THE KNICK PAPERS: part II

October 10, 1999
Oberlin, Ohio

Dean:

After the second show at the Knick stuck under the windshield wiper of my car, along with about 37 flyers for upcoming shows by so-called jambands (it's your fault, Budnick), was a manila envelope. Inside was a tattered manuscript written on a hodge-podge of legal-pad paper, the backs of multiple receipts from gas stations across the greater northeast, and several XL-II labels. Here it is. It's confusing the fuck out of me, but perhaps you can make something of it.

Jesse.

Part I of this story appeared in the October issue.

Back at the hotel, sleep was an utterly usless proposition. Entering the room, I went straight for the box of DATs sitting on the dresser and ripped the shrink wrap off the first one I could grab. I threw it in the deck. Punch You In The Eye. It was another soundboard. I fast-forwarded through the rest of my tape, stopping occasionally, and marked down the rest of the setlist. Digging through my bag, I pulled out a beaten copy of the latest Tour Extra. Thumbing through the setlists for the tour to date, I couldn't find one that matched what I had just heard.

Through all of this, Jeff lay on the bed, watching the muted television and flipping through a perpetually useless cycle of cable channels before settling in on alien encounters in lower Alabama on the Sci-Fi network. "I bugged out. "Do you realize what this means?!?" I asked him, almost viciously.

"That you're a freak?"

I stared at him blankly.

"Go the hell to bed," he said with a straight face.

With some sense of mission, I methodically packed up every single component of the DAT machine and stereo I had brought with me on the road trip and carried it, very carefully, into the bathroom. I began to catalog the remaining tapes in the box. It didn't take that long. Only one more had music on it, the rest were blank. I didn't think I could sleep, so I prepared for a long night. Leaving the bathroom, I opened the door to the room slightly so Erin could enter if she arrived back. I grabbed a pillow off my bed and made for the bathroom, where I climbed into the empty bathtub.

Resting my head on the pillow, I rewound the tape that began with Punch You to the beginning and hit play. Trey's various delay loops echoed around the bathroom, reverberating off of the clean tile and bouncing back into the tub. The tape sounded gorgeous. The walls simultaneously amplified and layered the music pouring out of the speakers. Despite all odds, I began to drift slightly into sleep. Ghost turned into a cacophonous swirl of white noise and distorted funk. A giant beat began to establish itself behind the chaos and the band - led by Fish - began to push towards Free. As the band exploded into the intro, I sat up suddenly, knocking the box of DATs from their resting place on the side of the tub.

The container overturned, spilling the contents on the floor of the bathroom. I rubbed my eyes, realizing that I had fallen asleep. The box lay on the floor, upside down, by the base of the toilet - about four feet from the tub - where it had skittered after the tumble. I noticed some text printed on the bottom of the box. I lifted myself out of the tub and crawled over. There was a sticker with some text printed on it. "The Lang Corporation". There was a phone number. Under the phone number was a long string of characters

I carried the box back to the room to use the phone. The lamp next to my bed was one of those peculiarly wired jobs that only seem to be found in hotels. There were two bulbs on it, one focused at each bed. In order to get to a desired setting, one had to cycle through other variations. For some reason, I figured that the light that would point at my side of the bed would be the second or third setting, so I flipped the knob twice in rapid succession. Of course, mine was the first setting -- which I missed completely. Before getting back to what I wanted, the light shone twice directly onto Jeff's face. "Go the fuck to sleep," he mumbled, and rolled over.

When I finally figured out how to get an outside line, I dialed the number on the box. The phone on the other end rang several times before picking up with a click, not entirely unlike a modem. There was a triple beep and then... silence. After a pause, there was another triple beep. Another pause. Another triple beep. This time I was ready. I punched the phrase below the phone number into the keypad. As soon as I had finished, there was a long tone -- almost confirming what I had just entered. Then, something that wasn't quite a voice, and wasn't quite computerized white noise, but wasn't quite anything else, began emitting a sound: "WEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHH. WEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHH. WEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHH." Then, the single most piercing noise I've ever heard in my goddamn life. With a jolt, I hung up the phone.

It continued to ring in my ears as I climbed under the sheets. In an attempt to cancel out the sound I turned the television off of mute and adjusted the volume. Gradually, the ringing faded and I drifted off to sleep. The front desk called a little bit after eleven, telling us that we had to pack up and get out by noon. Jeff dealt with them. The first thing I looked at after opening my eyes was the television. "2001" was on the Sci-Fi network. It was somewhere towards the end of the Dawn of Civilization sequence with the apes. I stared at the screen, dumbfounded. The monolith stood on the screen, practically staring right back at me. As soon as I had adjusted to the fact that I was having a staring contest with a big black slab constructed out some space age material, the monolith began to emit a hugely piercing noise, a sort of more toned down version of what I'd heard on the phone the previous night. I jumped out of bed and jammed the television off.

"You okay?" Jeff asked, still lying in bed. He hadn't bothered to hang up the phone. It lay next to him. There was silence for a short moment before the received began to buzz with an off-the-hook signal. He returned the phone to the cradle. I snapped out of it.

"Uh, I guess."

"What the hell were you doing last night, anyway?" Groggily, I explained the deal with the tape box and the phone number.

"Eh, it was probably just a modem line," he said.

"Then why would it respond to something I entered on the phone?"?

"I dunno."

I smiled stupidly, recounting what had happened. "I called the Lang Corporation and they told me 'WEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHH'."

"Waitaminute."

"Okay," I said, looking at my watch.

"You called the Lang Corporation and they told you 'weh'?"

"That's what I said."

"Ummm..." Jeff began intelligently. "This might be dumb but: Lang, weh..."

"What?"

"Lang, weh, mmm." With the "mmm", Jeff lunged his head forward.

"Excuse me?"

"Lang, weh, blank."

"Not reading you there, buddy."

"Lang, weh, dock, dude. Languedoc."

"Far out."