If Einstein had found the Unified Field Theory, he’d’ve combed his hair, chucked his Attends, and blipped out of his cold upstairs Manhattan lab and into a hot paradise of woman-fleshed beaches and waters bluer than windshield-wiper fluid. That’s just the sort of power the Unified Field Theory grants. If Arthur had found the Holy Grail, his grubby Dark-Ages tabard and mail would have melted to the earth, and he, robed in lightning, would have ascended (on the way perhaps burning Lancelot into a greasy smoldering turd) to choruses and coronas. If Orson Welles had made the perfect movie, his cigar would’ve transformed into a Cuban plantation, and his magic act would have drawn cloven-hoofed principalities of hell to bow at his feet.

How do I know? Because the real successes have done just these things.

In 1897, Farmer Henry Buck Rushland of Topeka discovered the Unified Field Theory in a batch of carrots he was hoeing, and now he’s sucking down cholesterol-free pina coladas on the cerebrated sandy shore of his mind’s imagining. There have been fourteen others who’ve discovered it since, all of whom are enjoying one heaven or another. As to the Holy Grail, John the Beloved absconded with it in 35 A.D., which is why he’s still alive on Patmos and still shopping around the sequel to his book of Revelation. And, the perfect movie was made by Ronald Reagan, whose performance was so great that he became president of the United States, wielding all the world’s power with none of the responsibility, and drawing homage from cloven-hoofed sorts everywhere.

There have been many others. Cancer has been cured twenty-six times, and the common cold seven thousand three hundred and thirty-two. The secrets of comfortable wool and invigorating panty hose have also been hoarded by selfish creators. Even modern horrors such as orthodontics and car repair are unnecessary holdovers from a time before perfect teeth and perfect cars were discovered.

As for me and my labors for the perfect poem, the perfect song, the perfect book . . . well, you haven’t seen the annex to my bedroom.

The robin who eats the worm has a slightly larger brain, having digested the worm brain into its own. A robin brain thus has more principles: Eat Dirt, Eat Worm, Eat Bug, Flap Wings, Feed Babies, Build Nest, Sing Song, Strafe Cat, and Harry Human. The astute observer will realize that these principles have all been gained through the bird’s digestion of the principle-fortified brains of lesser creatures. The robin gained Eat Dirt from worms, Eat Worm and Eat Bug from spiders, Flap Wings from moths, Feed Babies from bees, Build Nest from mud daubers, Sing Song from crickets, Strafe Cat from horseflies, and Harry Human from cats.

The astute observer will also realize that the origin of human principles is likewise the human gullet. This is why we must give up veal calf, for from it we have learned Bleat Mournfully, Chafe Hopelessly, Dread Farmer, Worry Tail, Abrade Joints, and Expect Execution.

Many other unwholesome principles have crept into human consciousness by way of the insatiable gullet. Various pates has taught us Gorge and Explode Liver; lobster has taught Scream While Dying and Scuttle; beef has taught us Lick Genitals and Stink; venison has taught us Stare Blankly and Jay-Walk; and the list goes on and on. (In Korea, the popularity of dog-soup and Doggy-Style are correlated).

The problem is complex, for most animals have disgusting habits that humans should not practice, and a culinary retreat to the vegetable kingdom allows only the principles Sway Slowly and Grow. The only reasonable solution lies in eating animals nobler than oneself: the dolphin, the bald eagle, the horse, the Saint Bernard. Some purists will, perhaps, prefer to eat people nobler than themselves, such as women, rulers, or geniuses. Or yet, best of all are those who eat only communion wafers and drink only communion wine, for they receive the principle of Messianic Salvation.

Even so, many of those folk have discovered, too late, that Jesus often Lisped Words and had the annoying propensity to Pick Nose.

“My little blister baby.”

When his pregnancy had begun, he had had no idea how translucent his skin would become, how through the epidermis and dermis and the epidural layer of tapiocalike fat, he would be able to shine a flashlight and see the little boy. In those moments, his own flesh became merely a mucousy extension of the placenta that swaddled the miracle baby.

But, best of all were the times (as now, sitting by the bay window in the oversized and chair and shining the fourth flashlight with the twelfth set of batteries) when the fetus turned toward that light and opened its blue eyes and looked upward through the murk of his father toward the world he would shortly join–join by emerging through the sliced paternal membrane.

He should have stopped then. The electrostatic elevation of leg hair was clear enough evidence. The ring of ionic heat about his left kneecap made the danger undeniable. But, undaunted, he continued to 41st. Surely lightning wouldn’t strike the same place twice.

Not exactly the same place. The blue-white bolt arced from left knee to right testicle, crackling angrily along the gray cotton and red silk and melting the fibers away in a blackened line. He fell, both his literal body and the now exposed member that had been struck, and together they hit the pavement. Then, with trembling hands, he reflexively cupped said member, scrotum empty now and marked by a second cauterized burn scar.

Not again. And boxers were supposed to prevent sterility.

When they gave us the Statue of Liberty they had 10,000 French warriors inside who waited until dark to spring out and capture New York, only when they did they found out they were on Liberty Island and didn’t have the two bits for the ferry ride to the mainland, so they had to swim for it and the only ones of the 10,000 that made it were three brothers from Alsace-Lorraine who happened to have webbed fingers and toes due to inbreeding and thus when they washed up on Manhattan were not taken to a hospital but a lab because the scientists thought they were frogs, and meanwhile the others drowned and were washed up on Liberty Island where they were buried beneath the statue with the warning, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless tempest tossed to me, I’ve room to bury them beneath my floor,” and when the three brothers from Alsace-Lorraine heard this warning they fled the lab and clipped the webbing from their fingers and toes and went into business blocking hats for the same politicians that snickeringly had arranged for the statue to be on an island. Since then they have worked their revenge on America by patiently and thoroughly and badly blocking hats so that not a person in Manhattan wears a bowler by choice anymore.

The only thing that would make a hypodermic scarier would be if it actually desired to do its job. Imagine seeing one on the dentist tray before you, a drop of novocaine clinging to its tip, its shaft throbbing in anticipation for your gums, its plastic translucent mosquito wings quivering with eager agitation, and when the dentist says “O.K.,” it buzzes over on those stiff plastic wings and lands on your lips and clings there with little metal legs as it sticks its proboscis beneath your gums, and, behind it, the plunger begins its savoring descent.

“Cicada,” he said.

They came every seven years, like the plague of Exodus. And, as though Grandpa were some first-century felled cedar, I counted his rings in sevens: the last time the locusts had come, I was but seven, and the time before that, I was, not at all, and then, before that, it was ‘59, with the Great Society, and then, ‘52, when Singing in the Rain was made, and then ‘45, when at last World War II was done.

Four generations of these shell-shedding beasts had come and gone on the spinning world between now, when I stood in this postage-stamp yard with Grandpa amid the scallions and irises, and the time of the Bomb. Four generations. Or ten thousand mayflies since that bomb brought it all to an end. Ten thousand mayflies and three humans, my grandfather being in that first generation, and me being in the third.

When I am dead, in four more generations of cicadas and eleven thousand of mayflies, I hope there will be another generation of me to think back.

When they’d first wheeled him through the automatic doors, his old-man voice had risen up past chrome and straps and blankets to say it was the moon the humors a woman the gods that had made him do it, had inspired the naked parade in the snow. But they heard not moon but radiation, not humors but neural transmitters . . . hormones . . . . . delusions.

“No No No!” he said with a white headshake like a ghost terrier clutching and flinging a rag in its teeth.

But he could say no more, not only because he could not articulate how it the nude walk had had something to do with Waterloo and Panama, but also because they were not listening. They were cooing and patting his neck-whipping head.

There will be no other Napoleons here, he knew as they wheeled him past the ragged boneless slumping patients, draped by the walls like badly erected tents. No Napoleons no Teddy Roosevelts no Joans of Arc. These monochromatic loons had no imagination, were only ever Jesus or Satan if they were anything at all.

Then came the impossibly slim needle like a rigid hair sliding into him, and the dope flowed dark and placid over his eyes in kaleidoscope.

He missed those old grand high days of madness, but they then had had no drugs as good as these.

“Welcome to the Great White Way! We can’t wait to see you dance.”

Thanks! I’m going to be appearing in the Majestic in a big revue!

“Um, well, actually, you’ll be appearing in front of the Majestic in your big revue.”

Huh?

“Broadway’s not what it used to be, kid. There used to be all kinds of dough in it, all kinds of folks who made sure that acts on Broadway were first class. But that ain’t the way anymore. Before Broadway was a musical destination, it was just a street, and now that it’s no longer a musical destination, it’s once again just a street. Which means that everybody can appear on Broadway. Like you!”

Yeah, but, I’m not talking about the street. I’m talking about the legendary theaters on the street.

“They’re gone.”

What?

“People don’t pay for shows anymore. They want it all free. All on the street. So all these theaters are in foreclosure. You can’t get in them unless you’ve got a hard hat. But good news for you is you can still be on Broadway by just being on the street!”

You mean, like a hobo.

“Course not. Hobos don’t sing and dance. They don’t have got a violin case for people’s change. But that, by the way, is all you get anymore on Broadway—change.”

So, now that the theaters are gone—after I’ve spent 20 years trying getting into them—and now that everybody expects entertainment for free on Broadway—

“Not for free. They give you some nickles if they like how you dance.”

—I’m supposed to be happy about this?

“You’ve been liberated from the system. You don’t have to wait for a director to pick you, for a producer to believe in you. You don’t have to rely on a bunch of marketers who don’t get you, a bunch of reviewers who don’t like you, and an audience who won’t pay to see you. Instead, you become all those things yourself.”

What?

“You hold tryouts, for which only you perform. You are your own director, casting yourself in every role. You write your own script and build your own set and design your own lighting. You do all your own marketing and sell all your own tickes. You sew all your own costumes. You pay yourself to be ushers. You show yourself to your seat. You watch your own show and review it for the papers and interview yourself telling how great you are, and you make yourself your favorite star!”

Seems pretty narcisistic.

“THANK you! That’s the word I’ve been looking for. I knew it had something to do with a beautiful flower, narcissus, and you gave me the word. You’re even your own dictionary!”

I quit. This isn’t Broadway. This is hobos playing on Broadway for spare change.

“But remember: Hobos don’t have your talent!”

If I’m a hobo, they do.

Yes, all of that is true, but it’s only half of the story. Moxyland reads like Lord Byron meets Lady Gaga, Dorothy Parker meets Axl Rose. It’s, in a word, something old meets something new.

Take the first character we meet–Kendra, who is on her way to get tattooed as a living poster girl for a multinational corporation. That’s something new. But she’s also a photo student who uses only “oldschool” film that has to be developed–this after the last Kodochrome processor is long-since dead.

Think of Toby, the familiar lovable stoner, whose rich parents bankroll his degenerate ways. We’ve seen this figure since the ’60s, except that Toby is also a streamcaster with a loyal Web following, whose own chaotic life becomes a reality series for the world. Old meets new.

Tendaka is the inflexible white knight paladin straight out of King Arthur and yet is also a gay activist/freedom fighter/terrorist/tagger–depending on your labeling preferences.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Moxyland is, yes, very new because it speaks to our time and our future, but it is also very old because it speaks to where we have been. Beukes’s writing is new and crisp because she has invented a kind of post-modern patois, but she uses this new language to tell a story that resonates with the narrations of the last thousand years.

And voice is the thing. We read voices the way we read faces. The reason art students have trouble painting faces is that every human being is an expert at reading them. The arm could be six inches too long and we wouldn’t care, but if the face is off–what the hell? People can spot a false face a mile away.

We read voices in the same way. A writer’s voice tells us five critical things: (1) who the writer is, (2) what the writer is trying to do, (3) what the writer thinks of the subject, (4) what relationship the writer has to the reader, and (5) what relationship the writer has to language, itself. People can spot a false voice a mile away.

And so, Moxyland could run aground because it sounds too futuristic, or too modern, or too traditional. But it does none of these. Beukes’s voice sounds simultaneously futuristic, modern, and traditional. That’s no mean feat. And on top of it all, Beukes creates four narrators with four distinct voices.