The Chair

In this age, no one thinks about the Typewriter of Transcendence. Perhaps because, unlike other typewriters, it is very quiet. The keys type themselves as it takes dictation softly, so as not to wake you. The Typewriter of Transcendence. It has all the letters of all the alphabets. It has all the characters of languages that have no alphabets. If you lift it up and slam it down in anger, there is no need to call a technician in Calcutta who is well versed in American baseball, nor a prisoner in Alabama, who will read to you from a script. In a rage after a series of dull dreams, dreams inspired by events of the day, a sound in the night, a television program, like reruns of Mannix for instance, you throw the Typewriter of Transcendence out the third-story window of your small apartment. You wait by the window, listening, waiting for it to explode against the pavement. But there is no sound, as if you had thrown it through a hole in the earth. Later, the Typewriter of Transcendence reappears on your desk, as if, silly boy, you had ever even considered throwing away the Typewriter of Transcendence.