The physiologic parameters of the hostage were nominal, flat, boring.

Survival was on the table, but not HER survival.

Achievement was on the table, but not HER achievement.

Risk was on the table, but not HER risk.

If this were extreme (or absurd in the extreme) and witnessed from a safe comfortable distance, it would have been entertainment.

But it wasn't, so she tried to talk the hostage-taker down. Not that she minded being a hostage, but she'd just rather be doing something else -- like maybe being Assistant Secretary of State for Quantum Electro-Dynamical Affairs, or seeing all the way through this bogus SOMETHING to the truth of absolute NOTHING.

"I want to read to you from my book, 'The Pot-Driven Life'," she said. "Unfortunately we, uhh, you know, got a little hung up doin' the research for it and never quite got around to actually writing, you know, like,... the book."

So, instead, she read to him from "Consciousness Explained", starting at page 1.

"C'mon, c'mon," the hostage taker-said impatiently, "read faster, I wanna see how it ends. I wanna know what consciousness is. Once you know that, who'd even give a fuck anymore. Turning yourself in and never committing another crime the rest of your life would be as easy as drinking cool water from a clear mountain stream on a warm summer's day in the Appalachian foothills."

She didn't tell him that consciousness never really gets explained because nobody knows what the fuck it is and titles of books are really just marketing ploys and books are really just products like toasters, and it doesn't really matter what's inside cause in the end everybody knows fucking nothing and what they say in all those hundreds of pages is here are all the ways we can approach emitting lots and lots of language in the absence of knowing absolutely fucking anything at all -- and so, in lieu of something, here's some fucking "story", and in lieu of something else here's another fucking "story" or logical proof that's impeccable in the beginning and then there's that moment of hand-waving, or that moment when it's suddenly look over here, but the action's going on over there and you miss it.

Around page 325 the hostage-taker started getting all antsy. "Hey, this guy doesn't know what the fuck consciousness is either. Does he? He's just like all those bourgeois losers with their goatees and pianos in their living rooms at the University of California, San Diego, isn't he. But shit, man, the guy hangs with Minsky... least you would expect is...."

Then he turned cold and sullen. He started looking at his gun.

"I need a bigger gun," he told the hostage. "Something automatic that fires lotsa rounds. Maybe some huge water cannon that shoots sulfuric acid instead of water or some flame thrower thing that covers a wide swath."

The hostage said, "Look, I think I can write down a first draft of 'The Pot-Driven Life' in a few hours. Then I can read it to you."

So instead of going to the gun-store, the hostage-taker sat down to work out his ideas on the origin of the cosmos from nothing, way way before the so-called big bang, and the hostage sat down to write 'The Pot-Driven Life'.

And this is what she wrote:

When the hostage finished reading it to him, the hostage-taker burst into tears.

"And we don't even have to leave here to go to the gun shop to stock up," she said. "The latest in all your suicide bomber apparel needs is just a mouse-click away. And Al-Caida ships FedEx Overnight and UPS 2nd-day air. And orders over $1000 ship UPS Ground for free."

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