* * *
He arrived home late in the evening. He’d stopped to eat in one of the fast-food joints on the state highway, just outside town, and had walked the rest of the way. He usually steered clear of those places, but that evening dinner was the last thing on his mind, a physiological chore that separated him from that first, great night with the system.
To facilitate taking the system powder, Kurt had suggested he obtain a straw, and Homer, to be on the safe side, had taken four from the dispenser at the cash desk. On leaving the diner, he’d thanked the dark, cloud-laden heavens for allowing him to be born in a country that had reduced to a minimum the time you had to spend on procuring and consuming food.
Going indoors, he went and sat down on the couch without taking his jacket off. He placed the box containing the VCR on the coffee table and studied the instructions, trying to remember the advice the store assistant had given him - though with scant success, because all the time the man was talking he had been thinking about what it would be like to try the system while he watched, after eighteen years, the film of the body snatchers.
Then he set to work, with some trepidation, because he didn’t know much about electrical appliances. But the installation proved less problematic than he expected and, although the timer wouldn’t stop blinking 00:00 from the stop position, the machine seemed ready to perform its essential function, the only one that interested Homer at this moment: that of reading the magnetic content of the videocassette so as to decode it into luminous signals that one enjoyed by keeping one’s eyes fixed on the TV screen.
Preparing everything necessary for the taking of the system was even easier, because actually there wasn’t much to prepare. Kurt had told him to take out of the pouch a large enough dose to systemize himself, which needn’t be very much the first time. In fact he had recommended that it be extremely small, though he hadn’t seen fit to supply a parameter on the basis of which the quantity might be precisely calculated.
Using the corner of his laminated Aberdeen Public Library card as a measure, Homer extracted this blessed, tiny dose from the little pouch and put it on the Formica top of the coffee table. Kurt had counseled the use of a smooth surface, such as a hand mirror, but since Homer didn’t have any hand mirrors in the house, he thought the Formica table top would make a fair substitute, for the time being. On subsequent occasions, if it was really necessary, he would buy a mirror.
Still using the laminated library card, he shaped the extremely small dose of powdered system into a strip about a millimeter thick and just under a half-inch long. Then he took one of the straws into the kitchen and cut it in half. He sat down on the couch again, laying the length of straw next to the strip of powdered system, on the coffee table.
Everything seemed ready. Everything was laid out in accordance with Kurt’s instructions. All that remained, apparently, was to take it. The great moment had arrived. The cassette about the body snatchers was inserted the right way round in the VCR. The television was tuned to the VCR channel. All he had to do was press the Play key on the remote control. The opening credits would start to roll and he would take the powdered system through the nose, as Kurt had demonstrated.
He pressed Play.
Your first systemization is rather like your first kiss. You’re so preoccupied with the problem of where to put your nose that by the time you realize that that thing you felt on your tongue was actually her tongue, she’s already broken away from you.
During the first systemization your dominant thoughts are, first, how long it’s going to take for the powder to take effect; second, how you’ll know when it does take effect; and third, how you can be sure, if at some stage you think it has taken effect, that the feelings you’re having are the right ones.
On subsequent occasions, the difference between the system and kisses is that when you kiss you don’t think very much about it, whereas when you systemize yourself, whether it’s the second or the thousandth time, you do nothing but think. You’re almost always thinking. Thinking about things like whether this time will be better than the last, because last time wasn’t that great, though perhaps that was because maybe you’d had too much to eat, or hadn’t had enough to eat, or because it was better to take three small doses at a distance of, say, half an hour from each other, because when you take it all at once the system must be of prime quality, because if there’s anything wrong with the system - an eventuality known to people inside the system as ‘over-cut’ or ‘badly cut’ or ‘shit’ - you may, if you shoot too large a quantity, throw up, and then you’ve wasted system, time and money, not to mention the fact that if the system is too pure even worse can happen.
Such speculation is known to habitués of the system as ‘paranoia’. Of course, people outside the system get paranoid, too. But it’s not the same thing. Let’s take the example of a perfectly ordinary case of paranoid behavior, like leaving home much earlier than necessary because you’re convinced that the bus driver, not finding any traffic, will get to the bus stop, say, ten minutes earlier than the regulation time and that, since he is traveling with an empty vehicle and knows perfectly well that at the bus stop in question there’s only ever one person waiting, namely you, the person with the delusion of which we are positing an example, he will drive straight past without waiting for the regulation time, and all because you, the paranoiac, have come to the entirely baseless conclusion that the bus driver doesn’t like you.
Now, such a delusion would never even enter the head of a true systemizee. But if by some absurd hypothesis it did, he would soon put the matter in perspective. ‘What do I care when the fucking bus goes by?’ he would say. Note that he would utter these words without the slightest trace of acrimony, and would then continue: ‘Look, I may not even go to the bus stop if I don’t feel like it. Let him drive past when the fuck he wants. I’m going to stay at home and systemize myself. Who needs buses anyway? I’m never going to take another one for the rest of my life. I’m fine the way I am. I’ve got the system.’
Nothing in the world is truly important to a person who’s inside the system. Everything can be attenuated, viewed in a more reassuring light. No matter how big the problem, it can always be cut down to size. When you’re inside the system, having a paranoid delusion that’s extraneous to it seems completely meaningless, because the only, essential, constant source of paranoia is your concern with achieving the highest possible degree of integration. All other things are trivial. Decorative problems, ornamental anxieties, non-essential torments. The only thing that matters is integration into the system.
Homer’s first time. There’s not much to tell, as a matter of fact. What happened was this: as the TV screen framed