Being & Nothingness Cam Project Group, February 4.
Back row, from left: Dirk, the cranky computer guy; B&NCT Member Sia; Project leader Gina; front row from left: B&NCT Members Phaye and Tom (Financial adviser Bethann not pictured)
Newcomers: For the detailed story so far, entitled, “Story So Far,” check the March 8 posting. One of the few known things about the Project’s SAALI computer, which now sits inactive in the yard, was that it was supposed to write these weekly story summaries.*
The Being & Nothingness Cam Project Team members—Tom, Sia, and Phaye-- are objecting to my continual reminders that all of us are fictional. Tom thinks that being fictional is going to make his teenage daughter think he’s even more of a looser than she already does, and Phaye’s worried that if her mom finds out she’s fictional she won’t be happy about Phaye staying at her apartment. Sia is quiet, but you can feel her simmering resentment as she languidly smokes her (now mostly clove) cigarettes.
Eleven days ago incident-prone Phaye, the youngest of the philosophy-educated B&NC Team, fell through a hole in the office floor and somehow pulled loose a bundle of cables, which started a chain reaction that killed every electricity-dependent object in the office. There wasn't a fire, but it did cause much of the computer system to literally melt. Phaye had spotted a bright new image on one of the monitors and been running to look at the camera’s tape backups when she stepped on and broke the shaky plank that temporarily covered a hole chewed in the floor.
The last week was spent restoring and upgrading our electrical system and with Dirk and the Dirkettes crack computer squad replacing and re-connecting all of our computer systems, including the monitors and hardware that are the heart of the Being and Nothingness Cam Project. How and when the presumably extant cameras are connected from the vast, ever-evolving, unknowable realms of life and reason to a bank of monitors in a little wooden house turned gloomy, coffee-soaked office is an excellent question. Still mysterious is the genesis of the B&NC Project and what in hell Gina is doing in the middle of all of this, although she got here by instigating contact with the vaguely-defined Masomenis Corporation.
Other stuff:
Project financial problems have been foreshadowed by financial adviser Bethann with her repeated and now boring references to her concern over the Project’s grant money management.
Gina has reluctantly agreed to meet a representative of the Central California Sartre Society, who claim that the B&NC is their intellectual property.
Dirk may have a thing for Phaye, and although Dirk’s a good 15 years older than she, it could happen.
Sia has reduced her smoking. We’re worried that this will ruin our attempt at looking as bored and cynical as a group of philosophers should.
No more animal incidents. Space the Capuchin monkey’s visit is still much-discussed.
Seeing as how there’s so much unknown, ill-defined, or yet to come we’d all better hope that Gina is either more together than she seems or there’s another Holmes out there to figure this out.
Have you noticed that when you cook peas it seems like plenty, and then you go to serve them there is never enough?
* Now that I’ve complained about SAALI’s poor performance and cast some aspersions on the units’ designers, I may have blown my hopes of wiggling out of writing these weekly updates.
I’m sure that you SAALI guys are all happily married, fit, eat well-balanced meals and go to bed at a respectable hour. I’ll even wager that you’re a darned handsome bunch.
Now that health insurance reform has passed, your team of workers may be happier if you offer them health insurance with the new options for small businesses...then falling thru holes in the floor and smoking too much, not to mention drinking too much coffee, might not be such a concern...
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