Demon Box by Ken Kesey
He dumped the court recorder up from his lap. When she surfaced, gasping and coughing, he gave her a fatherly pat.
"- hand me my trousers if you would be so kind?"
She obeyed without a word, just as she had hours earlier when he'd bid her stay with him instead of leaving with the Omaha Public Defender who had brought her. The doctor toweled a hand dry on a pant's leg, then reached into the pocket. He removed a ballpoint pen and his checkbook. Grunting, he scooted along the slippery staves until he was near the brightest candle.
"About one hundred years ago there lived a British physicist named James Clerk Maxwell. Entropy fascinated him also. As a physicist he had great affection for the wonders of our physical universe, and it seemed to him too cruel that all the moving things of our world, all the marvelous, spinning, humming, ticking, breathing things, should be doomed to run down and die. Was there no remedy to this unfair fate? The problem gnawed at him and, in British bulldog fashion, he gnawed back. At length he felt he had devised a solution, a loophole around one of the bleakest laws on the books. What he did was... he devised this."
Carefully cradling the checkbook near the flame so all could see, he began to draw on the back of a check, a simple rectangular box. "Professor Maxwell postulated, 'Imagine we have a box, sealed, full of the usual assortment of molecules careening about in the dark... and inside this box a dividing partition, and in this partition a door' "
At the bottom of the partition he outlined a door with tiny hinges and doorknob.
" 'And standing beside this door... a demon!' " He sketched a crude stick figure with a tiny stick arm reaching for the doorknob.
" 'Now further imagine,' said our Professor, 'that this demon is trained to open and close this door for those flying molecules. When he sees a hot molecule approaching he lets it pass through to this side' " - he drew a large block H on the right half of the box - " 'and when he sees a cold, slow-moving molecule our obedient demon closes the door, containing it on this, the cold side of the box.' "
Mesmerized, we watched the puckered hand draw the C.
" 'Should not it then follow,' Professor Maxwell reasoned, 'that as the left side of the box got colder the right side would begin to get hot? Hot enough to boil steam and turn a turbine? A very small turbine, to be certain, but theoretically capable of generating energy none the less, free, and from within a closed system? Thus actually circumventing the second law of thermodynamics would it not?' "
Dobbs had to admit that it seemed to him like it ought to work; he said he had encountered such demons as looked like they had the muscle to manage it.
"Ah, precisely - the muscle. So. Within a few decades another fascinated physicist published another essay, which argued that even granted that such a system could be made, and that the demon-slave could be compelled to perform the system's task without salary, the little imp still would not be without expense! He would need muscles to move the door, and sustenance to give those muscles strength. In short, he would need food.
"Another few decades pass. Another pessimist theorizes that the demon would also have to have light, to be able to see the molecules. Further energy outlay to be subtracted from the profit. The twentieth century brings theorists that are more pessimistic still. They insist that Maxwell's little dybbuk will not only require food and light but some amount of education as well, to enable him to evaluate which molecules are fast-moving and hot enough, which are too slow and cool. Mr. Demon must enroll in special courses, they maintain. This means tuition, transportation to class, textbooks, perhaps eyeglasses. More expense. It adds up...
"The upshot? After a century of theoretical analysis, the world of physics reached a very distressing conclusion: that Maxwell's little mechanism will not only consume more energy than it produces and cost more than it can ever make, it will continue to do so in increase! Does this remind you of anything, children?"
"It reminds me," my brother Buddy said, "of the atomic power plants they're building up in Washington."
"Just so, yah, only worse. Now. Imagine again, please, that this box" - he bent again over the picture with his ballpoint, changing the H into a G -- "represents the cognitive process of Modern civilization. Eh? And that this side, let's say, represents 'Good.' This other side, 'bad.' "
He changed the C to an ornate B, then waggled the picture at us through the steam.
"Our divided mind! in all its doomed glory! And ensconced right in the middle is this medieval slavey, under orders to sort through the whirling blizzard of experience and separate the grain from the chaff. He must deliberate over everything, and to what end? Purportedly to further us in some way, eh? Get us an edge in wheat futures, a master's degree, another rung up the ladder of elephant shit. Glorious rewards supposedly await us if our slave piles up enough 'good.' But he must accomplish this before he bankrupts us, is the catch. Und all this deliberating, it makes him hungry. He needs more energy. Such an appetite."
His hand had drifted down to float on the surface, the checkbook still pinched aloft between thumb and finger.
"Our accounts begin to sink into the red. We have to float loans from the future. At the wheel we sense something dreadfully wrong. We are losing way! We must maintain way or we lose the rudder! We hammer on the bulkhead of the engine room: 'Stoker! More hot molecules, damn your ass! We're losing way!' But the hammering only seems to make him more ravenous. At last it becomes clear: we must fire this fireman."
We watched the hand. It was gradually sinking, checkbook and all, into the dark waters.
"But these stokers have built up quite the maritime union over the past century, and they have an ironclad contract, binding their presence on board to our whole crew of conscious faculties. If Stokey goes, everybody goes, from the navigator right down to the sphincter's mate. We may be drifting for the rocks but there is nothing we can do but stand at the wheel, helpless, and wait for the boat to go... down."
He held the vowel, bowing his voice like a fine cello. "O, my sailors, what I say is sad but true - our brave new boat is sinking. Every day finds more of us drowning in depression, or drifting aimlessly in a sea of antidepressants, or grasping at such straws as psychodrama and regression catharsis. Fah! The problem does not lie in poo-poo fantasies from our past. It is this mistake we have programmed into the machinery of our present that has scuttled us!"
The book was gone. Not a ripple remained. Finally the court recorder broke the spell with her flat, cornbelt voice.
"Then what do you advise we do, doctor? You've figured somethin', I can tell by the way you're leadin' us on."
That voice was the only thing flat she'd brought from Nebraska. Woofner leered at her for a moment, his face streaming moisture like some kind of seagoing Pan's; then he sighed and raised the checkbook high to let the water trickle out of it.
"I'm sorry, dear. The doctor has not figured anything. Maybe someday. Until then, his considered advice is to live with your demon as peacefully as possible, to make fewer demands and be satisfied with less results... and above all, mine students, to strive constantly to be here!"
The wet checkbook slapped the water. We jumped like startled frogs again. Woofner wheezed a laugh and surged standing, puffy and pale as Moby Dick himself.
"Class dismissed. Miss Omaha? A student in such obviously fit condition shouldn't object to helping a poor old pedagogue up to his bed, yah?"
"How about if I walk along?" I had to ask. "It's time I checked on the bus."
"By all means, Devlin." He grinned. "The fit and the fascinated. You may carry the wine."
After getting dressed, I accompanied the girl and the old man on the walk up to the cottages. We walked in single file up the narrow path, the girl in the middle. I was still in a steam from the hot-tub talk and wanting to keep after it, but the doctor didn't seem so inclined. He inquired instead about my legal status. He'd followed the bust in the papers - was I really involved in all those chemical experiments, or was that merely more San Francisco Chronicle
Woofner was quartered in the dean's cabin, the best of the Institute's accommodations and highest up the hill. While the court recorder detoured to get her suitcase, the doctor and I continued on up, strolling and sipping in silence. The air was still and sweet. It had rained sometime since midnight, then cleared, and pale stars floated in puddles here and there. The dawn was just over the mountains to the east, like a golden bugle sounding a distant reveille. The color echoed off the bald head bobbing in front of me. I cleared my throat.
"You were right, Doctor," I began, "about me being fascinated."
"I can see that," he said without turning. "But why so much? Do you plan to use the old doctor's secrets to become a rival in the nut-curing business?"
"Not if I can help it." I laughed. "The little while I worked at the state hospital was plenty."
"You wrote your novel on the job, I heard?" The words puffing back over his shoulder smelled like stale ashtrays.
"That's where I got all those crazy characters. I was a night aide on a disturbed ward. I turned in all my white suits the moment I had a rough draft done, but I never lost the fascination."
"Your book must have reaped certain rewards," he said. "Perhaps you feel some sort of debt toward those crazy people and call it fascination?"
I allowed that it could be a possibility. "But I don't think it's the people I'm fascinated by so much as the puzzle. Like what is crazy? What's making all these people go there? I mean, what an interesting notion this metaphor of yours is, if I've got it right - that modern civilization's angst is mechanical first and mental second?"
"Not angst," he corrected. "Fear. Of emptiness. Since the Industrial Revolution, civilization is increasingly afraid of running empty."
He was breathing hard but I knew he wasn't going to stop for a rest; I only had another couple dozen yards left before we reached his cabin.
"And that this fear," I pressed on, "has driven us to dream up a kind of broker and install him in our brain so he can increase our accounts by -"
"Minds," he puffed. "Into the way we think."
"- minds... by monitoring our incomes and making smart investments? He can't be any smarter than we are, though; we created him - and that he is the main snake-in-the-grass making people crazy, not all that psychology stuff?"
"That psychology stuff is... like the stuff the Chronicle writes... mostly crap."
I followed in silence, waiting for him to continue. The wheezing breaths turned into a laugh.
"But, yah, that is my metaphor. You got it right. He is the snake in our grass."
"And no way to get him out?"
He shook his head.
"What about the way he got in? What would happen if you hypnotized somebody and told them that their dream broker was no more? That he got wind the bank auditors were coming and committed suicide?"
"Bank failure would happen." He chuckled. "Then panic, then collapse. Today's somebody has too much invested in that dream."
We were almost to his cabin. I didn't know what else to ask.
"We are experimenting," he went on, "with some hybrid techniques, using some of Hubbard's Scientology auditors - 'Clears,' these inquisitors call themselves - in tandem with John Lilly's Sensory Deprivation. The deprivation tank melts away the subject's sense of outline. His box. The auditor locates the demon and deprograms him - clears him out, is the theory."
"Are you clearing any out?"
He shrugged. "With these Scientology schwules who can tell? What about you? We have a tank open all next week. Just how fascinated are you?"
The invitation caught me completely by surprise. Scientologists and deprivation tanks? On the other hand, a respite from the bus hassles and the cop hassles both was appealing. But before I could respond the doctor suddenly held up a hand and stopped. He tilted his hairy ear to listen.
"Do you hear a gang of men? Having an argument?" I listened. When his breathing quieted I heard it. From somewhere beyond the hedge that bordered the cottages arose a garbled hubbub. It did sound like a gang of men arguing, a platoon of soldiers ribbing each other. Or a ball team. I knew what it was, of course, even before I followed the doctor to an opening in the hedge; it was Houlihan, and only one of him.
Against the quiet purple of the Big Sur dawn, the bus was so gaudy it appeared to be in motion. It seemed to be still lurching along even though its motor was off and Houlihan wasn't in his driver's seat. He was outside in the parking lot among the twinkling puddles. He had located some more speed, it looked like, and his six-pound single jack. Then he had picked out a nice flat space behind the bus where he could waltz around, toss some hammer, and, all for himself alone and the few fading stars, talk some high-octane shit.
"Unbelievable but you all witnessed the move - one thirtieth of a sec maybe faster! How's that you skeptical blinkies? for world champion sinews and synapsis. But what? Again? Is this champ never satisfied? It looks like he's going for the backward double-clutch up and over record! Three, four - count the revolutions - five, six... which end first? In which hand?... eight, nine - either hand, Houlihan, no deliberation - eleven twelve thirteenka-fwamp yehh-h-h..."
Flipping the cumbersome tool over his shoulder, behind his back, between his legs - catching it deftly at the last instant by the tip of the dew-wet handle. Or not catching it, then dancing around it in mock frustration - cursing his ineptness, the slippery handle, the very stars for their distraction.
"A miss! What's amiss? Has the acclaim pried open our hero's as it were vanity? Elementals will invade through one's weakest point. Or has he gone all dropsy from a few celestial eyes staring?" - bending and scooping the hammer from its puddle to spin it high again and pluck it out of a pinwheeling spray. "Nay, not this lad, not world-famous Wet... Handle... Hooly! No pictures, please; it's an act of devotion..."
I'd seen the act plenty times before, so I watched the doctor. The old man was studying the phenomenon through the hedge with the detached expression of an intern observing aberrant behavior through a one-way mirror. As Houlihan went on, though, and on and on, the detachment changed to a look of grudging wonder.
"It's the demon himself," he whispered. "He's been stoned out of his box!"
He stood back from the hedge, lifting his brows at me.
"So it is not quite all Chronicle crap, eh, Dr. Deboree? Eviction by chemical command? Very impressive. But what about the risk of side effects?" He put his hand on my shoulder and looked earnestly into my eyes. "Mightn't such powerful doses turn one into the very tenant one is trying to turn out? But, ach, don't make such a face! I'm joking, my friend. Teasing. These experiments you and your bus family are conducting deserve attention, sincerely they do -"
It was over my shoulder that his attention was directed, though. The court recorder was coming, carrying a small green suitcase and a large pink pillow.
"- but at another time."
He gave me a final squeeze good night and promised that we would resume our consideration of this puzzle the very next opportunity. In the tubs again this evening? I nodded, flattered and excited by the prospect. He asked that I think about his invitation in the meantime - sleep a few quiet hours on it, yah? Then he hustled off to join the girl.
I pushed my way through the hedge and headed across the lot, hoping I could get Houlihan geared down enough to let me sleep a few quiet minutes. Fat chance. As soon as saw me coming he whinnied like an old firehorse.
"Chief! You're bestirred, saints be praised. All 'bo-warrrd!"
He was through the rear window and up into his seat with the motor roaring before I could make it to the door. I tried to tell him about my appointment with the doctor but Houlihan kept rapping and the bus kept revving until it beckoned its whole scattered family. Too many had been left behind before. They came like a grumpy litter coming to a sow, grunting and complaining they weren't ready to leave this comfortable wallow, wait for breakfast.
"We're coming righ
Drove us instead up a high-centered dirt road that llamas would have shunned and broke the universal miles from the highway but coincidentally near the hut of a meth-making buddy from Houlihan's beatnik days. This leathery old lizard gave the crew a lot of advice and homemade wine and introduced us to his chemical baths. It was a day before Buddy returned from his hike to borrow tools. It was nearly a week before we got the U-joint into Monterey and welded and replaced so we could baby the bus back down to civilized pavement.
It was a whole decade before I kept my appointment with Dr. Klaus Woofner, in the spring of 1974, in Disney World.
A lot of things had changed in my scene by then. Banished by court order from San Mateo County, I was back in Oregon on the old Nebo farm with my family - the one that shared my last name, not my bus family. They were scattered and regrouped with their own scenes. Behema was communing with the Dead down in Marin. Buddy had taken over my Dad's creamery in Eugene. Dobbs and Blanche had finagled a spread just down the road from our place, where they were raising kids on credit. The bus was rusting in the sheep pasture, a casualty of the Woodstock campaign. A wrong turn down a Mexican railroad had left nothing of Houlihan but myth and ashes. My father was a mere shade of that tower of my youth, sucked small by something medical science can name only, and barely that.
Otherwise, things seemed to be looking up. My dope sentence and my probation time had been served and my record expunged. My right to vote had been reinstated. And Hollywood had decided to make a movie of my nuthouse novel, which they wanted to shoot in the state hospital where the story is set. They were even interested in me doing the screenplay.
To firm up this fantasy I was limousined up to Portland by the producers to meet the head doctor, Superintendent Malachi Mortimer. Dr. Mortimer was a fatherly Jew of fifty with a gray pompadour and a jovial singsong voice. He sounded like a tour guide when he showed the hospital to me and the high-stepping herd of moguls up from Hollywood. Hype of moguls might be better.