What was apparent to Kazumasa was slowly becoming apparent to everyone else. The tiny munching sounds that became so familiar to Kazumasa while he kept a vigil for his dying ball were now a deafening unison. Chicolándia and its plastic jungle, once void of insects and real living creatures, had been invaded by devouring bacteria. The enormous Matacão plastic palms and the giant jatubá trees crashed and slumped, crushing the mechanical monkeys and unhinging the plastic sloths. Employees in hard hats picked through the continuing rubble, the powdered debris of Matacão plastic flower gardens and Cleopatra’s tomb, the mechanical innards and sole remains of stegosaurus and other prehistoric imitations. J.B. wandered about what once was a plastic paradise, now horribly disfigured, shot full of tiny ominous holes, the mechanical entrails of everything exposed beneath the once-healthy plastic flesh. He shook his head. It was just as well that neither Chico Paco nor Gilberto had lived to see the crumbling destruction of their fondest dreams.
The Matacão, too, was slowly but definitely corroding, as was everything else made of Matacão plastic. Buildings were condemned. Entire roads and bridges were blocked off. Innocent people were caught unaware—killed or injured by falling chunks of the stuff. People who stepped out in the most elegant finery made of Matacão plastic were horrified to find themselves naked at cocktail parties, undressed at presidential receptions. Cars crumbled at stop lights. Computer monitors sagged into their CPUs. The credit card industry went into a panic. Worst of all, people with facial rebuilds and those who had added additional breasts and the like were privy to grotesque scenes thought only to be possible in horror movies. And there was no telling what might happen to people who had, on a daily basis, eaten Matacão plastic hamburgers and French fries.
As for the Matacão itself, so-called Matacão plastic conservationists ran all over it, tearfully trying to find a solution for the preservation of this contemporary geological and, many insisted, spiritual miracle. But every day, more and more of the Matacão disappeared. J.B. observed the Matacão from his apartment, watching its once-shiny surface defaced irreparably by the footprints of thousands of devotees, the famous altar of Saint George sinking into its deteriorating base.
Everything at GGG was falling into shambles as well. The sale of feathers had come to a sudden halt with the news that typhus was being spread to its victims on the wing, so to speak. Now, GGG could no longer depend on Matacão plastic. The president of the company had made a public statement regarding the demise of their revolutionary material, and GGG was beset with civil suits for everything from bodily injuries to damaged reputations. The stock market plunged as the invisible bacteria gnawed away, leaving everything with a grotesquely denuded, decapitated, even leprous appearance.
J.B. sat alone on the twenty-third floor of GGG. All the windows and any other portion of the building made of Matacão plastic were slowly crumbling to dust. The dense tropical humidity had begun to replace the artificially fresh air-conditioned atmosphere. When the air conditioning began to fail, most GGG employees photocopied their résumés and left. Floor by floor, they descended the elevators with their coffee cups and left forever. They left J.B. alone with his three arms, scattered paper clips, and a selection of old 9.99 objects which had escaped destruction, being made of traditional metals and plastics. One of the objects was a prosthetic arm, which his third arm caressed like a lost partner. J.B. mumbled quietly, with tired confusion, to the prosthetic arm, which he had named Butch, unwilling to admit his true longing for the flippant magpie and the third breast. His third arm was once again undergoing a slow atrophy, and J.B. was aware that he would have to leave the Matacão if he wanted to save his extra appendage. He thought absently that the old plastics and metals were still viable—not as realistic but viable. People were still interested in third arms, he nodded, his mind sluggish but still moving as if in perpetual motion across the old Matacão. The fashion and accessories department could be substantially revived by the introduction of third-arm fashions. He could propose the development of a new typewriter, not to mention pianos, keyboards, new games, new sports, new magazines to guide people through increased productivity and sexual activity, an entirely new way of life. That’s right, J.B. thought, conquering his loneliness with one sweeping gesture of his weak third hand—he would go into the arms business. Geoffrey and Georgia Gamble would have smiled; they themselves had predicted everything. At this he laughed hysterically, walked to the gaping edge of that twenty-three-floor plexiglass corporate structure and threw himself over. The spongy nature of the Matacão below did not save him. Some people later speculated that he might have used his golden parachute, but Jonathan B. Tweep, unlike poor Gilberto, had always known the truth. All the parachutes were made of Matacão plastic.