"I'm glad you finally got here, boy", he boomed. "I was reading over your last submission and I received another message from the master."
I really wasn't in the mood for one of his messages from the master but the comical nature of the situation lightened my mood considerably. Another book was lying on the floor and Higgenbothom now had a swelling red mark opposite of the one he had received yesterday. The two bumps looked like budding devil's horns and his crazed expression made him appear like a chubby comical caricature of Old Nick. When he mentioned a message from the master, Sally squeaked and began typing. It was mildly amusing but not nearly as engaging as it was before. Now, I had more to think about and going back to the days of innocence was not an option.
"So you liked my interview with Trout?" I enquired. "I thought you might be quite put off by the revelations. Before I could finish he cut me off."
"Trout?" Higgenbothom questioned, as he absent-mindedly rummaged through papers on his desk. "No, I haven't had a chance to read it yet. I was rereading your brilliantly written piece on the European and Asian hominids and how they collided in the years just before the settlement of Foggy Bottom."
"Yes", I began, "and I though you didn't like that. You said I just made it up."
I felt like defending myself and pointing out that I had not really made that stuff up. Artz made me make it up and God knows where he got it. But Higgenbothom had not yet read the piece on Trout and he would have no idea who Artz is, so I just dropped it. Perhaps he was even better off not knowing.
"Well, as I said, I received a message from the master and I've changed my mind."
"And what is that message from the master", I asked cautiously, perhaps even a little tiredly.
"I want more!" he boomed.
"You want more?" I echoed.
"I want more!" He offered again proudly as though he were the architect of that profoundly important phrase.
"Could you give me a little more to go on that that?" I prodded.
"Well, er, no." he sputtered.
"What exactly is it that you want more of?"
"Well, more hominids and neo cortexes and the like", he offered without confidence. "I am sure you will come up with something."
"Something?"
"Yes", he continued regaining his confidence. "Why don't you tie that evolutionary story into why the people of Foggy Bottom are the way that are today? That would be an excellent finale to your prehistory series."
"OK, I'll try," I offered weakly. But, I really had other things on my mind.
It was so much easier when I didn't think my own thoughts. But now, with the information that Trout had provided me, I not only had thoughts, but I was having thoughts about my thoughts. I wasn't sure which thoughts were really mine, and that was getting really complicated. I could not help but wondering if I was not better off not knowing that I was just a fictional character. But there was no time to dwell on that now. I had a piece to write and that would take precedence over my brooding reflections.
In order to understand the predominantly European hominids that settled Foggy Bottom, you really have to understand hominid evolution, particularly the evolution of the hominid brain. But, before we get to the brain, we need to build up an explanation slowly by considering the evolution of the eyes.
People tend to believe that what they see with their eyes is real, as long as it is not an illusion or a hallucination. But what people see with their eyes is really the reflection of electromagnetic waves within the very small piece of the spectrum that we call visible light. They do not see x-rays or gamma rays or infrared or any of the infinitely many other bands on the spectrum. If you were to show representations of any of these other bands to the average person, they would dismiss those representations as artificial. What we see with our eyes is real and other representations are not.
But, what we see with our eyes is simply those electromagnetic bands for which there is an evolutionary advantage. Being able to see color instead of heat or x-rays, for example, provides a tremendous evolutionary advantage. Our there on the savannah where lions hid in the tall grass, being able to detect subtle changes in color might keep one from getting eaten. So the hominid eye evolved to see the very small band of electromagnetic waves that we call visible light or color.
Similarly the human brain perceives a relatively small bandwidth of reality that also provides an evolutionary advantage. People tend to think that what they perceive intellectually is real, but it is only a very small segment of infinitely many possibilities just like the bands of electromagnetic waves. So what does this have to do with the people of Foggy Bottom? Well a little more explanation is in order.
The hominid brain evolved in discrete stages, which are known somewhat simplistically as the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain and the neo cortex. The reptilian brain handles base passions and tends to be binary in its perception. It perceives food or not food, mate or not mate, enemy or not enemy. The mammalian brain adds social awareness, herd instincts, sameness or difference and hierarchy. Finally, the neo cortex adds the ability to model the external world and thus leads to planning, language and ultimately culture.
Because the external world is too complex to model directly in the neo cortex, the most advanced part of the hominid brain comes with an innate preconscious ability to group similar objects into categories and to name those categories. So the neo cortex is not cluttered up with individual objects. Instead it is made up of named categories and relationships. But in order to understand the world in this way, hominids find themselves compulsively creating categories, naming them and then interacting with the world as though it were made up of categories.
So the people of Foggy Bottom see themselves, first and foremost, as members of categories. First they are members of a fictitious demographic category such as race, gender, age group, or socio-economic stratum. Then they are students or statesmen, tourists or locals, politicians or plutocrats. Each is defined by his or her category and each is largely true to that category. In this way, the people of Foggy Bottom are no different than people anywhere. And, if the only problem was that the people of Foggy Bottom live in a world defined by fictional categories, it wouldn't necessarily be all that bad. But that isn't the only problem.
The three parts of the hominid brain are not integrated. So the neo cortex creates categories and names then. Then the mammalian brain sorts the categories into hierarchies based on some intrinsic unarticulated value and makes a same or different decision to determine if a hominid in question is a member of the same category as the hominid doing the questioning. Finally, the reptilian brain makes a good/bad or enemy/friend decision based on the same/different attribution of the mammalian brain. All this cognition boils down to the visceral decision that hominids that are members of one's own category are good and hominid that are members of another category are not good.
Most of the behaviors demonstrated by the people of Foggy Bottom can be explained in terms of the formation, preservation, destruction, or reconstruction of these categories. On a good day the members of the various categories that make up of the people of Foggy Bottom will pass each other, on the street, as though members of all other categories were invisible. On a bad day, members of different categories will come into conflict with each other. But the categories do not exist anywhere in Foggy Bottom. The categories exist only in the advanced neo cortexes of the hominids that inhabit Foggy Bottom. And, to truly understand Foggy Bottom is no more or no less than to understand the categories. Where did they come from? What good are they? Could they be replaced by other categories? Should they be replaced by other categories?
I felt good about this piece. It was still speculative, but much more serious. And I liked the implications. If the categories were not real, then they were fictional. And if the people of Foggy Bottom defined their identities in terms of fictional categories then their identities were fictional. I felt like I was beginning to get even with the real people of Foggy Bottom. But wait, is real/fictional just another category. Maybe those real people of Foggy Bottom weren't so different from me after all. Or, more importantly, maybe I wasnt so different from them.
When I came into the editorial office, Higgenbothom was asleep with his feet up on the desk. I quietly left my copy in his in box and turned to leave. For a moment, I thought we had a visitor, because I saw somebody out of the corner of my eye. But it was just my reflection in the mirror. At first I didn't recognize myself. All that pondering had given me a more serious, perhaps brooding expression. But then I saw it was just me and with a sigh I headed out into the night.