Brian

Plan B

June 1, 2003

Dear Friends:

How could it have gone so wrong? Every day, we meditate on this. Our body continues to occupy its place (a small room, a bed, a chair and sink, a toilet, you can imagine) while our mind becomes a spider, patrolling the corners, the white ceiling, the place where the camera lens slowly turns. The thousand eyes of the spider look upon our body and see, not a plump middle-aged man in a white jumpsuit, but a million refracted images. Each image: a new possibility.

Our previous campaign was misguided. Plastic bags and umbrellas – of course it had to fail. Too small, too dependent on the loyalty of a few devoted soldier-ants. Our spider-mind, what would she do with ants? Nibble, nibble!

We now know, there is another possibility. A better way.


July 12, 2003

Every day, they bring us food: a box, in sections. Like prison cells. In each cell, something different. What fun! We like best the surimi, floating in our soup like little pink life preservers. We save them; every night, we put them in our ears and the sounds recede, like waves upon the seashore in Hokkaido.

Outside the food-cells, alone on the tray, there is a small plastic object. The shoyu bottle. Sometimes it is actually a bottle, sometimes a fish, never is it bigger than one joint of our little finger. If it’s a bottle, the top is red. The fish’s top is always green. Red, green, stop, go, so confusing! Every day we unscrew one of these tops and squeeze the shoyu over our rice. Sometimes, if there is nigiri, we put shoyu there too. Sometimes up one nostril, if the food is bad. It tickles! We like best the little bottle, because it can squirt farther. Sometimes, all the way to the wall! Its top is red, for danger.

Why, Dear Ones, do we tell you of these bottles? Every Japanese already knows them. Every mother fills a fish for her child’s o-bento lunch, squeezing it, submerging its tiny plastic mouth in shoyu, allowing it to drink. Millions and millions of tiny plastic shoyu bottles. Maybe billions! They are so common.

Exactly. Do you see?


October 19, 2003

Yesterday, after dinner, our spider-mind crawled down from the ceiling. She whispered to us, clinging to the hairs in our earhole. We removed the surimi from our ears, the better to hear her. Her tiny voice is like the sound the lightbulb makes, before it explodes.

“Mistakes were made,” she whispered. “Your Majesty must correct them. Watch.” Then she crawled down our neck, under our jumpsuit, emerged from our sleeve. It tickled! She pointed to the dinner tray, and we leaned low, following her small hairy arm. And we saw the little bottle.

That was all, our Faithful. But it was enough. Our way was clear. Of course, we had to eat her. With surimi, and a little shoyu. Crunchy!


December 29, 2003

Attention, Operatives!

Go to our mother’s house, in Yokohama. Around the corner from the Lawson’s, be careful of the small dog she keeps, it can read thoughts. You may have to shoot it. The bad substance is behind the shrine, in a bottle marked ‘Fluffy Kitten Hair Removal.’ Help yourself to an orange. Please kill my mother before you leave. Put her out for recycling.

The little plastic bottles (“Picnic Party”) are manufactured by Dolphin Industries. Of course we own this company. Go to see Nomura-san in Tokyo, he is our puppet. Only from these tiny bottles, Nomura-san is wealthy beyond his dreams, but he has a weakness for T-bar underwear. He will do as you say.


January 33, 2004

We must write quickly. The nice lady is coming with our lunch box.

Take the bad substance to Nomura-san’s factory at night. Find the location where the shoyu containers are packaged. Open ten thousand of the little bottles. Exactly! We prefer the ones with the red tops. Seal the room and sprinkle the substance about. Then wait, until it enters the bottles. An hour? Three? Use your judgment. Maybe take a book to read. Then put all the little tops back on. The fish must get the green tops. Unseal the room and leave.

Oh, and ask Nomura-san to check later. We never liked him.