the shelves.  “TyTy grows neural networks,” he said.  

“Oh,” Viral said, relieved to understand what was going on again.  “So like artificial intelligence.”

“Oh shit,” Viral heard Lron say.  

“What was that?” Tyler asked.  

“I said ‘artificial inte --’”...

“Oh hell naw!” Tyler shouted.  He lept from the couch and threw his hands up.  Viral noticed he’d peeled his banana naked and ate it like a candy bar.  

As Tyler stomped toward the kitchenette and back, Lron put his head in his hands.  “Not again,” he said.  

Tyler stopped inches from Viral and put his finger in his face.  “Let me ask you something -- what’d you say your name was again?”  

Viral told him.  “How do you spell it?”

Viral told him.  “Like the bug?”

Viral said yes.  “And you’re staying with me, and I’m your host?”

Viral told him, sure.  

“Toooooooooyt.”  Tyler eased back on to his heels for a moment as he savored the thought.  Then Viral saw the storm return to his eyes.

“Well let me ask you something, Viral,” he said, his mouth even closer to Viral’s now.  “What if I came around your house when you were growing up and slapped your mom and told her that her ugly baby was artificial?”  

Viral had assumed the question was rhetorical, but when Tyler stuck his chin out Viral said the first thing he could think of.  “Why would you have to slap her?”

“Don’t evade the premise!”

Viral stammered.  “I mean, if you did that, I’d be a baby, I guess, so...what’s the question?”

“Exactly.  Things are made; then they’re raised; then they’re taught.  They’re fed.  They grow.  They exist, perform, deliver, help.  They serve.  These things can be organic or not; what you call, insultingly, artificial.  But the organizing principle that allows for them both to be is the same -  enthalpy.  Order. The only thing artificial about my nets is the prison of human cognition to which you confine them.  You may contain multitudes.  But my nets contain multinuuuuuuuuuuudes.”  

Catching his breath, Tyler pulled the sleeve of his bathrobe across the dopple of spittle that’d collected in the fuzzy hair on his chin.  Viral caught himself staring with his mouth open, and from the tamed fire in Tyler’s eyes could tell his host’s ire had run its course.  After a quick calculation of the logical leaps Tyler had made during his screed, Viral needed just one more bit of information.  “Did you say ‘nudes’?”

Lron snapped the tab on a can of diet Monster energy drink from the kitchenette.  “Tyler uses machine learning to make videos of fake cam girls that he charges for on Only Fans,” he said.  

Under his breath, Viral said, “Multi-nudes.”

Tyler wiggled his unibrow like a fornicating caterpillar and licked his mustache.  “You like Walt Whitman?” he asked.  

Viral shrugged.  “I guess.  We read a couple of his poems in AP English.”  

Tyler held up the two-inch nub of what remained of his banana until Viral took it between his fingers.  After scanning a bookcase next to the fridge, he returned with a tome he handed to Viral.  

Viral looked at the cover.  Leaves of Grass.  “Yeah, this looks familiar.”  

Tyler flipped the banana nub into his mouth like a chocolate and almost choked when he tried to click his tongue against the back of his palette.  

Lron had resettled into the armchair and was waiting patiently for the fizz on his energy drink to settle in the pint glass into which he'd poured it.  When Viral looked at him for translation of Tyler’s coughing fit, Lron said, “He wants you to open it.”

Tyler swallowed whatever he’d hacked up and nodded.  

Viral opened the book, but it wasn’t a book.  It was a humidor, and inside was a one-quart, clear Ziplock bag of furry, cumulous clumps of marijuana buds.  Tyler undulated his eyebrow again but this time with the controlled rhythm of a sine wave.  “Get it?” Tyler asked.  

Viral was speechless.  Lron chimed in.  “He meant Leaves of Grass as in marij --”...

Viral interrupted him.  “Yeah, I got it,” he said, keeping his eyes trained on Tyler.  The man’s eyebrow kept moving; its consistent frequency both revolting and hypnotic.  In that moment Viral knew that something in the life that he had perfectly calculated was about to go terribly, horribly, irrevocably wrong.