What a day. Converted six gallons of stinking Atlantic ocean into pure, clean water. My prototype desalinization plant is an unqualified success, though still limited in how much it can process. And I can’t let it run unmonitored, no way. Last week, the thing was humming away in the basement and I thought I could safely jog upstairs for a couple of drinks, spread some peanut butter on something and eat it, and I get one foot in the kitchen when I hear this sound, the ghosts of a million slain babies howling in fear and anger. I hustle back downstairs and the brass tubing has uncoiled and snapped, the decanters shattered, water spraying out in fine, deadly jets. It left twin welts on my chest—an infinity symbol and a kind of wobby sigma.
[TEN YEARS LATER: a similar situation, except this time the water pipes knocked open with a fire extinguisher. Immortalized in Eller Max’s Untitled No. 103 (water pipes v. fire extinguisher).]
So somebody’s got to man the release valves but it’s not like I won’t be able to afford a maintenance crew once everything’s up and running. I’m talking about desalinization, bitch, OK? You got a way to take all that useless saltwater out there and make it into something that can fill a kiddie pool in Reseda and the canals at the Bellagio and run cool and clear through the tap at the Phoenix Convention & Visitors Bureau and that’s it, friend, you’re set. You’re a god-emperor. Luck on every finger, as they say. I’ll be buying solid-gold automatons to deal with the valves, their gears clicking in the musk-scented atrium of my glass palace, always on the verge of being overtaken by a vast jungle, fecund and overcomplicated.