Narcissus in Links
I’ve seen fog in the valley many times, but never quite like this. Rivulets of blue swirl and eddy through it like blueberries blending into vanilla ice cream. At first, I thought it was a trick of the light, of clouds flying quickly through the bright blue sky, but now I have to wonder.
A week ago, I conducted a computer search on my name. I’ve been getting a few things published lately, and I wanted to know; had I become somebody on the wide-open plains of the World Wide Web?
In the real world, my wife Jill is the breadwinner of the family. She does well enough to pay the mortgage on our 3,000 square foot home, as well as letting me take a sabbatical from work to pursue a career in writing fiction. I assured her I’d easily make five grand the first year, then gradually increase each year after that, what with the book deals, the sale of foreign and movie rights, etc, so that she’d be able to quit and we could move to a ranch in Montana, own horses and have parties where our new friends would trade recipes for home-brewed beer. I’ve been at it over a year now, and my gross receipts for short stories have totaled $87.21. That didn’t even cover my bar tab at the last World Fantasy Convention. And of the five novels I was planning to write this first year (one every two months with two one-month working vacations where I’d travel and do research) I’ve filled five pages up with notes. And of those five pages, two of them have phone messages I jotted down for Jill.
But so…
Maybe — just maybe — I was gaining some momentum on the web.
I typed in “Ben Cleaver” with quotes around the whole thing, waited a few seconds, and up popped the first ten links. Ten out of
There was a Ben Cleaver on the East Valley High wrestling team in Colorado. A Ben Cleaver who dealt in Meerschaum pipes. A Ben Cleaver who was principal of an elementary school. And look at this guy! A Ben Cleaver who was vice-president of Val-Corp, apparently a large company by the number of links pointing to it. Mostly press releases quoting him on things like “chain supply management” and “cost-effective global networking.”
Then there was a Ben Cleaver who died in the civil war. This one intrigued me. I clicked on the link, and for the first time ever, found myself face to face with another Ben Cleaver. He stared stiffly over my right shoulder in full Union garb. It was one of those old, grainy sepia-toned prints. Odd to see someone who once owned my name over a hundred years before I was born.
And look at that! Finally. A link to a message board on which I lavished praise on Don D’Auria, editor at Leisure Books. “Don, I appreciate you publishing the works of…”
The computer froze up. Damn it!
I rebooted.
As I waited for the computer to get its act together, I wondered how many other Ben Cleavers were out there. I wanted to leave my mark upon this world, but who was to say my mark wouldn’t get lost among a multitude of
The computer sparked back to life.
I entered“Ben Cleaver.”
420 hits. Hadn’t there been more last time?
Another intriguing link took me to a site called The House of Platinum, founded by one Ben Cleaver. It looked as if an Arabic street bazaar had vomited a tray of baubles and trinkets across the screen. In the center was a Taj Mahal-looking place encrusted with jewels. Was it a record company? A strip club? Nope. It was a cult.
Thoughts ran through my head, the silly thoughts of a once care-free man—
Perhaps I should start my own cult. Use my middle initial so as not to be confused with the House of Platinum guy. Maybe I could call it The House of Vinyl Siding.
And—
What if I contacted these other Ben Cleavers? We could create a Ben Cleaver Society. Pool our resources and buy a ranch in Montana. Populate it with nothing but Ben Cleavers!
Thoughts like that.
I hit the back button.
My computer froze up again.
Hadn’t I wasted enough time? I’d already eyeballed the first hundred links, and as far as
Ben Cleaver; vice-president of a large company.
Ben Cleaver; faced death and caught it in the civil war.
Ben Cleaver; principal at an elementary school.
Ben Cleaver; leader of a cult.
And what could be said about me?
Ben Cleaver; message board stalker of writers much more talented than I.
But…
What if…
I hit the restart button, logged back onto the net, brought up the search engine and typed in my name.
396 hits. Huh. Did I do something different this time, or is the net really such a fickle mistress?
I skipped ahead to links 120-130.
Another blurb of mine on a message board.
“Mort, I’m a big fan. Where do you get your ideas?”
Okay, did everything need a fucking link to it?
Then there was the web page of a Steven Ben Cleaver. A youngster, apparently, who’d made it on some honor roll.
I never made the honor roll.
Another Ben Cleaver who was an endocrinologist.
More of Ben Cleaver, vice-pres of Val-Corp. The same press release over and over.
More civil war links to Ben Cleaver.
Shouldn’t a name be like a snowflake? A fingerprint? A strand of DNA? Something unique like a domain name, a patent, a social security number?
Jill shouted from the bedroom. “Aren’t you finished checking your email?”
“Be right there.”
I logged off.
As I write this, all is silent on the highway that winds past our backyard. No roar of semis or cars or motorcycles. And there’s no singing of birds, or the playful holler of the neighborhood children. And that fog — that blueberry swirl fog — is creeping up the hill.
I stopped checking the links to my name for a few days, but two nights ago—
I typed in “Ben Cleaver.”
217 hits.
I realize it can change daily, but that’s less than half of what it was when I first conducted this search.
More silly thoughts from what was still, at that time, a care-free man—
Was a conspiracy underway to get rid of all the Ben Cleavers of the world? Was the idea of a society of Ben Cleavers too much? Perhaps one of the other Ben Cleavers wanted to eliminate us one by one until only he remained. I suspected Ben Cleaver, vice-president of Val-Corp. To reach a position like that, you have to be crafty.
