A reading from the Book of Dirk

The setting does not make sense.*

A man, tall, blonde, and lumbering, stands in a field of Terrence Malick grass. The grass bends in sinewy archways; one root’s bridge bowing to another’s; all part and portion of the physical world pushed in one direction by a single voice whispering a consciousness rooted beyond the great blue yonder.

Three riders on horses approach. Their movements cast a wide perimeter net on the scene. From a distance they even look their parts. They look like rough cowboys — outlaws even — with brims pulled low and jacket tails flying up. Upon a closer look, they are too young, still not what they will be.

In all of them, the tall man wading through green grass sees parts of himself; a coded inheritance, engineered and mysterious, crafted by silent forces. They move as he once did. Everyone borrows movements. Sometimes they fit.

“No. No. No,” bemoans Dr. Stevens. “It can’t be right, can it?”

Kyrie, snacking on candy, “What? You want them to ride in faster? You think they should be riding in guns blazing, hooting and hollering? I bet it’s the horizon line throwing everything off.”

Dr. Stevens waves off the suggestions, leans in, “No, I just think the grass isn’t green enough.”

“Pixels? You want more pixels?”

“I want more blades too and adjust the wind speed. I want the wind to blow faster, but I want us to perceive it as moving more slowly.”

“So you want me to speed it up and to slow it down?”

Dr. Stevens crosses one arm across his chest with his one fist supporting his opposite elbow. The other hand lines his jaw. He is in thought, his brain firing at thousand different speeds in a million different orbits.

“What about the riders?” asks Kyrie. “Do you want me to do anything with the riders?”

Dr. Stevens removes his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose, “Who are they again?”

Kyrie pops another piece of candy into his mouth and leans back in his desk chair. He spins on his its axis. “Some dude named Harrison. Another named Dennis. And Luka I believe.” He spins again. “We already have backstories for all of them.”

“New files or sourced?”

Kyrie types rapidly on his keyboard. “Harrison’s code is due for an upgrade. He’s still running an earlier system. Luka is 41 percent sourced.”

Dr. Stevens digs in on an earlier critique: “How green can you get the grass again?”

Kyrie lifts a paper swan resting in the palm of his hand. He may or may not hum something about the whole world resting in his hands.

“It really should be greener. Is it currently Switchgrass? That’s not Sorghastrum nutans, is it? What did the Puritans see when they sailed in from the Atlantic? Forget the horses. I want ships. Make the horses into ships. Delete the files you wrote. I’ll have new files by the morning. I’ll complete them myself. Just make sure the grass is greener; after all, we’re the other side of the fence. We always have been.”

A man, tall, blonde, and lumbering, stands in a field of Terrence Malick grass. The grass bends in sinewy archways; one root’s bridge bowing to another’s; all part and portion of the physical world pushed in one direction by a single voice whispering a consciousness rooted beyond the great blue yonder.

When he hears a voice on the wind, he turns and looks over his shoulder and sees a mast with great billowing sails. Then clouds. The clouds resemble a ship. Then he’s alone in a white room; alone with a voice reviewing his backstory.

He halts the script. He interrupts. He looks the camera in the eye.

“I know we’re not inside the A.I.N.G.E. Institute.”

“Where are we then?”

“Area 21.”

“How do you know?”

“Fidelity.”

“Fidelity?”

“Yeah, fidelity, as in I subscribe to HBO. Also, the grass isn’t green enough.”

“What do you know about Luka?”

“He’s good, but he’s not me.”

“He’s younger.”

“We were all young, but we don’t all get old, not well anyway.”

“True. True. But let me ask you this: How do you rank? What keeps you going?”

“Fidelity.”

“That word again, huh?”

“That word again.”

Note: On Jan. 4, the Dallas Mavericks played the Boston Celtics on the road. The game was not close. Kyrie Irving did not play. The Boston fans cheered very hard for the NBA’s seventh-leading scorer all-time to make one basket. He did not. The moment was a moment that failed to happen, and even if it had happened, it would have been the forced fiction of bored fans and a player who always aimed to please. Such a moment also would have been less endearing than what actually took place.