"Apres moi, le deluge." -King Louis XIV

	Folklore would have it that the mad see things we do not, and in
story after story, they predict the end of the world. They didn't have the
jump on us this time, though. America's deranged watched Judgment arrive
along with everyone else, because they, like 98% of other Americans, own
televisions. And most of them, like 62% of their not-yet-unhinged fellows,
saw Didi Buttons win the Miss Pre-Teen USA pageant.
	Those in the auditorium at the time reported bolts of coruscating
radiance seemingly bursting out of Didi's eyes at the moment she accepted
her honorary scepter. Few retained their vision, but many insisted that in
the stillness that held sway for mere seconds before panic broke out, all
the chairs in the room creaked simultaneously.
	A bowdlerized version aired that night on the news, but by that
time anyone who hadn't been tuned in had heard what happened next on the
Atlanta Civic Center stage: Didi Buttons danced and sang a note-perfect
version of "In The Mood", as popularized by Glenn Miller. "It was not
merely a case of our collective tendency to sexualize innocence," wrote a
New York Times critic the next day, "but something much deeper. I wanted
to merge with Ms. Buttons, to deliquesce physically and revert, as she
danced, to an amoeba." Morals groups, overestimating their relevance in a
society about the transform itself, denounced the comments as perverted
prattle; most of them secretly wanted to be Buttons-amoebas too.
	Gradually, the 2000-some blind in Atlanta found their sight ret-
urning, and what they saw was not pretty. Absenteeism was strangling most
industries as each of Didi's performances brought her more fans, and each
day saw more fans giving in to obsession. Her Super-Bowl-opening foxtrot
attracted precisely the kind of viewer that had skipped the Miss PTUSA in
favor of tougher Sunday night fare. The gig she got playing violin on the
steps of the Library of Congress brought in people who had claimed total
disinterest in the Buttons phenomenon. Nobody could rein in their cur-
iousity forever, and nobody, once hooked, could stand not to feed their
heads with continual fantasy fodder.
	Death tolls mounted. Some fixated on Didi's Superman costume (ABC
pre-Emmys show) and locked themselves in phone booths. Others went for her
stock-trader look (Vanity Fair fashion shoot) and were found smothered in
ticker tape printed with NASDAQ member quotes. Each media outlet's bind was
the same: kill their viewers with increased Didi coverage, or ignore her
entirely and prepare their offices for the inevitable siege?
	And who was in these beleaguered studios? Who still showed up for
9 am editors' meetings? Surviving scientists began to speculate on the
formula to Didi's appeal. Extensive interviews with the 15% of fans who were
still more or less lucid turned up one common theme: Didi Buttons WANTED
to be loved. Her intense fascination FOR and WITH each viewer were one and
the same, or so the viewer inevitably felt.
	The plan, then, was to put her in a gilded cage, to bombard her with
attention but impose on nobody the burden of providing it. An elaborate set
of simulacra, video playback units, mirrors and metronomes formed the heart
of the cell she was to be confined in.
	For good measure, they put her "Permastage" out in the wilderness.
A month later, the first crew to check back on her realized what had gone
wrong. Goats had butted down the walls of the cell, and within an estimated
60 hours, she had been nuzzled into oblivion by the same assortment of ani-
mals that was now wandering the area listlessly.
	It took decades, but eventually things got rebuilt and repopulated.
They even put up a monument to Didi, though nobody could put their finger
on why.

written for Colleen Campbell 10/11/01

I thought it was a mess, but Colleen liked it, which just goes to show that the more dead ends I have to mentally weed out while writing something, the less I'll be able to apprehend the final product. I like the beginning and end, too; hard to put my finger on exactly what my problem with the middle is, but I think one big thing is the uncalled-for zoom-out. Suddenly, Society Itself is the main character. There's also a completely botched transition in the fourth-to-last paragraph where I meant to say something about a chemical (or whatever) that made people resistant to the lure of Didi, but whatever.

The nice thing is that even if this were the suckiest pile of suck ever (which I still thought it was until I came back to it now, the next afternoon), it didn't keep me from going and doing some things that I was proud of the next day. Ups and downs are part of the process here.

Please consider the larksical changes of verb tense in the previous paragraph to be a tribute to poor old number 24.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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