Читать книгу The Complete Men School - Herlander Elias - Страница 8

The movie started with a lot of static interference and the recording quality was quite deficient: dark colors, too much contrast and excessive grain in the image did not help anyone to understand what exactly was depicted. In part, it seemed a documentary film, and on the other hand, it seemed a graphic manipulation. Gradually, there was an increasing quality in the movie as horizontal lines pop up, showing a clearer image. The noisy rain was clearing down, simultaneously other sounds were introduced and here a film noir style movie started, sometimes displaying disturbing pixels and aesthetic slashes of diagonal cuts in the framework. One could see several groups of people, amidst them there was the speaker in the foreground who was making a speech. Blue shadows with soft outlines are prominent in bright and radiant backgrounds. The circumstance would be rather equivalent to a conference or an assembly of a political party. Not only were the subjects in dark portraying an unusual profile, but also the way they stood up disclosed an unsurpassable silent arrogance. At first glance, the movie seemed to have been made by a voyeur who managed to visit the facilities of the Complete ones. Yet, the serenity with which the film has been made suggested that its direction might have been allowed. Rafael believed that this was the case.

Standing on the top of a grandstand an individual seemed to display a bossy position; he was making his speech before those who looked to attempt to get into this underworld or aesthetics vigilant subculture. Pretty much nothing seemed to make sense so far to Rafael…

— Welcome to the community! — greeted the Master.

— To be the Complete ones… is that what you want to become, isn’t it? That we shall we see… Being incomplete is, in the meantime, quite a challenge. Once again, please be welcome. After this, you know… you will not go back… There is no ‘how’ to come back. — he said smiling, mysteriously suspicious, as a true believer and loving it.

— It is impossible. There is no such thing as ‘former Complete Men’. The rules are the following: you will become everybody else, anywhere, at any moment, taking their questions to solve them, by showing how powerful you are in solving situations with a razor-sharp simplicity. If you are not afraid of the future, please address it in a responsible way.

— Excuse me, but what do you mean by saying we will not go back? — one of the potential pupils asked waving one of his hands.

— Because there are no written records on any one that attended The School and thus chosen to exit from the bond established with ourselves. Once the challenge is accepted, you the apprentices have no point of return. What you learn from us is something taught nowhere else. And besides, no one is obliged to stay in The School, but the fact is that everybody still remains here, nobody quits. — the Master announced super-sure of his words, as he added a visionary look, steady and stiff, rare.

— What is it that drives you seriously into believing in that? — the same young man asked, now feeling more secure in questioning the Master.

— Our results speak for ourselves. — the Master answered back, showing white sparkling teeth and an inspiring gaze sided by wrinkles.

— What is for sure is that you will need an alibi in your reality. You will have to establish a contract with the Real. Grab the pulse of life, feel it. The main goal will be reached by you over the course of the Operations in The Schools. You will know things before learning them, by making solely good use of your perception. You will be at the top, knowing thy selves on the edge. That I will guarantee to you. Otherwise, you will never become Complete Men. Grow up and think towards new levels. After everything, the process shall be terminated.

— You will surely forgive me, but I did not understand why you said we will have an alibi, and also, how we will know things without reaching them? — another student highlighted, John, as equally puzzled as Mark asked.

— Our students are integrated in society, in the common everyday life, but they are just doing their jobs; disguised while they fulfill the goals of the Operations of The Schools. Your alibi is the subject-matter how you get to live in both worlds simultaneously while you perfect yourselves as people in our Schools. We did not choose this path. Please keep in mind that the path chooses us. As you intervene in people’s reality, you will develop intuition and you will be usefully wise, so that your assignments become effective.

— Are you saying we will be changing our reality? — another potential student asked, boldly. — Reality happens no more, it is cultivated, produced, it is a scene sketched up; it flows, and it convinces people, it lies within a map, it is integrated on the screens. These Schools are a response to that inversion. — the Master clarified with a discrete thrill in his voice.

— What do you mean by saying these Schools are a response to such inversion? — the same man asked.

— My dear friend, if the State, society and the citizens in themselves would perform rightfully, we would not exist. We would be relieved of our command; our presence would be excused. It is a paradox, but the truth is that we fill the voids of contemporaneity’s voids in the consumeristic consciousness and in technocracy. We are diplomats, professors, businesspeople, fighters and social workers. We are true soldiers of dialogue.

The Master was happy to answer the doubts. He knew his figure would set up a vision, that above all it would drive a crowd into rapture with his rightful and instantaneous answers. His image represented an envied power. It would not surely be a blinding power. This would be a power to be persuasive, seductive, for what it was in itself, not for what it had to be.

All the candidates willing to become students in The Schools of the Complete ones were thinking about getting in, and so they kept debating issues with the Master. They aspired to switch impressions and solve classic riddles; the bottom line is that the goal was for people to learn how to change their lives, and in effect, people would change the others’ lives due to a civic responsibility. There was no conspiracy in the sense of a criminal organization or traffic of influences. Before anything else, it was an organization deprived of paranoia and fights for power among its groups.

At the Schools of Complete ones, the hierarchy is symbolic and it all could be resumed to a process. A process that in that moment had its inception date for the rookies who aspired to complete themselves as men.

— How can you describe the students that finish this course? The ones that finish the best way possible the Operation at The Schools and thus become Complete Men? — asked one of the most avid candidates, eager for an answer. The Master did not say what they wanted to hear. Even though, they enjoyed what they heard.

— The Complete Men seem to be normal humans, yet they are not. They stand in advantage before the ordinary people. They need that edge to go further beyond what is expected out of the most mortals. They seem like mainstream human beings, but they are better, more human, carriers of an astonishing humanity, so much atrocious and dearest that it could be understood as a threat to those ordinary crazy ones who stand in power.

BZRCCCRTTTTFFFTTTT!!!

Without knowing exactly what was wrong with the tape, Rafael rushed to retrieve it and then inserted it back in the MiniDV player; it was this or the tape being “chewed” by the head of the reading gear. He had never seen something so interesting and as mysterious, too. His curiosity was fed each time the movie was cast on the screen and the answers came out of the figure leading the speech in the recording. Now things were making sense. Rafael knew now that Roberta Wagner was not so smart by giving him all this information. He knew he had in his possession something of a higher value. He could write an excellent report or a research article, and so he was already thinking about showing it up on television. However, it was a bit early to get into major conclusions. The tape had a lot for all to begin. Rafael kept watching the tape after re-inserting it back on the player and so he saved his reflections for later.

Somebody must have the chance to try to make serious journalistic work on these Complete Men, but perhaps enough courage was missing to display it on the public sphere, in the media, the Network. “Was it Roberta herself?”— Rafael thought. He immediately silenced his mind from the moment one could hear in the recording a voice over referring in the first person, much as a storyteller that:

— It all began with the creation of a School of perfect men. There was no time to think in trivialities. After all, we had been designed to fight ignorance. So, we managed to study the universe in a cross-disciplinary form — the Circumverse —, given that the best way to fight ignorance back is to circumvent it with knowledge coming from every area and perspectives.

The voice came added to images of groups of people standing in formation, with civilian clothing standing sober and upright, usually in dark hues. A smart uniformization defines these subjects, in schools, laboratories, libraries and digital document archives. The video recording carried on:

—The Complete ones had been raised by the best to not give a chance to the worst. The legion was a single body, a collective-mind body, a way to respond to the forgotten Renaissance, and also a real tribute to the thinkers of the Lights.

Many groups of apprentices were ready with determination for the both physical and mental school exams, holding books on the hands while following their masters excitedly.

— When the Schools began reality was of another kind. The world had ceased to be a stage for action to become instead a stage for manipulated interests, a mise-en-scéne. It has been a while since science quit in explaining everything to everybody. The discourse of reality, the knowledge about the world, became complex in such a way that an aversion to science arose.

One could tell that the visual indications of the epoch belonged to the sixties (haircuts, dress codes, advertising and cars) where groups of young college men were typing political statutes and outlining intervention maps of underground operations in Paris, London, Stockholm and New York — and the voice continued:

— The Complete ones, before the other men, they argue with a classy posture, perfectly relaxed, yet still serious, all the problems the talkers share with them. Their words seem to cast utopias, democratic well-being and healthy group diplomacy. What they do is, basically, to export to third parties the logic that united them in loco. They apply a simple methodology: most of the times they argue the issues without mentioning per sefacts and names. Moreover, they do not disclose the conclusions they managed to achieve. The process in itself represents precisely the cure. They seem to wander, yet in reality they are saving lives, and far from playing with words, their focus was about real problems, politics, society and aesthetics; that is what they spoke about.

Rafael kept observing the characters in the photos. As if in a strategic formation, the Complete Men gathered in the street, forming groups of two plus two. They were wearing Person sunglasses with silver side bands and Airwalk shiny lace less shoes, the Velcro models were their favorite ones. With their hands tucked in their pockets, the Complete ones commented several issues among themselves, as if they were not hiding anything from anyone. Around them, the passers-by crossed the street concerned with their own daily routines, and they could not figure what these characters were up to. And the voice kept on:

— Because everything was done in The Schools, which were no more than collective gatherings of apprentices and masters, the common incomplete ones thought these were festivities, rallies, excursion, associative meetings, street markets or free performative arts. But the truth is that the Complete ones are skillful, and since they have adapted themselves to the milieuwhere they are, they just could not be detected by the surrounding audience. Those who know them know they called the others as ‘Incomplete ones’. — the movie ended all of a sudden. Rafael got more bored, and despite the things he watched in the recording, they led him to think over the configuration that allows the subculture constitution: Complete Men, operations, statutes, tactical goals, Schools full of apprentices and masters, and so on. Well, Rafael managed to stay up-to-date about the outlines of this strictly urban phenomenon, which, judging by the narrator in film, it has branches expanding all over England, France, Sweden and the US.

Rafael finished watching the movie late at night, and then he decided to call Roberta:

— Hello Rafael! So, do you have any news concerning our boys? — she gently asked.

— Yes, I have. But have not you watched the videotape?

— I’ve watched it, but it seemed a bit redundant to me… Not to mention that the tape was in a seriously bad condition. It did not add much to me… There was nothing more about it than it was already on the notes.

— Please notice Roberta, I also have watched the tape but with the sound up and from a certain point in time there is a narrator’s voice that speaks about the events. There is the part of The School, though there is a whole moment in which the voice guides us. To be honest with you it seems the most important of it all. — Rafael concluded, convinced he might have found a loose end.

— But I watched the tape with no sound on! Then that keeps me more curious. You must take a look at the notes too, ok?

— Yes, of course, but it seems that I start to better understand the contours of this Complete Men subculture.

— Great, I am happy about it. You already know if the thing pays off… count on me and we split the credits. All I need is to speak with some friends of mine who work in TV networks.

— Ok! — Rafael started to laugh.

— But look, do you know someone that is an expert in analyzing photography?

— Yes, why?

— Because the black and white pictures have a lot to tell.

— Ok! Please speak with Paulo Renato here at the newspaper office. Tell him I’m your friend. Stay sharp, kisses.

— Kiss. Look… I am very thankful — Rafael ended up widening his smile, he was as happy as ever.

October 19, 2000

BAM! Rafael woke up with the alarm clock in high volume playing a track from Alice In Chains, besides it was almost lunch time, so angrily he hit the small machine. Today is the day to meet and speak with Paulo Renato about the pictures Roberta has sent to him. There were hundreds of people passing by on the streets in plain Fall. Rafael left home in a hurry, without having lunch, and then he faced a gray day, with clouds and heavy moist air. One could almost frame an image of this day and place it in a museum for depressive romanticism. As usual, Rafael was feeling pissed off by having to penetrate the dense crowd in order to catch the public transportation. He hates masses of people. Moreover, his media player with headphones could not be turned on because he had forgotten to charge it. It was in one of these moments of euphoria, stress and lack of patience that he noticed a street billboard while he was on the bus, where it was written:

“We are the ones who wrote the book you are reading.

CM School”

"What the hell…?!”— he said to himself blasphemously while feeling awkward. “That is the kind of language that the Complete Men use and there is a matching signature on it. ‘CM School’ may only mean ‘Complete Men School’ or something like that. Holly Molly…!” Rafael was surprised with the coincidence and now he just began to doubt everything.

The bus crowded with people stopped. It opened its exit doors dumping its passengers and their umbrellas in the bus stop on a corner next to a blue-mirrored glass skyscraper that looked like if it was hugged by silver clouds. Rafael stepped in and then asked on the reception what the floor of the newspaper office was. Already in the elevator, Rafael was observing the pictures. He felt as if these pictures were trying to pull him into them, the respective black and white world of the stealth portrait. Rafael just could not look away from the characters in the photos. He felt closer and closer to them, and Harold Buds’s ambient music became louder intensifying his photo-real vertigo. He thought to himself “Who were these guys?” Rafael felt an inner tension every time he noticed the poses from the dark, sober, blurry characters, who most likely were the very Complete Men. The ambience, the figures and the complicity attitude from the photographer was something pretty mysterious. As a journalist, Rafael was only looking for an answer to what seemed to be the report of his lifetime, given that so far, he only had spent time with minor articles. These were the kind of images that are shown to illustrate words that do not say a thing that matters.

DING! The elevator campaign bell rang as he reached the 49^thfloor. With a cigarette on his lips, Rafael felt impressed with what he saw in front of him as the elevator door opened its doors. A vast open space with hundreds of networked computers tucked into the interactive office furniture occupied the whole floor. Here it was the newspaper office where Roberta worked for, the Autonomous Zone. A very fancy lady passed pretty fast next to Rafael’s nose and informed him that it was not allowed to smoke in that place. While Rafael was smashing his Davidoff on an Eva Solo’s mahogany ashtray sided with chrome, Paulo Renato arrived.

—Hi! You are Mr.Sterling, right?

—Yes, yes! How are you? — he greeted him, returning the question.

— I’m fine, thanks. So, what brings you here?

— I spoke to Roberta and she told me that I could count on you for some help. I need a hand with these photos we are using for a research article.

— Ok, ok … no problem about it. Show me the pictures. — said Paulo Renato. Rafael opened the light brown soft envelope and gave the photos to Renato.

— Hmmm. The photos are interesting! I am going to take them and digitize in the drum scanner that is the powerful one. Then we will retouch them with Photoshop to seem what else lies underneath them. These photos seem like Caravaggio or Rembrandt’s paintings. Man Ray did some works like these. Actually, maybe Helmut Newton or Anton Corbijn.

—What do you mean by that? That the photos seem like paintings? — Rafael asked doubtedly.

—Precisely. I presume you want to know is if we can obtain a sharper and clearer image from the photos, the characters in them, I mean, or any other evidence, whatever suits better to the contents of your research, right?

— Yeah, that is it! — exclaimed Rafael hoping to see Renato working the pictures out.

— But look Mr. Sterling, the images are high-quality. Not only I am going to need some time to scan them properly, but also it is going to take days to study and modify them. Since they are in black and white that hardens my job and the computer’s task to examine the footage. Consider that we need an algorithm for a powerful sharpness I am going to need to use a software of my own after I apply to it Photoshop.

— In sum? — Rafael simplified, knowing it was not going to be something of an easier task. — Call me in the end of the week. By that time, I may have already something to tell you about. Also, because the software I have at home for image processing performs more complex tasks and gets near what you are expecting. Anyway, it takes all night to perform the examination.

— Ok, I will call you on Friday. — Rafael answered, as if he was losing his drive.

After the meeting with Paulo Renato, he went home, called Sylvie and they cooked the dinner together. However, no matter how much Sylvie would talk, Rafael’s mind was elsewhere. He stood now watching groups of aesthetic soldiers. He pictured himself being awarded with prizes for having unraveled an urban phenomenon. Of course, everything was a big “if…”, so much that Sylvie did not seem to feel right before himself. As usual, they went to her place where they slept in the living room with a view over the river. The Bang & Olufsen sound system shot sound notes to every corner of the house, designing a tactile symphony that delighted them. In a given moment, they were not paying any attention to the music whatsoever. They remained hugged until morning in-between the slim silky gray-stripped sheets.

In the following morning, in spite of the sun’s rays spreading their light in the room, they did not warm the cold air and Rafael woke up shivering. He was already alone at her place, after she left home to go to her work. His cell phone rang and so he picked the call up, without knowing what to say, while he was stretching himself:

—Hello? Who is this? Is that you Sylvie? — asked Rafael, still feeling sleepy.

— No, it is Paulo Renato calling here, the Autonomous Zone Image Editor, Roberta’s colleague. Do you know who is talking?

— Oh, yes I know. I am sorry, but since it is almost 10:25, I thought it still was not convenient to call you.

— No problem!

— So, tell me, do we have any news?

— Yes, we have. I managed to enhance a code routine in an image processing software that in nearly 10 hours applies to photos the effect you need. Let us say that near 21:30 pm if you want to come by to the newspaper building, we can chat about them. I could print the pictures for you already retouched.

— Excellent! I will come by at The Autonomous Zone. You do not know how thankful I am to you. — Rafael was smiling, even if his eyes were still closed.

— I figure.

— It is in the 49^thfloor, right? — Rafael confirmed.

— Yes, that is it. I will see you then. Bye!

— Thank you. See you later! — Rafael said goodbye at the same time he felt as if he was in a slow-motion movie shot.