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Reference 163 METRO
Ossian is sitting in the middle of the intersection of Wicket and Oval Streets. Steve pulls on his retractable leash, but Ossi won’t move. He spreads his forepaws for stability. A cold breeze ruffles the long white fur on his back and around his face, over one eye.
I am wandering over to the Safeway.
“Lucky there is no traffic!”
“Fred, once he settles like this, I either have to pick him up or haul him like a sled to the side of the road.”
Ossi watches me until I put my hand in my coat pocket to get a glove. Then he trots over and puts his paws up on my knee.
“He thinks you are bearing snacks!”
I step over to the roadside, by the ditch and Ossi follows as a pickup goes by with a rattling trailer.
Ossie lunges forward and Steve pulls back, locking the leash with a click. Ossi runs in an ark back to me from the truck remembers the promise he saw when my hand pulled the glove from my pocket. Then he goes into a crouch looking hard up Oval Street hill.
It is Lou coming down with both hands in his coat pockets, against the cold breeze.
“Lou! Hope you are in better shape than our republic!”
“At least masked gunmen aren’t breaking into my house, Steve.”
“You remember, Lou, when Grant Gazberg came to speak at PU?”
“Yes, years ago, at the Sociology department. There was nearly a riot.”
“It is probably the only progressive department there.”
“That’s right, Lou, they made so much noise you couldn’t hear him speak.”
“You know why?”
“Those people were just the other side of the extremist coin.”
“As I remember, he was spreading some story about immigrants bringing rotten fish on campus.”
“bel Vionnet catches up, having stopped to talk to some kids with a puppy.
“Are you talking about the food poisoning at the PU cafeteria?”
“We are, bel”
“I think there were only three employees from Cameroon, and they became scapegoats.”
“That’s all been discredited now, hasn’t it?”
“Those three lost their jobs though, Fred!”
“That was disgraceful, just so wrong!”
“Yeah, bel, wasn’t it traced to E. coli on the lettuce?”
“I believe so, Fred. The point is, I think Gazburg should have been allowed to speak, even if he was spreading absurd lies.”
“People believe that stuff!”
“I know, Lou.”
“Those lies are dangerous as well as absurd.”
“What do you mean, bel?”
“People are enchanted by their associations.”
“But we are talking about a university!”
“Fred, otherwise intelligent people come to feel their identity depends on the illusion.”
“bel, people go to university to be challenged and think in new ways.”
“Some do, but I am not sure that is generally true.”
“So why do you think they go, bel?”
“To get a qualification.”
“Oh! A cynic might say, they are buying a prestigious ticket with fees.”
bell is grinning at me.
“Fred, cynicism is the wisdom of small minds.”
“You mean my tiny mind has shrunk?”
“I don’t take you for a cynic, Fred.”
“Thank you, bel,”
Steve drops another treat for Ossi who is agitating for a greater length of leash.
“Well, the extremists don’t want you to hear anything but their own message.”
“Right, Steve, at maximum emotional volume.”
“Most people aren’t extremists, but they get an outsize amount of attention.”
“It makes for good television, Fred.”
“Not only tv, but podcasts, and comments on social media.”
bel sweeps her long thick yellow woolen scarf over her left shoulder. “So, they claim their right to freedom of speech to strengthen the illusion.”
“What illusion?”
“The illusion that they have the answer, Fred.
“Something that isn’t true, you mean.”
“Exactly, Fred.”
“Like shouting “Fire” in a crowded room.”
“I think you can be prosecuted for that particular lie.”
“Lou, freedom of speech for a speaker at an event is one thing, but so-called influencers, are often online.”
“Steve, once they reach a sufficient level of notoriety, they start making appearances.”
“And raking in the dough from online advertisers.”
“Well, Lou, only from those who don’t mind an association with that brand.”
“A bodily presence you mean, Steve?”
“Provocatively clothed, of course, Fred.”
“With an emblazoned tea shirt!”
“And baseball cap, don’t forget the baseball caps!”
bel, drops a treat for Ossi who is barking at a passing cyclist.
“When Rusty Steele spoke at the PU Retro Advancement festival, last summer, someone threw a goatmilk strawberry shake at him, staining his ten-thousand-dollar Samurai Jeans and freezing his crotch.”
“That was Gavin Goiter, bel.”
“I remember. It was the same day, Petra Pettykins the Back to Corsets advocate, drew a huge crowd.”
“And, bel, activists from the Healthy Belly movement threw whale bone stays at her and she had to leave in the middle of her presentation with a bleeding cut on her face.”
“Now that is powerful television drama!”
“You might even call it “reality TV”, Lou.”
“You couldn’t get away from that clip for weeks.” Steve looks up after calming Ossi with a vigorous ear-rub.
“Rusty is the one who insists that Hilary Clinton is a cyborg and women who wear jeans are tempting men into sin.”
“Well, the thing was, he claimed that women in jeans deserve rape and abuse.”
“Fred, that is also absurd.”
“It’s got what they call ‘resonance’ in too many minds.”
“That’s what I mean by enchantment!”
“Kind of like a spell cast by PR.”
“Steve, the enchanted can’t see the real world.”
“They dwell in their own happy reality!”
“The cops chased Gavin across the parking lot and tackled him, you know.”
“So they did Lou, and when they pulled Gavin up the cameras caught his bleeding face.”
“Oh, yes, it was right out of a police procedural.”
“There was an online storm as to whether the assault had pushed him onto the asphalt or whether he tripped over a loose shoelace.”
“Or he had his face kicked in.”
“Fred, the vids showed he was wearing loafers.”
“Gavin Goiter’s freedom of speech was abrogated by those cops.”
“Okay but he didn’t say a word, Steve. He threw a milkshake.”
“Lou, that counts as speech, in the context of that moment.”
“Steve, it’s a demonstration, not a spoken sentence.”
bel is sorting the tangled fringe on the yellow scarf, hanging from her right shoulder. “Either way he was injured by the cop’s action.”
“True, bel, but it was only a milkshake.”
“The cop didn’t know what it was at that moment.”
“Right, Steve, but don’t you think they over-reacted, bel?”
“Given the chaotic circumstances I find it hard to say.”
“Well, they were surrounded by hostile members of the audience who surged forward.”
“Yeah, Fred, I guess we must try to put ourselves in the cop’s shoes.”
“Maybe so Steve, but the police are supposed to be trained to deal with that kind of thing.”
“I think they were rent-a-cops.”
“Lou, they were Urban Safety and Security Solutions.”
“That’s Banninck Cocq’s outfit.”
“They have a number of contracts around here.’
Steve, we all know they have been in Fauxmont for years.”
True enough, Fred. Ever since Jake Trip hired them to secure his huge new house.”.”We haven’t had any TV dramas around here yet.”
“It’s all entertainment now, Steve.”
Bel has dropped her scarf’s fringe, and the scarf slips off her shoulder. She bends down to pick it up. “Well TV turned everything broadcast into sponsored entertainment. Even the news was brought you by some company’s product.”
“There are differences you know, Bel, news, and drama, documentaries and so on.”
“That’s how it is presented, but it’s about getting people’s attention., Lou.”
”The attention economy, bel, Getting the most ‘likes’.”
“Drama is what gets attention, extreme weather, crime, tragedy, even good stuff, sometimes.”
”It is usually cute little blond kids saved from evil.”
”That is always the same because it works.”
Lou, now anyone can be a publisher, writer, video maker. We can all join the media business.”
“Well, Fred, I have resigned from social media. It is too much like a big room full of people shouting abuse at each other.”
Ossi has been sitting quietly with a paw on Steve’s boot, but now starts barking hard at a passing enemy dog.
