Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem

heads of the air bag cabbages would instantly inflate, drawing air from the root system, to cushion the impact of the crash, saving lives,
preventing costly property loss
. Only—
    The Dystopianist pushed away from his desk, and squinted through the blinds at the sun-splashed street below. School buses lined his block every morning, like vast tipped orange-juice cartons spilling out the human vitamin of youthful lunacy, that chaos of jeering voices and dancing tangled shadows in the long morning light. The Dystopianist was hungry for breakfast. He didn't know yet how the misguided safety cabbages fucked up the world. He couldn't say what
grievous chain of circumstances
led from the
innocuous genetic novelty
to another
crushing totalitarian regime
. He didn't know what light the cabbages shed on the
death urge in human societies
. He'd work it out, though. That was his job. First Monday of each month the Dystopianist came up with his idea, the
green poison fog
or
dehumanizing fractal download
or
alienating architectural fad
which would open the way to another ruined or oppressed reality. Tuesday he began making his extrapolations, and he had the rest of the month to get it right. Today was Monday, so the cabbages were enough.
    The Dystopianist moved into the kitchen, poured a second cup of coffee, and pushed slices of bread into the toaster. The
Times
Metro section headline spoke of the capture of a celebrated villain, an addict and killer who'd crushed a pedestrian's skull with a cobblestone. The Dystopianist read his paper while scraping his toast with shreds of ginger marmalade, knife rushing a little surf of butter ahead of the crystalline goo. He read intently to the end of the account, taking pleasure in the story.
    The Dystopianist hated bullies. He tried to picture himself standing behind darkened glass, fingering perps in a line-up, couldn't. He tried to picture himself standing in the glare, head flinched in arrogant dejection, waiting to be fingered, but this was even more impossible. He stared at the photo of the apprehended man and unexpectedly the Dystopianist found himself thinking vengefully, hatefully, of his rival.
    Once the Dystopianist had had the entire dystopian field to himself. There was just him and the Utopianists. The Dystopianist loved reading the Utopianists' stories, their dim, hopeful scenarios, which were published in magazines like
Expectant
and
Encouraging
. The Dystopianist routinely purchased them newly minted from the newsstands and perverted them the very next day in his own work, plundering the Utopianists' motifs for dark inspiration. Even the garishly sunny illustrated covers of the magazines were fuel. The Dystopianist stripped them from the magazines' spines and pinned them up over his desk, then raised his pen like Death's sickle and plunged those dreamily ineffectual worlds into ruin.
    The Utopianists were older men who'd come into the field from the sciences or from academia: Professor this or that, like Dutch burghers from a cigar box. The Dystopianist had appeared in print like a rat among them, a burrowing animal laying turds on their never-to-be-realized blueprints. He liked his role. Every once in a blue moon the Dystopianist agreed to appear in public alongside the Utopianists, on a panel at a university or a conference. They loved to gather,
the fools
, in fluorescent-lit halls behind tables decorated with sweating pitchers of ice water. They were always eager to praise him in public by calling him one of their own. The Dystopianist ignored them, refusing even the water from their pitchers. He played directly to the audience members who'd come to see him, who shared his low opinion of the Utopianists. The Dystopianist could always spot his readers by their black trench coats, their acne, their greasily teased hair, their earphones, resting around their collars, trailing to Walkmans secreted in coat pockets.
    The Dystopianist's rival was a Utopianist, but he wasn't like the