Seven Demons Aidan Truhen (reading an ebook TXT) 📖

“Like how?”

“Like chatty.”

“Well we have hours right?”

“We do I was thinking we would spend it in tranquil contemplation of the majesty of the earth from altitude.”

“…”

“…”

“…So now that we’ve done that—”

“O God I’ll tell you when we pass over Iceland.”

“Are we going to pass over Iceland?”

“Absolutely not.”

“So you will never tell me.”

“Nope.”

“And we’re not passing over Iceland at all that was like pilot humor?”

“Sure whatever.”

“O because I have friends there.”

“…”

“…Whom I will not wave at as we do not pass over Iceland.”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…So how—”

“O my God—”

—

The thing is that lying is hard and truth is easy and there is this idea in the world that the best lie is the one that is close to the truth and that is beautiful bullshit and I will tell you why. That kind of lie is the most usable lie. It is easy to remember because most of it actually happened just like that and for most people in most situations that is all you need. But in any professional situation where a lie must be sustained in the long term where it must conceal a truth from a person determined and capable in the field of finding that truth then the lie must touch the real world exclusively at those places where the interface can be controlled. Deep lies are all about control and you cannot control a hybrid lie because any time you need to give further detail you risk giving detail which can be used to penetrate the lie.

“O hi Richie I saw you out with a blonde last night—”

“O hi Jack yeah my cousin Anna was in town from Potsdam—”

“O that is lovely have you been out there to visit?”

“Yes I have it was great Anna is like a tour-guide-type person and we stayed in this really terrific hotel—”

See what just happened there is that Richie fucked-up. Anna really is a tour guide from Potsdam and he is sticking as close to the truth as he can but oops his cousin is from Potsdam so why was she staying in a hotel with him there?

So if you are telling a lie that matters you do not want to be retrofitting it to the truth on the fly, which is what you will have to do if it touches the truth all along its length and now this feels dirty anyway ANYWAY you cannot do that you are not that smart and you think you are but you’re not. You will get busted because you will say something like:

“I recently had excellent ajiaco in its native setting.”

Did you now? Well that is interesting because ajiaco is a delicacy much favored in Bogotá like if you were to look at any tourist guide it would say try the soup and do you know what else is in Bogotá? No not cocaine that is a fucking stereotype. What is in Bogotá is the Emerald Trade Center, and if we think back we find ourselves saying: What was it that Mr. Client wanted us to steal but emeralds?

Now it is possible that that is all so much bullshit but I am willing to bet you that when Mr. Client said the word emerald his entire fucking soul was wearing the same dopey grin as poor dumb Richie staring up in his mind’s eye at whatever he and Anna-not-his-cousin did in the Alimony Auberge.

I will bet you enough money to pay Mozart for sex that Mr. Client was here in the last month talking to people in or near the big sandy building with the green glass frontage.

—

Bogotá is a kind of a triangle running along one side of a bunch of high bits and there are rivers and a road that runs north–south through town and it’s a city like any city you would know it’s got ten million people and skyscrapers rising out of neoclassical cement construction like World’s Fair stuff like LA. There’s some old old Bogotá too like colonial and the thing you need to get right now is this is a fucking. Capital. Of the world. It’s Paris it’s Madrid it’s Hong Kong it’s not some fucking stage set for your personal narrative and it is complex as shit. I have been here before when I was in coffee because have you met coffee of course I fucking came here. And the thing that you do not do when you are approaching a capital city with its own way of doing things is blow into town like a giant hornet and land on everyone’s food and scare the shit out of the tourists because even a hornet eventually outstays its welcome and gets blatted under someone’s boot heel. That is why I am not here with Saul who has some employment history in the region or Rex and his explodophilia or even worse with Lucille who just likes to slice things up very small with his love. It is also why Doc and her I Will Kill All The Cows are presently chillaxing in the spa pool at a hotel in Zürich sourcing whatever thief shit she requires and Motor Oil Charlie is working on Eiger’s dongle—

Yes yes she is and she is not happy with my dongle humor—

—so that leaves me to hitch a ride with Mozart and be real calm and conciliatory and not get neck-deep in shit in a place where they do understand appropriate responses to freelancing plus also too not everyone here was a huge fan of the management structure around—i.e., me being the only shareholder in—the Pale Peruvian Stallion and that is not stereotyping that is commerce.

So softly we go.

—

“Hi I’m Jack Mahboubian hi.”

“Hi Mr. Mahboubian welcome to the Zebedee how may we assist you—”

The Zebedee is a luxury hotel and also a festival of Daliesque architectural batshit whose website features a digital composite image of that woman from the American Gothic picture holding a board meeting with men in episcopal purple one of whom has the head of a snail. For some reason I