Sharif thinks, therefore he is … in a diner

I’m in a resurrected diner back home. The place is a grease-slinging phoenix. Any other… I’m in a resurrected diner back home. The place is a grease-slinging phoenix. Any other two-legged, egg-laying vertebrate that looked, walked, failed to fly and in general terms humiliated the rest of its species like this example has, would have died, despised and embarrassed. Each time evolution has tried to correct its mistake, the diner’s mystical powers assert themselves, the restaurant is reborn and the surrounding population demonstrates that its learning curve is just below that of the Trix Rabbit.

I fully expected this incarnation of the Camp Hill Diner to have the same exhausted, aged and ugly waitresses surrounded by the same decor, but where else (in a 15-mile radius) is a guy supposed to get a $4 meal of eggs, home fries and toast in the middle of the day? So I headed over.

I’m sitting in the middle of the non-smoking section. Looks like the local nursing home took a field trip, so there’s not much room for me. I order my eggs, look around. Something’s glowing red. There’s this little red oval next to a touch monitor against the wall. I get up, head to the bathroom as an excuse to get a closer look. I leave my book on Chinese revolutions to hold my seat lest a geriatric knave should snatch up my ketchup bottle or occupy my chair.

Gazing into the monitors as surreptitiously as possible, I see names of waitresses listed, ready to be touched, and orders entered. I formulate a theory. I return to my seat. Wait for my embryos to arrive, then casually ask if those red things are fingerprint scanners. “Yeah,” she replies.

Clearly this woman does not appreciate how cool this is. I’m trying to put that server’s lack of excitement about the scanners’ niftiness into perspective, when I hear something utterly unexpected. “Yeah, but DSL will work just fine.” I’m stunned. I tell myself DSL must also be some form of denture cream, but another voice from the same direction replies, “But you need a router.”

I look over. I had not missed the existence of other youths. Either one of these men is old enough to be my grandfather. Then the world collapses. A vision swirls around me building on the diner’s hideous blue lights and on banks that require fingerprints to cash checks and laser keyboard PDAs.

I see a new world. It’s a Gibson novel lit by the sunbeams of Jesus, softened by the faux tolerance of zealots draped in red, white and blue, united in one song, a song without melody – it’s a world whose deities smile like grandparents and devour like Moloch.

Intimacy has been eroded by constant and unearned gratification. Software interfaces that look like Mad Libs sheets generate e-mails, notes, research papers, novels and wedding vows.

The zoos have been moved to Indian reservations, the reservations into the aquariums. The aquariums were stuffed into the libraries, and the libraries share the space inside wristwatches with pornographic holograms.

Sunday morning is every day, and a cloned Cobain really isn’t scared. They won the war on drugs by prescribing away demand, and 24-hour diners are staffed by genetically constructed goddesses who are just bright enough to bring the food out, but too dim to resent doing it.

The eggs are the same, though. With that realization, my vision ends. I eat. I pay. I head for the parking lot. Hop into my Honda. The CD player kicks on, and the Doors mask the engine’s noise. I throw my car in reverse, narrowly missing some woman strolling unaware into the diner. I trace the Doors back to Huxley, and Huxley to Blake. I’m forced to wonder if we’re locking the doors of perception, so that we can molest the infinite; divorce heaven and hell; and never sleep.

E-mail Zak Sharif at rzs8@pitt.edu for his address, then write him a letter.