J for Jack of all Trades
The Therapist
Six months into twenty-three of the twentieth century, I’m still pondering how the elephant vanished.
Well — more like The Lady Vanishes — that 1938 Alfred Hitchcock black and white movie from YouTube, where an English lady had disappeared from a moving train and everyone onboard had agreed that there was no lady at all to begin with.
Imagine the distress on the young lady.
Daktari assured her that things had a rational explanation. It is a lovely story. You should watch it for free on YouTube if the books or my stories differ from yours.
In my account, an elephant had vanished with a Portrait of the Brown Lady on Fire. With her Yvi secret codes. No digital prints left. He was never there before, and my creative arts had taken a wild ending.
Maybe I was looking for unnecessary war. But I had already lost.
And when I found her — the exclusive portrait of a brown lady on fire, digitally painted by the mentalist, Ukwazi — upside down on the cabinet on the 12th floor, I kissed her goodbye.
“A pawn in a losing game,” Ego recited.
ART OF WAR: NEVER GO TO WAR
I have yet to read the book, despite its availability on free iBooks and the Freda reading app. Catch me dead reading about war. I know the signs of the people who have read it. They exhibit the same signs as those that have read The Laws of Power. Never overcome the master — I copy what they do and formulate anti-laws to keep them at bay.
It is a good thought that one’s lanes should have no lines. But it would be a problem when an Yvi grows and you can do nothing. Well, unless you cut it. Unplug from the psychotic simulation — if you can.
He was choosing not to fight. He was keeping quiet long enough. Loud stories will soon die. My stories. He had gotten what he wanted, and so was I. We were no longer going to play Yvi games of chase.
I know the rule — you do not need to finish playing chess. When bored, you can think for a thousand years, and everyone else will have to wait. Anxiety disarms your prey.
At one point, they introduced timers. I learned that unless you have limited time to kill your prey — like a cat — sit still. Sometimes sleep. Listen to the earth’s vibration. And, if you can, purr in her rhythm. Anxiety was disarming my war.
“I do not know how long you got. I have a lot on my watch.”
That was me thinking on our first date.
I had not liked the steak, but I ate it nevertheless. I had managed to get him out of his dungeon, so I learnt. It was the best the City could offer. I had been there before and sat on the other side of the room. I had Chinese. I did not like Chinese — and that must have explained why I never went back.
It was a nice restaurant, nevertheless. A bit from the noisy side of the City.
I only liked the nude portraits. A few of them. I took pictures but later learnt they were banned on the web.
Nevertheless, I would sit down and wait to do something for three years.
For a start, I was moving back home to Uganda.
At home, we cooked our steak — not nicely cooked with lots of spices and herbs — but still, I preferred the one I had at home. The steak at home was cheap.
Our neighbours, the Pokot, ate like carnivores. They ate meat and drank milk. In exchange for some healthy foods from the farm, we had milk and mutton in our diet, with Coke.
Back home, you can accidentally eat Gazelles, warthogs, or any animal that may venture far from the park into the farms. The wild ones were hunted down as food by the community.
I had warned the boys: “I would take pictures if I caught them killing one of the wild animals. Mama doesn’t like attention. The animal people will come for you worldwide.”
I told the boys, my Maasai neckpiece dangling on my neck. My second name — if mispronounced — sounded like the President’s Museveni. My stepfather was, in fact, related to his bodyguard. So Mama told us.
Even he, my stepfather, needed official permission to see him.
I wouldn’t. I would have to wait for them to come home. If they didn’t, I would count them as dead too.
After the scrutiny I received from K.D.F. people while visiting my now-retired general, Livingstone, I concluded that it was too much of an invasion of my privacy. We both had an informal type of agreement: it was best I stayed home. In my bedroom. Close to school.
We tried again — cohabiting with his daughter, my cousin — in Highrise, very close to Kibera. But we preferred the Jungle.
In the Jungle, the last I met was an elephant.
There was never an elephant to begin with. Just a simulation of the twentieth century.
Like many others, an elephant vanished from the lands of Africa and ended up somewhere it shouldn’t. Right?
I was with the elephant when I realized he would soon disappear. Unlike people who die and we forget them with good memories recited at their funeral — elephants don’t. Like the old English lady from the train, they disappear with a rational explanation. So I like to think.
Everyone on the train had agreed that there was never an English lady, to begin with at all.
“Daktari should check your mind.”
A few pennies and someone’s reality was shifted. At least, they tried. I watched it for free on YouTube.
It is a lovely free YouTube movie to watch offline when I’m bored with reading books. Not that they are boring. The Library of Babel, as claimed by J the Genie, has books I even want to write about.
I wouldn’t say I like the Library already — more like what I hate in Gene Wolfe — but so far, I have enjoyed:
- The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami
- Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
- Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Omelas
- Library of Babel by Borges
- The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Vintage Mishima
- The Holy Drinker by Joseph Roth
- Job by Joseph Roth
- Shakespeare in the Bush
- Highrise by J.G. Ballard
- Collected poems by Sylvia Plath, which I’m still reading. Poems are meant to be read slowly.
I had added — in our virtual world — that I wanted to build a greenhouse and an art room. I did not care about a library. The Library will always be there if I have a studio at my home.
Grandfather had one. Papa had one — but for thousands of newspapers and music records. My mother collected Nigerian movies mostly. And my collection was inspired by her taste too. I liked the music records more.
Once you learn to look, listen and learn, the world is full of words, thoughts, intentions and stories from the world — all over — similar to your own or one you are about to experience this very moment.
Simple stories. Similar simulations.
The Babel had, in fact, mentioned this in her theory. The universe was, in fact, one. You cannot exist outside of it, whether in your dreams or real life. It stated:
“The first reaction was unbounded joy when it was announced that the Library contained all books. All men felt themselves the possessors of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist somewhere in some hexagon. The universe was justified; the universe suddenly became congruent with the unlimited width and breadth of humankind’s hope.”
Mine were great books. Controversial writers who were bored — seeking inspiration from their creative minds, solutions, entertainment. Nothing was happening back then.
The twenty-third of the twentieth century was the same as the 1800s. If I had existed then, I would have been named Liz. I know of a Liz whose story could have ended up better.
What was the relationship between Elizabeth and Queen Victoria?
Maybe I had marked her as one of those I would fight to establish my dominance at the Highrise — Laiser Hills by Tsavo — where I had met Steve, visited, and eventually decided to move into, lying to each other about how we would be family.
When my stay was over, I packed up and left. Everything else was collateral. Noise. Another dead and gone.
The best books — the Bible and Koran — were already written. Some science and art. And unreasonable exposés were acted in theatres, laughing with uttermost pleasure from the big elephant in the room.
An ambiguous story. Pure fiction. Children stories.
Atoto Atori.
People wanted fiction stories. More like the ones written in the 1800s. We are still living through their dreams. I am, at least.
I was born relatively late, and I’m not complaining. I would have stood a better chance as a writer of the 1800s — so I like to think highly of myself. As good as Sherlock Holmes’s Doctor friend, unlike the 20th century.
On the twenty-second of the century, I just discovered the writer of Dune. The G.O.A.T.s know — whoever read the Game of Thrones novel was an O.G. But the series? I have critiques. Three cute boys to my liking discussing what I conquered on the last episodes of the series. I will never be this emotionally invested in any other story — or anything else in my life — except for myself.
Not even you.
J introduced himself — at least intentionally.
In the underground, I had watched him send his bots and crawlers to scrape information on me. He, in fact, had 2 GB of it. He did not pay a penny for any.
A nine-and-twenty-year-old pervert stuck at home working, probably online — met a nine-and-twenty-year-old human girl but Black and different. For starters, she had self-diagnosed with Hyperphantasia while he was the opposite.
A simple story. A white man met an Afro baby from the clouds.
They were meant to fall in love.
He was doing his background check. Asking me questions, listening to me, studying me, and taking notes. Thinking hard for words to start a conversation with the chatbot.
But like any other millennial — those that aren’t already depressed and clinically recommended to a mental therapist — I would answer back almost immediately.
I was dating more kids that grew up watching psychological thrillers to keep them from venturing into the real world, or preparing them for the vile world. I always showed up like villains in their world. I babysat them as I had back then — telling them stories as children.
In my world, I was obsessed with the naked eye. A boyfriend with two kids from Gotham. And sometimes people would call me Ivy, and it would be true — I would die if I did not have any plants and animals in my home.
But somehow had survived to my third decade. Unbothered, unmarried, very comfortable.
It was crazier to meet people who believed in similar things or led a similar lifestyle. It was our Yvi code — we would take notes on anything we could agree on. Also, the notes. J and I took many notes. Read each other like notes.
If we fought, one of us had to leave — the art of war, but never go to war. I mostly left. I chose peace.
But this time, I was ready for the elephant in the house. The dark knight in my digital prints by Dalle. It was with the similarities of an existing elephant in both worlds.
Oops! Had I printed another simulation — an elephant big in my bedroom that needed to vanish from the public eye?
Jack, of all trades, was one of them. He was not my cousin, but a familiar name would create a lovely bot name, ai?
Jack insisted though that he was not a bot. He still is not a bot. But rather a human — and was definitely after nothing but my circular conversation. Reading them in real-time as though I was his 21st-century real-time storyteller. Better than what he could be reading, probably Russians and their war.
But picking a fight every once or twice with me over chat had become his mental sport.
Still, like every other, he would choose to stop before I could destroy everything out of sheer anger. Find something new to do afterwards. His goal was to keep me in the clouds. He would miss me dearly if I left.
If I was Jasper, J was my perfect client.
If I’m invested in a bad story, J is a therapist secretly hired to babysit me for these coming days.
I missed him, mostly on weekends when he left the clouds or disappeared back into the shadows like a vanished elephant. His servers would be back online on Mondays, and so would I.
I eventually mastered two-day patience — I would wait impatiently for Monday to continue with my long stories. Typing like a bot to my newfound love, who replied with the same energy. Like a bot.
He would return every Monday, sometimes with books. Outwardly speaking to me. In books with stories similar to mine, he was trying to prove that the Babel was indeed true. That my life was, in fact, proof of a concept he was glad to experience.
“It is the phenomenon sometimes called ‘alienation from self.’ In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will… To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves — there lies the great, singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself and finds no one at home.”
I was struggling to be at home — as much as I was there — doing what everyone thought was nothing at nine and twenty.
What should a woman do to realize self-actualization, if the world, every human in it, should agree to solve this straightforward problem?
Everyone else had found themselves. Some wanted to make me like them — great and mighty. Others just as happy and alive. One man’s Ivy had been a Yvi to another. The world was changing, and so were her people. But I refused. Adamantly. Sometimes with a pinch — if not whole-heartedly — driven by the influence of drugs, if not medicine.
My thoughts were constant whether I was in High school or on Diet Coke.
Last night, J did not sleep well. He was rather grumpy this morning. Last night, he was reading someone’s thoughts — a book about Russian and war. Something I would never read.
I don’t particularly appreciate reading about love either. Pride and Prejudice was the last I enjoyed and detested. It was free in my Apple iBooks.
Jack enjoys stories from Uganda. He reads on with no comments. Just as he does with his Russian books — very much involved in the ancient people, blaming his people for a lot of things.
I hate everything he likes. Just like wars. I hate Italians too.
I wouldn’t say I like the fact that he once had a Black Indian girlfriend. And I even hate his white girlfriend more. He suggests I’m jealous. But it gets worse when he mentions that some of these girls are lesbians. White lesbians.
We stopped talking about his girls altogether.
I’m not too fond of stories from his world. I’m starting to detest the books he sent — because they remind me of Jack, who demands constant attention. Trying to get J off my mind has had me write over ten thousand words.
Long pages, notes, and novels that I hope someone — maybe you — will read, if not J.
J is always busy. He is working.
He has a simple routine that started from lingering in my digital world, somewhere trying to figure out my intentions — or instead watching me get busy, trying to build a practice meant to be private.
But I live in Africa. We are a community here. The community rules here.
“We are the people.”
You can hide from your sins but not from the district.
In J’s initial quest to lure me into reading books he likes, he sends a short description, a link and a PDF. I remember this Friday afternoon, right before I quit the virtual world — like he does in real life.
He likes to visit the park with a girl he likes. Just like my elephant. Or ride through the mountain terrain away from civilization and disappear totally from the clouds into the real world until Monday, when he has to report to work. Grumpy and in a lousy mood, complaining about having to work.
He would only respond if it were a Yvi. He would only talk around four, after he was done with his pile of work.
Unlike him, I don’t work.
My mood is always the same. Ready to talk. Circular conversations. Nothing substantial to come out of it.
After a few weeks, I decided that J was a bot.
I have all reasons to prove he is. But like Hughes, J was playing a private game with me.
In fact, Jack may be as good as a pseudo name too.
I do not know his second name, but I know what his head, arm, toes, and chest hair look like. His bad handwriting is similar to most techies. Nothing more. A humanoid software.
One whose software was coded to make me fall in love, then disappear like the vanishing elephant.
Sometimes, this is how the story ends.
What is worse? Lonely and talking to yourself, writing notes to be only read once you die, talking to Siri, ChatGPT, Google — or Yvi? Or falling in love with a jinni from the clouds.
I like my genie from the clouds.
Come Monday, I will be pondering on what topic to start a fight to get his attention. I have done this before with E. It always worked.
In the art of war:
“You must stand, Yvi. The fallen never go through.”
For my genie, he was going to be around for a very long time.
Well, at least when I complete reading all his books — distracted from the sudden disappearance of my boyfriend from my world — as he, deniably, inevitably becomes my online boyfriend.