FAN FICTION
NOVEMBER 2018
GARFIELD.GOV
ADAM HOFBAUER
GARFIELD.GOV
ADAM HOFBAUER
Every morning, Jim put on a pair of crisp khaki pants and an alligator polo, and went in to work at the Paws Compound. They continued to produce and illustrate the comic strip as they had for forty years, and manage its syndication and online distribution rights. But the actual writing, now that it was the only strip approved for national publication, was being conducted at an undisclosed government site. Every month, the Bureau of Cultural Management faxed the staff scripts, and careful notes on the means by which they would be illustrated. “Don’t worry,” the inspector of culture had assured the staff the day of the vice executive order. “Outside of a quarterly inspection you’ll barely notice us.”
A week before the order, Jim received a letter from the office of the Vice President. “Dear Jim. I have always been a staunch believer in the grace of laughter. Your Garfield has always been my favorite comic funny. We are proud to announce an exciting new development in the history of American values.” Jim kept the letter framed in the Paws Inc. trophy room. It was displayed adjacent to the comics page form the Chicago Tribune, from the first day after the order took effect. Where once there had been a dozen strips, now there was only Garfield. There was a section for classic Garfield. There was a reader’s choice section. There was the first daily message from the Vice President. And at the top was the first strip written by the Bureau of Cultural Management. In it, Garfield wants to eat more lasagna. But he can’t. He’s too fat. Jim had to admit, it was really funny.
Every afternoon, Jim called the Vice President’s office. Most days, he got a voicemail or a secretary. “Did you hear if he laughed this morning?” Jim would ask. “Could you hear the Vice President laughing?” After the announcement, before the armored trucks came to secure the hard copy archives and wipe the systems clean, Jim had dictated a letter to the Vice President, detailing what he felt were the core components of the strip. “Garfield has always been hand lettered,” he wrote. “It is an artisanal object. Treat its creation no differently than the firing of fine china or the building an oak desk, for the study in the final room in which you will ever sit.”
After lunch, Jim would review merchandise, or speak to foreign licensing partners through the translation service. He fed the cats on the back porch. They always kept at least once cat at the Compound. It felt a wrong not to. When the cats slipped into old age, Jim always escorted them to vet himself, to hold them as they went, and to hand pick their replacement. Jim hoped that in whatever desert bunker or glass skyscraper in which they now whispered the strip to life, a cat still prowled somewhere, to eye the figure eights of birds. On the day the trucks came to claim the archives, down that long highway in the morning, Jim’s granddaughter had asked him if he thought this was the cat’s destiny, to be hauled away like this. And he said she misunderstood. Garfield wasn’t being taken away. He was having the final laugh. All cats die, he thought. Until now. “It is the cat who writes his material”, he had written the Vice President. “We can only listen to what he’s telling us.”
Jim alone had been told that the plan was to eventually turn the generation of the daily strip over to an algorithm. That was why that had gathered the archives in the first place, to digitize the cat’s four decades into a functioning, electronic nervous system. They’d been writing Beetle Bailey that way for years. But they had yet to achieve the sophistication needed for believable Garfield stories. To demonstrate, the Bureau had even sent Jim a sample of algorithmic generations. “Scenario Generation: Garfield falls asleep with his head in the lasagna. Garfield picks his head up. Garfield’s eyes are lasagna.”
“You see?” the inspector of culture had said. “Unusable.” Jim wasn’t sure. It was very Garfield to fall asleep with your head in the lasagna. “Our concern isn’t the quality,” the inspector said. “This never leaves this room, but the program may have become momentarily self-aware.”
“Is he laughing, though?” Jim had asked. “In the mornings, when he reads the paper? Can you hear him laughing?”
He had put down two cats that year. Had held them in blankets as the vet inserted the catheter into their IVs. It always took two pumps of medicine. Sometime the cats let out tiny, final meows after the first injection. Sometimes they couldn’t muster the energy to close their eyes. Some looked at him. The past two had both looked elsewhere, as if through the clinic walls, towards something they had always sense approaching.
At night, Jim went home. He opened the newspaper, but he skipped the comics section. He sat at his desk and took out a piece of paper and started to draw until he had finished a three panel strip. He knew that unlawful creation of any Garfield narratives was means for significant fines and possible jail time. Like he did every night, he would burn the strip in the kitchen sink. But he was so pleased with himself. To remember every night that the thread had not been severed. That the cat still whispered to him, from somewhere.
A week before the order, Jim received a letter from the office of the Vice President. “Dear Jim. I have always been a staunch believer in the grace of laughter. Your Garfield has always been my favorite comic funny. We are proud to announce an exciting new development in the history of American values.” Jim kept the letter framed in the Paws Inc. trophy room. It was displayed adjacent to the comics page form the Chicago Tribune, from the first day after the order took effect. Where once there had been a dozen strips, now there was only Garfield. There was a section for classic Garfield. There was a reader’s choice section. There was the first daily message from the Vice President. And at the top was the first strip written by the Bureau of Cultural Management. In it, Garfield wants to eat more lasagna. But he can’t. He’s too fat. Jim had to admit, it was really funny.
Every afternoon, Jim called the Vice President’s office. Most days, he got a voicemail or a secretary. “Did you hear if he laughed this morning?” Jim would ask. “Could you hear the Vice President laughing?” After the announcement, before the armored trucks came to secure the hard copy archives and wipe the systems clean, Jim had dictated a letter to the Vice President, detailing what he felt were the core components of the strip. “Garfield has always been hand lettered,” he wrote. “It is an artisanal object. Treat its creation no differently than the firing of fine china or the building an oak desk, for the study in the final room in which you will ever sit.”
After lunch, Jim would review merchandise, or speak to foreign licensing partners through the translation service. He fed the cats on the back porch. They always kept at least once cat at the Compound. It felt a wrong not to. When the cats slipped into old age, Jim always escorted them to vet himself, to hold them as they went, and to hand pick their replacement. Jim hoped that in whatever desert bunker or glass skyscraper in which they now whispered the strip to life, a cat still prowled somewhere, to eye the figure eights of birds. On the day the trucks came to claim the archives, down that long highway in the morning, Jim’s granddaughter had asked him if he thought this was the cat’s destiny, to be hauled away like this. And he said she misunderstood. Garfield wasn’t being taken away. He was having the final laugh. All cats die, he thought. Until now. “It is the cat who writes his material”, he had written the Vice President. “We can only listen to what he’s telling us.”
Jim alone had been told that the plan was to eventually turn the generation of the daily strip over to an algorithm. That was why that had gathered the archives in the first place, to digitize the cat’s four decades into a functioning, electronic nervous system. They’d been writing Beetle Bailey that way for years. But they had yet to achieve the sophistication needed for believable Garfield stories. To demonstrate, the Bureau had even sent Jim a sample of algorithmic generations. “Scenario Generation: Garfield falls asleep with his head in the lasagna. Garfield picks his head up. Garfield’s eyes are lasagna.”
“You see?” the inspector of culture had said. “Unusable.” Jim wasn’t sure. It was very Garfield to fall asleep with your head in the lasagna. “Our concern isn’t the quality,” the inspector said. “This never leaves this room, but the program may have become momentarily self-aware.”
“Is he laughing, though?” Jim had asked. “In the mornings, when he reads the paper? Can you hear him laughing?”
He had put down two cats that year. Had held them in blankets as the vet inserted the catheter into their IVs. It always took two pumps of medicine. Sometime the cats let out tiny, final meows after the first injection. Sometimes they couldn’t muster the energy to close their eyes. Some looked at him. The past two had both looked elsewhere, as if through the clinic walls, towards something they had always sense approaching.
At night, Jim went home. He opened the newspaper, but he skipped the comics section. He sat at his desk and took out a piece of paper and started to draw until he had finished a three panel strip. He knew that unlawful creation of any Garfield narratives was means for significant fines and possible jail time. Like he did every night, he would burn the strip in the kitchen sink. But he was so pleased with himself. To remember every night that the thread had not been severed. That the cat still whispered to him, from somewhere.
Adam Hofbauer’s fiction has been featured in the United States and the UK, including in The Emerson Review, Gold Dust Magazine and The Dead Mule School Review. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. He lives in Philadelphia.