The existence of the Network didn't matter to Simon. As an Invisible Hander, he just regarded them (whoever they were) as just another group of the Unenlightened.
Simon believed that only he and his fellow members of the Invisible Hand were totally enlightened.
NO BLAME
Just because you aren't paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you.
–dennis jarog
When Dr. Dashwood went out to lunch that day, he was accosted on the sidewalk by a one-legged sailor who said his name was Captain Ahab.
"Avast!" Ahab cried. "I would borrow a moment of thy time, O seeker of bioelectrical and intrauterine arcana."
"I never give to strangers," Dashwood muttered. "Apply to Welfare."
"O muddy understanding and loveless heart!" Ahab protested. "And impaired hearing into the bargain! I said I would borrow thy time, not thy dime, thou prier into vaginal mystery with the tawdry telescope of mechanistic philosophy. Avast, I say!"
"Make an appointment with my secretary," Dashwood said, convinced that this man was unglued.
"O God look down and see this squint-eyed man," Ahab shrieked, "blinded by his own stern Rules of Office! They are three times enslaved who cage themselves, most deaf of all who cringe and hide behind that tyrant majesty, Appointment Book!"
"Really," Dashwood said, looking desperately for a taxi, "I can't-"
"Avast, ye soulless and unmetaphysical lubber!" Ahab cried. "Think not I yet seek still the white-skinned whale. 'Tis worse: on horror's scrolls accumulate fresh fears, and deeds that call in doubt God's truth. I say that thou hast need of doctoring, for all thy pride hastes thee to sodden ruin. Thou thinkst thou knowst; but thou knowst not, O wretch. No Dashwood thou, but Dorn-George Dorn, I say!"
Dashwood finally leapt into a passing cab and escaped.
"Golden Gate Park," he told the driver, deciding to snack at the Japanese Tea House. The quiet, rustic Zen-like atmosphere there was just what he needed, after the abrasions of Tobias Knight and Captain Ahab.
Captain Ahab stood on the street, fuming.
"My Abzug, no blame," he muttered.
THE GOATS MARCH
Now we've got them just where they want us!
–admiral james tiberius kirk
While Captain Ahab was trying to Illuminate Dr. Dashwood at noon in San Francisco, and Justin Case was dialing the Saudi Arabian consulate at 3 P.M. in New York, a man named Francois Loup-Garou was finding a Rehnquist in his Lobster Newburg in Paris, where it was already late evening.
Naturally, he was a bit startled.
M. Loup-Garou was, like all French intellectuals, a rationalist-virtually a Cartesian. Of course, as the founder of the Neo-Surrealist movement in art, he was officially an irrationalist; but, like all Gallic irrationalists, especially the Existentialists, he was exquisitely rational about his irrationality. He knew there was some explanation of how the Rehnquist had gotten into the Lobster Newburg, but for once in his life he preferred being an irrational rationalist rather than an irrational rationalist. He just did not care to think about the explanation of how a Rehnquist gets into a Lobster Newburg. Who, after all, wants to contemplate such ideas as maddened chefs having at each other with meat cleavers, or more exotic hypotheses, such anthropophagy or voodoo rituals in the kitchen?
The distasteful incident occurred at a dinner party given by the famous American physicist James Earl Carter. Dr. Carter had recently won the Nobel Prize for his demonstration that the multiworld of Everett-Wheeler-Graham was the only consistent (noncontradictory; paradox-free) interpretation of the Schrodinger wave equations of quantum mechanics. He was celebrating by spending a month in Paris and meeting every possible international celebrity. The dinner guests this evening, for instance, included an inscrutable Japanese monk, a very scrutable German novelist, a famous Swedish film director, three French philosophers, a Swiss theologian, two English neurologists, the notorious Eva Gebloomenkraft (the Terror of the Jet Set, as the newspapers called her), an Austrian psychiatrist, Francois Loup-Garou himself, and four goats. The goats had been brought to the party by Loup-Garou, who was working hard at promoting Neo-Surrealisme by establishing himself as a newsworthy eccentric. "The goats go everywhere with me," he said firmly at the door. "They are a reminder of our earthy roots." It wasn't nearly as good as de Nerval walking a lobster on the boulevard, but it did get into a few newspapers the next day; and, after the effect had been established, Loup-Garou genially agreed to having the goats housed in the pantry during dinner.
As the guests settled themselves at the table, one of the English neurologists, Dr. Axon-a jovial, red-cheeked man who probably hunted as a hobby-asked Dr. Carter, "Does your theory actually propose that there are real tangible universes on all sides of us in hyperspace?"
"In superspace," Carter corrected genially. "Yay-us," he added blandly. "There are millions of such universes. Or to be more precise, there are about 10100 of them. Ah only refer to possible universes," he explained quickly, lest anybody think his theory was extravagant.
"Some more wine heah," Carter's brother said loudly. "Ah think you've had enough, Bill-uh," Carter muttered in an undertone.
"Do you think President Kennedy will get the space-cities program through Congress, now that the space factories are paying for themselves?" asked the other English neurologist, a pale, saturnine man named Dr. Dendrite.
"Ah don't understand politics," James Earl Carter said. "Ahm a scientist."
"Some MORE WINE heah," Carter's brother repeated. "Then there are universes in which I was never born." Dr. Axon pursued his own line of thought.
"There are universes in which John Baez became a general instead of a folk singer," Carter said easily. "Ah suppose he would be equally vehement about nuking people as he now is about not nuking them. If it's a possible universe, it exists. The equations say so. All ah've done, really, is to show that any other interpretation of the equations is contradictory."
"Somebody ought to psychoanalyze the physicists," the Austrian psychiatrist muttered to the Swedish film director.
"It's like the Buddhist concept of karma," the Swedish film director said. "We all get to play every role, somewhere in hyperspace."
"Superspace," Carter corrected again.
"Then there's a universe where Kennedy is a physicist," Eva Gebloomenkraft said, "and you're President of Unistat."
"Well, Carter said with his genial smile, "ah hope ah could get along with the people who run the country. What do they call themselves-the Triangular Connection?"
"I don't care whether this theory is true or not," the German novelist pronounced. "As a metaphor, it is perfect. We all live in parallel universes. I am Faust in my universe, and the rest of you are all extras or walk-ons. But each of you is Faust in his universe, and I am an extra-maybe just a spear carrier."
But by this time the wineglasses had been refilled several times and everybody was getting more relaxed, especially the physicist's brother, Billy, who was heard reciting to Ms. Gebloomenkraft, "Who Burgered? Tom Burgered! Bullburger! Who Burgered?"
"… the Second Oswald… in Hong Kong…" somebody was muttering at the other end of the table.
"In some universe maybe Schiller didn't write Faust at all…"
"I wonder," Dendrite said, "if there's a universe where Pope Stephen became a singer instead of a priest."
"Everyboduh knew that 'Who Burgered?' routine when we were growing up in Georgia," Billy was saying.
"Verdammte publishers," the German novelist was telling the Swiss theologian. "They're all thieves."