The History of Writing (Part Three) Charles Anthony Gollander

It is the steadfast opinion of the creators of this document that one never quite feels their youngness as much as Americans (and perhaps all people) do in their 20s. Charles Anthony Gollander was nearly t the end of his 20s and he was feeling his youngness as vibrantly as a stroke or a guilty-verdict of some unclassifiable felony. 

Ambivalence saturated, enveloped the most trivial, ephemeral things, interactions. Every request or offer was answered with the seriousness of a sacred oath, absurd and sarcastic comments were considered with calm and dire humility. The days when radio was surpassed by television, when roller-rinks faded from popularity and skateparks were assembled as fast arrived at a social plateau as the stoic charm of a word like 'cool' was challenged by the collective, desperate authors of the term 'rizz'. This nationwide embrace of forced meaninglessness made him feel like a hologram of himself. People were always telling him he was afraid of something. What the something was was never identified from the nebulous fog that is human consciousness. Something greater than an infected wound but smaller than a civil war. So long as you afforded it a sense of legitimacy it would register and linger until another thought discreetly replaced it, and then return at the mention of any other discomfort disturbing one's sense of well-being. 

At least on the surface of life, there was nothing to inspire this shared unease that carried from day-to-day. America  possessed all the makings of a utopia. The domestic terrorism that haunted our populace from the Obama Years to the end of Trump's second term had been successfully (and predictably) ejected the way of the dodo and clumsily large cellphones and Pokémon trading cards. Bigotry and sexism were on the decline (although classism persisted through a strange rebirth mostly received as competitive individual achievement--and individual achievement, like personal safety & free speech, is all but impossible to argue in principle). The average parent was about 30-years-old. The average person lived to their 80th birthday. 

What was never subdued further than a point of remission, however, was insecurity. It harassed every victory as insects harass a picnic. There was no amount of money that couldn't be spent or taken. Whatever you had, you could lose it or have incrementally more. It wasn't considered wealth-addition. It was considered a natural, healthy appetite. Generosity was a pitiful kind of weakness. Generous people were judged as naive and their openness to vulnerability & chance was practically traded as corporate stock or a material resource. Charles Anthony Gollander was a generous person, or at least he had a generous heart. The greed that his father, Dr. Milo Gollander defended as necessary ambition enjoyed no welcome in the not-quite-young corporate officer's livelihood. Although he withdrew from the ribbon-cutting ceremonies of cancer-research hospitals or attending poetry readings for the aged survivors of yesteryear's wars & tragedies...he rarely stood mute in the audience of some hysterical or obnoxious declaration of a glorified halfwit with a $400 haircut and he tirelessly vetted those who pursued careers of dramatically large importance within Gollander Industries in an equally noble and futile effort to at least slow the momentum of a superficial world at full-throttle to make absolute conformity the norm. He represented a new kind of minority. Neither of race nor philosophy nor sexual orientation but direct focus and practice. Others readily agreed when he put forth ideas illustrating the longterm benefits of pausing the acceleration of asset gains in select areas of Gollander Industries but the records of the votes in these decisions casts a glaringly different shadow. The soulless acolytes of Dr. Gollander weren't about to let some kid and his embarrassing altruism interfere with the vociferous demand of their greedy, wounded innerlives. They lived for their narcissism and responded with unchanging disgust whenever the character flaws of that purpose were said aloud. For a time, Charles Anthony believed these men & women were only the victims of the outdated psychology of a world ebbing to extinction by the year, day, hour. If he didn't consider himself a Buddhist by name, he did hold strongly to the view that a debt of organic dharma attended every birth and that such debts could be confidently satisfied through patience, kindness, transparency, through the collective will of a society who put reason above a stubborn want for success as a reaction to fear. 

But, of course, this is a story about America, and all American stories are rooted in fear, especially the fear that deftly renames itself. 

This tragic code espoused by all who underestimate the will of their own blood. Song of dull housewives and horny fuckboys, alike. Charles Anthony was never truly spared from their voices--their sound & scent reaching, nagging down to myelination of his auditory cortices, to the ends of his fingers, the fat tissue of his toes. And by age 26  a subtle form of nerve damage made  him feel like a kind of psychic cripple. he neither drank nor used drugs on a regular basis yet an illogical vigilance echoed through his awareness of the simplest things. The dumbest explanations people could muster ruled the day. As though if enough people defied theories like evolution and social behavior some radical, new truth would emerge from the depths of their pathetic insanity and harvest anxiety & miscalculation as the holy grail of huyman thought. By age 27 he became resigned to strategies of endurance. Meditation, daily exercise, a useless and short-lived attempt at professional therapy. But with the slang-happy youth of Generation Z adroitly counting the years until some inspired midlife crisis and the egoic, nationalistic standards of older generations merely replaced with the pretentious denial of the freshly impressionable, Charles Anthony's hope for the future deteriorated to little more than a fragile sense of integrity. Suicide became as common a thought as brushing teeth. 

Until, with really no telegraph or anticipation at all, a profound scientific discovery was made. 

It was referred to as the tiny god formula by anyone who knew a damn thing about it. 

And suddenly Charles Anthony Gollander didn't feel so bad. 

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Drawn initially into world by and its sordid affairs as part of a cancer-research project with the goal of reducing exhaustion & pain in stage-one patients, the tiny god formula was to wed the deepest yearning of the anonymous ancient with the waiting gratitude of the as-yet future surely as the first reproducing creatures rose from the water & mud of the cosmos's ruthless fermentation. 

It was a product of humankind's tenacious insight, to say the least. Combining subtle aspects of germ-deactivation with uncanny precision to an eerily deft understanding of cell-growth, the drug ensured its parent-engineer, Dr. Robert David Kaufman an enviable place in history, among Albert Einstein, or Ignaz Semmelweis. Although he unfortunately did not survive his own pancreatic disease and the the effects of age it wrought upon his septuagenarian body, Dr. Kaufman's colleagues (other citizens of that country associated of the notorious Adolph Hitler) spared no breath to echo Dr. Kaufman's name in the years after his passing. Above all his other qualities & talents, the good doctor valued diversity of memory and the sense to balance intellectual vigor with humble retreat from the same. 

What came in the years following his discovery is still a matter of some speculation & dispute, being an affair of uncertainty and prestige, very lynchpins in the cause of human history, but for the fact of happening (or possibly happening) ultimately steered Charles Anthony Gollander to attempt to betray and de-power the awful trajectory his father and the soulless acolytes who stood with him instead of running the sharpest object he could put his hand to through some major artery in his body. We like to think of it as that primate in 2001: A Space Odyssey throwing a handgun into the air above him and it returning down as a hammer. He might have simply taken the ultimate refuge, silenced his thoughts in sad farewell--and been dignified in doing so. Instead, he devoted his heart and livelihood  with the type of selfless enthusiasm generally reserved for raising a child, or preparing an exquisite delicacy. 

The drug and its design & manufacture illuminated an assortment of research projects. Everything from Parkinson's disease to Diabetes to the most recent strains of the Covid-19 virus had their arsenals of data and intellect updated. And in addition to the confusion and ignorance of the American-centered world being reduced, all concomitant enterprises were rejuvenated to a glory not seen since the dawn of the printing-press was to allow the distribution of quarterly magazines or the first t.v. guides. People knew they were a part of something important. It was obviously difficult for most of them to process the dense yet austere language that charted and defined tgf's technical make-up, but its purpose was so bluntly clear that even dryly cynical schmucks in the midwestern states had to hold their love for Jesus and ambivalence over the late Donald Trump to let it have its deserved moment in history. It was like a terrestrial vehicle that could defy gravity, a stemcell with the capability of a fist, a houseplant keen to become a rainforest. 

Charles Anthony Gollander left his home every morning as the sun bled over greater San Francisco, giddy as a butterfly and proud as a bird. The sense of shame and contempt he felt for the average employee of Gollander Industries was by no means erased from his interiority, but it was more like some random instrument on a massive desk rather than the desk itself. He stepped briskly through the doors of Gollander Industries, the eyes of many not-so-discreetly oscillating like dart-guns in his direction even as their adroit conversations continued uninterrupted. The Son of the Man Who Leased the World. His strategies of endurance became repurposed as the muscle of his curiosity & focus. While it remained rare as ever for any of them to actually converse over their inspirations & feelings of anything, the project did still demand a kind of effort to make the days considerably less dreary. Old, nearly-forgotten vocabulary found its way into his sentences and thoughts and he gradually let himself carry a little more than the most primitive faith in those who sycophantically (and proudly, sometimes) shook his hand. For a series of months this shared cultural weather gave the idea of a lasting, dignified future that was very, very real. It was like walking on a new planet, or touching the moon. A distinctly new heart pumping in your chest. A lesson one never expected to learn. 

Of course, what seemed so lasting didn't last, as it never has. 

Of course, pettiness soiled the bargain. 

Of course, the shit in people only required enough bags to break and materials to be lost in order for grandeur to be undermined. 

Production continued but the weak, soulless habits drifted back into daily affairs. The way the tactless pretend subtlety and stereotypes pretend confusion, the tiny god formula was pathetically sacrificed in the cause of fulfilling unearned indifference and stale childhood transgressions. Just as much as any bitter veteran might have predicted. 

And Charles Anthony Gollander was just a day or two too old for that shit. 

**** 

Like so many of the scientific challenges before it, the tiny god formula was hounded less by questions of What than applications of How. The specific gene types and cells affected by the cancers hoped to be treated were quite well established. Their pathology had been coursed as thoroughly as any common labyrinth with a beginning and an end. It was the dizzyingly intricated and astounding walls of disfunction illustrating the corruption of afflicted bodies running through the two poles of that labyrinth that brough the scientists to work every day. This is where germ de-activation & cell regrowth came into play. Parasites and what-else could be readily, efficiently exterminated. But they took everything worth saving with them. And those things were incircumnavigably critical if the patient cared to go on eating, digesting and excreting all those fine crops and substances meant to keep humans alive and life worth the struggles and hassles of living. Unlike a house, say, infested with termites that shat asbestos, or a property ruined to unbearability, the body couldn't be excoriated to its biological foundations or stoically abandoned in resignation with the profound intention to will itself whole again or build anew elsewhere. Humans are made of such robust and elastic materials, for good or ill, whether they appreciate it or not, and the inherent laws of those systems applies to everything from fatal coughs to happy cupcakes. 

Maybe the biggest difference (of myriads) between the targeted diseases and the researchers paid to cure them lay in the stress that threatened collapse of the two subjects. To a simple eye, it was like a Jenga-puzzle with a small percentage of the total being thoroughly subtracted from the organism with the goal/expectation that such pieces reappear at a higher tier as though they'd been there all along and yet contained zero injury yet were utterly impervious (or at least resilient) to the nature of the targeted disease. 

It led to quite a few heads of quite a few disciplines of quite a few countries begging to be scratched in perplexion. Some were genuinely at a degree of challenge they'd have to refer back to their adolescent years for true comparison while others simply reverted back to such a state by way of annoying, childish regression. As the weeks became months became a couple years (the last being when Gollander Labs joined the fray) discerning which was which was like finding a needle in a haystack with a constant addition of new metal objects and hay interfering with the chance of significant discovery each day. The most devoted scientists called on every resource they could think of down to the ancient goddess Persephone. The majority of them prioritized their egos and hardly contributed more than the most rudimentary efforts in order to maintain some shallow appearance for their colleagues and the convenient dopamine boost in the service of some perverted plasticity. (What else is new.) 

As 2035 became 2036, Charles Anthony Gollander got over his delight and excited surprise with the project after noticing the repetition of obvious errors in the reports & paperwork, and, by that point, thoroughly disenchanted with the allowance of second-chances he had to mutter & dribble from his mouth & heart, decided his days with the company--and really California, in general--were just a sad waste of time only a schmuck or another overpaid leech would give another day to. 

He really didn't know where he was going or if there was even a place to go to, but he knew even the credible illusion of a chance was better than letting his energy rot in some magnificent prison with his fellow-tortured under the buzzing vanity of a legion of drones buttoning- and unbuttoning their labcoats like voluntary lifelong virgins cut/pasting other peoples' stories about other peoples' junior proms. 

He turned in what needed turning in for the day and went to the washroom for the very last time. 

While he was looking into the almost-cathedralhigh reflection of the washroom's mirror, one of Gollander's employees exited a stall and joined him at another sink. A man at least 20 years older than Charles Anthony, plenty old to have his character figured out for himself. He made eye-contact with the not-quite-young man, then made a lame smile in greeting. 

Charles Anthony felt what was coming coming. The ugly, familiar twitch in his gut. Legs quietly stiffening in anticipation. 

The man had a schoolboy's voice. He said, "Evening, sir." 

"Getting there, anyway." 

"You're him, aren't you?" 

"Which him?" 

"The boss's son. Charles Anthony Gollander." 

"I keep opening his mail, at any rate." 

The man dealt another horrid smile. "I've seen you here near every day almost a year, now. I've been contributing to tiny god. I'm an engineer." 

"Any luck lately?" 

"Well, sir, we're lucky just to have an opinion, ain't we?" 

"That's what they tell me." He walked away from the sink to one of the hand-dryers. 

The man rinsed the soap off his hands and turned off the water and followed Charles Anthony. Over the scream of the two motors: "I've meant to introduce myself sooner, but I'm just terribly shy. In the company of greatness and all that." 

Charles Anthony's dryer went silent as he pressed his hands over his shirt to drain the last of the moisture. "I haven't seen a lot of greatness, lately." 

The man mirrored his actions, again. "How true, sir. It's been like trying to extinguish a volcano, hasn't it?" 

"It was," said Charles Anthony. "Now it's like correcting grammar the grammar on a postcard with a picture of a volcano." 

"How well put." The man's supplication was really getting on his nerves. "But I guess you're closer to the center of this than most of us. I heard you were even born in this building." 

"Me, too. I wasn't. At least according to my father. It's just a cute story because it's short and so exaggerated it sounds true. Elementary reward-hijacking to neurologists." 

"Do you have a degree?" 

"Not by a longshot. I just study the terms and go where curiosity points me." 

"There's been a lot of trauma and addiction in my family, so I try to catch-as-catch-can when I'm not too busy or it doesn't get overwhelming." 

"That's about where I'm at." The man reached a hand to Charles Anthony's shoulder, sending a deeply awkward shudder through his body, and Charles Anthony pulled away. 

"Something wrong, sir?" This wounded yet hostile expression in his eyes. 

"Sorry, I'm in a bit of a rush." And he was moving for the door. 

"Some other time, then." 

No fucking way. 

****