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No Identity She sees her own relfection in the mirror - Eyes cold, expression dead. She tugs a cold comb through wiry hair, Glasses cover her eyes, a veil which within to cower Sle locks the door, carefully places the key Deep in her pocket, strightens her shoulders Ans walks gracefully past others, Smiling transparently. Another key, another lock to pass. Her car reverses from the lot. She races the highway: Swerve, shout - She has no identity here. And theres the turn - the slows to make it... A crunched bumper bar, another hundred dollars. And this, atop the price of food, the price of petrol... Stress! She walks - slouches - into work. The manic driver speeds, again nameless. Her secirity dropped, her nature exposed. Hatred, revenge - stress, worry - Others must pay for their actions! Locks, keys - deep in her pocket - So much to do! They must be kept out. She sleeps alone, cold and separate - frightened... She races the highway - here she has no identity.
Memoirs of a Moment ©1993 Tim St.Clair “It was just a dream.” The soft voice spoke reassuringly, unknowingly. Unknowingly of the abrupt truth that lay encased within its impenetrable casing. * * * Some dream. God! Where had it all started? A long time ago, that’s where. Probably in my early childhood, or sometime, at least, when I was still that young, buoyant kid, up on the issues and ‘in-things’ that accompanied my generation. Ah, those were the days. All I could see, at the ripe ol’ age of sixteen, was the corruption and violence that our great “civilised” society had threaded into its everyday procedures. All I could see was what the media told me. The lies and half-truths that accompanied each night’s news reports on the TV and radio. Then there was that surreal world that emanated from Hollywood and Universal, the sort of that made people think that this world of ours is full of heroes, with more resistance for bullets and bombshells than- what? not much, these days- anyway. So they were the people that lived in front of their TV’s, or in the theatres, where the real world gave way to the unreal world of movie stars and the like. But, through all of this, there came the news. The news, the more news and other news, this news, that news. It all said the same thing. “Today in Washington, mass civilian revolt caused the gory deaths of...”, “Slovinia, last night, the remains of the four escapees were found smashed to death...”, “Once again, Police Commissioner what’s-his-name was found guilty of sex offences with an immature nine-year-old...” and on and on and on. Turn the TV off, turn on the radio. “Today in Washington, mass civilian revolt caused the horrific deaths of...”. We were surrounded by death and destruction, violence and chaos. And was it so bad? Was it so untrue? Granted, there was a few wars going on, the occasional city razed, the sometime death of 10,000 civilians. But, who’s counting? More road deaths and drunken smashes, but who’s counting? I’m sure someone was. I, most certainly, really couldn’t’ve cared less. Why should I have? It was another world away, I sat in my safe little room typing away at a computer keyboard, watching the cartoons on the TV or playing the piano. What use was the knowledge that another god-knows-how-many kids had died of malnutrition. Any use at all? Well, some thought so. The staticians loved it, the historians too, and definitely the newsreaders and media groups. But that’s really all. The world can only hold so much, I said. Each American city only held the odd 15 million or so and the European cities held about the same amounts each, and all the countryside on the globe really didn’t matter much to me at that age. So with all the TV, radio and newspapers there had to be something for the kids, too. And there was. There was ‘VideoMania’. All those big ‘men’ movies, high action, blood and guts- just what they didn’t show on the TV is what the children did see. It was as if the adults were actually scared of what they saw. They happened to see the real world being exposed. The Americans and their military and presidential corruption, the Australian corrupts destroying lives and inevitably the country, the pompous European idiots and their silly war games, bickering and land disputes. And then there was the world of Hollywood- that stupid glittering crap that rolled endlessly from the reels of film. The idiot storywriters that poured the same old thing over and over and over into movies about rambo men, rambo women, all-American heroes, all-American heroines(!), good cops, bad cops, dead cops, cop wars, drug dealers getting shot by ex-cops, westerns, western cops... The list went on to infinity. Millions of millions of dollars went into movies each year, about as much as went into the military rubbish, and almost as much as went into computer games. The games industry was rather big. It included enough fighting and shoot-em-up games to simulate World War IV. The games industry was so competitive it revolutionised the worlds computer industry. Getting more power into less space, more fight into the home- more violence into the younger. Everyone thought the US military had the most sophisticated computer network and power on the planet. Not so. Electronic Entertainment surpassed all. The huge industry in games even affected the movie world. The movie makers made films about characters generated by a computer game, and the game industry in turn made games about movie characters. All in all, the world was thriving on violence, corruption and destruction. The environment was decaying, the kids didn’t care. In the utopia world of reincarnation of their favourite dreams, where even reality was not real, the adults of the childrens’ tomorrows couldn’t give a stuff. Their parents were too scared to give a stuff, and the world just didn’t go anywhere for quite some time. Their so greatly needed utopia was still far off- still just a story. * * * “Some dream. Well, I’m awake now, might’s well get up.” Outside, the sky was a darker shadow, the grass was a shade greyer. Our utopia was a little more crumbly.
Suicide Expedition Calling out. Nobody there but me. Calling your name to the wind, as the song goes. Rushing so fast it sucks the words right from my mouth. Replaced by a subconscious thought, twisted like it is. Bedroom scene. Not sex. Bedroom: Four white walls, grey carpet, table, bed, yellowish light, door, aluminuim window. Dots on the walls from Blu-Tac: Bygone pictures and posters torn out of existance. A bygone time. Blank eyes, blank ceiling, blank expression, blank soul. Dark from lurid night. Evil/Fear from torrentuous night. Plaster cracks:A smile from a friend. No smile indeed: Sadism subconscious tormenting the lame. Friend and a friend: Pure love, no restraints. One on one. Going out: Forgotten joy. Good time: No comment. “...The purpose of life is to live. Understand this and be at one with yourself. Have a nice life...” Quoth God, who never one lived and lives eternally in us, they say. They say alot of things. About people. About feelings and stuff. Putty in the hand of god, a mind. Putty to shape and perfect. Putty to bake and putty to shatter. To shatter: Scattered pieces of a whole. Mostly replaceable, though nothing’s perfect. Life as an ant. Carry a load, drop a load and repeat. Until eaten by a bird or torched by a brainless kid with a magnifying glass. Meaningless existance: No love drive, no will to be. A springy helix of finite length and infinite possibility: An algorithm. Existance as an algorithm. To be or not to be. A sum, add up the worth, see what you get. Nowhere. The algorithm is wrong. Change the algorithm. A sum, add up the costs, see what you get. Cycle of dependencies, liberate each other from a hopeless life of drudgery. Nowhere. Change the algorithm. It won’t change. Society is to blame. Television. Radio. Stereo. Mono. Computer. Virtual Reality. Hollywood. Pleasure Island. Space colonisation. Isaac Asimov. Fantasy novels. Fiction. Science Fiction. Alien Attacks. World Peace. 1984. Internet. Information Superhighway. Cyberspace. Cyberpunks. Greenpeace. World Wildlife Fund. Ozone Friendly. NASA. NATO. EEC. G7. USA. CIS. SPCA. RSPCA. GST. VAT. Hitler. Stalin. Alexander the Great. Atila the Hun. Jesus Christ. Sidartha the Budha. Mohammad. Gods of all. McDonalds. Kentucky Fried Chicken. Pizza Hut. Hungry Jacks. Social Security. Pension. Monitory Assets Testing. Taxes. Politics. Communism. Democracy. Heirachy. Anarchy. Chaos. Order. Socialism. Fractal Geometry. Circle. Square. Triangle. Shapes. Images. Boy. Girl. Man. Woman. Adolescent. Teenager. Adult. Mr. Mrs. Ms. Mstr. Miss. Black. White. Red. Yellow. Colour. Skin. Race. Paint. Ink. Background. Portrait. Symbols. Icons. Representations of idealist ideals. Graffiti. Words. Ideals all. Is there a difference? Society is to fault. Change the algorithm. The algorithm won’t change. Blank eyes staring at a blank ceiling. Love: The algorithm. The algorithm can not change. Need: External device. Batteries not included. Get your own. Find it yourself. It’s not my problem. Years. Seconds. Time passing. The algorithm can not change. Need: Values of Variables and Constants within the algorithm in order to solve the problem. Need: To change the algorithm in order to suit the variables in order to get the desired result. Chemicals reacting in response to neurostimulation. Action Attained. Electric pulses across cellular bodies cause genetic algorithms to resolve. Action Attained. Murder within the soul in an empty coffin. Metadeath within seconds. The algorithm does not change.
1. Awaken A baby was crying. Sophia couldn’t stand it when the baby cried. Tonight the baby cried because outside the house was a raging storm with crashes of thunder rolling down from the black sky every time a stroke of white light lit the blue-grey rain. Wind was banging things together and somewhere out the a dog was howling. The house was set back in trees which were hissing from both the wind and sheer weight of water banging into them as it fell. Torrents of water flowed down the dirt road, forming mini-rapids that cleared away the dust and leaves. The old corrugated iron walls and rooves of the sheds just up the road roared through the darkness. The baby wailed again. Sophia closed her eyes again and pushed her head further into the pillow, pulling the warm blankets up over her head in a vain attempt to block out the babies’ screams. She loved the sound of the rain and the smell of the wet air that it brought. It reminded her, somehow, of her childhood that seemed so far back. But she couldn’t stand a babies cries in the night. However the cries faded and soon after, Sophia was asleep. The smell of wet grass. Mud and wet grass and the smell of sunlight warming the ground. When sophia opened her eyes for the first time the next morning, she decided to lie in bed and smell the world that wafted in the window. She could partly see out to the green-as-could-be trees and lawns and paddocks beyond that, and she could smell the wet grass. Too soon, however, after her awakening was she forced to get out of the warm surrounds that was her bed. Her tiny clock was ringing through the silence. She had placed it strategically in order to make herself get out of bed to shut off the ringing sound. It sat squarely on a table in the opposite corner of the room to her bed, little arrows on its face indicating the time was just after seven a.m. Breakfast was hot buttered toast and warm milk coffee and yoghurt over bran flakes. She ate slowly, there was no rush. She had deliberately set her clock half an hour fast because she loved the morning, especially after the storm, and she loved to have breakfast and go outside before everyone else got up and motivated and into the chores that always seemed so abundant. Today, though, she was especially eager to get out of the house. Although she knew it was the same as any other day, she wanted to see the glorious world outside for the fist time as a twenty-year old. Today was her birthday. Whilst walking in the leafy mud that was always abundant after rain, Sophia realised just one thing was odd about the day. She hadn’t been awoken by the cry that usually came around first light, when the baby whose cry she hated requested her breakfast. Perhaps, she thought, it was his way of wishing her a happy birthday. She continued walking, past the old rusty tractor by the shed, around the grove of trees to where the dog kennels were. Of the three normally tied up there, one was missing, his chain torn from its mountings. It had been the lightning and thunder that had caused the dog enough anxiety to break free. The dogs had never liked the storms and the one that had fled had fled many times before. Then was the scream. Not the scream of a baby, not a scream of terror. A horrendous wail of a woman who had lost something very close to her. Her baby. The police had said afterward that there had been no visible sign on break and enter and nothing valuable had gone from the house, and everybody was accounted for and everything was as it should have been. The baby, simple, was just not there anymore. Sophia gave her statement and then went upstairs to her room and fiddled around, passing time and thinking about the night before. Everything seemed fine. The baby had cried, the dog had fled, the storm had lulled her into sleep like it had done so many times before. Of course, she blamed it on herself. She should have gone in to check the baby, to sleep with it, perhaps. She had known it was scared, she had heard the dog barking at something. Perhaps it wasn’t the storm. Perhaps it was some intruder come to steal the child. Perhaps the baby learned to walk and found its way outside and got lost. As the day wore on, Sophia’s thought became more and more irrational. She became nervous, edgy as if she had stolen the baby herself and hidden it away and someone was about to find her out. Of course she hadn’t, but with her worry and unease, she thought, somehow, that it was possible. Night came suddenly, it seemed, compared to the usual gradual dimming of the land until it finally drops into darkness. Everthing was centred on one thing- the missing baby. The days chores had been forgotten, the glorious day had become grim and paled into insignificance amidst the tension. The police had checked back with status reports all day. The first day had passed very slowly. As did the week. Leaves had piled up on the lawn, the trees seemed to be losing leaves as if Autumn had already come. The dog that had fled after the storm was found dead on the road a few miles away, struck down by some unforgiving motorist. The very house seemed very quiet and very empty. It was then that Sophia left her home. She decided that she had been living there long enough and needed to be away. Her companions (it seemed like a family no more) pleaded for her to stay, but she refused. That morning, one week after her twentieth birthday, she was packed and gone. 1. Surreptitious Noise. Water falling- but not like rain. A gentle roar that did not bubble like a small stream over rocks and sticks.A greyish white span bridge across a surging river, a waterfall tossing spray into the air under the very curve of the bridge. Sophia’s car had run out of fuel and so she had coasted as far as she could then pulled over, took her bag from the cars boot and deserted the vehicle where it sat. She had walked a fair distance that afternoon, down a road she didn’t know, away from her past. Then, on twilight and many, many miles from her car, she had found the bridge. A single fluorescent light shone down onto the rotting boards of the bridge on either side of the structure, casting gentle rainbows into the misty spray flowing from the waterfall. On the other side of the bridge, Sophia could see a few metres along the small trail that lead back into the darkness. Halfway across the bridge, she thought she saw something on the other side, something small and furry, but like no other animal she had ever seen before. It was gone before she reached the other side. In her mind came images of childhood stories, of trolls under the bridges, of horrid creatures that stirred at the edge of the cone of light that shone from a lamp, of spiders and snakes and evil creatures that lived up long, dark paths. ‘Myth.’ She said, shrugging the childish fears away. Her voice was soft and very calm, even gentle, as a mothers is for her newborn child. She kept on walking along the dim path until her arms got sope from carrying her bag. Then she sat down, the ground cold but not that cold, leaned against the round bag and promptly slept. It was warm, there next to the fire, with him. She had awoken early to find an ageing man starting a fire. He had a kind face, and reminded Sophia of what she always imagined Santa Clause to look like. He hadn’t said a word, just smiled and went about preparing two mugs of tea, waiting for the fire to cook the water in a blackened can. Around them, the morning calls of birds, the endless wind pushing the trees this way and that, the dense scrubby undergrowth, the cold, hard ground. They both sat and stared into the fire, never speaking, just sitting and waiting, in the middle of a small bush track, somewhere. Finally, the old man finished his tea and put out the fire. Suddenly, everything seemed cold. Sophia had sensed that she was sleeping – dreaming – still and had awoken on a cold section of a dirt path. Very faintly in the distance she could hear the slight rush of a waterfall. She moved on, away from the sound. The house was empty and locked. Its inhabitents had moved away long ago, she thought, looking at the overgrown garden, broken windows and rusty little front gate. The house was situated next to a narrow bitumen road than snaked its way in and out of dry gullies and tree-dotted paddocks. To the west, the road streched endlessly over the low hills and valleys. Looking towards the east, Sophia could see a broad range of mountains, far away in the grey haze. She stared at the house a long time before deciding to find a way in. She though her stomach was starting to eat itself as it had grumbled and moaned almost constantly all afternoon, and her legs were a little cold, even in the sun. There wasn’t anything in the house. Everthing was gone from all the rooms and cupboards all throughout the house. It had no power, but contained a sturdy looking fireplace. Sophia had collected some wood and piled it up in the fireplace before realising she had no easy way of starting the fire. She sat in the corner of the old kitchen, staring at the rat eaten debris at the back of a cupboard. “Fine.” Hollow voice in a hollow house. “Why the hell did I leave the car?” The time passed as she sang. Her tune was true and the soulful song of the young adults voice swept through the decrepit building, filling it with sound. Birds froliced in the garden, intrigued with the odd noise. A butterfly inspected the broken gauze dangling from a window. The house seemed alive once more. Nightime was cold, but not as cold as the hard earth the night before. Sophia had unpacked some of her suitcase to prepare bedding and find warmer clothes. She had discovered earlier a packet of old matches in a jacket pocket and lit a fire. She had also discovered that there was running water in the bathroom, though the water looked and tasted like it had been in an old rusting water tank somewhere. She surmised that its source probably served as a water trough for sheep and cattle, and that a pipe had connected it with the house. Still, she was pleased to find something she could fill her stomach with. The shadows twisted on the ceiling of the empty room, forging characters long dead in their dark prescence. Sophia lay staring into the fire, tired. Soon, she was asleep, again dreaming of another place, another Sophia who was happy, not hungry, not alone. 2. Open Lucky for my money, though Sophia. She had stumbled into some small village where she could al least get a good meal. She recieved a few odd looks, but she had expected these from any small town, particularly any town that had a tired and hungry young girl meandering though weilding a suitcase. She had recieved a few whistles and claps from outside the local bar, but had forged onto a small service station and eatery. She was quite pleased to have reached civilisation again. “Headin’ somewhere, young lass?” asked a fairly old-looking man, who had watched her order then stuff the food she recieved visciously down her throat. “Uh, yeah. Sort of.” She managed, though she felt as if she could talk non stop for hours. “I see. Just headin’, then. You wanna lift anywhere? I gotta rig outside. Could take you along, if you’re interested?” The ‘rig’ turned out to be an old Bedford truck that served as this old mans only means of transport. His actual use for the vehicle, Sophia never quite understood, but thought it must have to be carrying some sort of grain or woodchips as it slowly groaned up the hills then raced down the other sides. She had found out very little about the trucks driver, only that he was heading for a nearby town whose name he never revealed. His name was Ian, but he asked to be called ‘Joe’. “So, girl,” Joe ventured as the vehicle churned its way up a narrow winding road. “You’re a pretty looking girl. What’s a girl like you doin’ wandering aimlessly around these parts? Looking for work?” “No. Ah, well. If I could get into something I really liked, yeah. I’m on sort of holiday from my family.” “Ah, you’ve run away then, eh?” He seemed less than perturbed by his assumption. “No. Well, not really. My sisters’ baby was, uh, went missing. I left home after that.” “Ah. Too bad. Still, it’ll do you good to get away from home.” She stared at him, shocked. He had acted as if the baby had not even existed. She had just told him that the baby had been kidnaped and he had said back that she needed to get away from home, as if she had stolen the little child. The truck had rolled easlily down the next slope, right down into a town. They were heading roughly south, though the hills around the town and dimming light made it hard to be sure. The sun had set and the twilight was quickly ending. “You’d better find somewhere to sleep. It’ll rain before tomorrow. Plus there’s things about in town tonight, wouldn’t want you mixed up in it. Anyway, nice of your company, this trip. I got things to do.” Joe rushed her out of the truck as if he were embarrased to have her in there. As she said goodbye she offered a small cash fee, but Joe refused, and as she stepped down from the cabin, she tripped and fell heavily to the ground. Nobody offered help and as she clambered to her feet and watched the truck mosey on down the packed earth street, she figured her knee was bleeding and she was cold, so she decided to find a place to stay.
wait like dawn on a silent ocean, and clouds evaporate inside your open eyes. again, again opening, to see what you must see. wishing and waiting for him, caring already for what you do not know. he’s there, in your mind, coming from the other side of awareness for you. to take you there, away from this still, lonely world. like the tiny bird of a morning, a song that bursts out in loving harmony. the breaking chill, evaporating the cold with its sensual warm. still there, still there, existing somewhere in your memory, loving life, as you do, and loving all there is to love. you know him already, and love him as much as life itself. like the giant sun, after the great storm has past. and a flood of emotion, gushing through you like a new emotion. like the soul of earth, filling in each tiny hole with new life. he’s coming, you know, to seek you out and give you what you need. soon, soon, he will be there for you.
For the Sky The lone bird cries, Its soul to keep. As its breath is lost, It plummets below. The forest mourns a death, But rejoices in new life. A tree lies prostrate, A gnarled limb bleached towards the sky. A zephyr breeze blows a salty spray, Seaweed clings to the jagged rocks. The husk of some long-dead animal Lies crushed on the shifting sand. An Albatross lifts effortlessly from a limb To fly with the four winds. A nest of eggs lies hidden Within the twisted treetops. Silently a tree grows, Unaffected, it seems, by Time. Her branches slowly reaching For the sky.
Excalibur © Tim St.Clair, 1995 1 History sometimes repeats itself Antarctica floats across the water in crystal sharpness Which must be experienced to be properly described A town house along the jetty In a town that isn’t there Snow, that white, chilly fluff that coats everything In a splendorous brilliance of dazzling light And a town back further, east towards the sun A cable car up to that grey northern headland And seas water so cold That even the sea dwellers don’t swim In a dream the image sets Into a single image of recognition. 2 I want to rule the World There is no such thing as a born leader You must be taught how to lead Some lead Others follow Some follow The rest follow There are no such thing as born leaders or born followers Only sheep running across the road in front of a car. 3 I will always love you Night approaches from the same direction as day Sweeping across the flowing fields of sweet white flowers A gentle, almost quaint, vague whisper Tells the land to grow quiet and sleep Way up high, too far away to reach Little lights are so dim and obscured by clouds. 4 Amongst friends On a distant hill, around a green valley In around a little red-roofed house, is a tree Year after year little orange things grow Then each, one by one, fall to the ground Year by year the tree is hungrily poisoned By the seeds which the orange fruits contain. 5 Dust to dust A forest is slain in order to die gracefully Into the same, sane ground.
Somewhen in Time The gnarled wagon stood empty below a vast mass of trees and mist-shrouded undergrowth. One broken wagon wheel lay rotting into the sodden ground. As uncounted time passed the contents of the wagon, namely a handful of old garments and cloth and some grain, had spilled from the lopsided tray of the cart to be devoured by the deathly atmosphere on the remote, gravel road. A twisted skelatal hand lay reaching imploringly for the distant sky, dead, mould eating at the remains of tortured flesh. A grey-green vine twisted its way along the bony arm and across the disgusting entanglement of stale white bones. The gutted remains of another body lay amongst the wagons’ seat, sickeningly deformed by the acidic tasted of the forest. Far off in the distance, barely noticeable against the unbearable silence came a sound not unlike the churning waves that pound against the scarborus headlands on a distant shoreline. Gradually the sound intensified, grew louder and more distinct- a rushing throb overlayn by an uneven churn… Two white lights burst forth from the mat of fog, great beams of light extending into the gloom, eminating from the grey-green body of the roaring vehicle. It sped on, oblivious to its surroundings, the two telltale tracks in the soft ground gradually began to fill with murky water. Suddenly there were yells of rage, and the beat of horses hooves across the splattering slush, moss and mud thrown high into the air. Then in was gone, and the sound again was crushed by the blanket of heavy, pungent fog. The gnarled wagon slowly sank into the quagmire. There it was! The break from this time and place. The door to... Hooves! The sound of a horse galloping through the slime infested swamps. This was his only chance. The man drove insanely towards a black door-like ‘hole’ in the fog and... vanished. High above the dank blanket of swirling mists, the deciphering eye of a giant hawk cought the movement of light beams through the fog below. As its instinct told, it obeyed and fell into an incredible plummet down into the unseen mists below, screaming its call of the kill, chasing the huge object. It was too late to pull out of the deadly fall and the screeching bird disapeared into the black door. “Dead.” The statement told all. It had origionated from a sweaty being seated on the drivers’ side of an old army jeep. A small piece of dry mud fell from the rear of the silent vehicle. In the distance, a horses’ whinney, as if the poor beast was in great pain. High above, the circling movements of a great bird, its scresm heard through the silence. “Ah!” The man instantly knew his plan, and looking around in the endlessly shifting sands, cried out once and searched for his place to hide. Amongst the shifting sands, the broken red rock, the blue-yellow sky and dry air, there rode a woman, weary atop a roan horse. Her eyes, though tired, were alert, searching, hunting, for something she knew was there but couldn’t find. She wore a red satin-like vest and long, skin-tight leathery black pants, high boots on eact foot and at her muscled hip, a holster for a single-hand-held crossbow. The woman halted the huge horse and sat mounted. Time passed. In the silent distance she thought she heard a clang. Metal on metal. She loosened the buckle on her holster and reached with a skelatal hand for the crossbow. Three of her four scrawny fingers cracked in staccato succession. Slowly, she pulled on a black fingerless leather glove which creaked drily over her hand, then rode simply over the dune towards the sound A woman! The tracker was a woman! And after all this time, he had thought that the strange follower in its evil black suit had been a man. Those muscles! That ‘thing’ was a woman! From his hiding place he watched the woman ride in on her great roan horse, its hooves punching the sand, a steady pace across the yellow-orangeness of the austere desert. The heavily sweating man closed his eyes for a moment, a pause between breaths- an image of his past between moments... Ah yes, it had been a good life, he reminisced. Ah, yes, the past. Or was it the future? Who could tell these days. In the old days, he had been a scientist, a PhD in physics to be exact. The old days had treated him well, serving him with a great catch- he had made his break after the discovery of- Wham! A little steel dart implanted itself deep into the gound beside him. He lay silenly underneath the jeep, the cool shadow projecting a chilling thrill down his wet back. The the boot came down in front of his head, a black army boot, hot and crust from the dry air. The wooden butt of a rifle came down beside it. His plan had to work... “Come out, come out, wherever you are.” The voice was gutteral, the two boots paced up and down as if to mask the fact that the owner of such disgusting footwear knew his exact position. They stopped directly in front of him. An arm, clad in a dry leather glove appeared under the bumper bar, a small piece of mud dropped to the ground to lie still in the soft sand. A metallic object whizzed past, a small dart through the air to implant The had held a small crossbow. His chance was now... Gone! He was there! She had heard the dart hit! And he was gone. Ah, for how long had she been waiting for this moment, and how far had she chased this madman! Only to fing him gone once again. She stood up and looked back across the desert, the endless seas of sand and rock, the harsh blue of the clashing sky. Oh how much longer will she have to chase him, how much longer will she have to- The shot hit her in the arm, her body twisted under the impact. Red life spurted out across the shifting dirt, a spray of blood on the hungry ground. The woman cried out as would the high circling hawk and fell heavily onto the ground, her evil eyes closed. The man took his chance, and looted the weapons from the dying woman, took and drank her water and operated his escape. He vanished into the door, the smell of near death behind him. A chill echo of a laugh echoed thoughout the stillness even as the giant bird landed. The chase The whirring feeling ceased. He had made it. He stumbled blindly for a moment, tripping on the unseen footings that spread themselves in from of him.
to Move On And one time I woke up to a quiet, warm day. Not to bells and yells and another gruelling day in that place. And perhaps I had a memory of the fun and the friends- We run and laugh and annoy and push and shove and hate- In a friendly way And there’s myself now looking back to the lonliness with a friend, a sadness that lasted a whole lifetime. But the joy of love- to hold and talk and be with and- love, the togetherness destined to bring sadness and loss, with a leaving. The sadness of a Friend gained and moulded and touched and lost- I left, not them- the Friend- to use another to love and hate as one. And a Memory faded, and one day it was no longer there. The time spent in that place was past and used: And it was time to move on.
My mind is glowing I think I’ve worked out that which has been bugging me That which has eluded me all this time That which we all seek to understand Or that which we all seek to control Scoff, as you may Leer as you will certainly do As I transcend this world Guided by not my spirit, Not by my soul There’s a sense of belonging A sense that something – us perhaps – fits No sense, no wonder, it is That we should seek out this soul-mate And find it firmly beyond our reach Yet I see this yearning This black hole of gravitation between us But two polarised magnets Attractive to each other But driven away by some unseen force The sensation fades Over time, everything does, All that is left, all that remains, Is that sense of self, the awareness of what was And what we thought we shared
Revealance There comes a time when we must disclose out true identity, When this happens, some others do not believe us. Some are skeptical, such as the idiot psychiatrists that believe only in their own wisdom, Some are uncaring as to anothers feelings on the matter, much like a na•ve child, And it all stems from the question ‘Who am I’ So, Who am I. An immortal question indeed, As one who watches the TV game shows knows, ‘Who am I? I was born then and I did these things, so who am I?’ Who cares. I do. At least somebody wants to know. You see, in our ‘western civilised’ societies, everyboy is a so-called individual; That is, someone who will make their conscious feelings felt in whatever way. You see, the individual as a person is recognised, is someone. It has, I suppose, to do with the egos need nor personal safety and company- Nobody wants to be alone, even if they say they do- So they become the Somebody Different in order to gain Respect. It is like holding a gun up and saying: ‘Hey, respect me or I’ll kill you.’ There is a choice. Either you say ‘Yeah, sure man.’ And you’re his friend, Or you’re dead. It works, doesn’t it. You’ve become the forced friend. The friend forced to become the individual in your own group with The so called Elite, ie; you and the wielder of the force- the gun. But seemingly away from the point that is, it really is the point. Let me explain again. No, let me say the point straight out. You cannot be the individual, therefore you cannot express your self? Wrong. You can become the individual in these days by doing things that are Socially unacceptable? Wrong. What is right is by becoming ‘normal’. The average, the mediocre, the mean. Whatever. Be the ‘norm’, for no-one else is. In fact, if you think about it, there is another way... Who am I? What do I like, what do I hate? Why am I what I am? Who, why, what, when and How? I will tell you my side, then you think of yours. I am an author, a poet, a writer, a nobody. I do not want to be anybody, I want to be the societal norm. I want to be the individual? I cannot escape from life easily while fixing it up and not causing social backlash, I cannot, therefore, escape myself. I understand that to change the world, I must, as one songwriter I know puts it, Change myself. I must become something different, I must be able to change and be willing to accept You, and Him and Her and them and everyones reponsibility and point of view. Now, I recently recalled somebody talking about their personal facade, their mask And I think ‘I have a mask I wear, which hides my fear.’ I am afraid to talk on the telephone. I am afraid to go to sleep at night. I am afraid of being trapped by a bushfire or flood. I am always afraid of everything... almost (I will explain). But I don’t show it. I lie about my weaknesses. I joke about my fear. Why? Well, perhaps I am afraid that somebody will find out. But isn’t that what I want? Why can’t somebody else know? Because... I don’t... I can’t tell them. Why not? But there are those who know me, Know my insides better than most. Perhaps better than me, perhaps not. These are the people that I am not afraid of. They are the nameles few whom I love And for whom I really care. Maybe itÕs the people for whom I have no knowledge Or any sense to care for that scare me. I think it is. But the question is ‘Who am I?’ And the answer isn’t easy, but the solution is simple. The simplest way to find out who you are is to ask yourself What are my fears, and how can they be overcome. Once you know what your weakness is, Murder it. Kill it. Overcome it. Do not be afraid of your weakness. In a book, Dune, the main characters main idea of fear is this: Fear is the mind killer. It can be overcome only if you want it to be overcome. Face it and it will decline, run from it and it will mount behind you. Basically, he was right, and in the end of the book he overcame his fear And won. And so can you, just look at your problem, face it and say That isn’t so hard. This question is easy. This has to be the answer. And this was my solution: You are nothing at all. You are what you think others think you are. You are alive. That is all. What else is there?
The Restaurant It is a public place, As can be seen by the vast numbers Of tables, chairs, The empty self-serve food bar. I am sitting alone, The rows of empty wooden seats Adorn a bland cream coloured table. A small group sits apart, up towards the end. My thoughts wander. A memory of a memory past. A hallucination of another place, another time Superimposed within my vision. Here I am, alone in an empty room. People wander in, one by one. There is a rush, the room quickly fills. Every table is filled. All, apart from mine. They, the newcomers, avoid it. Why? What have I done? Still they will not sit. One glances my way. Ocean blue eyes. Innocence. Possibility. Eyes lock in understanding. The one moves my way. Passes. My thoughts again wander. I am sitting alone, the small group gone. Rows of silent chairs sit unmoved by the noiseless atmosphere. I am sitting alone, waiting.
Run Away We are born ourselves. We live a stranger. We die alone. There is no turning back. There is nowhere to run. Except the inevitable future. We are what we are. Run to the future. And die.
In Her Love Lo! She once again to me Approaches with deliberate speed. In her eyes, in her heart, In her soul- in her love. Amongst mortar and stone, Yet also amongst the young spring, Out of a dark grey crevice A sheepish flower smiles. Oh to hold her warm body Against mine, to laugh and weep In joyous peace- In burning love. Her perfect body so near draws, A sweet, sweet fragrance floods the air. The once so-droll room Is tranformed to a splendour. Oh to hold her for eternity, Our souls locked in agonising ecstacy. We are as one, we are alike- We are apart, she must go. But so quick a return she will And the glory world she doth fill Yet within a crevice so long forgot The drying petals of a flower lie to rot.
Here is my word. I live in a box- One and a half a beds length long, two beds’ widths wide And one beds’ length high. The paint peels from the walls, the door doesn’t shut properly, The window can fall out- Everything within my box is neglected. Even me. People tell me not to feel sorry for myself, But if I don’t then that will be no-one feeling anything for me. I pity myself because no-one else will. I don’t blame them. So into my box I slowly crawl, into my bed to hide from myself. I would have to be my own greatest enemy. I can take a friend and make him an enemy. How? It’s just what I do. I force them to love me and is they can’t be forced- The world has a population over a billion Minds and souls that are ready for my twisted imagination. And so I take a friend. He is a dear friend, I could not harm him, he- I would do anything for him. Because he is my friend. But I cannot accept that he is like me. He seeks friends too and just doesn’t have time for me. So I make myself known. I do things that are odd to get his attention- To make him see me. And he sees me- The attention seeker, not me the friend. And he is lost to me. So I snuggle in the bed in my box. I try to extract what little warmth is left in my soul to heat my dying body. I look at my world. The paint peels, the carpet is tattered. I myself lie almost naked in my tiny home. Another friend rejects me- I am so scared of being alone, And I am so alone for so much time every day. Sure, It gives me time to think, but thoughts are dangerous to me... I am insane. I love alone. Help me, love me- God, what am I saying? Maybe it’s what’s on my mind. I didn’t mean to hurt them! Love me for my sake! I cry, Else alone as alone can be, I will die.
Hypocrite Hypocrite! Make the insane man demented! Murderer of ambition, root of anger. You think you’re god- Can do anything. You’re wrong, you know. You are wrong. I had hope, You-. It was love, wasn’t it? You didn’t get it, did you? ‘Ha’, you spat in your own face, ‘It was not love, It was something else.’ You hate yourself. You say you hate nobody, You say you can’t hate anybody. But you hate yourself, don’t you. Love others? When you hate yourself. ‘Ha’, I spit. ‘It was indeed somethig else- It was ambition, an answer to love; Make them hate, twist them around. Reach into the heart, squeeze out the life.’ Yes, you give and give and remain passive. Bullshit, it is. Lies. You lie to yourself. You reckon you’re so good. You can pick the faults of others so easily. You make them hate, Then you mock and despise them for hating. I murder you again and again, You rise up like bile after a bad meal. You, my twisted mind, You, the Hypocrite.
I’m leaving you. The day I met you The day I died The day I met my spirit The day I didn’t cry The time we were together The year we spent apart I did all but forget you And your place in my heart The caravan burning on the beach The day that I went home The evening at that restaurant The years I spent alone Those times that I spent smiling And those parts I can’t forget Times when I did not know you Long before we had even met Times I say were wonderful Times I say I hated Times I say I really missed And the time when we first Dated The time when I first failed you You thought my love was a hoax The place where I kept my feelings Locked in their empty box The time when we were lovers The day we found out ‘us’ The week we spent on holiday in a Miserable broken-down bus The times we do not remember The future we do not see The love we can no longer hold For we are no longer ‘we’ And that’s all there is to it, Goodbye.
The Butterfly Effect The story of a rogue- and probably stolen- caravan hurtling through space and time… Of five renegade high-school computer nerds on a mission from God: To learn the deepest, darkest mysteries of space, time, and everything in-between, and to prevent the entire universe from ultimate destruction… Of learning the hard way the real meaning of cause and effect… Also the story of James, who merely hangs about the place and annoys people… -the author
EMBRACE THE DEMON The sign on the warehouse said “Armitage” and gloomed with a brightness only neon could afford. Dan, Terri and this pudgy little guy with long green and orange dreadlocks they called ‘Critter’ were stuffed in the back of an orange Datsun that had belched an acrid blue smoke all the way from the Jetty, where they had met up an hour earlier, while Jackie and Gina were in the front. Carousing into the carpark, they bottomed out on the concrete and a trail of little orange sparks lit up a patch of night as the exhaust fell off again and dragged. Gina was all like “Stop going so fucking fast.” And Dan said “You can’t go fast in this thing.” at the same time as Critter who said “Look at all the fucking people already.” The orange bug was careening into an open section of the yard at fifty when Jackie pumped all the stops, pulling the handbrake and jumping on the clutch and brake pedals all at the same time, throwing everyone forward and making a huge squealie noise that made the Christmas lights all over the dashboard and rear window splay forward. “Does anyone see a park?” “Right. Go right, over there near that white thing.” Gina said after she’d steadied her drink. Terri was laughing because shit had gone everywhere in the back, the bottles of alcohol they weren’t supposed to be bringing, and Critter’s bong water which had splashed all over the vinyl in front of him. “Fuck you hit that hard Jack.” Jackie was just happy even though she hadn’t drunk or smoked anything on the way (although the car was full of weed smoke anyway), like there was this kind of residual energy of just getting here alive that was flowing into her. The others were all already extraordinarily pissed and Critter was really planting himself for orbit this time. Nobody was going to be driving back home tonight anyway so it didn’t matter. Jackie killed the engine about five rows of cars away from the entrance and already they could hear the throbbing rush from inside. There were people everywhere in the carpark, all swarming towards that pink-orange glowing tunnel like ants running from a rainstorm. It was raining, just a bit, just enough to piss them off, but it wasn’t going to last because there were a few stars out over the other side of the mountains to the west. It was just the inland edge of a storm that was making its way down the coast, so they got a bit of a chill off the back end as well, but all in all it was a great summer night. Armitage was a chick, the DJ doing this rave. It had been thrown together as recently as three weeks ago because the locals in this area had something against raves, like they seen too much TV from O.S. but never bothered to check the facts, and if they took too long to organize them then some local council dick would call the whole thing off or turn it into a fucking all age blue light disco which nobody would go to anyway. Critter liked to argue that the people who went to raves didn’t go there to take drugs, and the people who did go and take drugs (which was pretty much everyone anyway) knew what they were doing (most of the time) and knew the rules. Rules like don’t mix and match your poisons – if you’re drinking, stay drinking. If you do ‘x’ (like he’d call it when talking to those people because it pissed them off) then drinks heaps of water because it dehydrates you like nothing else. And if you smoke heaps of the weed then don’t drink anything because you’ll get the worst fucking headache. And if you do tranks or amyl’s or tabs then you fucking miss the whole thing anyway because you get so twisted you pass out. He’d only bring all this up when some usually older person would say ‘But what about that girl from up the coast who died a few years ago at one of these events?’, which would launch him into the whole thing, his mouth would start up like a diesel motor, and like a diesel motor you just couldn’t stop it no matter how you tried, and he’d end by saying ‘She died because she was stupid.’ which was fucking stupid in itself and always got him into these arguments that went nowhere but took their god-damned time getting there. He’d learned to say ‘She was drinking alcohol all night and then took ecstasy, and everyone knows you don’t do that.’ He didn’t fucking care anyway, and that was the root of the problem. Jackie reached back into the car via the little triangular window on the front of her door, and picked off the yellow glasses from the dash. She put them on. “How do I look?” She was biting her lip. Her hair was normally beach blond, short and sort of messy in this half-fashioned kind of way. She’d put in a coppery dye mostly on the top, but it was dark out here that you really can’t see too well. She’d decided halfway here that she’d dye it blue after tonight. Anyhow about the colour: that’d all change when she’s inside. She’s wearing this hugging white high-necked shirt with no arms with a two-tone blue stripe around the middle that really accentuates her gorgeous tits (which was the idea), shiny sparkly grey-blue flared pants, and these big black things on her feet like platform clogs, which had made for some interesting driving, and probably explains the maneuver coming into the carpark. “You’re nothing on me,” said Critter, who looks like he’s just finished painting a house with a bucket and spoon. He’s got a T-shirt with a big blue Julia set on the front that he’d printed himself using a cheap iron-on transfer he got from K-Mart. It wasn’t printed straight, like he’d messed up the alignment just a bit and kinked the transfer during the ironing, so there was this crease welded in melted plastic across the middle. He wore long shorts and his fat little lets ended in grubby white Nike’s. “Just look at my sexy body.” “Hey Crit,” said Terri, “Are you related to Fat Bastard?” “Can you tell?” said Critter, drawing the last little bit out of the bong before pulling the little brass cone from the front and tapping it on the roof of the car to empty it out.https://www.flickr.com/photos/frumbert/with/3049339762
What? I sit. I listen. I see. What? I see nothing of interest. What? I watch people as they run by, busy with their own life. What? I hear the void of speech, echoing the misty past. What? I hear people talking, Guttural and broken words. What? I sit alone. Alone with myself. I hear life. I see death. Why?
The Wall. Green palms surrounded by bark chips, encompassed by treated pine logs gave the impression of cool relaxation inside the bathroom. An enormous lagoon set in the slightly raised heavy blue carpeted floor, slowly bubbled noiselessly, a spa hidden deep within its blue waters. A white wall adorned with posters including a beach resort, a flock of birds nesting in a hidden tropical sanctuary, a mass of shiny buildings comprising a futuristic city centre and many others stood directly opposite a huge plate-glass window, overlooking a dense tropical rainforest of life. Light came filtering down through unseen skylights lost above the thick mats of green fernery hanging from the blue tinted roof, high above the floor. Beyond the thick greenery clustered on the floor, cleverly hidden by an attractive latticed wall of green-white Ivy, a door lay expectantly open, waiting for a candidate to enter. Beyond, a small, bland shower recess and toilet. Nearby, another door, this time a well tanned Oak door, lay closed: The entrance from the adjoining hallway. Somewhere, lost in the masses of greenery, a plain white wall lay an eyesore. The wall eminated a faint luminescent glow, mainly from the inset mirror. The oak door gradually opened quite effortlessly and the lagoons' activity increased, as an infra-red sensor detected a body emerge from behind it. “Get ready for this, Pauline. I hope you like it. It really isn't your average, everyday, run-of-the-mill type bathroom.” A flicker of movement: A light-skinned, smooth hand absently brushed aside a strand of light blonde hair, dangling loosely over two brilliantly deep, blue eyes of an evenly built man. The woman, behind his mass wandered through the door after him. Pualine was beautiful. There was no doubt about that. Her slightly raised top lip indicated that her white teeth had had, at one stage, a brace to retain them. Her casual hair, a mixture of brown and gold, gently cascaded her slim shoulders. It was her eyes, though, that captivated her guide. He felt lost within the two inset orbs of incredibly deep blue, lost in love. “Nick! Nick, it's...” Paulines hushed voice sounded, then resounded to nothing. Lost in the fantasy of the tropical room, her eyes scanned the room, finding only an abundance of beauty. Suddenly, she saw the bland wall with its inset mirror. Her wonderous face twisted as her expression became that of puzzlement. “I see you have noticed the wall.” Nick's voice sounded for the first time. His smooth voice broke the astounded silence throughout the room. “Different, isn't it?” Pauline turned her head towards Nick: A questioning glance. Nick smiled back, looking squarely into the womans' face. She felt his affectionate gaze apon her, and momentarily looked up to meet his eyes. Nick reached over to her face and brushed an imaginary spot from her cheek. Paulines face reddned as a blush crept up into the soft tissues. She averted her face quickly, looking into the swirling waters of the lagoon. The subject changed; Pauline asked a question and then walked into the separate section of the room to change into a more comfortable outfit - She was going to try the delights offered in the massive spa. Nick quickly departed to prepare some refreshments. The one-piece swimsuit may have been a little small for Pauline, but she thought Nick wouldn't mind. All of a sudden, a dizziness overcame her and she felt herself falling. A blackness clouded her vision momentarily. She recovered just as Nick entered the room and she followed him as he dived into the swirling waters of the pool. Pauline's laughter stopped and she looked at the wall with a quizzical glare. She knew there was something different about it. In disbelief, her memory reminded her of the fact that was so obvious: The mirror had gone. Not a trace of it's existance lay on the wall. “Something wrong?” Nick's head appeared above the waters' surface next to Pauline. “Um.” She stated, and inclined her head towards the wall. “Nick, where has that mirror that was on the wall gone? I mean, there was a mirror on that wall when we came in.” “That mirror? Well, it's about time I show you the real use of that wall.” Nick answered. “Watch this.” He turned towards the wall and straightened his shoulders. “Command: Unlock.” He stated solidly. An undetected light shone across the length of the room and onto the wall. Pauline's expression was one of astonishment as Nick's next command came into view. “Command: View. Rainforrest. Life.” The wall actually changed to meet his demands. An whole area of living rainforrest, teeming with life merged with the whiteness of the wall in the same way a picture forms on a television screen. With her eyes wide, Pauline gaped at the now beautiful wall. Just as if she were actually there, she thought. Most suddenly, a brightly coloured parrot lifted from its perch, deep within the picture and flew towards the screen, gradually gaining speed as it did so. A momentary flicker went unnoticed as the bird touched it's first taste of the other side. It flew across the room and dissapeared into the roof, somewhere above the mass fernery. Pauline gaped at the smiling Nick. “Command: Off. Lock.” He stated. Nick returned to the room carrying a tray of coffee. As he placed it beside the great spa, he looked over to the wall - A scene of a somewhat dry desert. Pauline was trying to reach out to the picture but found only a wall where the image should be. Inevitably, she turned back to Nick, who was sitting in a vigourously bubbling spa drinking a brew of coffee silently and reguarding her slim figure. Before she could ask any number of questions brimming inside her head, Nick started to answer the unasked quiestions. “It's a computer-generated image cleverly manipulated by a LCD screen.” He paused, waiting for Pauline's attention before continuing. “Holography plays a big part in the effects on that screen. It enables an image to be displayed in any part of the room and even in three dimensional figures. It's years ahead of its time!” Paulines mind spun. She could only smile and sink under the swirling blue. Nick had left the room when she surfaced. A heavy silence burned through the room, and stillness reigned. It felt too quiet - too still. A glimmer of uneasiness grew within Pauline's mind. She thought she heard a noise behind her, but when she turned, all to be seen was a blank wall and the luscious greenery of the room beyond her still lake. An idea struck. “Command: On.” She stated. Nothing happened. “Please?” The screen eminated a dim glow, and following her next command, a display of Nick's face appeared on the wall. A movement near the door attracted Pauline's attention. Something that existed only at the edge of her vision, bordering on her own imagination. She glanced at the door, gently brushing her wet hair from her eyes, as if to see better. It was the image of Nick on the wall that jerked her attention back. The image was changing gradually. Nick's body was becoming more grotesque, harder. His face was gradually melting as a gruesome head replaced it. Pauline could only stand paralysed, watching in disbelief and horror. The image, bloody and torn then stepped foreward, calling out to the frightened woman in staccato bursts of gargaling. A bony hand stretched out to her, through the screen and into the room, quickly followed by the rest of the deathly body. Somewhere in the house, almost lost within the deafining silence, a clock chimed and soft music started to play. An unnoticed flicker crossed the being as it emerged from the fading screen. Pauline screamed something incomprehensible, and fell back into the misty pool. The image vanished. Nick entered the room quickly as he had heard a scream. He rushed over to the body steadily sinking into the giant spa, reaching out and grasping her bright swimsuit, tearing it as he hauled her unmoving body from the water. Pauline had regained consciousness, and had sat silently beside the pool, staring deep within the blue-misty liquid of the lagoon. Nick continued his questionings. “What I really don't understand is that end bit. As I understand in, as I left the room, you felt a little faint, and evidently fell into the pool, and while you tried to drown youself, dreamed up some strange dream about that wall.” “But it seemed so real! I could hear everything - see everything. It was this room and that wall over there with the mirror, and it changed.” At that point, her crying started again. Nick gazed at the white wall, and it's inset mirror, cradling the sobbing body to his own. Finally the crying subsided and she continued to tell Nick again of her ordeal. “Pauline.” Nick silenced her. “But...” She countered hastily, but Nick's hand again motioned her silence. He spoke softly to her, reassuringly. “Pauline, forget it. It was just a dream. It didn't really happen. It was all a bad dream.” He stood up, held out his hand to the beautiful woman and spoke affectionately to her. “Let's go and have a cup of hot chocolate.” At that point, Pauline stood up, straightened herself and walked to the door, following Nick's lead. A faint noise behind her caused her heartbeat to quicken and she turned sharply to see the room. It was the same room, the same white wall. Then, a flash of bright colours above the fernery caught her attention and she saw a bird fly towards the inset mirror. She watched in wonder as the Parrot dissapeared into the wall. The beautiful woman turned to the oak door, but Nick had already gone. She absently rubbed at the torn one-piece swimsuit strap at her shoulder and smiled, closing the door as she left.
this distant place inside me: so malign and so deep, so very hollow. no: void i walk against the world, pushing off with every step only to be pulled back to earth. i cannot escape? run away? my fear: that which i cannot see hear taste touch smell. examine confront delve confront learn confront face these waves smash relentlessly against the rocks. pound pound pounding away making rock into the sand between my toes this fear, if fear describes this coy self exploration, throws back on me. i reach far down for the energy to defeat this senile delusion and all i find is the void, the emptiness, the cold guttural grey space the void is in me consuming me eating me up carrying me away making me hollow i am consumed. it becomes peaceful here
Open your eyes and see. Once again He walks past. Dead expression, a shadow at dusk. Staring into nothing- nothing To start at. The sun is bright, a dew dusts the grass. Clouds whisk at the corner of the sky. ‘Look there! Isn’t that? Yes. No. It’s Him. He is evil.’ Around the brick and mortar corner He sits. Dead expression. Alone. He looks up- stares at the walls Of cement, a shadow cast across His vision. A whisper of warm breeze Folds it’s way across open fields. The bright leaves cast a dark shadow. ‘There He is again, so strange.’ A solitary chair waits vacant. He stands alone, staring from a window. A cloud shadows the setting sun. The world slipping into darkness. The house is lit by a fluorescing light, Its gentle white light glow filtering Through an open door, fighting the night. ‘He’s out there, somewhere.’ A brisk breeze whips the leaves from the trees He stands facing the bright light. Someone stands silhouetted in a doorway, Straining to see through the darkness.
More than its Meaning Why do you hurt me so? Why don’t you take my soul? Why do I love you so? It pains me to see you now It tears me to wonder how Forever I will love you. You say you love me, yes you do You say it through and through But I just can’t say that I love you You could inflict on me great pain Although it would be in vain Because I would still love you. Perhaps I’ll never see you again What do I do then? Will I still love you? And together now and then I’ll tell you again and again I will tell you that I love you. I now tell you that I love you.
Under the Storm A twisted bolt of soaring energy blazed. Lightning struck with ferocity at the ground. A tree, twisted and charred Lay dead under the storm. Rain gushed through the open arms of The treetops to saturate the ground. The breeze blew the death from the soil. The water flowed freely away. Grass grew steadily through the dense undergrowth. Small animals grazed on the fallen fruits. In a bland block of brick and mortar, A man silently sits, watching.
communication decentralisation, the world is breaking down. The coffee is cold, freezing slowishly. eat at macdonalds, it's fireproof and waterproof - the food, I say. interesting that you say that. why is what I ask. like john laws on the radio, asking why. never does he get it. the answer, I mean. I ask if it's raining in siberia but they don't tell me if it's raining here either. but looking back over my shoulder is like glancing into the past. it takes time to process it all, everything I'm trying to say. because I'm sitting at the computer, staring out a window, looking into some other future and reading into the past, because i want to know my now. knowing off the moduliser/demoduliser that connects my brain to the void. that's the web, is what i am now saying, do you see? I learn from you and the rest of you but you learn from me by only the same and different means. do you undersand? like reading a book, because his (or her, too, now, as they aren't content with it now or later) thoughts are there. a man will die but now his ideals. pity though. that novel was about socialism but it'll never work because of now the information can't be controlled like it used to be controlled long ago. Too many know. trust nobody, they say. They say things like this. they know why they say it and they know why we don't know why they say what they say. but I know. I am one of them. I am them, but they don't know. they say it bacuase you're all easy to control if you know nothing. of if you think you know nothing but you know something. or you know something but think you know nothing. it's a good policy for breeding mistrust and doubt, don't you think? that's because it works. not like my electric kettle, though. it doesn't even keep the water hot in the drink after it's gone cold. the kettle I mean. you see, I don't see how you misunderstand. I always knew what it was that I was all about. it was easy to see that it was simple to understant and probably simple to not understand, but I don't see that because I understand it. do you follow? I do. I know, but I can't tell. It's forbidden by them. I am not one of them, they are not like me but in some other ways they are, like before. - isn't there so much to understand? isn't there so much to see? why can't you realise what I'm saying? then you'd find out about me. why is it that you can't find out? what makes it so hard to do? why do we even try to at all when there's no point for us to? it's stupid that i think i know, when it's probably that I don't. why don't we just all give up? what's in us that we just won't? its trying to understand it, and communicate it with all of you. that the mind's alive and that's the point of what we're here to do.
The Tree It was an old tree when I first saw it. It had old, rotten and twisted branches and a half made tree-house high in its perches. The tree had grown up long before my parents were born. It used have a fence around it, but it had been destroyed years ago. It was an Oak Tree. One day, after leaving my bed and spilling my breakfast cereal on the chair, I looked at the tree. We were such good friends. Deep within my thoughts, the tree touched my love and we knew each other - understood each other. The tree grew outside the front door, and when the sun was low in the west, its shadows glowed with brilliance. I sat under it at this time and silently conversed thought with the old tree. I am an old man now. The tree is dead and gone. I have an Acorn from the old tree. I will build a fence and plant the acorn inside it. It will grow and replace the old tree. The old Oak Tree.
same mind (separate life) Nightmares are reality, Spelled out in the mind, Physical excitementations Being left behind. A digital replacement Is becoming our fatality: Electronic dreaming In a virtual reality. Another world to see and loot; One more to destroy. A binary land to overcome And much yet to deploy. The next place of society, The extra place to flee, The other place to find youself- A place you won’t find me. Reality. In reality. The reality. Reality is what I see, And what I see is you and me. The world outside, the world within A world I do not see, Excavations of the mind- What’s dug out is not me. Open rooms and unlock doors- In a place which is no place- To search for truth, to seek a love Greater than time or space. Reality. In reality. The reality. Reality is what I see, And what I see is you and me. We come and go within a time That has no time within, A virtual projection of A life of lust and sin. So short is life, so weak is love That speaks not of it’s shame, So show your self and too your fear- I will not judge or blame. It’s reality. I’m reality. The reality. Reality is what I see, And what I see is you and me. Reality. In reality. Our reality. Reality is what I see, And what I see is reality.
Brass Echinus
© tim St.Clair 1996
her affair's pretense simulates
her mysterious content accepts from her familiarity
… his consecration
in her belly:
too few erratic flames?
he laughs absolutely.
trying to declare a with desire and, preferably,
to trample numbly,
to sweeten,
to slaver,
to uncover amiably,
the weeping waste.
he pays for her animal charity that he savors;
her organic physique speaks.
any unites will be bashful addictions!
try not to unravel,
to concede.
it's almost sure that her light was his pliable, thrilling spring:
and neither one believes
her calculation is indisputable to her simple blue predisposition
how it is her lovely doe eyes dominate his fragile presupposition?
her charismatic bikini screams for her paranoia:
he crawls rhythmically,
a nymph runs in to love-
each redemption is a spiraling galaxy:
shows deep in her.
any reason to run to psychological connoisseurs;
is her nebulous, conceited, zealot ego-junkie
-delicately if with desire
she massages the fur-
her placid, anxious atmosphere aches
forever
her dutiful caress is a kind of obituary:
expressing purity.
her new blood is like more than one falsehood
it requires from her metadexterousities
an estimation of plays;
must every cryptic paradise degenerate?
must her philosophic nobilities darken deliciously
-if placidly-
frightening him to archetypal desires
overruling the payment to heal?
Mind Image Shifting, churning. Billowing in bursts that sting the eye and naked leg. Whipping hard shrubs that grasp fistfulls of oxides, Trees that retch white salts from their waxy complexion. Sand on a beach. Pain from walking. Calcium deposits far and wide, strewn and forgotten by long-dead creatures. Cuts and abbrasions up the naked leg, a fallen victim to the wash. Broken bottles, a rotted thong and a needle amongst the spinifex. The shelly shore. A bird pecking too hard at a rock that won’t give, An innocent creature peeking from the dirty wash of pale sand. A naked leg burning, searing, melting, in summery heat. Clothes, a towel, ants crawling through the grass. The holiday makers. Spinifex to shrubs to undergrowth to trees. A rough path cut by water and wear and inquisitive tourists, Happy in their way to and from the other side, Odd holes, as big as a finger, poke crevices in the whiteness of earth. Home of the crabs. The water, blue as the richest eye that stares down. The sky, bleached by the salty horizon. The house on the headland, lost somewhere in the misty spray. The smell, cleansing, washing though, filling the soul. The shore, of course.
Atomic User And he runs, And she runs, And it runs, On the Atomic Fuels And he works, And she works, It all works, On the Nuclear Fuels And he runs, And she walks, And we all live, On the Powersafe Fuel And we need, And we thrive, And we lie, Of the Wastage of Fuel But it’s safe, It’s not safe, Yes it is innocuous It’s deadly, Look at me, But we all run and work and thrive and live and die and it will kill all you see It is safe, We’re alive, We need the vast energy And we are dying, Yes we’re leaving, It will kill us all you’ll see And it works, And we work, And they work, Under the Nuclear Fuel And we run, And it runs, And they run, Within the Atomic Fuel And it dies, And it thrives, And we all change, from the Power of Fuel And we try, And they die, No-one survives from, The Killer in Fuel And he runs, And she runs, And it runs, From the Atomic Fuels And he works, And she works, It all works, Under the Regime of Fuel And he talks, And she walks, And we all live, On an Energy Fuel And we thrive, And we hide, And we die, Of Euthenasia Fuel.
The New Beginning Carcasses had been lain strewn Like a child’s forgotten toy. The long winter was over - A new beginning unfolding. Carcasses had lain waste throughout the Dead Planet. Decay had set to upset Natures cycles. Carcasses had lay Dead - Not a single memory intact. Grass covered by winter - Dead until the dawning spring. Carcasses no longer lay strewn across the barren wasteland. A gentle stream joyously pondered Its journey to the great sea. Life lay strewn All over the new Planet. Tiny, delicate creatures Gradually evolving again.
Inversion A hologram floats now on the ceiling, Rippling like a stone under water. A projection of the minds’ mind, Chucked out by the lens that is an eye. 1. A Nightmare only once, never again seen, except-. Gray, like the lucid lights on a night avenue. Except that frail, earthly colourless void That is no colour, not all, not none. A blanket of despair. Or a veil of peace. Or something else, Who can know? It’s like there’s nothing- Was, Is or Will Never Be. It is timeless, ageless. Lifeless. It is not like a desert. Nor it it like space. It is like a gray fog that limits the sight To nothing but gray fog. It is like floating up, floating down again. It is like a dead tree, twisted against the rest. It is like the silver hair of an old man. It is like the lifeless rag entombed in the coffin. It is like cold, wet cement. Death is gray. 2. Moving sands of time, washing shores in the pale gray moonlight, crickets and beetles battling through the stinging trees, harsh wind reeking painful havoc on the land, thickets swaying to protect the thirsty roots, flowers crinkled from the days sun, and a gray branch, melting back to the ground. 3. The hologram is but a representation, Cast out by the hurting brain. Colourless and motionless, the nightmare will continue. Waking up, facing the world, seeing the life spawn. So colourful, so weak and fragile. The fog is solid, calm. Gray.
The Butterfly Effect by Tim St.Clair © Copyright 2001 Redistibution in any form prohibited. Part One – The Fruitfly Effect1 0. The Creator sighed, found a way into his bowler hat, and went for a bouncy little stroll out across the lawn to think it through. It had all started so well. Where had it all gone wonky? No, this would take some time to sort out. Time enough even to sort out if it was possible to sort out. Nudging his carrot into the light, he studied it for a moment, sniffed it once or twice, and took a bite. 1. In a long musty-smelling restaraunt-style dining room in some long-forgotten stuffy old boarding school overlooking a small, quaint town whose chimneys gaily farted out bluish tufts of smoke in to the gaseous air, He picked at his nose-hair, watching the others stareing, sniggering, saying things that he could not hear. His name was James. “Yuck,” he said to his dinner, probing it to see if it would move again. He was in a foul mood. He was always in a foul mood all the time, except when he was in a horrid mood. It was probably built into his genes; little pockets of foulness that only opened to the outside world. Inside those genes, behind the one-way pockets, however, he existed in his own very small world; a world in which imagination was constrained by the tight brown imitation leather belt wrapped right around its stomach. He was a special kind of human, James. His type of Human came in little black and yellow packets stuffed up the back of a supermarket shelf, near the imported Chinese Egg-Noodle, the ones with the spelling mistakes all through the cooking instructions. These packets were very cheap and boasted ‘Human(oid) - Just add Water and Stur!’. James’ brand of Human would probably cost just ninety-nine cents. This was most likely the reason that His type of Human was so prevalent. It was also the reason that Humans had so many different and totally unworkable political systems such as the U.S. Democracy, but that’s another story. This is his story. Well, a story that refers to him occasionally, at any rate. Okay, so it only mentions him at least three times in ten; lets just leave it at that. See? You thought this story was going to be about James. Well it’s not. No, this story is about The Nerds. The Nerds were an elite bunch; well, so they thought. Everyone else just let them sit there (as long as they didn’t talk too loud). The Nerds: it was like an organisation where everyone had to believe they had an intelligence quotient two standard deviations above normal, where the mean (what they called x-bar) was one hundred, and a standard deviation (figured by them as std.dev) of roughly 14.6667. The Nerds all knew what all this meant (so did their math teachers) and so only they could use this terminology. If anyone else spoke with these terms, say over their tantalising out-of-date instant coffee, they’d be shunted off to sit and stay with The Nerds. For those of you that don’t know already, this is exactly the kind of thing that goes on in stuffy old boarding schools, to coin a stereotype. The Nerds, beleiving that they were so intelligent because they debated so vigorously about Schrodïngers Multiple Universe Theory so often, thought James was just an ectogenetically engineered by-product and deserved to sit with the overly hormonal Footy Players. Which he did. Well, he was there first and they sat with him; there weren’t any seats left. Scattered all around The Nerds’ table were all sorts of other overly stereotypical and overtly aloof (but not necessarily related) groups, each neatly ordered and classified by the single lateral consciousness that was The Nerds, who were in turn an overly stereotypical group themselves: The TeenyBoppers, The Footy Players, The Staff (horrid whisper, snigger), The Weirdo’s, The Muso’s, The Arty’s, The Foreigners; the list went on into endless possibility- The People Whose Socks Happened To Be A Different Colour, The People Who Just Sat There This Time But Would Normally Sit With The Footy Players, Those Other People Who Don’t Fit Well Into Stereotype Roles... Thus The Nerds existed, seated alone in the middle of the room, their place reserved since the dawn of time. There were exits. There were windows of which The Outside could be seen. There were lights and there were curtains and there were lots of fiddly little things like trophies and pictures of Jesus all down the side, stuck on somehow. In the unclarified and disorganised minds of the rest of the students, a table was a table, and a group of people was a group of people, and you sat where you sat. There was nothing more to it than that. But The Nerds are possibly the most paranoid people (though they would never admit it, nor see it in themselves). In their minds, it was lucky that they got a place to sit. If there were a fire, all the exits would block with people. The Nerds would be the last out (they stick together the way Velcro sticks to ionised belly-button fluff). If a flash flood came through this way (the precise reason why there would be a flash flood in this particular room is a story in itself, a very long tale reserved for another day, another time, suffice to say it involves large amounts of ceramic plumbing that was installed at a time when plumbers were few and money was tight, and the Bursar had a friend who ‘thought he could do it cheaper’, and you know how Bursars are about saving money) they’d be at the bottom of the pile of people, along with the many other things often associated with flash floods, like bloated cows, mud and news helicopters. If, and this was worst of all, worse even that drowning in mud at the bottom of a cone of human beings with mysterious parts of bloated animals rubbing in your face while news crews film you, they had a spare seat and James walked in, there just wasn’t any place to run. So James sat picking his nose. His baked cardboard dinner was cold, not that served ‘hot’ it wasn’t any better than served cold anyway. He had grassy stuff for beans, a lump of, well, something for a potato, gazpacho-like tomato sauce and best of all, cakey chocolate flavoured gravy (it was school food; they had to put something there to make them eat it). The Footy Players sat all around him, talking moves and plays and scores and the tactics of their opponents and all that other boring Footy Stuff. He asked for the salt. Nobody heard him. He had the sharp suspiscion that were he to sit here for much longer, he would be overcome with the salt smell of body odours, indiscreet wafers of putrid vagrance, tomato suace... It was all his, of course, the sauce and all. Living up to his most unintriguing psyche, he blamed it on the Footy Players. Nearby, snippets and snatchets of speech spuriously aurated in the audible environment as The Nerds talked seriously about the afterlife, the row of scary yet somehow irresistably pushable scientific buttons on calculators, and recalled recent experiences of apotheosis; that is, everyday Nerd Stuff. Then, after the meal, The Nerds moved as one, past the now-empty tables, for most of the others had gone back to either swim, play music or watch ‘Babewatch’, an American attempt at TV Soap. Quite pointless, no storyline to speak of, no hidden meaning. American TV. You know how it is. Outside the dining room they ran into James, who had just been reprimanded because he had quite accidentally fallen into somebody’s fist and somebody elses knee. Fancy that. The tight pack of Nerds then decided to go to their favourite place: The place of the Computer. Here was a bizarre room; walls and a ceiling like most others, but jam packed with beeping creatures with glowing faces, whirring fans and pretty coloured wiring of all sorts. And people! People who hated computers came in here. People with rollerblades on (which didn’t work on the soft, dirty carpet). People eating and drinking. People wrestling. People needing to do work. People watching other people. People with the people watching the other people and more people coming in to see what everyone else is doing in here. The computers were in overtime too. Between drink spillages and chair-against-mousepad fights, the computers processed away, doing their graphics and games and text things and printing and calculating and beeping and carrying on like there was no tomorrow. And there was the people who thought they were funny, turning on the fans in sub-zero winter and dithering with all had those twisty things that adjust the brightness of the lights and pulling out chairs when people went to sit down, and printing out completely black pages on the laser for no true reason, so that other people had to wait for ten minutes to use the printer, and locking the doors so that nobody could get in and attempting to rollerblade (which didn’t work, anyway) and ‘accidentally’ spilling somebody’s coffee all over his or her books, effectively gluing the pages together. It was a lively place! And it was all under the control of The (All Supreme, no anchovies) Nerds. And unfortunately James (just anchovies, no supreme). The Nerds despised James: James shouldn’t be allowed to come in here anyway, said their cute but misguided logic. So The Nerds2, in their infinite wisdom would lock James out. And the world would suddenly become a nicer place all over. Except outside the room, where some disgusting, smelly, irritable, stupid creature not fit to be called a plant or animal, let alone human, but maybe (only just) a fungus, lurked. The Nerds are the Gods in the Place of the Computers. Gods because they all know what the hell a relational database management system is. How to use it (or give semblance thereof). Where to get paper and toner for the printer (because there isn’t any in it, ever) and what to do when the computers crash (turn it off and on very fast repeatedly because it ate your work!) and all that sort of super techy stuff. James knows some of this stuff also, but doesn’t know how to explain it in a language other than binary (“...one-zero-zero-one zero-zero-zero-one-one zero-one-one...” etc). You see, if James is asked a question about, say developing an amortisation table in the Excel spreadsheet for use in a dbase database system to do a mail merge cross platform over a serial interface, he will go off and sulk, because he isn’t able to understand what the person means. The quester should have said something like: ‘James, While Not Toner, Do amortisation(excel)=database*(spreadsheet-1); computer print mumbo jumbo to me. R.S. 232 linkup PC. You can do it. End Do. End While. Go.’ Now this would seem a little backwards and mixed up, but James thinks like a computer (a very old, mechanical one, probably made by IBM) and only accepts input if what you say is said in the right way. In other words, although James thought in Computer Language, he couldn’t communicate so well in Human Language, which made things difficult. Which, all in all, wasn’t a bad thing. He had the most irritating voice anybody could have imagined. And so The Nerds, as was their way, relentlessly pressed on. The Nerds demand a computer (only one- they can do many things at once. Aah the joys of Multitasking) and get one straight away. One of The Nerds is big and nearly strong, and has a good knowledge of all the so-called ‘pressure-points’, which basically means that if he were to squeeze somebody’s arm, it would hurt that person very much. Plus, the person they asked was leaving anyway. Lucky, that. So now they have use of a computer, and in a flash, they’ve somehow got it up and running, opened up more complicated things than you’d find in a physics-major’s thesis and already completed two days work in the space of a few seconds. Then, they’re gone, the only trace left of their existence, a small column of smoke rising gently from the computer keyboard. And (surely obscure in origin) a 2B graphite pencil. The Nerds are five long termers plus a few wannabe’s, as well as one who is in the wrong group but doesn’t know where the Footy Players are right now. In exclusion to the wannabe’s, The Nerds span ages from sixteen to eighteen, and roam their territory like Japenese tourists photographing rocks in the southern half of the large territory in the north of the largest island on Earth. They –The Nerds- stop only for food and to protect their own kind. Children run in fear from strangers, dogs bark and knock over garbage tins, birds flee in terror. All of this not because of The Nerds, but because this’s what they do anyway. The Nerds just happen to be there when it happens. This is the true essence of The Nerd. To summarise so far: He, or as it may happen, She, as a direct result of that deep-down desire to be nerdy, is blamed for things which would have happened sooner or later anyway. Had they or not ever had a hand in it is never discussed. The Nerds Did It Anyway. Somehow. 2. The next day, James was plotting a way to get back at The Nerds, for it had to be they that made him get hit by that bus, all those weeks ago. Through thorough lack of planning and a dead-base stupidity rating, he somehow managed to completely miss this, his own plot. From another point of view, in any case. You see, all this has happened because James is in awe of himself. More seriously than most. In his mind3 (and those genes we were talking about earlier) he is like the supreme being, hovering proudly above the ground as he speeds his way towards the place where his story begins. They are shouting his name, calling out to him, reassuring him that, Yes! he is popular and, Yes! they all think of him what he thinks of him. He recalls an image of John F. Kennedy, in all his smiling glory, right before the was shot. Outside his mind, back in what is commonly (and falsely, but we’ll get to that later) termed reality in fact, and approximately four steps behind, is one of The Younger Nerds, shouting apocalyptic abuse at the slothlike, wedeling figure that goops its way along a gravel path; a creature names James. So self possessed that it would keep bumbling into things and continuing on as if nothing happened. In this Nerds mind was an image of John F. Kennedy right after he was shot, and really looking not so glamorous at all. No exorcist get rid of this demon (and yes, they’ve tried) called James. No exercise in military training can eject this blemish from history out into outer space, and No, they haven’t tried - do you know how much this kind of operation costs? No radical extremists were available at this time- they were all off shouting moral complaints at homosexual politicians about some environmental woodchipping issue. How typical. Can’t get good complaints these days… And breakfast time. Exercise over (ie. a short walk to the mess hall), time to put on those calories. Kilojoules of energy to be had, here. Pity, though, that more kilojoules of energy could be attained from the ‘food’ served to them by eating the plate rather then the cereal. Dietary Fibre issues aside, here. Look, it’s one of those days again. No, not Monday. That happened last Thursday week. This is worse. Much worse. Much, much worse. In fact, heinous. There is only two seats left in the entire eating gallery. There are only two people left to sit in the food hall. The Younger Nerd, first in because he tripped James on the stairs, is first to sit. Knowing the worst is to come, he exchanges places with a Nerd Wannabe, who must forgo this kind of initiation procedure in order to prove his or her worthiness to such a great and needed cause as Clan Nerd. James is then present. James puts his left foot forward, walks, then his right, then his left, then realises that he is moving horizontally and that something gooey is all over his chest, and comes to a halt right under a table, amongst the legs of The Staff (horrid whisper, snigger). Moreover, today, this isn’t just The Staff (horrid whisper, snigger) table. No. Today, this The Big Knobs (snort, cough) Table. The School Board, at mess with The Lowlife Scum. And guess who, covered in orange juice soaked cornflakes, is under the table? No, not a mutant lobster man from Mars left out in one too many solar radiation storms. Or then again, maybe it is. And she screamed. No, James hadn’t suddenly introverted into a foul smelling female! It was one of the Big Knobs (snort, cough). She had just seen some creature staring up at her from the baked beans. Those gentle, blinking blue eyes staring up from the plate. Lively food! There did exist stories around about the cross-eyed chef and it had something to do with small, furry animals going missing from the neighbours yard every so often. Suddenly, the table jumped, then cursed (well actually, yelled out the surname, in plural context, of a ludicrously rich American man. Hint: it has something to do with an easy method of traversing through fences) and swayed and then everything was quiet. James, milk stains, cornflakes and all stood at the end of the table, red faced and deathly silent. Seven old faces stared up at him, down along the bridges of their noses, heads tilted back so James, from his low vantage, could see right up into their heads via a certain smelling appendage4. Someone coughed in the dark silence of the dining hall. Someone else exploded (those damned baked beans again). One group of people got up and left, quickly. And the Big Knobs (snort, cough) just stared at the embarrassed weed fumbling away from the end of the table. “Blimey,” said the one who had screamed in the same way as you would say ‘Holy Milkshake, Batman’. “The things that they keep under these tables. I propose we exchange them for new, sleeker models. Did you see the way our milk spilt?” “I second the proposal.” An old man with an eyepatch spoke up through a yawn. “Any… oh… aah…” Nobody replied. Somebody was already snoring. 3. The Nerds were all laughing when James sat down with them. Laughing not at James, but at a theory that one of the Younger Nerds hat put forwards actually suggesting that there was a God. Although The Nerds did not believe in God, you see, just to cover their bets, they didn’t deny the existence of God, and therefore went to church occasionally anyway. Just in case. “Why for strange-emotion you?” James asked in his manner. By the term ‘strange-emotion’ he meant ‘laugh’, but didn’t understand the concept. The Nerds translated the question in their heads, figured out all the possible answers as defined by their own model of the Fibbonanci method, and then grossly ignored him. All except the Younger Nerd who explained to The Strong Nerd the image he had thought of before that James reminded him of: The bit where John F. Kennedy’s brains exploded in a ball of caporious goo from his head from the impact of a lead projectile. He even explained what caporious goo actually was. The Nerds all laughed again, except James. But then, James wasn’t a Nerd. Then they all felt a bit sick, as the visualisation caught up with them. “So, James,” Ventured a Wannabe. The Oldest and as yet unnamed Nerd shot a dangerous look at him, but the Newbie continued, hopeful and watchful. “Have you ventured into the symbiotic relationship yet? I hear that National Existential Ennui Day is coming up soon and it requires that you have nothing to do that day except apply knowledge to the extraction of natural resources from otherworldly maudlin chaos internal to the multidimensional cosmos.” The Oldest Nerd smiled. This kid had promise. It didn’t make relational sense, but then again, it wasn’t supposed to, was it. Well, was it? Then wiped some milk from his well-rounded glasses. James, across the table, had splurted liquid out his nose and received a kick in the knee for it. But he managed to reply. An excited kind of reply. A mixed up kind of excitement. A kind of mixed up kid, when you get down to it. “Yes, as I have matter fact a of!” Translate. Surprise! Shock. Recognise it could not have been a joke as Black and Gold brand humans are not capable of humour (that costs extra, and comes in a separate shaker pack). These funny little thoughts (referred to by James as Background Task Daemons) went on inside each of the Nerds Brains (who each defined all logical sections of a humans neurocerebular structure as it’s own self supported unit, capable of thought and process separate from the others) but each time they rethought it through, the same answer appeared. It had to be it. James, wait for it, was one step ahead of them! But, this was simply impossible. It shut every single person up. Except James. And the rest of the people in the mess hall who didn’t know what had happened anyway. Didn’t care. Because four hours later he was still following them telling them about his self importance to their group (which made about as much sense as this sentence). In a non-related dimension, on a planet with the same space/time co-ordinates, just up the road (relatively positioned to the current position of James, many many dimensions away), a bird tweeted and dived for a small, yellow butterfly that was hovering above a flower. It caught it. Nearby, somebody was talking about a new branch of meteorology called the ‘Butterfly Effect’. Nobody listened. Nobody cared. One week later, in the dimension where our story is currently taking place, which for clarity, we shall currently call ‘reality’, James was Head Nerd. Of Himself. All the other Nerds had been fired or were sent to serve time in the Library (and, boy, you just don’t want to know what goes on in there!) which was, at that time, run by The Library Monster, a renegade mutant brainless hippie drag queen book freak escaped from a top secret US Military genetic science testing site in the sixties through an experimental one way time portal: There was no escape. In fact, The Library Monster had suffered gross mutilations (perhaps some alien or CIA agent- where’s the distinction?- thought she was a cow) from using the time portal and now looked like a Komodo Dragon wearing purple satin pyjamas. Other features include bright red fluffy hair, coke-bottle glasses, lipstick thicker than the smog over Las Angeles and a voice with undertones suggesting ‘I’ll eat you My Pretty, and your little book too! E, hee, hee, hee!’. If seen, please return her to the sixties or, preferably, exorcise her into another dimension. James decided that, today, he would be a poet. And so stroll he did into the Place of the Computer, which loomed silent throughout the pale night. Stars did not shine overhead,5 but clouds did approach with gleeful determination from the east. Somewhere, a dog howled; a car screeched and close, some lone creature was playing their R.E.M. CD6. Insanity, chaos and murderous evil glowed in James’ left eye (he had walked into the door on the way in) and all was silent except the whirring of little cooling fans. One was a tad loose, though, and so squeaked a bit. Deserted. A single leaf of paper spewed out the top of the printer, a gust of wind throwing it up into the air, where it hit the fan and tore. There were still disks in the disk drives; pencils lay forgotten over work books (as always). Up near the end, on a spare chair, a single bright purple and green rollerblade lay alone, the back wheel slowly spinning. In other words, everyone left in a hurry. Such was the presence of the New Head Nerd. If anybody was still around outside at close enough range to hear, they would have heard a strange sound: Somewhere between a hacking spasm mixed up with great sighs. Anybody inside would have seen James, squirming face up on the ground, half laughing, half sobbing; totally evil. “Today, The Tomorrow. The, World Nerds!” He screamed. How cliché. 4. ‘...Drop into fourth. Stupid move, that’s not fourth, that’s reverse. Where’s fourth? Bum! Too late! Back on the road, get past that- Watch out! Time can’t be up! No way! Fourteenth. Stupid corner. Who designed this game anyway. Oh, Sierra. That explains it, then...’ Such is the mind of a rev head arcade gamer. Empty. But I just went to the bank! Such is the wallet of that same rev head arcade gamer. This gamer, who just happens to be a rev head arcade games lover (not just somebody who plays it because he might as well because this is his last dollar and everything), has virtually nothing to do with the story, although he did punch James in the face (who, notice, isn’t here right now because he’s not feeling well) earlier this day before coming here, and he does like Mississippi Chocolate Mud Cake (mmm) too. Everybody likes Mud cake. It’s the staple food of all Western Civilisation, and, incidentally, has nothing to do with the invention of flush toilets. Bet you never knew that. The Nerds usually spent their weekends ‘hanging out’ (ie. being geeks) at the local videogame amusement parlour, a shop upstairs from the video hire place and just over the road from a cinema; A ludicrous spatial containment captivatingly titled ‘Videogame Amusement Parlour’ in a big yellow and red whizzy font. The windows were all plate glass painted on the inside with those big star-like images that you find on bargain buster shops - painted by the owners’ nine year old kid with housepaint - backwards (‘Well it looked right from where I was standing!’). Hanging out, for The Nerds anyway, meant standing around, playing games in some arcade or, if money was tight, sitting around watching those old BBC Channel 4 produced science documentaries about chaos theory or molecular biology, or other interesting topics that they could chat about (over some nice Kenyan filter coffee, perhaps?). Today, however, was special. Today James would conquer the world. Well, he said he would anyway. The Nerds, no longer The Nerds by name but still by reputation, implanting their ages (minus one Wannabe who had to go buy some new clothes with his mum) throughout the electronised place of bassy thumping techno music, alpha-ray radiation sickness inducing low refresh rate screens and a horrid purple carpet that appeared to be out of the local pub.7 There were Five, now. Only The Five (hey, a cool name, better than The Nerds. No it’s not, sounds too much like The Famous Five “...and Timmy the dog...”) to do battle with James, the Head Nerd. Five to fight for survival, their name and because everybody hated James anyway. Five to go to the ends of the earth to replace Justice and Inequality where it once stood. Five to... Ah, whatever. After the next quick game. 5. Lunch. Aromas of Mexican food wafting from the place where they all gathered to dine. The Footy Players weren’t here yet, The Outcasts weren’t here yet, The Arty’s weren’t here yet. Nobody was here yet. Except Those Who Used To Be Called The Nerds But Were All Fired By A Geek Named James, who sat unhappily amongst the rows of empty chairs and solemn, white tables. The doors up one end clanged, but it wasn’t somebody coming in; they just did that from time to time. Wind, you know. Clang. There they go again. Lunch was boredom with a smell. Mexican Lunch was the same thing but with a lingering aftertaste. In fact, it was not unlike the taste you get after being violently sick on a very crammed public transport bus as a matter of fact. Lingering aftertaste... Metaphorically, those doors clanging open once more, The Head Nerd walked in, a rank smell following like salt from an ocean wave- strong, assured and, in a funny way, cleansing. One of the older five from Those Who Used To Be Called The Nerds But Were All Fired By A Geek Named James, the one who used to be Head Nerd, a tall, gangly strange person- a freak if ever there was one- who had a strong grip and carried a pencil with no spare leds in it, called out something quite rude at The Head Nerd, who just walked on by, like we were all told to do by our mums when we were kids but, of course, reverse psychology rules applying here, we went and punched up the kids instead of ignoring them. Perhaps The Head Nerd didn’t have a mother who told him these things. Perhaps he didn’t have a mother. Either of these or his curly brown hair had jammed in his ears the last time he actually showered (and he needed to earlier because; a) He was dirty and had a blood nose; b) His head was swelling still and he thought he could shrink it with cold water; and c) Somebody told him that the water in the shower tasted like ‘Lemon Spritz’ (with real fruit you can’t see), and he had to know for sure. It didn’t, of course. Silly James). Suddenly a holy apparition appeared. Normally this kind of thing wouldn’t happen, but in a world where James could exist, things definately weren’t normal. Anyhow, the wierd old codger, glowing away madly like all apparitions should, was a balding old man with a few sunspots on his forehead and really wrinkled skin over his elbows. The old nerdy group, sitting alone at their table, automatically labeled this figure God in a single vote group descision. And hell, why not? If there was really a god, a point that may or may not be true, depending on your personal history, family, friends and most likely your early childhood as contributing factors to your belief, or lack thereof, this might as well be him. People went for the ‘holy light’ thing and popping in and out of existance on a whim. If that’s the mould people wanted, this old bugger fitted the slot perfectly. He said in his not-quite-Brittish accent, “Oh, chaps, perhaps you could help me. I was wondering if-” But of all the people whom the Greatest All-Knowing Creator Of All The Known Universe And Probably Beyond That As Well to pick, all the billions of people who’d’ve sucked out their eyeballs with a dust-o-matic just to have a few quiet words with the old chap8 God had to pick Those Who Used To Be Called The Nerds But Were All Fired By A Geek Named James. Whew! And, remember, none of them believed in God (much). So, just as suddenly as the man with the mercury nimbus appeared (pop!), He, thinking ‘Oh poo!’ popped off back to wherever it was that he’d been before (pop!). Or so thought Those Who Used To Be Called The Nerds But Were All Fired By A Geek Named James. 6. God Appeared. Too late to save the smelly dead creature beside him though, but it has been certified by certain newspapers (Scandal: God arrives too late!), that, in fact, he did appear, too late to, er, save the smelly, er, dead creature beside him... In a desert. God stood, golf shoes in the hot, burnished sand, next to the chalky white remains of what seemed similar in skeletal structure as an Earth bound creature known there as the Camel. There was no sign of any water, and Gods’ Own SuperSense (a handy unit he picked up one day in K-Mart: It was on special for Christmas) told him that, well, there wasn’t any abundant bodies of water in this system. Where exactly he’d just ‘popped’ too was very iffy. On a nearby dune of the cold, herbish smelling planet, God spotted a metal disc, which he instantly knew contained all the Secrets to the Known Universe, Shortened, Revised Edition, Pocket Form, Oxford Press 1998. In fact, he remembered writing it and getting heaps of royalty payments for it. Which was good. God hadn’t had an real income before. The Church had always ‘needed’ more cash for, oh, the old gold statue or two here, or for a ‘study-tour’ across Europe staying 5 star all the way... Then God was shot by a soldier with blue-in-blue eyes. 7. James sat down. There were tables and tables, why did you have to sit here, Damn you! Thought the table. The chair was worse off, though... The Old Nerds ate in a kind of bankrupt silence- knowing that the future is dim, knowing that you’ve got a bank two paces behind you, knowing that your ex and son have twenty billion dollars of investors savings tucked away in their own names and the bank can’t get it... And the five of them needed a plan. James hadn’t taken over the world yet. Thorough planning would come later. The X-Nerds (Non-radioactive X-Men geeks) were now getting back to life, discussing the problems with four dimensional relative spacetime and what would happen if, say, somebody goes back in time and kills his Grandfather before he’s done the deed with the time travellers Grandmother? A ripe ol’ discussion. The idea was simple: Send James back in time a long way, probably back to the French Revolution, where he can conveniently have his head removed from his body (An early cure for dandruff) and kicked around gaily by a bunch of arrogant sadomasochists who speak funny9. If he were to be sent into the future though, chances are- technology changing all the time, you see- that the X-Nerds may live to be old enough to meet him again. It did work that way, didn’t it? Anyhow, he’d have to be excommunicated from society (not hard to arrange these days: Join a Political Correctness compaign) and somebody would have to send a ‘You’ll get better, soon. Guaranteed!’ Card to his folks -A nitrous oxide tank, a styrofoam cup and a small wormy tube full of gooey green liquid. But that could be arranged. As for the bit about time travel, that would be a little harder, as current thinking on the matter reveals that there are little particles that travel back and forth in time but are hard to detect because today’s technology doesn’t do that kind of thing, and nobody can find a wormhole bigger than the theoretical size of the universe before the Big Bang.10 In the end what would just have to do as a Time Travel unit was built. It took two weeks since that first idea of sending James off into the future and many more ideas have arisen, and still, predictably, he hasn’t devoured the world in his grouse, nasal evilisms. Firstly, The X-Nerds (They like that name- The X-Nerds, by Marvin Comics! Coming to a Phosphor Screen Near You) could send James way back in time and forget about him, or send him way off into the future and hope that he is a bad dog and doesn’t come home this time, or, and this what they eventually do, but we aren’t up to that yet, are we? so just forget what I said, go themselves- become martyrs of the time travel revolution (and probably make certain historians very angry) and go have a jolly romp around plagiarising technology from one time to another, eating better food and doing all sorts of fun things (which we won’t go into until you’re older), generally re-enacting ‘Time Bandits’ and ‘Dr Who’. Follow that? Because we’re there now. Sunday: The day when some people think that God wants them to go to church early in the morning. God doesn’t really like this. Would you like it if half the world sang at you at eight in the morning on a Sunday when most of them sound like the people who get up and defy death in those back street karaoke bars- Worse than when some completely deranged fool drags their fingernails down a chalkboard. Well, maybe not that bad. This Sunday was rainy, sunny, windy and through it all dead boring. And that was just Sunday Morning. But come that fateful Sunday Afternoon and a strong breeze whisked through the tops of the yellowing poplar trees that danced along beside a withered, black gravel track to be lost amongst tall bushy Chinese Elms and a grand old Oak and eventually, somewhere, go ‘plunk’ smack bang into the front of somebody’s house. Stupid people, always putting houses in the middle of a path. Makes it hard to walk along a path if somebody goes and puts a house in the way, doesn’t it? Mid Afternoon; the waffly clouds shambling overhead, the tall spires and glass cages of the town rising up like black mountains into the hazy purple smog of a western sky, the whirr and incomprehensible drivel of the greyhound track just up the road- A typical Sunday Afternoon, indeed. And after the big dangerous-looking time machine was filled with the Five members of the X-Nerds, plugged in, charged up, programmed and just about to catch on fire, James walked into the room to see what was making all the noise: How could he listen to his Modern Jazz album with all that noise? What’s the difference between Modern Jazz and heavy whirling machinery anyway? Then all went black. Then after it all went black, one of The Undecided walked into the room and said: “I quit. I don’t like being a Nerd. You get punched up too often. I want to be with The Footy Players. Where do the Footy Players sit anyway?” Since nobody was there, nobody heard him and since nobody heard him, nobody replied. He left the room and shut the door behind him. 8. And then everything wasn’t black anymore. Everything was back to normal. Sort of. God stood bleeding on a nearby dune, a fair string of curses flowing feebly across a million acres of untouched sand. A strange planet of shifting dunes of sand. God wondered what he should name this planet of Dunes, with all the Dunes of sand, and Dunes of Dunes stacked on top one another. He settled on the name ‘Dirt’. And when God realised that he was bleeding, the little round bullet hole sealed itself up. James stood nearby a blackened lug of metal. A piece of it fell to the ground. “Whoops!” A voice from inside the smouldering remains of the world premiere Time Machine.11 “Will youh ghet hoff mhy noshe?” Somebody else quested. “!” Went a smaller, lighter voice. “Why, you do seem to have squished my attacker quite well, er-” Congratulated God, whose shiny white and black check golf shoes glinted unhappily in the sun. Then, as a ‘door’ fell open God spotted who it was, and unhappily added “Oh, it’s you.” “Oh, Hello. You were, again? Sorry. Missed the name first time round, eh?” In a manner of speaking, most of the X-Nerds asked a similar question. God told them each, separately. None of them seemed to care anyway. “I thought you didn’t believe in me,” He conceded. “Bollocks!” One little titch burst out. If he were really talking to God, and it looked like he was, because this was the guy who’d they’d all seen in the dining hall two weeks back, and since he was now speaking for all the X-Nerds and probably James too, then those bets they all covered some time ago (the ones about attending church occasionally) might just prove handy. “If we didn’t believe in you, what are you doing here?” God thought about it, scratching one of the little brown spots on his high forehead (God doesn’t think of himself as balding. It’s really an expanding forehead. Got to make room for all that knowledge, you know). “Hmm,” was what He said, and left it at that; logic escaped him. Then the Time Machine fell apart, that blasted wind started up and the seven of them decided it was probably time to leave. They meandered towards the south where a vast mountainous wall could be seen. “So, uh, God-” The older X-Nerd started before God so rudely interrupted. “Please, call me George.” “Why?” “Because that’s my name.” “Oh. I didn’t know. Okay, uh, George-” “That’s better.” “What is?” “You called me George.” “I know. You asked me to.” “So, get on with your question, then.” God said irritably. “Oh. Okay. Where was it that you were-” “What’s your name?” God asked, interrupting again, as He was becoming renowned for doing. “Uh, Simon. Why?” “Well, you know My name. I wanted to know yours.” “Oh. That’s Stuart, the little fat one. That’s Errol, the other little fat one. And, uh-” “I didn’t ask what their names were.” “-Matthew and Karen. Well I’m telling You anyway.” God could be so obnoxious sometimes. So he rushed “But getting back to what I was saying, uh, where were you going?” “What? Why don’t you ask sensible questions?” Then to himself, although everybody heard it anyway ‘Silly Humans. Never should have made ’em. Why did I ever get involved with mail-order shopping?’ 9. But they arrived. Then God said something about creating a fully functioning Kentucky Fried Chicken place. Nobody was really listening until they say a fully functioning Kentucky Fried Chicken place come into view, just over the next hill. I mean bitumen, dying shrubbery, that little box thing that you talk into, the one car in the drive through that you always get stuck behind, even when you’re eating in. Everything. Just sitting there in the middle of the desert. There was one car parked in the carpark, but that was probably the manager. The X-Nerds glanced at each other in that ‘Kentucky Tried Cooking’ look. But God liked KFC and beside sand, there wasn’t much else to eat. So they ate all eleven secret herbs and spices and ate the white stringy stuff that grew below them (in the oven, probably) and drank the drinks that had somehow traversed a million light years through spacetime to get there. The best part of the entire experience was that the chairs were very hard, cold and probably designed by some sadist bent of giving everyone haemorrhoids and digestive tract overloads. Night time on an alien planet can be cold. Night time on an alien planet in a desert can be cold, too. Combine the two and you get something like ‘night time on an planet alien night on an alien cold in the planet a time can be desert’ which, surprise surprise, doesn’t make very much sense. Unless you are a human(oid) computer and Head Nerd, in which case it means than you are actually on some other planet, in the middle of nowhere, and it is likely to get cold. God sat next to Simon, who, incidentally was the old Head Nerd before he became the Head X-Nerd. God and Simon got on reasonably well, thought God. God and Simon got on like Plums and Vegemite; sure it works, but boy does it taste terrible, thought Simon. Stuart and Errol and the other two sat around tending the fire, which was silly because God had started the fire right up out of the sand- A desert planet doesn’t have wood, or bits of newspaper left stuffed into little holes in the ground around empty public garbage bins. Not like Earth. James was elsewhere, most likely searching for a mirror so he could do his hair, which was a mess. Strange, he should have been looking for a comb. God insisted James come along. Which got The X-Nerds and God off on the wrong foot altogether. Which was not good for the relationship, or the arthritis. So the next day, when the sun had come up, which, even on this sandy yellow alien planet, was after the night had expired, at about half past nine in the morning, the Universe ended. Time stopped ticking. The days of their lives no longer poured down like sands through the hourglass. And it was a nice way to finish the Universe, a nice warm planet, lots of lovely dunes, like at the beach, except there weren’t no beach round here. Pity, really. It would be interesting to see what the waves did when Time stopped. It was interesting, too, The X-Nerds didn’t feel hungry, didn’t get thirsty and were quite mystified at why their watches hadn’t stopped (and they were Casio’s too!). Stuart had the answer in, well, no Time at all: They didn’t tell the time; Time was relative to an objects position in space as viewed by a relative stationary object; in Earth’s case, the Sun, as for this place, nobody knew any locals (except God who’d been shot by one of them) and so couldn’t ask. So the small digital Casio watches, so bizarre, kept on predicting what the Time would be if the Universe hadn’t ended, in exactly the same way that it would stop if you ever needed to know the time before the Universe ended. Ah, such is Murphy’s Law... And just before everything went black (very black, this time. A darker shade of black...), a gentle wind swept across the forlorn planet, unearthing (unarrakising?) a flaming golden sword, which God picked up. “Been looking for this darn thing for aeons!” He said. 1012. And In the End, there was not very much at all. Besides six Humans and God and a big golden sword. There was no light. There was no dark. There was no sound, no feeling that there was anything, and in fact, it were true. In The End, there was Nothing At All. Fancy that. “Uh, God...” Ventured James quietly. In the End, for no real reason whatsoever, James could speak normally. “Shhh!” God scolded. “You’re ruining the atmosphere of this!” His voice passed through the void like mud passes though glass. “Oh. Sorry. It’s just that-” “Shush!” God made a funny sound deep in his throat. “Oh. Sorry. I won’t do it again. I-” “Will you bloody-well shut up?” God’s voice was a very hoarse whisper. Or would have been if he didn’t shout so loud. James grunted. God seemed to pause. It was hard to judge, now that Time had stopped. How long had passed already? A second? A year? No, it couldn’t be a year. If it was a year already, James would have ultimately bored them to death. And what was death, anyhow? The X-nerds didn’t feel dead, even though obviously there was now nothing around saying that they were alive. Perhaps they were somewhere between life and death, or somewhere beyond death, like a busload of American Tourists. Judging by their still-going Casios, they all came to vote that it was only three minutes, not a year. Anyway, after God paused, they all started walking after Him (they had been walking on the black void for quite some time, now). “Damn near ruined the End, you lot,” God seemed miffed. “What?” “They filmed the End of the Universe, you know, just for the record. The Time Library wants to keep these sort of things, you know, just in case somebody actually wants to review this Universe and recommend it to someone or something.” The X-Nerds and James stared at God. So, they all shared the thought, there was more to this afterlife and end-of-the-universe business after all. “Well, bugger me with a red rubber hose and forty feet of nylon string, it’s a bit lucky we covered out bets, then, isn’t it?” Simon half-joked, mimicking that poxy ‘Blackadder’ accent that Rowan Atkinson did so well (it was, after all, his character). God didn’t get it when the X-Nerds laughed. God didn’t understand laughter, or Humans, for that matter, or James. God understood Golf, which is why he invented this Universe in the first place. But they never had a good a golf course anywhere in the entire Universe as he had just off his bedroom back home. Now, he thought, smiling to himself again, there’s a good fairway... 11. And all faded away to nothing. The X-Nerds, always sticking together, knew only the whereabouts of the X-Nerds beside them. James was... elsewhere. And God? Well God seems to have strolled off mumbling something about greens and trees and little white hard things that you hit with sticks. “Did anyone bring a torch?” Somebody asked. Ingenuity applying to the X-Nerds only, five pinpoints of light appeared from out of the screens of their Casio watches. James’ watch obviously didn’t have a light. Which wouldn’t have mattered since James wasn’t here anyway. And because he didn’t have a watch. It wouldn’t have had a light even if he had had one. And even if he had had a light in the watch that he never had, the light wouldn’t have worked in the watch, and so it would have been pointless to try to use the light in the watch that he didn’t have, or even in the watch that he might have had, because either the watch would have been broken and the light wouldn’t have worked, or the watch would have worked but the light still wouldn’t have worked. Even if there was a light that worked in the watch he might have had, the batteries that would’ve lit the light wouldn’t light the light because they were dead, or would have been if he had had them. But he didn’t have a watch, and isn’t here, so it doesn’t matter. So suddenly all The X-Nerds instantly started bumping into one another, all similarly drawn to each others’ light, like moths drawn to somebody’s face when they’re trying to sleep. “Uh, Karen?” whispered Stuart. Karen, when out in the light, was the only female X-Nerd among them (in the dark, she was just someone squishy to walk into). She was quiet in her own way and rarely added anything to the small group, except in numbers. She was seventeen, had thorougly blondish hair and thoroughly brownish eyes. The brown eyes had it: Stuart, Errol and Karen had brown eyes, the other two had greyish blue eyes. The Head X-Nerd, Simon seemed to have one grey and one blue eye, which made him quite unique amongst all the groups. And true singular uniqueness is condemned in western societies. Which was why he became a Nerd in the first place. “Smeg,” Came a voice through the darkness, then a clatter. It was the most irritable Head Nerd, James, bumbling through the darkness, still trying to see where he was going with his eyes, which was silly, because there was nothing at all to see- that’s the point of absolute nothingness. But what had clattered? “Smegging hell!” The angered voice came again, and then something smashed. And a rumble like a landslide. James only used the ‘smeg’ word when he swore. He ‘borrowed’ it out of a novel he once read (he said he read it, anyway, but he actually watched in on the TV); his Idol, an hologram named Arnold J. Rimmer from the Grant/Naylor story, Red Dwarf. But out here, what the hell was smashing and crashing. Then they found out. The lights came on in two places: Two perfectly cylindrical cones of light shone down from way up above. The X-Nerds all stood in one, frozen fingers still on the little buttons on their watches. James stood a ways off in the midst of a few cardboard boxes, some of which appeared torn and broken. A good number of them had spilled a lifetimes supply of those little fluffy peanut shaped packing foam things, a stream of plastic that meandered off into the distance. The X-Nerds stood fast in their cone of light, a hard, white floor below them. Everything seemed to go very quiet, very cold. Then, in James’ cone of pure light, another box fell from somewhere up out of the lights circumference, smashing down on the ground. Lots of little marbles wheedled away across the floor, purring into the black distance. James cursed once more and his cone of light flickered slightly but stabilised, like an active fluoro tube in a bathtub full of liquid margarine. After the rolling marbles had stopped, some more time ticked by on their casio’s, even though it didn’t tick by anywhere else. An odd fog crept across the floor slowly, probing each next bit of territory slowly, then would rush and swirl as it attained the new landscape. The strange mist was ankle deep and smelt like a strawberry spearmint. Clunk: The sound of a far off three phase power switch in an unsoundproofed stadium. The cones of light expanded, grew outwards as if the floor was slowly dropping downwards. Then, as the light spread out, the X-Nerds could see that they stood in a big room. As a matter of fact, the walls, if there were any, were so far off that they were lost in the strange, swirling fog that hugged the ground like as if terrified of the immensely high, white sky. James stood about twenty metres away at an enormous mountain of boxes and crates. One side of the great pile of storage units, in about a three metre cleft, had cascaded down the pile onto the floor. James stood at the bottom, not looking embarrassed, because he didn’t know how. But it was his fault. “Cool,” Errol said. Everyone else nodded. “Wish I had one of these!” Pause; kind of like when everybody stops talking to take the same breath. “So! Intruders,” A voice boomed, a thunderous deep voice that shook the ground and rolled freely over the miles of foggy voidscape. It didn’t sound like God. Where was God, anyway? “Intruders in My storage room!” “Ah,” Simon grunted aloud, then whispered to his group “Looks like the end of level boss has arrived.” “Whispers? Ha!” The big voice laughed. “Whispering will do you no good! I am All-Supreme!” “He sounds like a giant pizza,” Karen stated surreptitiously, but without much humour. Simon looked up, for it seemed that that’s where the voice came from. “Oh, well. Sorry. He did it-” pointing at James “- and we’ll be off now. Bye!” The five started walking away from where James stood, but all walked into a Rather Invisible Object. Now some invisible objects aren’t really invisible. Glass for instance; Glass isn’t invisible, you just happen to be able to see right through it. But you know it’s there and if you get at the right angle, you can see the glass. Rather Invisible Objects, however, are like glass- they let the light through- but you can’t see then no matter what you do, which makes it hard to know its whereabouts. And when there’s five of you all walking in a tight group fairly fast away from the scene of an accident with somebody with a big voice and a name like a pizza topping coming after you, and you walk into one of these rather invisible objects, you get flat faces and fall over. Which is what happened, in that order. “Oh cool. Fractal edge floor tiles,” Stuart mentioned after a moment on the floor. They all looked through the swimming mist at the floor. It wasn’t just one big floor, like cement or rubber; it was tiled, like a hospital morgue. What a nice thought. But each of the teeny tiles had a fractal edge on it, which meant that while the volume of each tile was fixed, or in fact bounded within ‘limits’, the surface area of the tile was proportioned reasonably exponentially to the volume of that tile, which simply meant, in non X-Nerd terms, infinite, or newspaper terms, “Really Really Big!”. Everything in this room was very infinite indeed. But enough of that. The door they found was quite well made. It was set into the rather invisible object so smoothly that it hardly left a mark on the original surface. But it opened away from them, which was good. It was an interesting job, too. Hard to do, really. You could see through the door towards the neverending plains of churning fog, but the door opened into what seemed a hallway. “Cross dimensional?” Simon reasoned clinically. “Mm. Probably,” Karen said professionally. “Nice job.” “Yeah.” Behind them came that voice again, the one that thundered deep in their chests. “Stop! You can’t go! I... I need someone to talk to!” It was whinging. And mixed up in that echoing shemozzle was the small, squeaky voice of James. “Wait! Hey, you. I’m Head Nerd! I order you to-” But the X-Nerds were gone. The door slowly edged shut, the hallway was then no longer visible. James slumped down against a box. A single peanut shaped foam bauble floated down onto his chest as he stared vacantly off into an infinite, white distance... 12. ROOM 101: MICROSOFT SUPPORT DESK. The sign was on the back of the door, chiselled into the old, tarnished brass. I was a grand old thing, oak panelling, gritty and cracked with age, dust. Very dusty. And it was also the door that just been used by five worried-looking people. Under that very door fine white mist seeped, a damp spot rotting into the old, reddish floorboards. The X-Nerds sat just along the hallway, which was actually a narrow mall in some deserted village, at the withering table of some ancient caféteria. Overhead, whitish-yellow clouds raged through a ferocious orange sky, speeding overhead like in a hurricane. Water, or a liquid just a viscous, gurgled and plooped down behind a low grate in the wall. The room had been plastered and wallpapered in an angry red, but that had long ago peeled and tarnished to the present sullen displesantness. There was dirty glass in the window, grey with a scum that seemed to feed on the cold, molten sand. A tattered clothing shop across and along the street, deserted, clothes torn from the dummies which stood like silhouettes in the darkness. It started to rain, the large dollops of water the colour of blood. “Kind remind you of home?” Karen asked, quietly. “Oh, yeah,” Matthew said. Matthew had been silent the entire journey. He and Karen had walked together most of the way, allowing the other three to do the talking, which was how things were done back when they were just plain Nerds. In this group, age or sex didn’t matter. Simon was leader, he’d been Head Nerd for as long as anyone could remember. Stuart was next in line, then Errol. Karen and Matthew (and the Nerd Wannabe’s, wherever they were) formed the body of the group. Agewise, however, Simon was oldest, then Matthew, then Stuart, Karen and then Errol. “Except we have cleaner windows at home. Mum likes to keep them clean.” “Does anybody else think that all this is a bit strange?” “What, you mean the end of the universe, Karen?” Karen rested her head on an upturned palm, tracing rings of dust into the table. “No. Yes, well, the time machine working, meeting God, fractal-edge floortiles.” “Seems fine to me,” Matthew grinned. “Oh. I guess it’s just me, then.” The rain continued unabated. 13. In another dimension, one so often called parallel to Reality, at a time no longer relative to Reality’s Present, the weather patterns suddenly changed. A storm started to brew where a storm shouldn’t brew, and on the other side of the planet, a bird was suddenly thrown into the path of a speeding car by a freak gust of wind. On the grey back seat of that car a book titled ‘CHAOS’ lay open, exposing, amongst others, the words ‘The Butterfly Effect’. The small bird fell dead into the grass beside the road. 14. “...And then we ended up here.” James concluded his story. The light from above paused, said “So, they deserted you? Why?” The Head Nerd listened to the soft, strange voice. It was weird, but nobody had ever really talked much to him before, well, apart from his Dentist, but those conversations always seemed one-sided. Nobody ever wanted to hear his story. Now, here in a storage room at the End of the Universe, lived a disembodied voice that looked like a light who wanted to listen. It sounded like Marvin the Robot, out of the ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ TV Series- depressed and slow. He thought he saw a gleaming white robot standing nearby, but couldn’t be sure. He remembered seeing the HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy on TV and tried to recall whether the characters in it had had experiences similar to the one he was having now. Sure, it was a dream. You don’t just meet a god and wander over planets that aren’t there and talk to lights. Everybody knew that. About the lights. Therefore, it must be a dream. He must be dreaming something out of the Guide. But he couldn’t remember anything in the Guide being this wierd. He was a fool. Evrything in the Guide was this wierd. Or wierder. But James went on, talking. He could, now there was nobody to hear him, talk like everybody else. He could communicate in human terms, not some computer parsed binary encryption that he was used to speaking in. Perhaps before he’d just been nervous. Perhaps in this strange dimension he was somehow different. Probably it was just that he was stupid. And so here, in these cool swirling mists, in a room where Time itself did not exist, nor the rules of quantum particle physics or the rules of thermodynamics, in fact nothing but fractal tiles, mist, boxes of foam baubles and a talking light existed within this entire reality, James went on talking. 15. “Up on the hill, near that big house!” Karen was excited to have spotted him first. The X-Nerds- casual, not military- moved as one. God swung his club, a tiny white projectile bursting off the ground, curving, curving, flying across the ground. Plop. Into a pond. Suddenly, the pond wasn’t there, only a flat piece of ground. The pond had vanished completely. The small golfball lay unmoving on the short, green grass. Beside it, a small, yellow fish, small enough to, say, put in ones ear, snuggled into the grass, its unblinking eye turned towards the raging sky. “Handy, that.” Stuart called out just as God swung again. God half turned, missed the ball and dug a sizeable chunk of green life from the turf. Then cursed a string of curses that would make geraniums turn brown and wither. “I was wondering where you lot had gotten to,” God said when they arrived next to him. God hadn’t noticed James wasn’t with them. Perhaps he’d learned from past experience. “I guess you don’t know your way around the celestial city.” “This dump is the Celestial City? Like, paradise and heaven and all that?” “For man’s sake, no! This is the celestial city, sure. Heaven and Hell don’t exist.” “But what about when you die? The afterlife and all that?” “Afterlife? What nitwit gave you that idea? Afterlife indeed!” God spat penderously. “No, this is where you were supposed to go when you died,” God explained. “Except when everyone got here, they were dead.” “What about us, then?” Matthew asked, as if he’d come up with a question God couldn’t answer, like one of those Mensa puzzles that you’d get each Christmas from your Uncle, something you’d never forgive him for. “Well, you are exceptions,” God cheated, quickly masking his doubt with apparent ingenuity. “You see, uh, when your Universe ended, everyone who was still alive got to come here. Yeah.” “So...?” “Where are they? Oh, they’ll be arriving soon. I hope.” “Why?” Karen questioned. “What?” God questioned back. Again, with explanations this time. “Why would they want to come to a dump like this?” “It’s not a dump,” God defended. “It looked good in it’s day.” “A squizillion years ago.” “So?” God seemed a bit hurt. He looked down at the little golf ball on the soft turf. It waited patiently for Him to whack it again. “Well,” Karen argued, “If you’ve got all these people going to arrive soon, don’t you think you may as well tidy the place up a bit-” God wanted to interrupt here, but Karen could be very assertive at times. “-It is a little dusty, after all.” God considered this. He turned from the X-Nerds, brushed them back a little and whacked the gold ball. It shouted “Wheeee!” as it sailed through the air, before landing only feet from the flag. “No.” “What? Why not? The place is a dump.” Karen whined. Simon looked imploringly at God, a sorry expression indeed. “Look, God. George. The place seems a bit run down-” “Yeah well what will you be doing for the rest of eternity? Huh? And the other twenty-two billion other lifeforms that will live here? You can patch it up.” God was getting angry. You could tell. A whisp of steam lifted from his left shoe as he started to pace towards the flag on the green. “Ah,” Simon blurted carefully. “Yes, well, I suppose we’ll be off then, shall we? Got to get home for tea, don’t we. Bye!” This had become a habit for the group. Sneaking off when things turned a bit grim. But it almost always did the trick and things so far had worked out fairly well. Especially now since they’d lost James. Perhaps it wasn’t best to disturb God while he was playing Golf. Perhaps it wasn’t best to disturb him no matter what he was doing. 16. A billion light years away, and about the same number before, back in a small room in a house, there was a small black mark on the floor. This roundish blot which seemed smudged on the pretty, white carpet, moved. It did not move much, or very fast, but it did move. One of The Undecided then slammed the door back open, opened his mouth to say something else, but had to close it again because he’d forgotten what it was he was going to say. He had forgotten because, only moments before, when he’d just stormed out, the room had contained a large, metallic machine that appeared as if it were ready to burst into flame. Now, he’d stormed back in, and it and the six people who were also in the room with the machine had mysteriously vanished. All that remained of their existence, it seemed, was a small quivering black blot on the floor. A wind burst through the window, billowing curtains screaming into the room like two giant blundering grannies grasping for their respective walking frames. The blot moved, just a little, very slowly. It shimmered like liquid boot polish; or black coffee in a black mug. It seemed to want to... No, that was silly. It couldn’t. It was a black blot on the carpet, for God’s sake. It burped. Silly as it may have been, it had done it anyway. The young Undecided knelt, peered deep into the jellylike lump of quavering nothingness that continued to burp its way across the carpet. A face appeared in the shiny black surface, the blackened mirror of the youngster gazing back up into his astonished green eyes; and the blot of blackness separated into four equal parts, each of which reflected a miniature of its surroundings, cast in matte noir, a quivering reflection of a quiet, peaceful reality. 17. The sign buzzed, as all pink-red neon signs should do. It was a flickering sign at a diner, by no means at the edge of town. The Celestial City, a city known to some of the locals as ‘Castip-Ulstyity- Ity’; to other (more sober) members, ‘The Capital’; to most just plain old ‘Celestial City’. Though not quite next to the road, due to a badly placed council carpark, three run-down hotels and a minature golf course, the Diner was a popular enough place. All the lifeforms left from the End of the Universe had arrived, plippered into place with only a minor puff of smoke, a while earlier. The city fared well, the usual assortment of city life teeming through back streets and underneath bridges. Life hadn’t returned to normal though, when designing the city millions of years ago, God hadn’t expected there to be any problems in transport: People had their own donkey and were granted feet so that they could walk. Humans, however, being one of the more ingeniously stupid creatures in the now-expired Universe, had invented Public Transport, which had been brought along to the ‘afterlife’ (just in case). Over five million years of evolution had developed one of the most complex life forms in the entire Universe- the Human Being- and over that five million years, those same humans couldn’t even invent a good public transport system that actually moved people form Point A to Point B. Instead, they’d invented Taxi’s: money-guzzling beast engineered to move people from point A through to some other character in a different civilisations’ alphabet, and to start out in the wrong direction. Some of the other lifeforms, simpler, sleeker models which had less bits that could break or fall off, had developed quite creative methods of travelling. On one particular world, a planet so enormous that even their satellites thought the world was flat for the time they took to cross the sky, the lifeforms13 had developed a surprising method of transporting objects from Point A to Point B: Build giant conveyor belts all around the entire planet and sit by them. In other words, to go from Point A to Point B, the creatures became Point C and moved Point A by Point C to Point B to simulate movement. Unfortunately, for the Celestial City, only the Humans had thought to bring their taxis and busses and diesel locomotives along, just as a reminder of home. The door to the Diner was open already, propped that way with a chunk of brick tied neatly in a pink stocking. A hot tongue of steamy air spewed out into the twilight carrying yet another bout of ’flu and disease. Fortunately, people couldn’t die of disease in the afterlife. It was about it’s only true merit. Come to that, they couldn’t actually die of anything. Already there were some pretty silly looking corpses walking around. The X-Nerds hadn’t been here before, but it seemed a friendly enough place: The counter supported the usual array of locals- the man with his hat pulled over his face, the man staring into his muddy coffee, the woman in the rich red (and utterly cheap) Kaftan whose crossed legs could be seen through an envelope of blue smoke. A few tables and chairs were by the window; by the door. A jukebox churned out all the standards quietly in the corner. Somebody was coming out of the Ladies’. Nobody you’d know, just a familiar looking face. The X-Nerds sat in the corner; hard white chairs, but comfortable enough. Elvis hung on the wall. Not just a picture. Elvis hung on the wall. “Something doesn’t feel quite right,” ventured Karen. They didn’t eat out normally. “Hm,” Simon agreed. Karen was right, as usual. It felt like the quiet before the storm; a tenseness in the air- as if some great adventure was about to start and forever throw their lives into deranged chaos (not that their lives weren’t already thrown into deranged chaos). “Lets order, huh,” Matthew said on hearing his stomach grumbling. “I could eat a horse. As long as it’s dead, cooked and garnished so badly that you think your out in a field eating grass. But, yes, I could eat a horse.” 18. Mmun-mnuu-eee-ooo-mmoan-i-muuu-nooo... The sound echoed through the great, dark tunnels- a sound like a thousand monks who’d forgotten the words to the hymn. It was only five hundred monks who didn’t know the words to a hymn, but their eternal mumble was echoing off the walls and so seemed a thousand voices. The tunnels were low, carved, tiled and painted in red-ochre, and resembled the twisting maze of sewers under the Celestial City. Throughout them, the low chants vaguely drifted, dwindling, echoing, whittling away slowly at the very foundation of rock. The droll undertone of Vox-Multiformis (the name given to the chant14) imitated a thousand times over against the rough, hand-hewn walls. No outsider had ever stood in the Great Halls of Lorna-Major (well, nobody anybody present could recall, anyway). No outsider could imagine the infinity of the halls and tunnels that crisscrossed the cathedral. Lorna-Major was a solitary planet. A lone planet orbiting a lone white-dwarf sun, the only planet outside the Universe, atmosphere part oxygen, part sulfur, mostly methane. Large yellow clouds streamed over the barren waste of rock and dust. A sea of methane and other short chemical chain combinations of carbon and hydrogen, with the occasional chlorine, nitrogen and oxygen thrown in for good measure. A sea of death, the fish once brought here from a small planet known as Sol3-L1, already dead before set free to rot into the smelly, sodden swamp-like ocean. For many aeons, thousands of generations far surpassing any amount of time known within the Universe, the Monks of Lorna-Major have practiced worship to their Gods. They, for reasons forgotten centuries ago, provided themselves with the technology to remove both their own planet and the nearest sun to its present position, just on the transition between the Universe and pre-atomic Void. This didn’t go down well with the other six inhabited planets and two C-class genetic research moons in their solar system, but nobody complained because they all froze to death very quickly. All except one particular batch of a shiny black, jellylike lifeform, which quivered very slowly in its petri dish, very cold, very alone, but very intelligent. Now, Lorna-Major had become the centre for culture, the centre for religion and politics. Lorna-Major had one of the best Universities outside the Universe (the only one), a Library with books that told the story of the universe with simple, full colour glossy photos and little pop-up cross-referencing multi-dimensional models in the centre pages. It had a great restaurant too, where lots of weird and wonderful people came to be seen. Not to be seen eating, though, as most of the food was caught on the marshy beaches of nearby methanic and sulfuric oceans, and therefore was quite poisonous. But the food was cheap! And they made great Martinis (shaken, not stirred), with those little umbrellas too! I-moo-numm-eee-loo-ba-loo-ba-muu... The chant continued. Nobody knew what it meant, its origin had been obscured by the mists of time (and those same mists of time had seeped into the section of library that contained the books explaining the chant, and indeed, the entire point of the religion, and had dissolved the manuscripts and papers in its putrid smelling green gas). The chants were sung- murmured and mumbled- by the remaining five hundred monks (remaining awake, that is) who didn’t know the words but weren’t going to let anyone else know that by not singing them. All in all, the sound like a far off earthquake rumbled out of the high-roofed cathedral. Up the back, near a large vertical tapestry, a balding man and a grey-haired woman. All the monks were balding men, but only these two had sunspots on their head. All the monks wore brown garb hessian sheets (they called the ‘robes’, but they were really potato sacks they stole from a military bunker). Also, the two monks with sunspots were wearing golf outfits: disgusting pastel combinations in corduroy and felt with checkered blue and yellow socks and black and white leather shoes. This would have made them stand out in normal instances, but the candles had melted down so far in this area that nobody could see anything anyway. There was a fair amount of snoring going on in this area too. One God said to the other, “Pretty boring service, huh?” The other God replied sleepily, “Mmm-unk-oo-lee-o”, thinking somebody had awakened her because She wasn’t chanting. Promptly, She fell asleep again. Then suddenly, over the amplifiers (after the air-raid siren went off to wake everybody up) came a voice. It was a nasal voice, a whine ensured to keep your attention (“...I wish he would just shut-up!...”) and seemed to be very excited about something. “Hark!” The voice said ecstatically. Then again “Hark! The Universe of our Escape.” “Whatever that means,” said one of the Gods, quietly, up the back, to himself. Then, with a slowness that tried to heighten the anticipation, but only managed to reassure some of the monks back into slumber, the roof of the cathedral opened to allow the monks to see the great expanse of stars above them. “The End of Time is nigh! The End of the Universe is-” But that was as far as the irritable screaming voice got. Unfortunately, opening the roof meant letting in the toxicating gasses of the atmosphere- Methane, sulphur, nitrogen and so on, nothing if which any of the monks could breathe- and all of the short, balding Monks who wore brown potato sacks and knew all the answers to the Universe, died in a great racking spasm of asphyxiation. One last slight cough and- Dead Silence. But the two Gods got a good view of the show. Immune to Methane and sulfur and whatever else the Universe and beyond could throw at them, they sat perfectly happily (as only they could do) and watched the great embodiment of their work slowly spiral gaily into itself, closing in, exploding and imploding, then, instantly, ceasing to exist at all. There came a small voice. “I’m late. I hope I’m not too late.” Up the other end, some doors opened and a lone monk surveyed the scene. “Oh dear,” his toneless, nasal voice complained. Then, he too fell over and died. All that was left was one sun, a restaurant that served deadly food and a cathedral with one thousand dead monks lying inconspicuously amongst the silent pews. “How ’bout a round or two, Randall?” Quested the female God of the other. “My place or yours?” The other said. “Hmm. I know-” “George?” “Yes,” And it was decided. “Let’s go see George.” 19. “And in just a moment, we’ll go back to back with two great classics from the Eurythmics, but right now, let’s see what’s happening in your world.” It was a nice room. There were pictures on the walls: Planets and dinosaurs. There was a small glossy print on the back on the door. It was green and black and read ‘The X-Files’. There was a calendar. On a bookshelf crammed with looseleaf and old tattered books, an FM radio was going. The bed was unmade and the window was slightly ajar. The blot lay quivering; squalid on carpet. It had split, re-split, and again, like a cellular lifeform, replicating the original over and over. A thousand score black jellies lay tremulating on the carpet; silent, alone. It seemed to be grinning. It was an evil grin. 20. “One Horse, garlic bread and a one point two-five of Pepsi,” The waitress, a short blonde with one blue eye (only one - in the center of her forehead), handed over the goods. “Pepsi?” The X-Nerds cried. “Pepsi. We don’t have Coca Cola.” “Oh,” Simon was at a loss. No Coke. They’d found out earlier that they didn’t have plain water either. “Do you stock, it’s rather rare, a little drink called ‘Purdey’s Elixir Vitae’?” “Elixir Vitae? Do we stock a drink with a name like that?” The waitress burst out laughing, a golden little laugh that made some of the men in the corner involuntarily squirm. “Boy,” She went on. Simon hated it when he was refered to as ‘Boy’. “Boy, let me tell you this. We’re in the Celestial City, here. This is the city of the Undead. Not back home on some little yellow planet with a-” “Uh, actually it’s blue and green-” “Green? Who ever heard of a green planet?” A couple of people in the corner looked up, raised their arms like schoolkids. A couple of people with purple skin and eyes in the palms of their hands. The waitress looked at them for a long time, defeatedly. “Whatever. We ain’t there now. We don’t have this drink of life. Shit, kid, we aren’t even alive any more!” “Well, actually,” started Stuart, who was well into the garlic bread. “We are. We asked God and He-” “You asked WHO?” Someone at a nearby table burst out, but he was obviously referring to somebody within his own conversation, so the five turned back to their own conversation and politely ignored him. An oversized cauliflower with three ‘legs’ and no arms wandered in, grumbling about, of all things, conveyor belts. “And,” Stuart continued, a crust of the yummy bread dangling precariously from his lip. “He said that we were all alive and that the afterlife-” “Afterlife? Who gave you that idea? On our planet, we’ve been sending people back and forth across dimensions for centuries. In none of them were any creatures who talked about no Afterlife.” The waitress laughed hard at the five stupid suckers sitting in her shop. She turned to go serve another customer, her long spiny tail knocking salt all over the remaining four-out-of-twelve slices of hot, yellowish bread. Matthew had almost finished eating the garnished horse. He looked up and said “-...”. 21. “Randall? Linda? What are you doing here. Last I heard, you were building a computer-generated Universe out near the Lorna-Major Academic Academy. What brings you here?” George was just finishing the seventeen-thousandth hole on his personal golf course. He reached out with his free hand and plucked two drivers from mid-air. Handing them to the two other Gods he added “Did they bore you almost to death, out there?” “Well, actually, they seem to have bored themselves to death. Actually.” Linda said. George looked up sharply as he placed three round, white things on the green turf. “What do you mean?” “Well, last I saw, they were all rolling around dying between moans. They’d opened up the roof just before the Universe ended and then they all died.” “But they can’t have. The Universe ended some time ago.” George appeared to be on verge of panic. “But we saw it. Stars and all, ended and dissapeared right there-” Randall stopped. He and Linda glanced at each other, suddenly understanding. It was their Universe that had ended! Their long hard work at programming a computer to genrate a holo-projected virtual Universe and they had just sat happily watching the show when it crashed! An unhappy silence descended. The golfballs waited in joyous rapture at the thought of being thwacked again. George was first to speak. “But, as you say. What of the Monks of Lorna-Major. Are they allright?” Linda told him what happened, in full glorious detail. George despaired. “And you let it happen?” He suddenly exploded, furious. “Yes.” “And you don’t know what you’ve done?” “Yes. We sat and watched our Universe crash. Do you know-” “The chant! You idiots. ‘Vox-Multiformis’ means ‘Voice of Stability’ in some distant, misunderstood language!” Steam rose from God’s shoes again. He really did have a sweating problem. “That chant was the Vox-Multiformis, You dolts!” “Oh, well. Um-” Linda started. Randall stood and started at George’s feet. ‘They’re steaming,’ His only thought. “It means, You spastic, elastic brained morons from the planet Zot, that boaring mumble was keeping the balance between good and evil all throughout all the Universes, I seem to recall. Something like that anyway. Mine, yours and a million others! And you let that bloody smelly planet collect more gas than those monks could breathe! And now they’re dead! You... You-” George shook an angry finger at the other two Gods, who both wore the silly grin of a schoolchild who knows he’s in trouble and hasn’t got a hope of blaming anyone- except, with distant possibility rising, each other. And so it was that he, George, the undisputed vegetative God that he was, did something that hadn’t occured since the very start of the Universes. In fact, the very start of everything. When the Unseen and Unknown OverGod had first balanced the chaos and energy and formed the Gods and formed the Void between each Universe, He placed within each Universe- each Dimension- a small but powerful symbol, a shiny, black object, no larger than a pencil case, to balance the order with the chaos. Let loose, the black Flux Scalis, as it was termed and therefore became, could tip the scale between primeval forces and rend everything- Gods and all- Chaos and Energy once more. In other words, kill everyone and make everything else totally useless. Anyway, George called a meeting. 22. The Flux Scalis was, in many other Universes and their relative dimensions, the night, the shadows, the creatures that lived in cupboards and under beds15. Flux Scalis was evil concentrated, not just some satanic cult bent on eating goats’ liver and drinking the blood of a cockerel. Real evil, chaos by another name, came to the other Universes as dark wraiths, hopelessness and despair, boogey men, and mail-order shopping TV networks. On Earth, many many aeons before the Universe ended and Time stopped, in a small room in a small house in a large country, on some nice carpet, Flux Scalis slowly writhed and mutated. A large living creature, a foetus in the womb that was quiet and empty, growing outwards and upwards like a balloon trying to burst. As it grew, it lost some of black sheen, lost some of it’s jelly-like properties. Then, it stopped. It stopped growing upwards and outwards. Now, devoid of all its former blackness, mutated into something less insidious, more transportable, it stood on two freshly formed feet, smiling that evil smile that the Mormons have every Easter when they come to tell you that the world will end next Saturday just after lunch. And here’s a pamphlet on our ‘way’. Ouside, some children swung gaily on some black tyres suspended by a heavy steel chain, their young laughter splitting an ear shattering silence. The Flux Scalis blinked and took her first ever breath. She was ready. 23. After the initial jeers and boos and then cries of understanding, the assembly of Gods settled down. George had explained the basics of what had happened was waiting for the initial response. Perhaps he should go have a cup of tea. Maybe a round or two. Someone, about halfway back in the assembly, then spoke up. “Who stared it? Let them fix it.” “How? It’s already happened, hasn’t it?” One other God said. “No, you’re thinking only through one dimension and in one direction.” “What? Where have you been for the last ten million aeons? The fact is that that we are going in this direction-” the God speaking motioned ahead of him, “- and you are thinking in this direction.” He motioned in the opposite direction. Someone else got up and shouted (he was way up the back) “No! He means go back to before it happened-” “That would mean unending the Universe!” George protested. “So?” Came the distant God again. “We could all do that. Just somebody would have to go back in time and-” “Who?” Yet another God protested. “Nobody wants to go back there. I’m glad the whole stinking mess is over.” A little voice shimmied across from the edge of the room. “Oh shoot! Where did that go? Damned stapler.” “It’s only a stinking mess because you let it get that way. You are a God, you know. You could have fixed it up with a wave of your hand, or didn’t you know?” “Oh, bloody hell, you lot,” came that voice from up the back again. “Can’t we at least talk about something sensible here. We’ve got a problem and we have to unend the stupid universes. So bloody-” “Not neccisarily,” One female God up the front interjected. “If we could use one of the five dimensions parrallel to the Celestial City, outside time to form a mesh between ourselves and all the universes before they’ve finished-” “But we’d still have to unend the universes.” Somebody new shouted at her as if she were deaf and stupid. He was about three seats away. “Now you listen to me young man-” “Why, thankyou, you old hag.” “Oh look, now I’ve lost my two-b pencil.” George let them argue. Arguments between Gods can only go so far. He knew what He’d do, and He also knew just who he’d send back into the Universe to fix it. 24. Flux Scalis wandered through the rooms and hallways of the house. So far she’d destroyed most of the contents of the rooms she’d visited. Now, wandering into the kitchen, she saw her first Human. A small, young Human. He was The Undecided and stood eating some black paste spread on bread. Looking around the room, the Flux saw many intriguing items- electric knives, a toaster, a sink full of water, onions. Then she saw a sight that horrified even her - a jar full of gherkins16. She formatted a plan inside her mind, ready to spring the excruciating trap, ready to begin fulfilling her destiny. In the background, Anne Lennox was singing about sweet dreams. He died slowly, and in terrible agony. The skin on his shoulder seared away to the white bone in putrid black smoke with the scalding touch of the Flux, and he screamed, dropping his bread onto the floor, face down. It stuck fast on the linolium, but he did not care anymore. He tore away from his female attacker, his hand splashing into the sink, dashing water about the room. He did not care. Then the Flux swished the toaster into the sink. The toasting bread was now ruined, but the screaming boy did not vex as the current swung up his arm, renting raw flesh from bone in jerking spasms of blood-bubbling fury. The boy shot back across the room, twisting his back sideways on the hard table. He hay motionless but alive on the floor, his bread now smeared into oblivion. On a twist of fate that had nothing to do with the horrendous tortures planned by the flux, an egg rolled from the bench to break over his face. The murderess grabbed the electric knife and in many minutes of blood soaked glee amidst the terrible screaming, had sawed the now-dead body into hundreds of glistening peices. She took her time to eat the raw meat and clean up every last blot of the iron enriched blood. She ate him with onions and cheese, garnished with the cat. She put his eyes on toothpicks and had them with champagne. The Flux could see more of these Human things far off, through the trees, down a black pebble road. She knew only that she must kill them as well. Subtlety, though, was the key. She grabbed a meat clever and stromped purposefully out the door. 25. She screamed. And screamed. Her purse fell to the floor and bounced once on the red tiles. She held her head with both hands, her body thrusting right then left. Her face became that of elemental pain, disfigured by hurting. Then, she seemed transparent. Did this happen often? she thought. Was it something to do with the Diner? One alien in the corner was just about to order what this woman had eaten earlier. For some reason, he now declined, ordering the Upside Down Lobster dish instead. With a last groan, a vortex appeared superimposed with her body, as is trying to occupy the same space. The colours of her body swirled, twisted inside themselves, became more transparent her head seemed forty feet from her neck, her feet lifted from the floor. Then, the grotesque being swirled into itself and was no more. Her clothes fell to the floor, but she was not naked. She had ceased to exist. The same thing happened to a man just outside. 26. George sat at a desk in his bedroom, watching the evening news. Number one story, an old lady on the outskirts of the Celestial City would have been two-hundred and four today, she had calculated, if Time hadn’t stopped and impeded her progress towards old age. She was a strange old woman, alien in almost every way- smelly, purple, dismembered- except her clothing style. Celestial City had some of the Universes best fashion designers (in fact, all of them), and she appeared as if she shopped with them all. Second up on the news was the weather, then a quick report showing that incredible numbers of the cities population were being ‘sucked’ into vortexes of primeval chaos and ceased to exist. At the end of the news broadcast, as if to prove a point, the news reader, an old man with very thick glasses and a grey moustache, did it himself. And the station went to an ad break. A small company on the other side of the city had just imported a new batch of Purdey’s Elixir Vitae (where from was anyone’s guess), a refreshingly expensive new drink containing ridiculously inexpensive ingredients such as air and water. God hit the remote: The TV went off. “Sally,” He said into his intercom. “Get me the X-Nerds.” It was like calling for Superman. A pause. “Right away, Mr God,” said a tiny, female voice, a voice similar to that of a telephone operator. God could have summoned them and they would have appeared right away, out of the nothingness. But doing it this way, making the X-Nerds cross half of Celestial City in a silly little yellow taxicab sent specifically for them, and making them pay for it at the end, was much more satisfying, and, hey, more fun. At eight to nine they arrived. God had sent the taxi at six-thirty, so that meant that he had inconvenienced them quite a bit. Good. They had inconvenienced him enough by starting all this. The door opened, slowly, a creaking noise. On the floor just behind it lay a soft cushion with a platinum ball-point pen on it. It was Sally, God’s secretary. She stated routinely “The X-Nerds, Mr God.” “Oh. Show them in, and, uh, Sally, you look great in Red.” God conceded. The cushion blushed. The small platinum pen just lay there. Sally left and showed the X-Nerds in. God offered them a brandy but they refused, not because they were underage, but because brandy tastes disgusting. “I’ll have a Coke!” Errol said, but God ignored him. God did not say anything but motioned them to follow him over to a bookcase. They did so, noting that God seemed a little angry at something (no change there). They stood by the bookcase. God reached out, took a blue book, and just like in those old Frankenstein movies, the bookcase swung around to a secret room. Except in the old Frankenstein movies, the book was red. God stood on the dais, the X-Nerds still beside the bookcase staring out over the sea of a hundred old people in golf suits. A wave of discordant colour sense rolled over the five stunned Humans as time after time they saw a bad taste in clothes repeated out over each God, male and female. Still, it was better than seeing them without golf clothes on. Some clothes, even this sort, were better than none at all. “So much for God wearing a flowing white sheet, like some strange people thought back on Earth,” Simon said. His image of God was a short, fat man, much like the Budda, except wearing a plain suit three sizes too small with a jacket, no tie, sitting on a big leather lounge. Hangabout, perhaps that was his image of a police commissioner. Confusion niggled its way in. Maybe it was a politician. Or a mafia boss? The real Ronald MacDonald? God did in fact have a leather lounge, and also owned a suit. But, like all Gods, wore his Golf clothes, just in case they had time for a game. “Gods! Please!” Still the congregation of Gods shouted at each other, arguing not the multiple Universe theory, they knew about that one, but of electrophysical time flux as applied to nuclear-based newtonian models of virtual universes. Slowly the flares and tempers settled, George formed rainclouds within the room and given them all a cold shower, just to be sure. Up in the back corner, just after the clouds had dispersed through a little grate in the ceiling designed for that purpose, a small door creaked open noisily and a K-Mart shopping trolley stood in the opening, a menacing grin etched into the wire frame that was its body. “Whoa! Wrong room! Sorry!” It said. Then the door closed and everybody turned back to George and the X-Nerds, waiting expectantly. God spoke, more to the X-Nerds than to the other Gods. “Everyone,” Said God. “This is Simon Kszuckesnerd.” “It’s pronounced Ecks Nerd,” corrected Karen. “What a fole.” “Simon,” He said, and Simon edged forward a little. “Why did you come here? More specifically, tell us how you came to be here in the Celestial City.” Simon hated it when he was singled out and so slinked backwards until he bumbled back into the bookcase. “Uh,” He faltered. “You brought us here, right after you were shot.” This caused a commotion amongst the seated Gods. A fly landing caused commotion amongst the gods. Whilst they were arguing the Head X-Nerd started to mumble again, trying the old escape routine. “Yes. Well, we’ll be off then.” And reached for the blue book God had used to switch the bookcase around. It wasn’t there. He turned to see God waggling it at him, shaking his head from side to side in the universal signal for ‘no’. He had that menacing, devious smile just like Parker Lewis in ‘Parker Lewis can’t Lose’, which came on after the news each night. “Oh, bugger,” Said Karen. By speaking, all the hundreds of voices were suddenly a memory and attention instantly snapped around to her. “Oh, bigger bugger!” She added, staring at ancient faces older than the Universe itself. “Karen,” smiled George, trying to get Karen to tell the story. His eyes went very narrow as he said it. God had a cute grimace when he was trying to be devious, she thought. It was in this way- in a large room hidden behind a bookshelf, next to Gods own bedroom, in the Celestial City at the end of the Universe, in a place that had all the Time in the world for Karen to tell her story- that all the assembled Gods learned of the story of James and his conquest of Earth. From bare beginnings when the Nerds, young at this stage, as a matter of fact still Nerd Wannabees, back when the Nerd old-boys were called Tech Heads, leapt at the idea that James might want to be a Nerd. The Nerds were in limited supply. Nerds were hard to come by and Good Nerds even harder. James had looked promised to be a Good Nerd, even, a much-envied SuperNerd, such a nerd he was. “But then,” Karen’s captivating account went on, “Then James became different. Something in him seemed to burn out- later we found it was his brain- and he became a stranger to the Nerds’ Way. He started to believe in life after death. He started to loose faith in Nostradamus, not real faith, because it’s all crap anyway, just the sort of faith you instill in somebody else making them believe that you believe. He even started to believe in Go..ho..ho..hod. Um, so you can see what a fool he was. Yes.” The gods looked confused17. Karen ignored them, continued. “He stopped watching the X-Files on TV. Then he committed the biggest Nerd Sin, he stopped using Computers. “Nerds must use computers. In order to survive; to continue to fight and seek out the Great Question; to be in touch with the action; to remain in essence, A Nerd.” Someone coughed then yawned. Other than that, the place was silent. Then outside the little door at the back came tremendous crash. It sounded precicely like a K-Mart shopping trolley with red wheels rolling down grey cement stairs with a corroded dark blue iron railing. Karen politely shouted “Oi! Listen, will you?” Then continued on with her narrative. “James had become vaguely akin to a computer, though more like a computer without an operating system: Expensive but useless. He forgot how to talk properly, he somehow unlearned how to stand up for himself and for what is right. He became completely unbearable. “Then we, the X-Nerds, for we’d been dumped by James from the status of Nerds, all decided to get rid of James and send him to a different time. We built a time machine and while still in the testing phase, it was accidentally activated it and brought ourselves and James to another time, where we met God. He brought us here and here we are.” Karen concluded simply. Karen was good at telling stories. The question was simple and the X-Nerds should have expected it to be asked. “Where is this ‘James’ character now?” They, the X-Nerds, looked at each other, stupefied, then all spoke. “Who cares?” “He’s gone, and that’s the point of why we built the time machine in the first place-” “Why does it matter?” The Gods themselves considered this. A Human, so deranged that he had both lost the plot and been lost from the plot. A Human so stupid that he stopped knowing how to be a Human. But so what? He was a Human, anyway. And Humans were stupid anyway. So why should it matter what these Humans thought of him? Anyway? “No! We all want to know where this ‘James’ character is!” One of the Gods roared. It was Randall. “Uh, I don’t, really.” Said Linda, who sat nearby. “Shut up, Linda.” Scolded the first God. “Well I don’t. And don’t you tell me-” She was furious at him for some reason. “Shut up, Linda. Just shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up.” Randall got so excited that he started to sound like a human. He looked up and George and the X-Nerds and all the seated assembly were looking quite directly back at him. He blushed a little, grinned stupidly and quested in a puny voice “How about I shut up, then?”. George nodded, his sunspots glinting sweat in the light. He didn’t say anything. Just nodded. He nodded a bit more. “Well?” He said to the X-Nerds, meaning the question about James’ whereabouts. The X-Nerds each shrugged. They knew he was probably still sitting in the fog playing with the packing foam, but he was happy there. He could stay there, couldn’t he? 27. Felicity Scalore owned a Casino, two yachts and a little farm in a quiet, sleepy village. This was where she spent most of her days. Her managers and commanders kept the dollars rolling in and she had established a nice little private guest house. Happy little married couples would come along, quietly, up the back roads behind the boring village, to stay at the guest house, just for the honeymoon. Then one of them would be murdered, or have mortal wounds inflicted apon them. Never by any of the townsfolk, who hardly knew the comings and goings of the guesthouse. Never, it seemed by the gentle Felicity. She seemed a sweet young woman, content with her life. It almost always ended out that one of the couples that had stayed there had done it. Murdered the other, maimed their new lover, or would simply vanish and never a trace would be found. Nobody would ever suspect Felicity. Such a nice girl could never harm people like that. If somebody suspected her, they would just forget about it. Just like that. Felicity would always continue, though, shrugging off to circumstance or to a foul, drawn out plot, drawing the partner into such a back road, run down cottage in order to kill. Occasionally, when it became too much, she would leave to go to her Casino, or take a holiday on a cruise ship. Sometimes, the murders would still happen. It was all a little too silly, but what the hey. Nobody in the small village knew much about her past. Usually, a small, tight community could figure somebody out- would know people who knew people and information would travel down the grapevine. Felicity, it seemed, had no background. Nobody knew anything about her, other than she had first bought the hobby farm and guest house around four years back, and that she’d moved from a town where, the year she moved, seven teenagers had vanished, without a trace. They hadn’t run away. The forensic people hadn’t seen any chemical or genetic traces of their existence anywhere. Seven people from Felicity’s home town vanished the year Felicity left. But she was such a sweet young girl that everybody put it all down to coincidence. She was such a nice girl. Felicity Scalore, looked out at the setting sun, a fiery red, the colour of warm, liquid blood. In her black-in-black eyes she knew, tonight, there’d be another murder. Tonight she was hungry again. And another section of the future’s history would be wiped out altogether. “I’ll get you, whoever you are,” She said quietly to the sunset, so her guest could not hear her. “I don’t know your name, but I’ve seen where you live. You are mine.” Moments later, Felicity’s guest was torn limb from limb by a black creature, the colour and texture of molasses. The being chewing and slurping as the still living body twitched and screamed in agony, watched its own warm carcass devoured by the terrible hunter. 28. And in The Capital, the Celestial City, another Human fell prey to the vortex and became nothing. The new newsreader had said earlier on that evenings bulletin that the vortex only affected Humans. Nobody else was reported having the same problems. It seemed that some strange procedure was systematically wiping out numbers of seemingly unrelated Humans, the only links being the genealogy: People belonging to the one family often all fell victim to the vortex. It was not determined how this was possible. One division of the council in the Celestial City was set up to explore the possibilities of these actions. Only when their project leader, a Human, was sucked into himself by the selective vortex, did the project team understand just how the vortex worked- it turned you inside out mathematically but not physically, then applied a dual cosine wave to the relative physical plane of existance, and then the equation divided by zero and an error was generated. Unfortunately, the fabric of whatever the Celestial City was fabricated with couldn’t handle the error and the cause of the error was nullified. In these cases, the cause of the error was the human, and so the vortex was applied to the humans and they simply vanished in a puff of, well, logic. But as to stopping these strange occurances from happening, nobody had any ideas. One week after this discovery the project team was dissasembled and scattered and the whole idea of looking for the impossible was abandoned. In other words, nobody really cared what the hell happened to the Humans and their damned Public Transport systems. 29. As it had been left, white mist still crept under the door. The street had remained, in essence, the same. The little caféteria had re-opened, the clothes shop hadn’t. Room 101, as the withered sign on the door still said, hadn’t been looked into. The door opened slowly, allowing white light and a little of the low-set fog to spill out into the dim street. The stony ground sadly reflected the light. “This is the place, right?” Linda asked. Linda had needed to get away from the irritating Randall for just a while. Since their virtual Universe had crashed, the God Randall had been getting more and more arrogant and obnoxious, ordering Her around, telling Her to shut up all the time. Soon, He would go too far. “It looks unused.” “Uh huh,” George responded. Across the street, sitting on a bench, the five Humans who reputedly started this whole thing sat, unhappy with the Gods’ decision to send James back to Earth with them after they’ve figured out how to unend the Universe for both the X-Nerds and James without actually unending it and spoiling the stays of the other individuals in Celestial City. “This is it.” The great white cross-dimensional gap in front of them stood empty. A marble rolled out through the door onto the street. “Yo! James!” God rumbled into the whiteness as they all wandered in. Behind them, the door remained open. Nothing. “Heigh-ho! Jamie,” Yelled Linda, her high pitch piercing. After the echo, nothing. “He wandered off,” Said a sad, lonely voice. “Mikal! How you doing?” George looked up into a cone of light, smiling. “Oh, it’s you, George. Fine, fine.” A beam of white smoky light shined on Linda’s face. “Haven’t seen you ’round here before.” A lonely cone of light is a cautious cone of light, remember. “No, Mikal. I’m Linda, George’s, uh, cousin. I’m from out near Lorna-Major. Just visiting, you know,” Explained the female God. She wandered around aimlessly, trying to kick up the stubborn floor-hogging mist. It didn’t work. “Oh. Pleased to meet you. So, uh George. What brings you around here? Something up?” “I found that flaming golden sword again,” God produced the item he’d found on the desert planet and placed it on the floor. It was lost to the fog. “Oh. I didn’t realise you’d lost it. Is that all?” The voice thundered, not angrily, but thundered because that’s how he spoke. In a room of infinite dimension, the reverb was magnificant. Long ago had considered SPEAKING LIKE THIS, but anyone who did that was just being silly18. “No,” And George spoke up at the light, telling him of the events and why they needed James. “Oh. Well, James got bored and wandered off that way-” A shaft of light flickered away from the stack of boxes in the middle of the room, a direction pretty much directly away from the hidden door that the X-Nerds had used to leave the storage dimension. “- just after these five left. He could be anywhere.” So the two Gods, the X-Nerds and a shaft of light started to move in that direction, walking at a slow speed because Errol said he didn’t feel well. “Well you did have to go and eat an Equus Caballus, didn’t you!” Karen scolded, and giggled at him. Hanging out with the Gods hadn’t changed her much. She spoke a little more, but what she said was still as nerdy as ever. The X-Nerds, by some strange coincidence, all thought back over the recent period. They couldn’t really tell how long or short their stay in Celestial City had been. Sure their Casio’s were still going (How?), but they weren’t even half close to telling the time here in the Land Outside Time19, because the sun tended to rise at different times each day, depending on how tired the population of the city were. It was a good system- No matter how long you slept in, you still got up just after dawn. That made getting to work a hell of a lot easier. Not that anyone went to work, these days. Except for Fast Food employees, Accountants and Taxi Drivers. Simon glanced around at the other four Humans tracking across a bland, empty room the size of a Universe. They were actually walking with two Gods, something nobody else he knew had ever done. Something probably nobody has done. Probably. They were also walking alongside a talking beam of light that shone it way along with them. He was dead positive that nobody he could think of had ever done that before. He felt special. Errol didn’t feel so special. As a matter of fact, he felt so disgustingly unspecial that just being grossly and colourfully sick all over everybody simply wouldn’t justify this kind of unspecialness. He’d eaten a horse. Eating a horse should not be attempted often- Once is enough. Even for a small horse. Why did he even order a horse? Then, with a suddenness that made his eyes grow wide (well, technically, his eyelids), he realised that he hadn’t ordered a horse for lunch. No wonder the big fearsome ogre at the next table had looked funny at him- It was his horse he had eaten! ‘Well,’ thought Errol. ‘I hope he liked my cheeseburger instead.’ Stuart, Matthew and Karen wandered silently, staring at the fractal floortiles, their mind as blank as the void around them. “James!” Thundered Mikal, the beam of light. Linda started to wonder how a beam of light could speak. It must be confusing if a God can’t figure it out; then again... Then she thought about Mikal himself. If he was a beam of light, where was he coming from? Where was he going to? If he pointed off into that white distance, where would he go? Where would he come from? And if he did shine down from a source, and the roof was an infinite distance above, could he be higher still? Really, it was all a bit much. What happened when the bulb went? There was no reply. Then as the X-Nerds had done so before them in their plight from James, the two Gods that wandered aimlessly in front of them now walked into one of those Rather Invisible Objects. Mikal, having only a bunch of free-flowing photons for a body simply reflected off it. “Oh, wow!” he said. “You know, I invented these darned invisible doors so they wouldn’t spoil the view. Then I could never find one again because I kept either passing through them or bouncing off them. Open it. See where it goes.” “You mean you don’t know?” Linda asked him. “How can I? I’m just a beam of light, aren’t I?” Linda let it drop. “He’s been here,” Stuart said, picking up a peanut shaped object. It was a piece of packing foam. He held it up for all to see. Nobody saw it. It was white: The room behind, above, below, in fact all around was the same shade of white also. That wasn’t the reason why nobody saw it. The reason was because nobody looked. Because George had just opened the door and everybody else was already through it- except Mikal who found it hard to shine through. He gave up trying and decided to stay behind where he was. And so Stuart went through it too, into a cold, dark room. Now everybody could see that he was holding up a small peanut shaped piece of packing foam. He put it in his pocket. “Bye!” George said to Mikal. “We’ll chat later.” Mikal agreed and the door closed. Suddenly, it was very dark. Fairly cold too. “James?” Hollered somebody. Something thudded. There was another strange sound, like that of a tongueless ox in alot of pain. “Oh, James?” The lights came on. Matthew stood by a light switch. Simon was lying on the floor clutching his shin and making socially uninviting noises. Karen and Errol were standing behind the two Gods. Stuart was wandering down a hallway, glancing in through the open doorways, shouting the word ‘James’ often. They all followed him. In the room at the end of the hall were James’ clothes, but no James. On the floor, near them, a smudged black mark, the texture of molasses. The smudge slowly wobbled. “Uh. Look at this,” Stuart pointed into a dim tray of black liquid. A small sign in its side said: LORNA-MAJOR CLASS C GENETIC RESEARCH LABORATORY FLUX SAMPLE A3.4 - DO NOT EAT! The God George gagged and started to sweat. 30. A new Time Machine. Brand spanking new and ready for action. It seated six (with room for baggage). The old Time Machine was built from bits of cornflake boxes, a tube of toothpaste, a big heavy twiddly thing from an old discarded TV set, a can of silver spraypaint and a cyclo-magnetron made from the innards of a microwave oven, and now lay withering into the sand on some desert planet. The new Time Machine was a state-of-the-art up and coming attraction of polished chrome interiors, ceramic plate external architecture, Potassium-sealed glass and little whirly things all down the side. The chrome interior housed electroplasma chronafluxions (pieces of Time), the ceramic plate architecture protected the craft from the extremes of temperature, the potassium plate glass acted as a smash-proof windscreen and the whirly things made it look particularly snazzy. Looks are important to the self-conscious time bandit. The interior was finished in a rich-red wool-based carpet (waterproof just in case), black leather seats and matching steering column, and a deep azure wood-grain dash styled by some of Celestial Cities finest craftsmen, and a small but functional bathroom. There was even a small refrigerator stocked with fresh mineral water (Purdey’s Elixir Vitae), Coca-Cola and a tasty little orange-mango mix Linda had whipped up for them. The entire contraption was the size of a small caravan. The X-Nerds, geeks, sorry schmucks, and whatever else they may have been, had class. They also had a job or two to do: Save the Universe; return the Humans to Celestial City; minimise the Flux Scalis into it’s original form and return it to the labs on Lorna-Major’s frozen genetic reasearch moon; Restore the monks at the Lorna-Major Academic Academy to life and start up that wretched chanting again; Return life on Earth back to normal; And get George a can of ruta bega beer from the planet ‘Grook’. Grook’s Beer was disreputed to be the best in the Universe. “Now I hope you haven’t forgotten anything,” Linda said to the X-Nerds, who sat inside the machine, strapped in, ready to go. “Whose driving?” The five Humans looked at each other. Nobody had the faintest idea of how to actually drive the machine. Simon told this to Linda, who told George, who got angry at Linda and told Her to tell the X-Nerds how to operate it, which She did. And, now, ready to go, the machines hatch was sealed, the X-Nerds smiling from behind the slightly yellow glass, Simon could be seen reaching out towards the console. He pushed a big fat red button and a little blue light on the top of the craft started to flash slowly. A grindy-whirring sound whirred grindily (they’d recorded the sound of the TARDIS out of Doctor Who and it was now playing) and in an instant, the five X-Nerds and Time Machine dematerialised. On the ground where the Time Machine had been only moments before lay a single peanut shaped piece of packing foam. 31. The question was not whether the glass was half full or the glass was half empty, no, what was in fact in question was a cheeseburger. The cheeseburger was invented by an Earth-based science-oriented food production laboratory franchise known as MacDonalds. There were such laboratories in almost every burb in the larger cities, and at least one in each town that supported a district population of over ten-thousand people. MacDonalds supported a population whose primary dietary intake approximated carbon-based materials such as polythene and cellophane. Burgers, Shakes and Fries, as their products were called, were what the franchise sold, but making people want to eat three month old pre-cooked tyre rubber and crinkle cut shopping bag plastic was what the franchise specialised in. On other planets, a large man painted in white, red and yellow, with a red nose, red frizzy hair and the name ‘Ronald’ would be soon dismembered, tossed in the microwave for a half hour or so and then eaten. On some planets, magical clowns called ‘Ronald MacDonald’ were delicacies. On Earth, however, where the locals couldn’t appreciate the subtle but sensual flavours of their own species, he was simply a gimmick to get kids to want to drag their mums and dads off to these petrochemical food-engineering labs to eat. The cheeseburger was the real feat of modern engineering and marketing. Why, people would ask, would people want to eat two bits of sodden bread with a single piece of cheese and manufactured meat (with five parts per hundred actual meat) between them? But people did. A cheeseburger, in some parts of the world, meant just that. Two bits of bread with a piece of cheese between. Very tasty. In the year the Humans called ‘Nineteen Eighty-Eight’, what the rest of the Universe called ‘oh you know...’,20 some visiting aliens took the idea of this ‘cheeseburger’ and applied it to the rest of the Universe. It caught on, making the two founding aliens very rich. Unfortunately, for those two aliens, all that wealth accumulated on their home planet and the excess weight of money and precious, rare metals shifted the gravitational balance of their planet and it spiralled into a sun, leaving both the surrounding cosmos very poor, and the rest of the universe without the recipe for a Cheeseburger (these aliens can’t be that smart). On a small, lonely blue planet, the only one in it’s entire galaxy to support semi-intelligent life (including polititians), also the only planet in the entire Universe to broadcast more radio frequencies than an exploding Quasar, in a small but clean building, underneath a major bank, in a large overpopulated city, just over the road from a good place to buy old LP records, behind a large palm tree, along the road from a recent horrific car accident, was a man. Never mind him. Next to him, a woman sat eating a Cheeseburger. She didn’t know it then, but her house was on fire. What she also didn’t know was that a large cubic alien spacecraft had landed by the pool in her back yard and that two small creatures who looked a hell of a lot like little red sofa cushions were sliding around taking sucrose samples from her lawn. And that a cat was dead on the road outside her neighbours house. She never found out because as she stood to throw the paper that had wrapped her hardly eaten cheeseburger into a nearby rubbish bin, she was struck down by an out-of-control ambulance speeding to the crash scene just up the road. In a gutter on the small blue planet, in a city somewhere, just across the road from a great little place where you can buy old LP records, lay a body, bleeding, cold, dead. Nearby the shattered, upturned head, along the agonisingly twisted white arm, in the twitching hand, a cheeseburger lay chilling in the cold, dawn air. It disappeared, dissolving away like people teleporting off the ‘Enteprise’. It even made a similar sound to people teleporting off the ‘Enteprise’. Oddy enough, the alien spacecraft teleporting this particular cheeseburger from its natural habitat, was named the U.S.S. Schmucknozzle. Had it been named the Enterprise, the owners would have been up against a pretty tough law suit. Nobody ever found out about the missing burger. Nobody ever cared. At least, not yet. 32. Something was wrong. Something felt different. Had She done it? Had She finally defeated him? It felt is if-. No. He had not vanished into himself, as She knew so many others had. He had-. It was hard to describe. It felt as if the one She sought, the one She hated most, had infiltrated Her at Her darkest heart- closed in around her womb, gone beyond it, somehow. If that was possible... Felicity Scalore snapped at the dying roses that adorned her simple garden. Agitated, she pulled each petal from one bud and left them crumpled apon the ground, small blood-red sores abbraised against the earth. She seemed lost in thought. Her guest lay dead, just there behind her, his cold corpse slowly becoming transparent, as if it no longer wished to be there and somehow willed itself to vanish. Then it closed in apon itself in a small but furious vortex, and was gone altogether. “It is done,” She said calmly to herself, but it was almost a question. She did not know how it would feel after he was gone. ‘This is how it must feel’ She thought. Moments later, Felicity Scalore vanished herself, all that remained, it seemed was a smudge on the ground, a shiny blot of molasses seeping into the ground. Nobody ever found out what happened to the sweet young girl who owned a casino, two yachts and a guest house. Perhaps, it was rumoured around the sleepy little village, she had found out too much. She was such a nice young girl. Pretty, too. A car was driving up the road, black tinted windows reflecting the yellow sun. 33. Space: The bit in between everything else. Space was big. Very big. In fact, it was so big if somebody were to stretch it right out, it would reach all the way across the Universe. And space was full of all sorts of things: Plants, people, planets, suns, stars, gasses, electromagnetic forces, little tiny sattelites sent out by the people of Earth in the sixties; Everything. And somewhere, sitting (well, they could be moving but it was her to tell) in the middle of nowhere was a little object with five Humans in it. One of them was asleep, one had her feet up in the dashboard while she watched and old Abbot and Costello re-run, and the other three were drinking Coka Cola and having a gentle chat. “Oh, Mr SpaceTime, here, come on down!” Mathew jabbed, an unbeliever. “No Listen!” Stuart cut in. Then he took a deep breath and picked up a fork to motion with. “Since we travel faster than light in order to travel through time in this ship, then according to Einstein’s model of gravitation, our ship will feel the reverse effects of gravity on the other side of the speed of light, and therefore, instead of falling into the sun, we will fall away from it, and so when we go backwards through time at speeds way above the speed of light the reverseal of gravitation, magnetism and all those other things becomes inversely proportioned to the relative speed below the speed of light, in what I call the apparent Universe, which we can accept in theory as zero, and/or non-zero, and therefore we went the other way. It would be easy to model mathematically, and with the right knowledge of three-dimensional logarithmic calculus and it’s relative Euclidean path through the fourth dimension of spacetime, to safely and accurately predict and plot a course backwards so that our virtual relative path reflected across a dimensional axis would therefore be inverse to our actual path experienced in three dimensional spacetime.” Stuart smiled his nerdy little smile. Matthew’s eyes had dried out and he sat staring into the leather of his seat. His bottom lip was quivering as he made a small sound: ‘ba-ba-ba-ba’. Perhaps he didn’t understand the bit about Euclidean geometry. He took a swig of Coke, swallowed, then said “Do you know how to do that?” “I was kind of hoping you would.” “I see,” and his face knotted in concentration. “I have an idea,” Abbot and Costello was over and Karen turned around. “Lets keep pushing the red button until we get somewhere.” And that’s what they did. Nobody understood the mathematics behind four-dimensional virtual flight paths and astrophysical gravitational effects, and so they couldn’t actually plan what they were doing, so they did it the same way that everyone else would do it: Just push the button, already. On a small blue-green planet, on the distant outskirts of a large (size 10-B) spiral galaxy, halfway through one arm, just a few million klicks from a small yellowy-white star, outside a little cave just up from a wide river, somebody sat. She looked out over the swaying grasses, past the ancient thrity metre high trees, through the herd of grazing deer and strange black and white spotted kangaroos at a large white rock. It had just appeared (pop!) like that, out of thin air. Then five people were around it, squatting and they made a small fire. Which set the surrounding grassland on fire. Which burned very fast towards the sitting female. Who got up suddenly in order to get the hell out of there. Who hit her head (ouch!). Who fell over because for her, all had gone suddenly black. Luckily her dog (a wolf actually - named ‘Wolf’) dragged her body back into the cave while the fire passed. “Woof, woof. Bark” said Wolf, wagging its tail. The year was Not. According to one of those fandangled dials that spewed its way excessively across the dash, the year was 9999**mn* and the time was 25:82:01:101. In other words, the X-Nerds had gone so far back in time that the little clock thing that measured the year, date and time had spun out and ticked over backwards. And since the Earth was in a funny orbit still the day had a handful more hours to it. The most accurate clock in all history was Wilbert Borfnorkle’s Highly Successful Digital Chronology Calculalator, which boasted ten hours a day, ten days a week, ten days a month and fourteen point eight one six two three months a year (the fellow was slightly mad). The God George had tried to duplicate this (making minor ajustments as he saw fit, as to not infringe copyright hence pay the royalties), and had installed this slightly-defective prototype unit21 in the the time machine. He could safely call it a write-off22,23. “Earth; Millions of years ago the earth looked like this,” Simon said. “Like this only bigger.” “This is Terra,” Matthew commented to nobody in particular. He had taken to calling his home planet by its old name after he saw it someplace. It sounded more... Nerdy. “According to the digital based geographic survey monitor-” Started Karen professionally. “The Map,” Stuart butted in, translating to anyone actually paying attention. “-We are almost exacly in the same spot as our house is back when we started,” Which made everybody think of home and of how everybody was. No, they weren’t thinking of the food in the mess hall, or of willfully submitting to the torture that the Footy Players often asked for (with clenched fists) or any of that. They longed to see their mums and dads and more importantly, to get back into the routine of using a computer. It was all right using the crappy old technology that Celestial City had to offer (like direct nerve injection virtual reality and neutrino cortex splicing), but what The X-Nerds really wanted was to get back to their own time, save the Universe, live happily ever after with lots of money and a good accountant who likes to add up all those nagging numbers for them; and especially to re-learn how to program kernal patching routines on their home computers with a program they called ‘emacs’, their computer teacher called ‘E. Mack’ and fellow students didn’t call anything because when they loaded it all they got was a flashing cursor. Then there was James. Could he be destroyed so easily? Was Terra (Earth, remember?), and indeed the Universe, a better place altogether? Had James really gone to pot and turned into a sodden black liquid on the floor? This was just one of the question nagging the collective mind of the X-Nerds. Then there was the case of a certain grassfire and a dazed looking woman fumbling along through the grass towards them. Beside her strode a wolf named ‘Wolf’. It had that look. “Hello,” Simon called out. “What’s wrong with this picture?” Karen hissed, whispering for no apparent reason. “Like here we are a billion years ago talking to a cavewoman and she’s going to understand English. What is this? Doctor Who?” “Well we had the Doctor Who sound, didn’t we?” “Oh chaps!” The breezy woman called back in an air headed kind of way. She was blonde too. And had blue eyes. Not that this actually means anything... really. “Greetings, moonmen!” She hollared, smiling. Then, in a slow, punctuated voice, she added: “My name is Amy and I am a woman. Do you know what a woman is?” Did they know what a woman was? Hubba hubba; Stuart was captivated. She smiled again, coming closer. It was the smile of an airheaded girl who appeared to have been drinking a foul potion (at least an over-proof liquor, double shot). Or cough mix. Or herbal tea. The X-Nerds played dumb. Struck dumb their minds played over with the possibilities. “Amy. Ayy-mee,” She said pointing to her chest. The motion was recognised. “Stuart, Karen, Matthew, Errol,” Simon said pointing; quickly. “I’m Simon. Sorry to bother, but we needed a good stretch. I suppose we’ll be-” Blah blah blah. Blah blah blah. And Amy took her turn at the whole mouth-open-boggle-eyes routine. The wolf sat calmly by her side, staring at the strangers with eyes that said ‘I love you. D’oh. Nothin’ in my head. Lovey-lovey-love you’ and a rolling wet tounge that literally dripped spittle every time the dog-breath rasped out. At least, thought Amy, they could have done something imaginative like said ‘Take me to your leader’ or pointed a ray gun at her and frizzled all her clothes off so’s she’d be naked and have to turn and run away very embarrased. Like on TV24. These people were no fun at all. Matthew had considered saying ‘Take me to your leader’ and pointing a ray gun, but he thought she wouldn’t understand what the hell he was on about. Out and about, Karen had spotted a rhinocerous-looking creature except one or two with more sharp ends than normal (she counted seven). It looked like a really big spiny lizard but ran faster. She considered leaving. Flat out. Inside the alien spacecraft though, she was comforted by the soft carpet and carbonated smell of spilt Coca Cola. Anyway, that was before the oversize rhino hit the spacecraft. Well, she got out fast too, but stopped shortly because an unconcious rhino lay in her path. IT STUNK. “Well,” Stuart was absolutely engorged with interest about the stunned ancestor of human history, and in the moments between boggle-eyed looks at each other, had been chatting her up quite thoroughly. When he stopped to see the other three waiting for him, he rather piteously added “We’d better be going. Nice to have met you and all and sorry we can’t stay for tea-” “Ug,” She blurted. It was a sound that in the old language (the one before they invented language) meant ‘Please stay, I have a shoulder in the oven and the folks are coming over this evening and boy are you a cutie. Perhaps later we can snuggle up close and see what transpires...’. Now you know why some people think English is an intrinsically convoluted and linguistically overburdened language. “No, sorry. Can’t stay. Unghk-g,” Stuart replied, being yanked off his feet by Matthew, adding the only portion of cavespeak he knew (but never fully understood) as they stuffed him into the timecraft. It actually meant ‘Did you know a giant hamster actually created the universe and he was made of Swiss Cheese?’. As a matter of fact, this statement was actually the conception of the idea of God, and elsewhere in the Universe, due to the sudden belief in it (the word makes the object25) a Giant Hamster appeared, the same Giant Hamster that allegedly became the Father of the Gods. Of course, had he said ‘Unghk-h’ He’d have explained all the reasons why his friends were dragging him off, and that maybe after this was all over-...’. Amy looked displeased. She thought the universe had been created by a implosion of parallel uni-dimensional universes centered on an ethreal second physical dimension non-inverting anti-energy emitting white singularity-hole that ruptured the time-space continuum. But she kind of liked this smallish, roundish funny speaking human - he was... cute, and so took his word. Just before they left, Stuart popped out again to say toodle-loo properly. It was a drawn out goodbye. The other four X-Nerds sat watching, wating (they had the time) as the two other people outside chatted, said their farewells. Stuart couldn’t promise he’d be back. Obviously. That’d probably upset Time and History somewhat. Amy didn’t want him to go (of course- she got a bit lonely when all she had to talk to was a wolf, her parents and lots of grass). Amy wanted to kiss goodbye but Stuart didn’t know how; that he’d never kissed before- Amy showed him, though. Hard. Long. Vigourously. Stuart tried to turn red, but be was blushing too much for it to work. He got in, winked at Karen, then waved to the earthling. Amy waved back. The wolf named Wolf barked once and then Errol pushed the red button. Nothing happened. A small dial registered that something (possibly them, possibly something altogether different) had moved through time though. He pushed it again. Everything changed. “Wow!” He said. Everybody was listening because he was the only one speaking. They had visited so many planets and galaxies that it was just all old-hat to them now. And Errol, whose turn it was to do the honours (push the button) had no intention of shutting up at any stage. “Like, it must have been one of those chaotic proabilities again. Like, we just chanced upon traveversing so little through space-time that we virtually stayed in the same place.” Neat. But it had only lasted a second or two. Stuart was looking out at the blonde-haired blue-eyed girl when they vanished through time. An image of her illustrious body flicked in his eyelids for a tenth of a second, then was gone. 34. James wasn’t happy. He’d just accidently slipped on a peice of leather-based carpet (what was it doing here anyway?) and spilt a barrel of molasses on his clothes. He had been forced to take them off (all but his underwear, for sake of decency) and discard the remains in the dark, cold storeroom. Luckily he had discovered an old locker and one of the bronze storage cabinets had contained, of all things, a brown hessian robe made from an old potato sack. It was itchy but helped keep him warm. Just. There were voices, he’d heard them earlier. He had tried to go back, but after that ‘accident’ with the rope-and-chain bridge over an abyssmic canal in which he absently cut through one of the bearing beams of the bridge with an oxyacetalene torch and utterly destroyed it, there was no turning back. There was a light at the end of a tunnel. It was moving towards James at horrific speed. Like a bullet train, really. With distaste in his mouth, he realised that he had fallen into a deep hole and was quite quickly approaching the But it didn’t hurt. He was actually standing upright (now how did that happen?) and the tunnel stretched out behind him, a horizontal gash in a rockface. As the light dimmed away, he picked out shapes, colours, smells. He stood in front of a fire, a small fire that churned out alot of smoke. The cave was set back into a rocky outcrop in the middle of a grassland. The grass swayed madly as it burned. Then he saw a large spiny looking rhinocerous charging another object. Its dim outline suggested a vehicle of some kind- a car, perhaps, one of those Mazda 121 bubblemobiles? People. Six people and a little thing he couldn’t see that waved through the grass. Four of them moved in behind the dull vehicle-object. Two remained outside. Then one moved off to where the others had gone. With sick revulsion, he recognised that waddling figure. He recalled the other four. They seemed to be familiar too. The Head Nerd watched as the X-Nerds vanished, the huge Mazda-like shape popping out of existance. He dropped a single white peanut-shaped piece of packing foam in the cave behind him. His pockets seemed to be full of them. A few moments later he bore the terrible brunt of a woman come home to find her house being invaded by an ugly, stinking boy, wearing a potato sack over his underwear, right when that womans parents are showing up too. Life could be so cruel sometimes. From through the sooty grass... “Amy! Who’s the boyfriend...” 35. “It appears to be a small, roundish lifeform, but our deep space tests have proved that if it is actually alive, then it can somehow live in airless outer space,” The voice came from an empty sofa. Or was it empty? Three small red cushions lay on the red velvet. On a nearby coffee table, amongst the coffee mug rings and newspapers, lay a cheeseburger. “Can you eat it?” One of the cushions said. “No. How do expect to eat that? It’s... It’s...” One other cushion was lost for words. “Well. Of course we can’t eat it. We’re cusions, for gods sake!” “Oh. Let’s sell it then! We’ll make other people eat it.” “Great idea!” And throughout the Universe, that horrific day became known as ‘The Day of the Red Velvet Cushions’.26 36. Felicity Scalore’s essence lay back on the floor, quivering. Once again she was a blob of molasses- dark and unmotivating. She knew she had failed. She knew she would have to start again. Dang it. She knew that this time she would have to succeed or else be utterly destroyed. The black in black jelly turned a shade red. Her single exploded eye stared vacantly up at the ceiling, an image reflecting from where no image was. It looked exactly like the Head Nerd, James. With a slight annoyance to the surrounding air, a ‘smooshe’ sound, and a faint tingle of sparks it vanished. In it’s place, a large structure, glass and ceramic with little whirly things down the side. Suddenly everything was very silent. 37. In another far off dimension, people ran in fear from giant tidal waves. They ran through the rain, ran through the showers of lightning that fell from the white-grey sky, ran from the greatness of water swelling above and behind them. On the other side of the planet, a butterfly landed gently on a green leaf but was shortly squashed into a sickly yellow ooze when a blob of utter black materialised just above it and felt the effects of gravity once more. Slowly, the butterfly was absorbed into the blackness. The blackness felt the shape, responded, started to change. This time, it would be more subtle still, it thought. So cross-dimensionally subtle. In a parked car nearby, still open to the same page, a book lay displaying a bunch of words to an uncaring ceiling. Amongst them, though, the words ‘The Butterfly Effect’ seemed to eminate a sense of pure dread, a sense that small change here made a large change there. The newly formed pure black butterfly took off, swirling the air above and beneath its shiny wings. 38. “Mr God?” came that small voice out of George’s intercom. “I’ve got those top secret reuslts you ordered on the X-Nerd Files.” George was busy, though, standing on a bright orange chair searching a cupboard for his only (dubbed) video of Spaceballs. It was his favourite movie, especially those scenes of Planet Spaceball showing the golfball-like buildings. “Mr God? Are you there?” interrupted the voice again. “Yes, yes. Coming. Just a moment,” George was in many ways like the Human race he supposedly invented: He’d talk to the phone or, as the case may be, intercom, fully knowing that to make it work, you had to push a little button. Therefore talking to an inanimate object incapable of listening, or even if so incapable of understanding, without pushing the button, or even after doing so, was an exercise in futility. “Mr God, I know you’re there.” interjected the voice. “If you don’t want me anymore, then just say so. I’m out here working hard for you, Mr God, rushing about getting documents and calling people in and you just can’t imagine what’s that’s doing to my lining. Well, I may as well just lie aimlessly on my couch at home, you know, waiting ’till my stuffing falls out-” “Send it in,” George said bluntly, cutting her off, finger lifting from the button. She got like this sometimes. The little nasal voice smiled, which under normal circumstances would have been hard to achieve, but things worked different around God, and everything was allright again. “Right away, Mr God.” A moment later, God was pondering what he saw. He nodded once and said things like ‘Yes,’ and ‘Uh huh,’ often, at which point he would start nodding again. His eyes darted back and forth across the page. “What?” he suddenly exploded. Sally was still in the room, gleefully watching George reading the papers, and turned a mite pink when he did this. Her first encounter with God’s sudden mood swings and quaking single-word sentances had made her stuffing run cold. But it was a good, steady job. She was guarenteed a nice lounge suite to live on, plenty of opportunities to meet people, though some creatures did have the discourtesy to sit on her on occasion. Still, when George went off like he’d just done, her normally rosy red appearance did lose a little of its hue. At that point in time Sally was thinking of a nice holiday, perhaps even a long, relaxing dry clean. Maybe she go the whole zipper and treat herself to a restuff in one of those posh Pillow Houses. She had the money - a credit line as big as God’s ego, but it wasn’t that. It was, well, George had seemed a little stressed since his Universe ended. Perhaps she’d go after things settled down a bit. She wasn’t expecting what was about to occur. “Oh my, oh my o my o my. Oh my o me o my,” God was, well, flustered and he let the papers fall to the desk. “Sally,” he instructed. “Somehow, we seem to have developed a problem. Can we get in touch with the X-Nerds? This is important.” “I’ll get right on it, Mr God,” Sally replied, sliding out the door. She was suddenly worried. She hadn’t seen God go off like this before. Something was definately wrong and more than wrong. God would never be this worried about anything, unless it was-. Sally screamed; a muffled sound, realising the truth. Quicker than a bad cheque, she phoned up Linda and asked the God to meet her at a nearby restaraunt. Then, she grabbed her platignum ball-point pen and slid vigorously out the door and into the night. 39. “What the hey-?” Stuart called out. He’d just discovered that the time machine had a glove compartment and so had opened it. Inside, there was the usual assortment of scrap papers, warped casettes, cigarette lighters with no gas, windscreen cleaners and an instruction manual for the time vehicle. Promptly, he fell into reading it. He occasionally nodded and mumbled to himself and nobody took really that much notice of him. Thus it was for the next few minutes. Everybody was silent except Stuart, who continued to mumble and nod. Karen look in the fridge for something cool to drink. Linda’s orange-mango juice had run out. Up the front there was a pile of scrap papers. Amongst them lay an unused postcard from the Taj Mahal. “Wow!” Stuart dropped the book and flung Simon out of the driving seat. “Now,” he shouted. “We’ve gotta choice here. Either I push this red button and we travel through time, like normal, or I push this blue button-” he flicked up a panel. In a little groove there was nestled an assortment of buttons and dials. “-and we can travel no only through Time and Space but cross dimensionally through parallel universes!” He was busting to try it. The others stared at him, then looked at the newfound buttons. There was another red one, a blue one, a range of yellow toggle-style switches and a little surface-mount green one flush with the end of the groove. Then, all eyes turned back to Stuart. Somewhere, a little red LED started to flash urgently. Space hung before them. It was like normal space - eight planets revolving around a sun, each with one or two moons, none carrying any detectable lifeforms whatsoever. There were far off nebulae, little red lights, a galaxy or two, some space junk that happened to look alot like the Voyager spacecraft and, in a bizarre but surely interesting twist of fate, an uprooted oak tree wafting past. And there was a creamic and chrome cross-dimensional-space/time vehicle twisting aimless though the dark ether. There was also that supernova, too. “It seems we have a choice, here,” Matthew stated. “Hmmm,” drolled Simon, looking at the white ball of light hurtling though the absence of matter outside. Karen, like Errol, was asleep on one of the chairs. Stuart still sat up front. He was reading the Owners Manual. “Hmmm?” asked Matthew, a little stunned for some reason. “Hmmm,” came the reply again. “Wait.” It was Stuart who’d said that, and he now looked back at the them. “If we wait until the energy from that nova gets to us then translate that energy into energy we can use to make a jump, then we can probably go alot further, or something.” “Hmmm,” said the other two together. They didn’t need to go a little further. What they needed was to go someplace predictable; to have some way of steering the vehicle through space, time and other dimensions. “Well,” went Stuart. “If we do that, we may have more possibility of steering us to where we want to go.” There must be some logic in that, somewhere. “Well,” went Stuart again. “We may end up visiting every possible point in every possible universe at every possible time possible. Anyway, the probability of us actually getting back to our own dimension to the exact right space/time coordinates, when none of the factors are known and all other relative factors are presumed, therefore taken to be either zero or infinite, depending on the first factors, are virtually zero. Probably even less.” Now, if there wasn’t any logic in that, he would just give up. The other two looked blankly at him. They might as well have been thinking about cheeseburgers. “Well,” Stuart started again. “When we-” Karen woke up and said “Fish.” Then she went back to sleep. The interruption caused Stuart to completely forget what he was about to say. “I think I’d like a cheeseburger,” said Matthew. Simon said “Hmmm,” and went back to looking at the supernova. Space and everything it contained still hung there like insects suspended in jelly. Still, the tiny spaceship twisted through boring old three-dimensional space, whilst rushing towards it at a very fast speed came a huge white light: The photonic plasma of a supernova. As the sheet of white energy touched the spacecraft, the tiny vessel seemed to dissapear and yet remain in the same spot all at once. Then, clearly, two vessels could be seen. One of those vessels dissapeared and yet an infinity of the clever little time machines could be seen, streching off into the distance. The effect was the same as two mirrors positioned opposite to each other, forever reflecting rays of light back and forth, multiplying the image by itself geometrically. Then the light was gone, passed into the blackness, and only one of the multitude of tiny, insect like ships remained. 40. ‘GRAND OPENING’ stated the sign. It didn’t say of what. It, like all big signs, was etched firmly into the ground of a nearby planet, a multicoloured mountain range visible from the nearby spaceway. Just ahead, on a reasonably sized asteroid, a multitude of space-fareing vehicles were parked. Stuart drove: he knew how. He was just shouting complaints at other drivers, fully knowing that in Space, nobody hears you scream. Somehow, though, screaming at the other drivers always made him feel better. If this traffic continued, he was of the mind to jump out at the next asteroid belt and shove a comet up their hyperdrives. The five X-Nerds sat gripping their seats as the time machine whipped through the cosmos along the galactic superhighway, a toll-based space freeway linking one side of the Milky Way galaxy with the other, where insane speeds could be reached and the rules of driving along it had been breached so often that nobody even bothered policing them anymore. Dead planets either side had been carved up for advertising or the occasional Kwik-Stop, reknowned to be the best place to stop ever (also the slowest). Some people had said that it was so good that if you didn’t leave immediately, then you’d be there forever just hanging around basking in the goodness of the place. Indeed, some Kwik-Stops had become planetry graveyards of abandoned space cruisers and freighters. The Kwik-Stop franchise had spread all throughout the galaxy very quickly and soon had outgrown the need for competition to survive and monopolised the market. It was reputed, however, that one new little franchise soon to be opened on a galactic tollway in an undesignated galaxy was set to be the ruin of the Universes only one-stop shop. Karen said she needed to go to the loo (and the one in the spacecraft was out of paper) and so Stuart, kind as ever, decided to stop at the next avaliable facility. He’d just passed a planet that said ‘GRAND OPENING’ in a tall, proud snow-capped sans-serif mountain range and so pulled to the exit lane and slowed down. When he’d passed through the airlock of the franchise’s asteroid, he noticed immediately that this was no Kwik-Stop. The plastic-looking play areas and Pizza-Hut style architecture of the place, put together with the gay yellow, red and brown paintwork and plate-glass windows suggested something a little more sinister. There was of course the tall Golden Arches forming a large ‘M’ shape, and underneath, the embossed image of a red cushion beatifically smiling it’s bennediction to all. The car-park was almost full but Stuart eventually found a spot - on top of a large pink convertible with the initails ‘E.P’ embezled in gold all up the side. It sat there a moment, as if in deep thought. What in Gods name was a MacDonalds franchise doing here in deep outer space? The X-Nerds were about to learn the whole, sinister truth. Karen said that they could do this after she’d been to the loo. 41. The butterfly was no ordinary butterfly. Apart from being very black, rather big and simply the largest lump of concentrated evil in that particular Universe, it had the capability to destroy all. The butterfly rose from a flower, lifting suddenly on a strange air current. It flew higher and higher until it was at the same level as the surrounding trees. Far away, beyond a parked vehicle, through the bushes and undergrowth, a Human man with a backpack wandered along an old path. He was walking away from the giant black butterfly. The Butterfly dipped and dived, riding on the air currents like it were an integral part of them. Then, as if it were a hawk that had spotted a slow hare below, it dived, disrupting the eddies of the surrounding air. Just by gaily flipping through the flowers, disturbing the air currents ever so slightly, she was changing the weather patterns ever so slightly. The small change affected other parts of the weather which forced a Lorenz effector of wheather changes; changing one thing slightly, another alot. This in turn called up storms and strange tidal occurences where normally there would be none. Technically, this was termed The Butterfly Effect, though, strange enough, on many planets in many Universes, the butterfly still flew gaily from plant to plant; the local inhabitants not bothering to destroy this perpertrator of destruction. Why had God invented the butterfly if it would only cause mass flooding and hailstorms? Logically, and according to The Butterfly Effect, to accurately create a weather prediction program, one must get rid of all the butterflies. Still, it was strange why nobody had thought of this. The Flux Scalis butterfly was no ordinary butterfly for other reasons, too. Due to her strange makeup (1 part concentrated evil to 1 part molasses), her Butterfly Effect no only affected her present surroundings, but caused the Butterfly Fluxions (virtual Butterflies) to ripple out into any nearby dimensions and cause strange physical effects there too. These effects would cause other Butterfly Effects and the problem would double. Quadruple. Octaple. Now this is subtle, she thought. 42. James stood on a knoll overlooking a vast, prehistoric valley. He was yelling quite loud, but the wind was against him and it was no good. He was yelling anyway because he was plain stupid. He could see two people running through the long grass. They apeared to be older than thirty and grossly unshaven - about the average of your average Art teacher. James likes Art class. He got to show his stuff (author’s note: stuff is in singular form) in all sorts of mediums- paint, crayon, paper maché, reconstituted meat by-products. Anyway, the people he could see were a long way away from him and he knew they did not see him (they were running in the same direction as he was looking). Strange, though, he thought to himself, it seemed as if they were chasing an old Chesterfield Sofa across the uncounted miles of the valley. One of them appeared to be carrying a bag James once saw on a documentary about Athens Airport. He never got to see what happened because a big branch from the tree he was standing under fell and he was knocked down by its green mass. Half a day later, he wandered that same valley. He’d seen a bunch of horses stampede by, chased by a somewhat hungry looking lion. He’d left Amy when she clubbed him repeatedly with her mothers withered walking stick. Her mother, who happened to be popping round for tea when James showed up, had almost instantly seen that he wasn’t wanted and joined the chase. Amy’s father would have too, but the Cricket scores were on the TV and ‘...well, those two will call if they need me...’. James was kicking a blue rubber beachball along the ground. He’d found alot of stuff scattered across the grassland - bits of luggage (he’d changed clothes: he now wore a safari suit he’d picked out of a large, brown suitcase whose airline label said ‘Athens’), the beachball he now kicked, a thong (only one) and a large unopened bag of Jelly Babies. He’d opened these and was now munching on them. They were the nice ones, covered in that white powdery sugar. It hadn’t really occured to him yet that he was walking around on prehistoric Earth, eating and kicking things that logically couldn’t have been there. He couldn’t yet even grasp the basics of chance repositioning of space/time anomalies, which was why the objects were when and where they were. He hadn’t clicked to this fact even when he saw the TV set in Amy’s cave, or that she even lived in a cave rather than a house. He’d picked up the bit about her dog (or Wolf, actually) named Wolf, but lots of people had them for a pet and so this didn’t worry him. What did in fact worry him was the impression that he wasn’t going anywhere. Sure, he was shambling along in open grasslands, but he didn’t have a destination in mind. He remembered the incident the previous day, or one of the incidents, in any case, where he saw the X-Nerds getting into a large caravan and just dissapearing. He started to wonder that they didn’t like him and had decided to leave him stranded on this strange, alien planet. Then that hit him. Alien planet... Alien planet... There was something about those words that made him shudder. He popped a green Jelly Baby in his mouth and wondered purposefully about his adventures. Questions filled his mind; a new experience. How did he get here? What was his purpose in life and how should he fulfil this purpose? Who was the girl in the cave? Did the X-Nerds really like him or was it really a façade above deeper, inner feelings or contempt? If you had three oranges and you took two, what would be left? He kicked the ball very hard when the answers started to resolve. It bounced on a tuft of grass and lay smiling wanly in the gentle sun. Just to be sure of himself, he stuffed the remaining handful of Jelly Babies, three red ones, an orange one and a greenish-yellow one, in his mouth, chewed, swallowed and sat down to think it through. He came to the same conclusion. The conclusion was this: His life wasn’t worth the paper it was written on: The X-Nerds hated the heck out of him- despised him utterly; Amy was just some girl who lived with her dog in a cave; He probably should do something purposeful with himself- seek a higher enlightenment27, rid the universe of all evil- that kind of thing; and Two (his maths wasn’t very good28). He then decided to leave this planet and find something interesting to do. Before wondering how to do this, he first had to decide which path to follow- personal enlightenment or super hero avenger person. He went with the second, not knowing a thing about enlightenment or even what the heck it meant. “Now,” he thought aloud, at the blue ball lying in the grass. “How do I get of this planet?” Then suddenly, a spaceship landed. It was a pink convertible cruiser, sleek and expensive-looking, and James could hear a familiar, solemn tune from inside. It had the initials ‘E.P.’ written in gold up the side. A smiling face greeted James. 43. One the menu were cheeseburgers, shakes and sundaes (but no fries). This wasn’t MacDonalds, but very much similar. It was actually MacCushions, a new, exciting place to eat (at least to anybody not from Earth) specialising in new high technology foodstuffs so inedible that one burger ususally lasted for weeks (even in a glove compartment); it was for this reason that cheeseburgers had become so popular throughout the galaxy. This and the fact that MacCushions only sold cheeseburgers. Nobody had told them about Quarters or Fillet-O-Fish or any of the other food proof products sold by their twisted step-sister company MacDonalds. The cheeseburger sold at the MacCushions little enteprise was a lovingly recreated model of the origional cheeseburger, now locked safely away in a vault a nondescript asteroid nearby. When sold, the cheeseburger had that self-same underside thumb-print of the origional, almost exactly across from the huge bite mark. Also, red sauce dribled down the left hand side (looking towards the bite) even before the burger was heated. After primary cooking, the burgers were stored ouside in deep space so no bacteria formed and destroyed the aroma,29 then when requested, heated until grossly soggy in a conventional oven (two-fifty for one-thirty in the six-fifty-six in MacSpeak). And talk about popular. Why anybody would want to eat them is one of the Great Seven Mysteries.30 The X-Nerds sat glumly at one table, surrounded by all sorts of people- alien, humanoid, mechanoid, android, Anoid31, and an overall general amalgam of societies, cultures and races. Music was playing behind the grey noise of two hundred voices speaking a hundred languages- it was ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, by Elvis Preseley. “He told me you’d be here,” A hardened female voice was talking to the X-Nerds. They watched the sound of the voice momentarily then followed its path back up to a well rounded cheery looking Human. She had a smiling face, and this fact probably accounted for the cheery look. It was a look of kindness: Green glowing eyes, dark lipstick, shadow on the eyes, hair the colour of an orange cat on wet straw. The voice itself was accented towards Irish, though what an Irish woman was doing eating cloned MacDonalds burgers thirteen thousand light years from home was anybody’s guess. Maybe she got lost on the way home from the Local. Since none of the X-Nerds said anything (it was a statement: You don’t reply to statements), the Irish woman said “That he did. I be Ezme Pearson and I own that pink convertible you so parked your truck on.” Errol was smiling, his teeth showing. Simon was silent. Stuart was polishing off a sundae (special - no toppings). Karen and Matthew just were sitting there, filling up the picture. “It is no matter, though,” She went on. “I won’t be leaving as soon as the five of yer be leaving.” Simon asked the who question. Ezme told them about James. The other were shocked. Simon asked about his present location. Ezme replied, expressing that whilst he was a seemingly nice young fellow and had promising character traits, she had to leave him on a nearby planet because he talked too much, and to be seen with someone wearing a safari suit was not done.32 The others were by this time completely astounded and making bubbling noises with their lips. Simon asked which planet but Ezme didn’t know. “Thankyou, Miss Pearson,” Errol’s imbecielic voice carried after her as she ducked off into the crowd. Simon asked what they should do next. “First of all, I think you should stop doing that,” Stuart said, slurping up the last drops of creamy liquid ice from the bottom of his sundae container. Simon questioned as to what he was talking about. “That!” Stuart said, annoyed. “What?” Simon asked again, completely misunderstanding the entire point of the conversation. “Oh never mind,” Stuart said as flatly as he could manage. Simon didn’t say anything. “Just shut up, hey?” Stuart said. There was a pause. This was followed by another. Soon, everybody in the room was pausing, looking around at everybody else pausing and wondering why everybody else was looking around at everyone, pausing. Somebody looked out the door but nobody was stealing any of the vehicles outside. There wasn’t a freak meteor shower. In fact, not much at all was going on. Except everybody was pausing at each other. So everybody in the room shrugged and started talking again and the pause was over. “So,” Karen ventured. “So?” Simon asked. “Look, will you bloody well stop it? All I- We want to know is where do we go from here? What do we do? You’re Head X-Nerd,” Karen pointed an accusing finger at Simon. “What now?” Simon looked at the finger. It hung there at the end of Karen’s arm, pointing right into his face. It was a small finger, he noticed. It was unmarked, there were no scars or warts on it. In fact, it was a rather nice finger. He looked back along the arm, pausing only to see the scar below the elbow. For some reason, more than half the people he knew had a scar just below the elbow. He thought it must be something to do with Genetics. Then he looked back into Karen’s brown eyes. They were hard, accusing. Simons were soft, baffled. These two sets of eyes darted back and forth, relaying slight subconscious messages, probing, sensing things. Simon didn’t notice Karens arm had dropped from its menacing position. They continued to gaze into each other eyes. Seconds passed. Then from out of nowhere a Gas repairman fell onto their table, breaking the visual conversation out of its knot of tangled expressions. All ten eyes looked up at the hole in the cieling. There were lots of wires and pipes up there. Gas was pouring out of one half-inch tube. After approximately twelve and a half seconds, they moved as one, back outside, into their time machine and without saying a word were back onto the tollway within minutes. 44. James grimaced as the five young people approached. A pleasant looking spacecraft had only moments before descended from the sky and touched down a dozen or so metres away, scorching the grass. It sat there cooling quickly before the door opened. The X-Nerds stared out across the fire at James. James stared back at them. It was dark- the sun had gone down and the light amplification unit inside the time machine, the other red button on the dash, had been able to easily pinpoint the fire on the unpopulated advertising planet- right in the middle of an ‘O’ made of mountains. “Hello, James,” Matthew led, apphrehensive. “Hello, Matthew,” James followed, his eyes narrow. The other X-Nerds watched in grim anticipation. For some reason, Karen stood next to and half behind Simon. Matthew had spoken first. He could speak for them now. Simon felt that he did not have to speak for them all the time, and, rightfully, shouldn’t even if he did. Errol sat down on a nearby log, then decided that it was wet and so stood again. James didn’t appear to be the same, said a shared thought amongst the X-Nerds. He appeared, well, more self-conscious, more purposeful, perhaps once again ambitious. Still, he was wearing a Safari Suit. How can you take somebody seriously if they will wear a Safari suit?33 The X-Nerds, with exception to Karen, who stood almost shyly behind Simon, still appeared a little gang of people, disjointed, travelling with purpose yet without apparent destination, friends just with friends for no other reason. Breaking the thoughtful, self critical silence came the sound of a two-way radio cackling. Matthew shot a glance at James who was shooting a stare back at him, and went off to see what it was. The fire was warm. Matthew was away for a long time. When he came back he looked a little less sure of himself and apparently quite anxious and purposeful. He strode up to the fire, basked in it’s reddish heat for no longer than a moment, then told them what had happened. “That was George,” He started cleanly. “Since when did we have a two-way radio tuned in to the end of the Universe?” “Since when did we have a two-way radio?” Stuart asked, looking into the fire. “Well we have one now. It was in the glove box,” Matthew obviously wanted to tell them about what God had told him, but Stuart cut him off. “I was beginning to suspect something odd about that glove box. It seems to fit more in it than it can fit.” “So? All glove boxes have more in them than they can fit. That’s what owning a car, or in this case, a spaceship, is all about.” Simon pointed out. “What? You buy a car because it has a glovebox?” “Yeah. Why not? Why would you want a car anyway when there’s public transport?” Errol broke in. Matthew did not take part in the resulting vocal feud. He instead started to tell anyone listening about what George had told him. “It seems we have a little problem on our hands.” He paused here, expecting someone to make a smart comment. Nobody did. Karen turned about to warm her back, and black and orange shadows danced over the surrounding panorama. He continued. “Did you know that just outside the Universe there are two worlds? One of them is the Lorna Minor World Design Institute, where they make planets like this one - advertising and so on. The other is the Lorna Major Academic Academy, where monks go to learn and do whatever monks do.” James coughed, a strange sound for an alien world devoid of any animal life. They all shook their heads, not wanting to say ‘no’. It wasn’t really the sort of question you said ‘no’ to anyhow. It wasn’t really a question, come to that. “Also, these monks sing and chant. All monks should sing and chant,” He said this with a slight smile, the only one amongst all six people. Within a negative second, the mood change was gone and he went on talking. “The problem is, this particular chant apparently keeps the balance between order and chaos within all the universes and any other dimensions.” This caused a stir, but only because each of them held different views on the why’s and wherefores of the politics of order/chaos based systems, as opposed to ‘clockwork’ systems, where there was only one system and the perception of that system was relative to the viewer and therefore all realities became entirely subjective. “Yeah, anyway. This chant got stopped accidently because Randall and Linda’s Virtual Universe Computer accidently crashed and, I’m not really sure how, but all the monks just up and died.” Silence only broken by breathing. “What this means is somewhere in one of the Universes, there is a discontinuity of order and chaos has become the overruling factor. Ususally, George says, the chaos takes the form of black molasses, an object described by the now deceased monks as Flux Scalis. It appears that there was some in the room we discovered with Mikal- the one next to the place with the packing foam.” Magically, James drew a small peice of white foam from his pocket. It was peanut shaped and it shrivelled quickly when he dropped it into the fire. “The problem lies-” “Hang on a bit, can you?” Simon asked Matthew, holding up an arm. He turned from the fire, walked forward and was soon lost from view into the inky black of night. A minute passed. The fire crackled and James put another branch on. Simon came back into view and flexed his knees at the fire. “That’s better,” he said, by way of explanation, then waited for Matthew to continue. “Okay. Where was I? Oh, yes. The problem lies with the flux itself. It appears that all sorts of Human beings have mysteriously vanished from the Celestial City- hundreds of them, all genetically related. This seems to mean, to me anyhow, that this Flux thing has at some stage been getting rid of Humans, sometime before the Universe ended, therefore creating a reality where those humans did not exist outside time, and therefore they dissapeared. Like on ‘Back to the Future’. “Anyway, more to the point, the Gods report that the Flux has dissapeared from one universe and They fear that it may have somehow entered another universe. Since They cannot detect amounts of the stuff, only that it exists. To go back and destroy it would mean that George and the other Gods would have to unend the universes and that would make everybody in the Celestial City rather unhappy. He instructed us to find it and destroy it.” James was looking a little unsure of himself. “Gods? I thought there was only one. And where’s the Celestial City? What’s the Celestial City?” Matthew looked thoughtfully at James. He didn’t know, did he? He couldn’t know, could he. Then, he looked at Simon suggestively. Simon shrugged and Matthew went into details about the Celestial City and all the Gods and their off-colour golf suits and the teeming life in the celestial city. The fire had burned low by the time he’d finished. It was very late. The white stars blazed unfamiliar patterns above the six of them. It really wasn’t that cold; the fire kept them warm and although they could have slept once more inside the time machine, it got stuffy in there and there was no real reason to. Here was a nice planet, nice real air to breathe, and a warm fire to sit around. Stuart was asleep, curled up in a little ball with his head against a tuft of grass. Matthew had fetched two pillows from the spaceship and he and Errol were using them. James had fallen asleep with his head between his knees and arms around his shins. Simon and Karen sat together, backs to the same tree, staring up at the sky, memorising the star formations and making up names for new constellations. “Look, there’s Borricarius,” Karen whispered sleepily but with gentle mirth. She was pointing up, but in no particular direction. Simon’s eyes graced her arm and index finger once again and then stared up into the open sky. It had rained before they touched down, but the rain had been light. Still, the air was clear and the stars twinkled only slightly. He could see a group of quite bright stars in the general direction to Karen’s aim. After a while, Karen said “It’s Borric the computer Repair Man, fixing a broken monitor cable with a flathead screwdriver.” There were five stars there. Yep, that’s obscure enough. By the time Simon had pointed out another constellation and thought up a good name, Karen was asleep. Simon got up, threw some more wood on the fire and then sat back down at the tree and slowly dozed off, smiling for no apparent reason. 45. In a very different, yet strikinlgy similar parallel dimension, a duplicate copy of the universe ever so wrongly termed ‘reality’, the X-Nerds had chosen not to stop at the Grand Opening of the newest MacCushions franchise. In fact, they never knew that MacCushions even existed, and therefore James was left stranded on the advertising planet, where it must be presumed that he later died, the body never actually found. A small piece of that white peanut shaped packing foam lay forgotton on the dry, lifeless ground. Then one day, in that similar yet unfathomably different Time, the X-Nerds spotted a nice looking planet, full of life. They decided to drop in and started looking for an unpopulated place to land. 46. Sally was hard at work at the filing cabinet when Linda burst in. “I have got to talk with George,” She said in even tones. She was in a big hurry. “One moment,” Sally said. Then she slunk over to the intercom, held down a button and stated: “The God Linda is hear to see you, Mr God. She says it’s rather urgent.” She smiled nicely at Linda, who fretted politely next to the door into George’s room. George had somehow sealed the door so that even other Gods must wait to be ‘buzzed’ in by his secretary, the little red cushion. A feeble voice eminated from the intercom. It sounded toneless and dry. “Okay. Send her in. Thankyou, Sally. You’re doing a great job.” George thought flattery didn’t hurt every now and then, so he flattered her all the time. Sally pushed a button on her desk and the door into George’s room mysteriously opened. Linda almost ran into the room. The door closed behind Her, just as mysteriously. Inside, George offered Linda a brandy. George offered everybody a brandy whenever He could. George liked brandy and thought everybody should like brandy, too, and so gave everybody the chance to try it. Linda grabbed the decanter, not minding the glass, and drank deeply. Placing the glass bottle down on the desk, She started to explain why she’d come over, but got as far as “Ahhh! Huh!”. Linda did not normally drink brandy. It gave her quite a start. George sat behind his desk, took a two chrome golf balls from mid air and started to roll them both around in one hand. Linda swallowed twice, coughed, then said “The Flux is missing from your Universe. I don’t know where it is. I’ve just been over chatting with Mikal about that room we were in before- the one with the Flux Sample in that tray. Then I decided to just check up the records on all the Flux samples in all the different dimensions. They’re all there, happy as Larry in their own dimensions, all except yours.” George came to his feet. He slowly paced around his desk, rolling the reflective golf balls in the palm of his hand. He was humming tunelessly while he nutted out the possibilities. On his desk lay a stack of papers. He glanced at them but did not pick them up. Linda had already nutted out the possibilities. “You know, of course, that there are only two possibilities. One, it has just up and vanished and order is overruling. Not very likely, of course. Especially in that mess you call a Universe. Or, it has somehow jumped cross dimensionally and the Great Hamster only knows what that could do.” George paused before giving her access to the stack of paper on his desk. Linda scanned it and nodded occasionally. As she read, George started talking. “We must get in contact with the X-Nerds and tell them to find James and take him to the Flux. He’ll know what to do then.” Then He thought about this. “I got the impression when I first spoke to James that he didn’t know about himself- his other self. I don’t think it would be wise to tell him ot the X-Nerds about it. They all seem a bit touchy and if they’re to come against the Flux, then they need to be as confident as they can.” Linda had read the notes; in all her aeons perfecting the now defunct Virtual Universe Computer, she learned to speed read the technical manuals that came with each Universe. Plus She was a god, and that helped. She’d just read over a hundred pages of hand-written notes in under a minute. “Then we should use the two-way to contact them.” She said smugly. “Two-way? That ship doesn’t-” “I’ll just go back in time to before they left the Celestial City and put one in and then come back here.” She vanished for a second, then reappeared holding a two-way radio handset. She handed it over to George. George said thankyou and called the X-Nerds and give them their instructions. Linda helped herself to another brandy. 47. James sat silently as he and the X-Nerds sped through the cosmos in search of another Flux Scalis. James had at first grumbled and mumbled abuse at the X-Nerds for leaving him in the first place, but the X-Nerds were used to ignoring him and did so easily. Now his patient silence worried the X-Nerds- they’d never seen him like this. In their travels, they’d discovered that most likely spot to find the Flux Scalis was on the frozen genetic research moons around the same spot as where Lorna Major used to be, before they moved to their new residence outside the Universe. It was pure coincidence that the X-Nerds had discovered this location, and that in their present dimension, the Lorna Major Academic Academy hadn’t been teleported outside it’s universe. In fact, the lovely old monks had been happy to show the X-Nerds and James around. They all saw everything- they had the time to, now Stuart had completely overcome the controls of the Time Machine, they couldn’t be late for anything. Or so they hoped. The Lorna Major Academic Academy, and it’s sister planet, the Lorna Minor World Design Institute, occupied the same orbit around the same sun, pi radians out of phase to each other in their huge orbital trajectories, however only the Academic Academy really needed the sun. The World Design Institute was entirely self sufficient, converting the pure energy of the universe into matter and heat in order to achieve its goals of building planets for customers. In truth, the World Design Institute wasn’t a planet at all, just a large collection of losely strung together frames and sectors, a rough cube capable of splitting up the middle to release the final planet, but the scale of the operation and fact that all sorts of universities and smaller foundations were scattered throughout the immense frameworks had decided to call the whole shebang Lorna Minor. The founders of the Lorna Minor World Design Institute had discovered in their peliminary reasearch a way of fooling the surrounding universe and dimensions into believing that the open area inside the World Design Institute was infinitly larger than the physical area taken to surround it- In other words, five-dimensional physics applied to the inside of the structure. The founders wrongly believed that this astounding fact was created due to the fact that under five dimensional physics, normal three dimensional space was aligned through four dimensional space/time in such a way as all points in the third dimension were in the same positions in three dimensional space yet aligned at different times in four dimensional space, and therefore altogether visible as three dimensions in it’s five dimensional relative counterpart. It was only discovered some centuries after the Institute had opened that all matter inside the Institute was actually wormholeded outside the area occupied by all the universes and was therefore an infinite area non-limited by space/time. Some fanatics of five dimensional physics studying at the Academic Academy on Lorna Major still believed that this was not the case and the Institutes founders were in fact correct. Some other fanatics said that everybody should just shut up because some people have a headache around here, you know. After this discovery, Lorna Major was privately offered the opportunity to relocate herself and the local Sun to a lovely little spot outside the universe, for a small fee, of course. In this reality, Lorna Major declined the offer, but in certain others, it had gladly accepted and now revolved in its lonely orbit outside all space and time. An old monk with a rather annoying voice mumbled something incompresensible at the six time travellers and handed them each a large helmet. He didn’t speak any English and so waited for them to put on the helmets. They were bulky and a little top heavy, but once they’d automatically sealed themselves around their necks, became a little easier to manage. “Can you hear me correctly?” He asked. They X-Nerds nodded. James waited next to a door and didn’t respond. The old monk went up to him and whacked the back of his helmet with his hand. James yelped as his head bounced around inside the helmet. Then the monk repeated the question. This time James nodded. “If you would just follow me then,” The monk smilied and wandered through a door, motioning for them to follow. James was last through and closed the door behind him. Suddenly it was very dark. “My name is Ahkn, and I will be your guide through the Library,” said an annoying voice from nowhere. In the darkness a door opened and the X-Nerds and James could see a yellowy green gas hugging the floor of the tunnel ahead. Suddenly, oxygen flowed within their helmets, and each person ‘aah’ed. Little twinlking lights came on inside the helmets and then everyone could see everyone else’s face. Ahkn now wore a similar helmet too, though it was well worn and his head didn’t sway and turn in the same way as their own. Ahkn continued talking, his lips very slightly out of sync with the voice. Ahkn liked to talk. “These helmets will allow us to breathe in this place, as the harsh gasses of this planet would instantly dissolve your lungs and you would die a horribly painful, bloody and slow death, gurgling and drowning in your own oozing, red blood. These helmets will translate my language into the most recognised language amongst you. You do all speak the same language?” “Yes,” Matthew, who was just behind Ahkn replied. They all walked through yet another door and out into a huge room. He thought they must get alot of visitors here, with the World Design Institute so close. “Yes. Of course you do,” Ahkn mumbled. “Ah, here we are,” He pulled a little cord hanging down from the darkness above and suddenly lights came on throughout the Library. The library was big. The library was very big. Hundreds of rows of scrolls and books stretched away one direction, and in the other, shelves and desks were stacked high with disks, tapes and computer equipment, although it was like nothing any of the X-Nerds had ever seen before. Soon they were wandering their own directions, glancing about them and occasionally pulling down one of the spidery scripts to read. Amazingly, the helmets automatically translated as they read the obscure symbols and diagrams. “Wander as far as you like,” Ahkn’s voice seemed right in their ears, although he still stood at the entrance. “All these rows follow back around to here so you don’t get lost.” Simon had wandered towards the computer equipment, as had James. Stuart and Errol had gone off together, straight ahead towards a more colourful appearing section of the Library. Matthew edged towards the scroll section whilst Karen picked a random direction and started walking. “They’ve got everything,” Matthews voice carried hollowly in all their helmets. It seemed to be right behind them all, and yet Matthew could be seen wandering up a distant corridor of scrolls and parchments into the dim, distant silence. The minutes ticked by as each of the six intrepid travellers explored and discovered amazing and exciting facts for themselves. Occasionally there would come a distant rumble, but nothing ever came of it and so it these soon went unheard. After a while, nobody spoke, and each seemed to exist within their own, silent world. “Hey, eveyone! Come have a look at this,” Karen’s voice carried steadily to everyone. There was a startled pause. “Where are you?” Asked five voices simultaneously. “Come to the middle and I’ll show you.” About ten minutes later, everybody stood near the centre of the Library. Ahkn was sleeping next to the door, seated back to the wall. For some reason Karen was whispering. “I think I found something on the Flux.” “Where?” James asked pointedly. He seemed very interested in the Flux Scalis- certainly much more interested than any of the X-Nerds. To them, the Flux was just another step to getting home. “Uh, follow me,” and Karen led the way down a seemingly random passage. They walked for around three minutes, then came to a spot where the dust had been disturbed. Karen pointed at a couple of books on the floor. “Those mention the Flux but don’t really tell you much.” James picked one up and turned to the middle page and sat down to read. “This one, however,” she told the rest of them, holding up an electronic book, “gives you just about everything on the Flux- how it was formed, what it looks like, the rules of physics it follows, and boy, does it follow some wierd ones.” Simon took it from her and paged through the first few chapters with his finger. There were diagrams, scribbled notes, holograms and even a chemical analysis of the object. “It’s molasses!” Simon exclaimed. “Well, it’s got the same chemical structure of it, anyway. It seems that this researcher even tried eating some to see what it tastes like.” “And?” Karen asked the taller boy. “And what?” Simon asked, as was his way. “And, what did it taste like, der?” “Oh. I don’t know,” Simon admitted. “That’s where that particular set of notes stopped. I guess it didn’t agree with him.” He grinned. “It absorbed him,” James stated professionally. “Huh? How do you know?” “I just do. That’s how the Flux works. It is concentrated evil- and it absorbes any hate and bad feelings of any living thing it touches. Any goodness and love is nullified by the evil and hate, like currents cancelling each other out.” Everybody usually had ignored James up until that point because anything he said was mixed up and backwards. Now he was becoming the centre of attention because it seemed he knew more about what they were doing than any of them. His thoughts were becoming clearer, more structured and even, oddly, interesting. “How can you just know something?” Stuart countered, stepping logically through his sentance. “I don’t know. But I know that that’s how the Flux works. Besides, it says so just here,” He showed them the page he was reading. Stuart read it and nodded, a slow, eerie thought occuring to him - Was that humour? From James? They stood there for a few more minutes, reading or paging through books of pictures and numbers. “I think we should go see if we can see what we’re up against,” Stuart said. James look at him sharply, but said nothing. 48. In a not too far off dimension, a spaceship landed in a field. It was a deserted field, though there were tyre tracks in the mud. It was raining. The sky was black with cloud and a ghastly wind tore across the short grass, tossing up dead leaves and bits of old newspapers. One of these newspapers flapped up against the windscreen of the spaceship, hugging the glass, but was soon torn away in the swirling wind. Then came lightning and thunder. Great spears of lightning fell and forked and fell again, spewing out across the miles of soaking ground, lighting up the storm in brilliant gashes of white, followed immediately by thrashing cracks of thunder that echoed and rolled through the mountainous terrain as if they were nothing at all. The sky lit up and a tree near the spaceship exploded. It was very noisy. “Ripper of a storm, huh?” Matthew grinned with mad glee. “Did you just see how close that lightning struck?” Karen blubbered. She wandered back towards the back of the ship and stopped at a cupboard. She open it, reached inside and grabbed a packet of Burger Rings from the second shelf. Then she closed the cupboard door and continued to walk away from the front. Stuart heard the TV come on in the back and went to investigate. His voice carried through the craft easily. “Do you know you’re not supposed to watch TV during electrical storms?” His voice said. Karen’s voice exaspered. “No, you idiot. That’s phones. You’re not supposed to use phones in electrical storms.” “No. I specifically remember my-” There was an almightly crash of thunder. The spaceship shuddered. For a moment, the two voices up the back of the spaceship were muffled. “-to watch TV.” “Shhh! Sit down.” “It was phones too. I remember now.” “Shush!” There was laughter, but it was on the TV. Matthew spoke. “Yep. Remember we all used to sit up on the balcony back home and watch the storms out over the gorge country?” He sighed in its memory and sadly smiled, his home in his minds’ eye. Simon sat on the left hand front-most seat, staring out the indestructable windscreen, making faces at his reflection in the yellowish glass. Errol sat reading the Owners Manual. Stuart had discarded it after his rather heavy landing on this very rainy planet. Matthew was attempting to sleep, but with all the noise, couldn’t. His stomach grumbled. They waited. Simon watched the rain form puddles on the ground. The water was running off in little streamlets, trickling off into the dense undergrowth only metres away. It seemed to be getting heavier. It seemed to be getting darker. After the storm had subsided, Stuart and Karen went for a walk and Matthew finally went to sleep. Simon went outside but only to look at the spacecraft. They han’t done a space-to-ground entry before and he noticed that the ceramic underside of the craft was slightly blackened, though nothing was burnt. It was a nice planet. The air was quite clear after the rain, and although they’d noticed lights from cities and other signs of intelligent life, they hadn’t yet come across any people. That was until the car drove up. In the car was a man. He was dressed in a suit. A grey, expensive looking suit. He was driving an expensive looking car. It whined softly, a sound strikingly similar to an Italian electric car. The car was not Italian. He didn’t look happy, but it was hard to tell from thirty metres. Stuart cautioned Karen into silence. It was darker in the dense undergrowth, and the difference between this wet dimness and the light, open field where the spaceship was parked was astounding. The duo could see both Simon standing outside the spaceship and a man hesitantly walking towards him, some twenty metres to their right. The light was very bright, but their eyes slowly adjusted. It was also very quiet, the only sounds being a distant bird calling out hopelessly. The cautious man raised his right hand, smiled, turned his palm upwards, took another step, then swiftly pulled out something from behind his back with his left hand and pointed it at Simon. It was a gun. Definately a gun. “Karen,” Whispered Stuart. Karen turned to hear Stuart. “I think if we rush out holding hands, laughing, maybe he’ll think-” He stopped to think. Karen wanted to know why he’d stopped. “What? That we’d been for a... walk in the woods?” “Uh. Uh, yeah. You know, kind of look startled and that. Maybe he’ll run off, and...” Stuart shrugged. So? The plan was a little bland. “Oh. I suppose it’s worth a try.” Karen’s right hand found it’s way into Stuart’s left. It was warm, she noted. Warm and soft. Stuart looked down and saw a scar below her elbow. He had one just like it, he recalled, only a bit higher. After a pace, Stuart quietly said “What if he turns it on us?”. “He won’t,” Karen reassured Stuart, but began to wonder if this was the right thing to do. She turned to view Stuart’s rounded face, winked, and smiled a nice smile at him. He reflected it immediately. “Secret Federation of Investigation. Hold you position,” The man stated. He had a very professional sounding voice. A voice that wouldn’t think twice about killing if it had to. He also spoke English, more an American accent to it, though. Simon used think this strange that one so far from his home planet could speak a language evolved over many years with startling clarity. That was before he discovered the Celestial City, where everybody (except the little cauliflower people with three legs) spoke English. Simon smiled. “State you I.D. plate, name and mission,” The professional voice barked. Simon didn’t know what to do. “Uh, I.D. plate? I don’t know what an I.D. plate is. I don’t think they registered this thing.” “State your I.D. plate, name and mission,” The man said evenly, raising his gun a little more. “My name is Simon,” He didn’t say his last name because he didn’t like the idea of his name getting onto any mailing lists or anything. People could find addresses and things from just a name, these days. “And I’m on a mission from God.” The man wielding the gun was a little startled for just a second. It was exactly at this moment that Stuart and Karen burst forth out of the undergrowth to the mans left, laughing and holding hands. They stopped when they saw the gun. Their eyes went wide and Karen screamed once, then buried her head into Stuart’s right shoulder, whimpering a little. Stuart put an arm protectively around Karen’s head. “What? Who?” Stuart tried to sound shocked. He looked at the man in the grey suit and then at Simon. Stuart did not wink. “What is the meaning of this? Who are you?” He said authoritivly. The man slowly spun, quite calmly, to point his gun at them, glancing suggestively back at Simon. “If you were of this planet, then you would know who I was,” The bad man stated. There was no tone to his voice. “Join your friend.” Karen unburied her head from Stuart’s shoulder and looked up into Stuart’s eyes. Stuart grimaced. She shrugged and they untangled themselves smartly and walked over to meet Simon. “So much for that, then,” She whispered. “Silence!” Hollared the man. “You will stay there,” he said, walking slowly, menacingly, around the caravan-sized spaceship. He dissapeared from view. “What was that all about?” Simon nervously asked the younger two. Karen winked mischievously at him and said nothing. “I said silence!” came the voice again. Then the three of them heard the door of the spaceship click. There was more silence and then a sickening crash and a single shot. The three friends rushed around only to see the man in the grey suit lying face first in the mud, unconcious. Errol sat in the doorway, wiping his hands on his shirt. Apparently, he’d kicked the door open just as the man had bent down to open it himself, and the blow had knocked him out cold. The man groaned, Errol got up, went over to him and squatted next to his head, looking at the blood running from his nose. Suddenly, the man woke, turned and had fired another shot before Errol knocked him cold again with his fist, an almost instantaneous action caused by the fright. Stuart and Karen had already gone inside by this time, and Simon had started to climb the single step into the machine before this happened. Blood splattered the opposite wall as a small copper bullet tore through the side of his right leg, an inch above his knee. It did not puncture the far side of the ceramic plate spaceship. Karen screamed, a long, horrible sound magnified by the enclosure. Simon only winced, the hurt in his leg too much for even a cry of pain. His hand instantly gripped his leg and he fell on his left shoulder. “Damn, ow!” he said because he’d hurt his shoulder now. Errol did not attend to Simon, as Stuart and Karen had already started first aid. All five X-Nerds had each completed their first aid certificates and each knew instinctively what to do. Instead, he took the gun from the unconscious alien man and threw it hard into the dense undergrowth. It clattered on something. Then he tore the man’s grey coat and tied his arms and legs with strips of the smooth, strong material. He threw the remains of the ruined suit over the mans face. Red blood still dribbled from his nose. Then he did something strange. He pulled a postcard from his pocket- it was a picture of the Taj Mahal- and dropped it on the mans body. “Here,” he said. “You can learn about us from this.” Simon thought this probably would be a good time to pass out. “Rice,” Said Karen, looking at Stuart, who nodded but did not say a word, his eyes wide with shock. He searched for some bandages. Dark clouds were once again forming in the west. 49. Linda was stareing vacantly at George, across the table, her bottom lip dangling dangerously close to her chin. George was wondering why Linda was stareing vacantly at him. Linda held a glass in her right hand. It had a few drops of whisky in it, and two lumps of ice. The brandy had run out. Now the whisky was running low. Fortunately, George’s secretary enjoyed going out and fetching things for him, and right now she was probably on her way back from the bar just up the road with a new bottle of brandy. “Ohmigod,” Linda sounded shocked. She slammed the glass down onto the deep red desk, a sharp cracking sound, and ran from the room quickly, not saying anything else. George thought he heard a retching sound. A few moments later, Linda came back in, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her yellow golf clothes. “Oh my,” she gasped, then resumed her place. Her cup magically filled with water, mixing with the remaining millilitres of whisky. She drank noisily. George stared at her. As if guided by an autocue, she started talking. “Randall and I used to have so much fun together.” Aah, Randall, thought George. He had been wondering why Linda had not been herself these last few days. Normally, she couldn’t be dragged from the greens, but lately she’d never even looked at a club or golfball. “When we were first working on the VUC34, we were together all the time, night and day, slaving over the hot little computers, drinking coffee and watching late night television broadcast from Earth. Do you know that that little planet puts out more garbage over the waves than you would find in your average sub-cluster galaxy? Anyway, it was fun, then. “We had this little house- well, it was large enough to hold the computers and all our notes and stuff. It was just sort of floating in the void. Then one day, just like that, ‘poof’- there was this planet and a sun, just sitting there. We moved our house onto that planet, which we found out later was called Lorna Major.” She finished off her cup, belched, then filled it again with more of the whisky that was on the table. She had a drink. George had heard all this before. Linda had visited before; before Lorna Major relocated. He recalled something urgent about her last visit, but couldn’t remember what. She’d told him about her plans to create the VUC and that she and Randall were happy together, living in a small house outside all the Universes in the pre-atomic nothingness. He knew she wanted to talk, so he let her. They had the time. “And so we became interested in the Academy and the restaraunt, although they didn’t serve very nice fish. It was a little dry for my taste. We occasionally went to the services, which were very boaring. They all just sat around, moaning and groaning, wearing their stupid potato sacks. It’s a wonder they didn’t freeze to death.” Linda paused, she hoped, dramatically. “Randall and I even went on a holiday to Earth. We’ve got a postcard, somewhere. I wish I had it, it’s got a great picture of this big marble place with huge long greens out the front. We were thrown into gaol for that.” She smiled, remembering. “You what?” George started. He reached for a brandy but there was none. He buzzed Sally and asked her to bring in the new bottle. She did so, duly noting that Linda was swaying in her chair. The cushion didn’t say anything but smiled understandingly at George and left, closing the door. George poured himself a drink. It tasted good. “Oh yesyesyes,” Linda continued, as if there had been no interruption. “It was such a great fairway, nice and straight. It had no obstructions, except for the pond up the middle. I never have figured out why you’d place a pond up the middle. “Anyway, we left gaol about half an hour after they’d put us in- we must have just vanished. I don’t remember how we got out, but I recall it was exciting. Somebody helped us, yes that was it. I wonder who? Anyhow, then we went flying and looked all around the world at everything- just to do it. They have a strange world there, but there is alot to look at. It’s a very strange world. Did I tell you that they put out more radio waves than most other planets I’ve seen? I must have.” Since her last stop, Linda had polished off two more glasses of the heart-warming drink, and her head was lolling about on her shoulders. Her voice was very slurred. “Anyway, I don’t know why, but Randall and I have been fighting lately. He’s always been bickering, and that’s probably why I love him, but, you know, it’s just that lately he’s been getting on my nerves. We never do anything together anymore. We never talk. He’s such a jerk.” She fell asleep. Her drink spilled all over her lap, but she did not wake. George sighed. He decided to go and see Randall. Perhaps talk things through, play a round of too. These two loved each other too much to treat each other like this. “Sally,” he gave instructions to his intercom whilst holding down a small black button. “I want you to keep an eye on Linda. She’s in here asleep. When she wakes, do not let her drink any more.” There was a pause. Sally liked to pause when George spoke to her. It made the mood more... uh, more. “Right away, Mr God,” was her response. Linda started to snore. 50. “That?” Simon asked, pointing into the dark tray. “It’s just black stuff in a tray.” “That is the Flux,” stated James professionally. Like, he knew all about the flux but he didn’t know anything else. He’s learned to speak; the time in the room with Mikal had taught him that, but still, when it all came down, he was still as stupid as ever. “It’s the most evil thing in the universe.” “After the mash potato they served us at school,” Stuart noted. “No, it isn’t evil,” Karen told him. “It’s the most concentrated form of goodness in the universe. Everybody knows that, otherwise why would they tell us to eat it all the time?” “Oh, of course. Silly me. I suppose when you mix them, like when you mix matter and anti-matter, they cancel each other out.” “No. You get baked beans in gravy, then.” Karen smiled at Stuart and walked off to have a look around. “There’s logic in that somewhere,” Stuart said. Then he looked pointedly across the bench at Matthew who just tilted his head and grimaced. There was nothing left to do. They’d come to Lorna Major to find out about the Flux Scalis, something they’d now done. They’s seen the biggest and most comprehensive library anywhere in any universe, and they’s gone to have a peep at the molten black lard-in-a-tray known quite well for its ability to vaporise any living thing that touched it. Now they didn’t know what to do. After a stark dinner- an instant noodle pack from a nearby (and quite handy) refrigerator, heated over a small fire, the X-Nerds and James assembled in the Time Machine. They waved goodbye to the monks. The Monks did not wave back. Karen whispered “We’ll make ourselves look purposeful if we leave just like that. Good appearences, you know.” She pushed the red button and the machine vanished through time and space. Then Karen screamed. 51. Jean-Pierre von Gorfenwherria, or Gorf for short, sat across from an unruly bunch. They were playing Kraal, a card game much similar to blackjack, except with more room for cheating. There were four of them, mercinaries by the look, as guns lay beside broadswords and dirks, leather armour amongst the bullet-proof vests. There were wooden boxed brimming with stringy packing, flippantly hiding rockets and other highly dangerous and destructive weapons. The four cheap soldiers sat on crates, drinking a reddish brew and belching often. “You’re a stinking, low-life, graat-sucking cheat, Jarl,” bellowed Gorf. He threw his hand down on the table. There were five identical cards. “You’re the one whose had the cards up his sleeve all night, you pig-shouldered brazenbeast,” Gorf’s opponent shot back. “And I don’t have sleeves, thank you very much.” “Well if you did, you would.” “Aha! So you did, eh?” Gorf jumped to his feet. The other two unshaven card players hastily moved back, one accidently spilling his brew on Jarl’s lap. Jarl punched him. Jarl punched the other, just for the hell of it. Just in case. Then Jarl was kicked in the shin by Gorf, and the fight was on. Outside the little hut the sun was warm. The breeze blew gaily across the scorched landscape and smoke lifted joyously into the air from a nearby bomb crater. A bee landed on a flower but set off a very old and extemely touchy land mine and instantly became many extra parts of the scenery. It was a normal day. A window on the earthen hut smashed and the greater part of an arm cascaded through. It, however, decided not to stick around to enjoy the day and slithered back through the broken window frame. There was alot of noise, primarily the sounds of yelling and fighting. The door on the hut burst open and two great men flew out, grappling each other. Another followed and yet another stood in the doorway, swigging a frothing brew from an old wooden tankard. “Let that be a lesson to yerall!” He stated primly, then turned and slammed the door behind him. It was at this point that a large white object with whirly things all down the side fell from the sky and lodged itself upside-down in the hut’s dirt-covered roof. There came an aghast silence. Smoke still lazily rose from a nearby crater. “Er.” There was a gun in his face. James did not seem to like the proposition of having a gun in his face and so had pushed Stuart in front of him. “Oh,” Stuart stated, and grinned, his top and bottom teeth showing. “Well,” Came a harsh, female voice. It wasn’t Karen’s. “That does it for my tomatoes!” From out of a side door inside the hut, a side door that incidently adjoined a further room used for sleeping and preparing food, stormed a woman, apparently aged in her mid twenties by Earth standards. She had dark straw-blonde hair and green, heavily guarded and pocketed eyes. Her hands were wrinked and calloused and brown from dirt. She was pretty. “Now look, you four. If you would ever-” She stopped. She looked at the big white thing hanging through the roof, twisting her head up the other way as if to get a better view. There was somebody in it, six people actually, all looking through the door of the vehicle which was obviously upside-down. The four men were pointing guns and knives at them, their game of Krall lying forgotten on the ground. “-stop fighting... Ah.” The woman dropped something on the ground. It looked like a cheeseburger, though now, looking at the four dirty parts spread on the earthen floor, nobody could tell. “Ah,” she bumbled again. There was a muffled sound, a voice from within the small white spaceship. “Oh dear... No, Um-?” There was another. This one sounded female. “What?” “Look,” There was a slight click. Nothing happened. “See? Battery’s dead or something. Um.” “Oh dear.” Click. Click. Clickety-clickety-clickety-click. “Oh dear.” Silence. “Well, that’s it then.” “Out!” harshed a voice, a voice carrying a gun. A voice connected to a big hairy arm carrying a big black gun. James fell. Stuart fell on him. Matthew stepped out and swung down. “Out,” that voice said again. “Now!” Simon jumped down, landing square on James’s upturned hand. Then he helped Karen down. They both looked a little sheepish. Then a gun went off. Nobody moved. Each of the X-Nerds and James felt their chests, their hips, their legs. Nope, wasn’t them. Except that Simon’s hand came back with blood on it. “Argh! You’ve shot me, you idiot!” He cried. Then he fell on his left shoulder and wailed a little. Well, a lot. “Hey! That’s what it is!” Said one of the men at the door. He grinned. Gorf looked at him, rather dissaprovingly. “Oh good. After this long, we finally get some prisoners and you go and shoot them.” “There was this little switch behind the trigger. I only-” “Jarl,” Gorf smilied at the men. He punched him in the mouth. “Shut up,” Gorf said placidly. The other woman had rushed over to Simon, as had Karen. They both appeared to know what to do, and carred him off into the next room. He was now unconscious and dangled limply in their supportive arms. Gorf sighed. Why was he here? Why did he have to survive if these were the people he had to survive with? He motioned the others to move to the next room. Guns in their backs made them do so. “We’re on a mission from God,” Karen said matter-of-factly. The other woman, whose name was, funnily enough, Frank, looked up. Under the circumstances, she was completely prepared for this answer. She nodded. How else could six humans appear from nowhere and destroy somebody’s home in a large cooking pot-looking creamic tub? “You’re all aliens, then, I take it?” “Aliens?” “Yes. You’re not from around here, then?” “Uh,” Karen didn’t know where here was. “No. I don’t think so. We’re from Earth, actually.” “Never heard of it.” “Oh.” “Never seen no real aliens before. Of course, we’re all from the same planet, not this one of course, but still, I’ve never seen no real dinky-die space aliens before. Are they all like you?” “Like us? Aliens,” Karen was really turned about by the conversation. She gnawed at the side of her left index finger. “Um, no. Some are blue.” “Aah,” Frank said knowingly. “And I’ve always thought they’d be little green men, for some reason, driving big things that look like them things you put under tea-cups.” “Saucers?” “Yep. That’s them.” There was a short pause. “There are green ones too,” Karen said, pulling Simon up onto a makeshift bed. He groaned and then fell limp again. He was still bleeding, though not as profusely. Red blood seeped onto the floor. “Oh?” “Yes, they look like little cauliflowers with legs.” “Uh huh,” Frank nodded. “I see.” “Oh.” Well. That was it. That was as far as the conversation was going to go. It seemed that nobody wanted to talk about the usual things- the weather, politics, last weeks footy scores. The silence came down as a hammer strikes an anvil. It was lucky that the big man, Gorf, burst in, because a whole new conversation could then start. Karen had already started to hear that white noise that one hears when trying to think how to start a conversation in a spot where one can’t exist. The X-Nerds stumbled in. James walked in, smiling aimlessly. The other two mercinaries walked in. Jarl did not. The door was closed and the two rough-looking cheap soldiers stood either side of the door. “They’re aliens,” Frank’s hard voice said after a while. Frank herself looked rather startled and scolded her voice for talking by itself. “Uh huh,” Then of course, the conversation happened again, and ended up in the same spot. This time, James cut in at the end. “Have you seen this woman?” He held up a polaroid of a black blot. It was rather shiny looking. That was a woman? Yes, these people were definately aliens. “It looks like molasses,” Gorf said, his head tilted slightly to the right. James got the message. Gorf hadn’t seen a blot of mollasses running around vaprising things. He thought that odd. The door burst open, clacking into one of the guards noses. He yelped. The other guard didn’t do anything. “Listen here-” the new voice began. Then “Oo’s this, then?” It asked. It belonged to an unfamiliar face, at least unfamiliar to the outworlders. “We’re friends-” Karen took charge. She was becoming good at taking charge. The new man stopped. Prisoners weren’t supposed to talk. That was the job of their captors. For a moment, his tall red-clad body swayed undecidedly, then Jarl, who now stood behind the man said “Hey! No talking.” “Uh,” said the new man. “Yeah. No talking!” Gorf told them about the X-Nerds. The new man laughed when Gorf told him about how Simon had been wounded. Then the new man turned and punched Jarl in the mouth. Jarl went outside. A moment later, there was an explosion and the sound of dirt raining down. A cloud of dust blew through the door. Simon groaned. The bleeding was slowing, mainly due to the new bandages now wrapped around his leg. He did not fall back into unconciousness, but remained in pain, awake. He groaned again and said “Who are you?” to the new man in the kind of voice that made everyone else wince. The new, gruff looking man smiled. “Your worst nighmare,” He threw back his head and heaved heavy laughter throughout the building. “He’s my brother,” said Frank, her tone dissaproving. “Then, who are you?” Asked Simon of Frank. His head turned sharply towards her. “Frank’s the name, Rebel’s the game. You are our prisoners, and you’re coming withus!” She smiled, trying to look extremely frighteneing. Simon sighed. He was surrounded by every kind of Chuck Norris wannabe. They were bad poets, too. And bad actors. Extremely just like Chuck Norris. “Oh-kay,” he conceeded. The next thing he said was slow, deliberate and entirely for theatric purposes. “Okay, then. What are we fighting for?” There was a word, a single syllable word, in there someplace. It didn’t seem right. ‘What are we fighting for?’ The sentance gonged and resonated within the five other empty heads (the mercinary-looking natives) as they sought its meaning. The new man looked at his sister, then at Gorf, then at the two guards. One guard was clutching his nose. The new man did not know why. The other was eating a tomato. Then he drew himself up dramatically, drew a sword and held it aloft, swished his cloak around his shoulder and bellowed “The Hollow of Destiny!”. Simon cut in straight away in a very planitive voice. “The Hollow of Destiny. What’s that? Is that a survey map or computer game?” “Maybe it’s a big sword, passed down for generations,” Karen smiled at him, happy to see him his usual self. Humour heals all wounds. “One that has magical powers and fends off evil.” Simon smiled at the new man. The new man frowned back. Simon changed his smile to a questioning look by raising his eyebrows. The new man did not change his expression. Simon’s face seemed to grin like a madman’s. The new man’s suddenly did likewise. Had Simon been able, he would have backed away at this point. Alas... The new man bent down and breathed heavily into Simon’s face. His breath, Simon noted, smelled just like an ice-cream soda, cherry flavour. Perhaps that was what the red frothy drink in the other room was. A moment later there was the sound of gunfire outside. Just outside. Right outside. 52. “Stuart?” Karen whispered? Everybody was asleep except Karen and Stuart, who now sat up the front of the Time Machine. Deep space fell away from them outside the yellow glass. God had just called on their new radio. For some reason it was in the glove compartment; the one they didn’t know they had. “Uh huh?” Stuart whispered back. “What are we going to do?” Simon was up the back of the caravan-sized spaceship, his breating even. Matthew had curled up in front of the TV, which was filling the rear of the craft with the hiss of white flickering static. “You mean with him?” “No, us. All of us,” she paused. “We’re completely lost. I don’t know where or when we are, or where we’re going.” “If you don’t care where you’re going, then you aren’t lost,” Stuart joked. Karen shared a moment of this joy with Stuart but returned to her sombre mood. Her hand once again slipped into Stuart’s, gently squeezing it. “We can’t just keep pushing the red button and hoping to go somewhere interesting. We have to find the Flux and save the Humans and all that. We don’t even know where any of them are, now. And I want to go home.” That was it. They all just wanted to go home, back to how they were before they’d even built the first Time Machine. “This whole expedition with Gods and time machines is so rediculous. James wasn’t that bad,” Karen had a need for talk. Stuart sat patiently, he wanted to hear her out for some reason. Outside, the black shoud of dark continued unabated. It seemed like night out there, yet there was no real night and day. The Time Machine sat relatively motionless to the distant pockmarked array of stars. “We all put up with him. Hell, the Time Machine was a bunch of toothpaste tubes and cornflake boxes. It wasn’t supposed to work! Now look at us, stuck in deep space all because of some stupid God. You’d think we’re just pawns in some kind of science fiction story.” There was a gonging sound, really very faint. Perhaps it had come from the TV, but the sound was way down and it was louder than that, wasn’t it? Stuart looked at Karen in an odd kind of way. Karen looked back at Stuart. Something felt funny, like a deja vu feeling without the sense of seeing it all before. It was more like... Well, it wasn’t like anything they ever felt before. And it was just between the two of them. For that one moment, the spaceship seemed to be just the set on some low-budget telemovie, the whirring of fans and blipping of lights as distant and unreal as the recent trail of events. The feeling passed as Karen cautiously started talking again. “ I’m getting wierded out, here. Which way do you want to go?” Then Stuart gasped. “Look!” and he pointed out into the blackness. They could both see a similar-looking spaceship, a clone of their ship hurtling through space, whirly things and all. “It’s us!” Karen stated. Both Stuart and Karen could almost pick out faces in the front. What they did manage to see was two very white blobs seated in the front. They didn’t look real, more statue-like, dummies even. Very thin dummies. They were not moving. The ship continued its long haul out of sight and into the cold, unforgiving universe. It didn’t stop. “I wonder what was wrong.” “How did we get out there?” Stuart whispered. “And why didn’t we stop?” Karen thought about it as she fired the main Chronafluxion engines. “I have a strange suspicion...” but that was all she said. Ahead of them, Time bent away again, a path of swirling lights and eerie gravitational effects tubing out into an infinite distance ahead, sucking once more at their miniscule spaceship like the giant hands of an uncaring child stealing away with a meaningless lolly. 53. “George.” The doors burst open and both George and Linda looked up sharply. Sally was nowhere to be seen. The room was quiet, there was no music playing or fans humming. One by one, the five all stormed in, out from behind the doors in Sally’s office into George’s room. “We have to talk,” a voice said. “Who are you?” George demanded. He stood, stormed over to the intruders and held them back. Linda, behind George, stood and stared at them angrily. “You can call us the X-Nerds, George.” The last word was almost spat. “Hello, Linda. How’s Randall?” the X-Nerd speaking acknowledged. Linda looked puzzled but nodded greetings back to him. “Who?” “How do you know who I am? You are not like Us.” “We know all about You.” Silence. The X-Nerds’ mood changed. “We’ve come from the ends of the Universe looking for You, literally.” He smiled. “I’m Simon, by the way.” “Yes, I was just about to ask that. So,” He didn’t know what to say. “Why are you here?” Simon told them their story, carfully leaving out certain details about the other end of the Universe. “And so you came back here, to before the Universes were all started and just storm in seeking our help? As if we will help you, mere mortal. We are Gods.” “This has to do with the Flux,” No response. Simon went on reguardless. “Just give us a hand or you’ll be...” Uh. Just how do you threaten a God, anyway? “We’ll be what?” “Uh. You won’t be able to play Golf anymore,35” Simon invented. It worked. George and Linda screamed and sprang outside after the X-Nerds, back across the empty rolling fields that would one day support the Celestial City, back to a white doorway into another Dimension. Inside, across the fog and fractal floortiles stood an impressive-looking spaceship, stationary in the void. “You need to get back home for an important event in future history, Linda,” Simon told the female God. Linda did not dispute this and simply vanished in an instant. She didn’t even bother saying goodbye. “And you,” Simon singled George out from the non-multitudes standing in front of the X-Nerds. “You are coming with us.” Simon spun dramatically but he yelped and clutched his leg. Although the bullet had passed right through the leg without tearing too many muscles, the wound had not yet healed. He sat on a nearby seat to recover. “Now just a minute, here,” George started after them. “No ‘But’s!” Karen voiced, her interjection stern. “But I didn’t say ‘But’!” “Aah! Yes you did!” “No I didn’t,” God bit his upper lip. Matthew stated “He didn’t, actually.” “And who’se side are you on?” “He’s on mine,” George said. “No, he was just saying that George didn’t say ‘but’.” Stuart told Karen. Karen turned to Stuart, wanting to win this one. “Look,” She started. It was a good start; strong, assertive, everything she’d need to see this thing through. She paused to suck in her breath and repeated the word. “Look. He did say ‘but’ and Matthew was obviously taking sides. You are also-” “No he wasn’t,” God intterupted. Karen ploughed on, right over Him, “-are against me. What did I do to-” “No I’m not!” “He’s not, Karen.” “Yeah,” George added, still biting his upper lip because he’d lost track of this conversation some time back. His eyes shot back and forth like a politician reading the autocue. “-deserve this? I got us out of that mess back there and-” “No, actually it was a co-operative effort. We all helped,” Matthew started his own conversation, with George, who sat and watched Karen talk over Stuart and listened to Matthew tell him about some cooperative thing. “What about me?” Stuart shot back. “I was just some blot hanging off your hand, was I?” “Yes. I mean No,” Karen fumbled. “But it was mostly my fight-” Matthew was saying. “Aah, the old, what’s the word? Start’s with ‘F’. Anyway, I’m just a blot, then. That’s what you think-” “No! I didn’t mean it like that, bugger you. I meant ‘no’,” Karen started to plead. “It’s just that when-” “Yeah, see!” And Simon said “I’d like a nice hot shower.” George sat smiling like a stupid tourist, enjoying life as only one can when one’s brain doesn’t understand a single thing happening around it. Kind of like the way an Englishman devestates his own country by simply being English. Simon sat rubbing his upper leg. He seemed, for some reason, to be in pain. George walked away from the madcap arguments without even as much as a dent to it’s vigour, joined Simon and they both went outside to enjoy the sunshine. “Where are we, then?” Simon asked. “We’re still at the Celestial City. Or where the Celestial City will be...” Karen ludicrousised. “I know that,” Simon highlighted. “Where are we in the plans? You lot have been beating out the details for the last god-knows how long-” “No I don’t. I never said-” God cut in but he was also cut off. “-and I’ve not worked out head nor tail of what the hell you were talking about. Can I read the agenda?” Karen took a breath and pushed George up the back of the Timecraft. That would be a big start, getting Him out of the way. He sat and watched TV. He liked to watch TV, yet didn’t know how they got all the little people inside. “Do we have an agenda?” Simon also asked. “Yes, and I will now inform you of it. Please be quiet and do not interrupt.” You sound just like a com puter, thought Simon. You do not look like a com puter. Karen started to read. She read out a messy but well-documented history or what had already come to pass. Simon and the others nodded goadingly. Then Karen started into what they had to do next. It included taking God to the Lorna-Major Academic Academy to inquisite the Monks about the Flux (of which he knew nothing about, having not invented it yet), then leaving Him to His own devices (stranding him there) and flying back to Earth to discern what the Flux had done and how. She mentioned James’ name once. “Then we shall sort out the other bits and pieces that God and Linda told us about before we left the Celestial City. Black and white, there it is.” Karen handed a sheet of paper to Simon and sat back in her seat. She closed her eyes, expecting the usual flood of questions. There was a great deal of silence. Simon had raised his left hand to his mouth and now suckled the side of the index finger, reading, nodding. God was laughing at the TV. Donoghue was on, interviewing a transexual Nazi Eskimo from Arizona. 54. It stood on a stark knoll, silhouetted on a black skyline. Ragged arcs of lightning whipped through the cloud, falling dangerously close. There was a dead wood; or it seemed dead from a distance: Upturned and twisted roots and branches fighting for space, darkening the road below. A gnarled wagon lay rotting into a sodden quagmire, one iron wheel slowly creaking in the icicle of wind. Bones from- animals? People?- lay bleached white by a forgotten sun, torturing the unpleasant, purplish vista. The road cut the landscape like a varicose vein. The Castle was of a chilly grey stone, a brusque atmosphere seeping from between the hand-cut holes. The portcullis had rusted into the mortar and a neat hole had been carved by use through the great iron gate. Inside, it was much, much darker and very cold. There were horrific screams filtering underneath a door, echoing down long tunnels until their noise became a droning reverberation occasionally punctuated by a grim silence. Elsewhere, from another direction, came another scream, a female scream, then a sick, dull thud and dread silence. Thunder from above tore down, whetting the air with yet more torment. It began raining, an acrid, sulfurous rain that carried a hint of sleet. A warhorse plodded noisily on bumpy black cobble, its worn hooves unshod. Behind, in the sleigh, five prisoners huddled in the slow drizzle, each shivering. Behind the wheeled vehicle, a band of mercinaries dragged the heavy shackle that bound their ankles. One of the mercinaries was whispering to another. “Don’t see why they get to ride in that thing, anyway,” The gruff man aimed his nose at the steel vehicle behind the horse. He yelled something obscene at the six people inside. They took no notice. “Shut up, Gorf,” came a hard female voice from behind. “-we’re in, now,” Simon stopped talking and looked up. The X-Nerds had been connected to a cold stone wall by a single steel chain threaded through heavy iron rings about their ankles. The one-size-fits-all ankle ring had rubbed the skin from his ankle, and a blood blister had formed either side of his ankle, just above the bone. He looked out through iron bars into the dim dungeon at an approacing figure, then past him at the bright orange brazier bellowing heat into the large, low room. Somewhere he could hear a slow, rhythically impaired drip. The figure out in the dungeon stopped, stooped low for he had a large hump on his back, and leaning heavily on a thick cane, fumbled in his pocket for a noisy set of huge skeleton keys. Noting that they weren’t there, he turned slowly, his knees creaking, and remounted the tight staircase and dissapeared into the inky blackness. Karen had been chained next to Stuart and lay sobbing. She was shocked at what some of the terrible guards had tried to do to her. She felt both sorry and thankful that Matthew had had stepped in to guard her from these viscous attacks. He now lay unconcious on the cold stone for he had provoked attack more than once. Simon droned on in his low voice with Errol, conferring escape. James had already been taken away by the strange little hunchback. Once again, the round shouldered man hobbled down the stairs and stood at the bottom searching his pockets frantically for the keys. This time he found them, and opened the cage in which the X-Nerds lay. He unlocked the chain from around Simon’s ankle, and yanked him to his feet, which made him yelp and tumble in pain. After a moment, the hunchback pushed him out of the cage and after locking everything up again, dissapeared behind Simon up the stairs. Karen stared up the narrow case of stairs after them, horrified. Stuart and Errol glanced at each other and sighed. Each silently wondered where the other were being taken and why none of them were calling out at all. Moments later, the hunchback took Karen, then came back for Errol. When he approached the last time from out of the black haze, he murmered something and Matthew awoke as if on cue. Stuart had to help Mattew up the narrow staircase, almost blinded by the darkness that was all around. At one point his sleeve caught on an iron hook, tearing a large hole in the fabric. He could not do anything about it. He had to escape. “Come along, then,” the ugly old hunchback poked at them. Stuart tried subterfuge. “What about the other one? Down there still.” He pointed back down the stairs and the old hunchback turned to look. “There were six, I was told by,” the decrepit man said. “You’ve only been down five times, though,” Stuart goaded. “Five plus one is Six.” “How many have I got of you?” The old man wondered aloud. He was apparently very slow minded. “I’ve been down five times and there’s-” “You’ve got to go down one more time,” soothed Stuart. Matthew was almost awake, his eyes were red and his head hung low. He was breathing heavily. The old man though about this and then turned to descend the stairs. “You follow me down,” he eventuated. “You can’t get away, anyway. There’s guards. They have swords.” Stuart waited until he was two steps down the rickety, narrow staircase, then quite proficiently kicked the old man in the back, causing him to lose his footing and cascade screaming down the stone steps. “Whoops!” apologised Stuart. “Won’t happen again!” Matthew was almost to his senses when Stuart grabbed his arm and ran. Matthew at once opened his eyes properly and understood the situation: Flee. Down the long, dark corridor then ran, stumbled, fought on, until at last they came to a staircase. Unfortunately, they were presented with two choices, namely Up and Down. “Down!” Husked Matthew, who was cathing his breath. Stuart thought about it a moment longer but said “No. Up is where there’s probably more guards and things. Who’d think we try to escape to where the enemy is.” “Eh? What do you mean?” “Oh, sorry. We’re going up.” Stuart grabbed Matthew’s arm again, pulled. “Oh,” Matthew glanced down the stairs into the darkness. “I suppose down would lead to the dungeons, anyway.” Then from behind, there came a howl of rage and despair. The two X-Nerds ran up the stairs, unthinking. And into a bright, warm hallway. Matthew sucked in warm air and blew it out his nose. Stuart’s head danced back and forth, looking for any signs of danger. Noises came: Leather boots on stone. Quickly, Stuart grabbed Matthew by the arm and darted into a nearby doorway without checking it first. It was dark, warm, silent. Outisde, the crunch of boots stamped past the door. He opened the door an inch and was about to once again dash along the hallway when he heard the voice. “Stuart!” A low, whispered voice eminated from the darkness. He recognised this voice. “Hello, James,” Matthew led, apphrehensive. “Hello, Matthew,” James followed, a narrow voice projecting through the darkness.. 55. In flight, the great black butterfly was almost graceful, the heavy wings dancing over air like a lonely yellow pingpong ball on a crystal clear stream in spring. On the goregeous green bud of a rose, the butterfly would settle, a strange sight as the goodness of the flower would dissapear, being slowly replaced by something that has no life. And the black butterfly would once again lift off the ground, torturing the air and leaving to find something else to kill. A black butterfly nestled on a black road is normally hard to see, but the truckdriver saw it. What could miss a two metre wide butterfly prancing fluently on the middle of a country thoroughfare? The driver summarised the situation in his mind and asked himself ‘You have a butterfly, a giant black dwarf of the Danaus Plexippus species if I’m not mistaken, and a Mack. One hits the other. Who wins?’ His answer was correct. A black puddle nestled on a black road is fairly difficult to see, but a black puddle on a roadway and all over the front of a truck and all over the countryside, isn’t. When finally it began to rain, the angry molasses washed away, diluted and completely invalid; completely useless. 56. “We have sent a delegation to that particular planet requesting the use of these meats to be used in the burgers. The nephew of a public servant contracted out by the sub-commitee responsible for the political linguistic reimpairment campaign came up with the name, which as you all now know is MacSpam, of course, this means the origional name ‘Fillet-o-spam’ gets the flick. With their approval, we expect to be using these so-called meats in our burgers by the turn of the cycle.” After speaking, the room elapsed into silence. The room was a tad posh, containing no less than fourteen solid gold sofas, twelve real hand-woven tenth century Persian carpets from Earth, and the core of a supernova caught in mid-collapse, suspended in a reversing gravitational field. Of course, if that particular item, the size of a squash ball, hadn’t been suspended in the gravity field, everything would be rendered useless by the sheer force of gravity exerted by the tiny mass - estimated at four thousand trillion megatonnes per square millimeter - and that would be that. However, there were no people oggling away at the tumultuous richness of the room, only sofas, coffee tables, carpets, chandeleirs, hologram TV’s, little red cushions... Each member of the immense race of little red cushions everywhere had been issued with a complementary platignum ball-point pen, just for the hell of speding some money. MacCushions had become so rich, selling cheeseburgers to the unsuspecting multitudes that their entire planet was even now tottering on its orbital path due to all the extra weight of the accumulated wealth. And that rotten supernova core wouldn’t be helping, either. Every time a space traveller would land on this planet, he or she would always take one of the little red cushions back with him, unwittingly spreading the planets natural population throughout the Universes, and usually also ending up with a rather nice looking ball point pen. MacCushions was also becoming so big- it’s annual profits were expressed as a one with four infinity symbols following- that they were coming across the need to widen their range from just cheeseburgers, for the universes supply of cheese was withering with demand far exceeding supply. Nobody had thought of carving up the Great Giant Hamster, for in Him was the best cheese of all. After the discovery of the one-hundred and tenth element in the periodic table - Spam, MacCushions’ board of directors decided to adopt Spam as a new, innovative food product, in their muchly awaited comeback to the Cheese Shortage Crisis. “But it’s not food!” was the main objection, but as was immediately (and correctly) pointed out, nor was the Cheeseburger. After the delegation to the Spam Manufacturing planet had given the all-clear, two proud new burgers hit the range- MacSpam and (for dieters) MacSpam Lite. Precisely one year after the release, the cushions home planet fell from its orbit and plunged into its sun. The resulting shift in their sun’s mass and with the additional gravitation effects eminating from the packaged supernova core, the entire solar system collapsed and formed one of the largest supernovas ever witnessed, containing enough energy to, say, replicate a time traveller into every dimension at the same time, forcing multiple copies of the same thing throughout every universe, probably with the effect of screwing up history completely. Meanwhile, in some distant parts of the universes, some cushions still survive. Almost every MacCushions outlet is still in full service. 57. “Excuse me?” Simon asked a nearby fellow as the six time travellers clambered out of the vehicle. “Sir, excuse me.” There was three people dressed up in space suits to greet them. Why they were wearing space suits in this really most interesting tasting air was beyond Simon. A great cathederal rose behind the welcoming party. It appeared to be made of hand-hewn brick. One of the space-suited men pointed to his helmet and shook his head. Simon reached for the helmet, yanking it off, thinking the man couldn’t hear him. The shocked spaceman wheezed a little and then fell over, gasping for air. Simon witnessed the air from his helmet mixing with the outside air, which was to say turning green and rolling away happily. The other two men from the welcoming party yelled something and dragged the now twitching man back towards the big Cathederal hurriedly. The X-Nerds were quite interested in this display. “Must be some kind of welcoming ritual, don’t you think?” George surmised. The others just nodded and patted Him on the back, saying thing like ‘Yeah, right,’ and ‘Come on, we’d best be along, now’. George followed like a lost dog. Inside the great Cathederal they were confronted with more masked men. There were helmets hanging on a nearby rack and one of the suited men were motioning to their helmets, just like the first. Simon pulled his helmet off too to ask what he was doing. After a few more moments of confusion, the X-Nerds and George were wearing the helmets. They found they could understand everything around them; signs would be translated as they glanced at them, and the headpieces were fitted with radio communicators and little lights. The air was also more breathable; not as smelly. “You are back,” a voice said in their ears. “You of course remember me, perhaps?” The X-Nerds shook their heads- a stupid motion to attempt when wearing five kilograms around your head. “Would it help if I said my name was Ahkn?” Again the X-Nerds shook their heads. “Are you sure? You left only one week ago.” The X-Nerds turned their heads left and right in order to symbolise ‘No’. They even did it slowly. “We’ve never ever been here before,” Karen explained. This caused a stir amongst the monks. Ahkn contemplated aloud at how this was so. She asked him “When did you see us? Was He with us?” She motioned at George. This time Ahkn shook his head. His head did not swerve and sway as did the X-Nerds. “No, there was another. He was shorter and, well, sorry to be offensive, but, uh...” “Go right ahead.” “Well, he was a complete and utter git, basically,” Some of the other monks agreed. Ahkn shook his head again, this time in sorrow that people like this actually existed. “His name- would it be by chance ‘James’?” Simon asked of the man. Ahkn pondered this, starting to wander towards a nearby door. A flame burned in a brazier next to the wall at thier right. “Hmmm. Yes, I think you may be right.” “Hmmm,” Simon hummed. Simon was the best ‘hmmm’er anybody knew. “Isn’t that interesting?” “Why yes, yes. I do believe it is.” Ahkn didn’t know the meaning of the word rhetorical. He thought that, No. Why the heck is that interesting. Stupid boy; it’s not interesting. Simon glared at him as if he was on fire. Ahkn checked, just to be sure. After a supper of fish (a bit dry, thought George) and little golden brown potato balls, the X-Nerds got down to business. Ahkn wasn’t told about George being a God just yet; he was still a little shaken about the multiple parallel universe thing. He made a mental note that the library here at the Academy needed a little updating. George was reading the book about the Flux, occasionally mumbling thing like ‘That’s a good idea’ or ‘I wonder why?’. In the end though, he inquired of Ahkn about the Flux’s taste. Ahkn suggested that it was similar to licorice, yet perhaps a little more acidic; hinting that the taste may be similar to a mix of tataric acid, tabasco and molasses. George started to feel hungry once more. Finally Ahkn was told about George and ‘the God thing’. Unfortunately Ahkn had a weak heart and had a severe heart attack and died in horrible burning agony. George restored him to life, though. Which was lucky, really, that he’d been there and all. It also kind of proved that he was in fact a God, doing the old restore-to-life parlour tricks. George also tardily restored the planet to full health, banishing the sulfuric and methanic to the oceans, not realising of course that this would make the fish taste horrible and also cause them all to die, float to the surface and release the gasses once more, anyway. In fact, God was great for parlour tricks, and after Ahkn had had his third caffeine enhanced cup of a steamed coffee paste (which must have burned all the way down), proceeded to give the monks a rather special magic show- lightning balls, novae and vortexes, creating lifeforms from Play Skool brand (non-toxic) Plasticine- the works. It was a real screamer for there was not one monk left not screaming by the end. The next day Errol awoke with the idea and went to find George straight away. He came back around half an hour later to find the X-Nerds still lazing about in their beds, being served a rich, work breakfast by silent monks in brown garb. Karen sighed contentedly and rose from the straw-filled linen that was her bed. “This is the life, huh?” She said to the others. They all nodded and smiled. It was going to be a nice, slow day. “Where can I wash? I need to do womany things, too.” She asked a monk. He rubbed his bald scalp, then pointed towards a door. The holy man winked at Karen and grinned obtrusively. Karen went off to clean up, sliding the heavy bolt in the door behind her. Just to make sure. Errol had told them that it was a nice day outside, and that the Time machine was at this moment being polished and cleaned, inside and out, by the multitudes of brown clad monks. He also mentioned that these holy followers were good at doing this kind of thing. Besides, there was a God physically resident in the Cathederal and that kind of thing usually sparks up a bit of activity in the church world. Errol didn’t tell the others, however, of the other things that he’d done that morning. They find out at the morning mass. And it’d be another problem solved, hopefully. Breakfast was nice. While Ahkn was doing some religious thing up the front, allegedly honouring George, Linda arrived. Then George was up the front doing Godlike things, bestowing bennedictions left, right and center, blessing everything from water to windmills, and having a ball. He’d put on a long flowing white gown (for sake of appearances) that flipped and wallowed in a zyphir breeze that nobody else could feel. “What are you doing here?” Simon whispered to the God. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the other Lorna Major Academic Academy?” “I know you,” She stated, recalling something. “Anyway, I needed a book on a certain type of computer. I tried the library at home but somebody’s borrowed the book I want.” Linda’s voice came back, low, kinda surprised too. “What type of computer?” “Oh, it’s a bit of an old one. You’re from Earth, so you’d probably know it. An AS400 made by somebody called ibn. Funny name, that, ibn. It’s hard to say and you Terrans usually have easy-to-say names.” Simon grinned, and said “Like George, Randall and Linda, you mean?” Linda almost growled at him. Simon then said “What are you looking up that crap for? Anyway, it’s I. B. M. not I- B- N- ibn.” “Oh,” Linda looked startled. “Oh, well then, they probably had it then.” “And it isn’t somebody’s name. It’s the name of a company.” “A what?” What do you mean ‘What’? “Like a whole bunch of people. They form a group called a company and give the group a name. IBM have called the group IBM, obviously.” “Oh. Then I didn’t need to come here after all,” Linda was just about ready to vanish again when she saw George. Her face went red and she stifled a laugh very badly. Some nearby novice monks turned about and wondered both why a woman was in the crowd and what she was doing wearing a terrible yellow and white golf outfit. Nevertheless, each quickly turned back in rapt adoration at the God up the front doing the bestowings and endowments. “What in the seven thousand three hundred and thriteen hells is He doing?” She asked the X-Nerds. “Cool, huh?” Simon replied. “Yeah, and its the first time I’ve ever seen Him not wearing golf clothes,” Errol added. Linda looked at the X-Nerds, wondering how they’d put Him in this mess. They had to have done it. “I’ve never seen Him in anything but His golf clothes, and that’s saying something. Is He wearing them underneath?” “I certainly hope so. I’d hate for that breeze to blow that gown up if He’s not.” Errol pictured. “Eugh!” Linda laughed. She decided to stick around to see what else happened. After a pause long enough to let George bless a boaring looking brown cloth, Linda accused Errol that all this had been his idea. He was the one who was grinning the most. Errol smiled mysteriously and aired “The best is yet to come!”. They waited. George sprinked ‘holy’ water onto somebody’s head and let out a flowery little speech, all the while smiling that idiot smile of his. Eventually, he tired of this little charade and drew himself up seriously. One withered old monk tried to persuade him to bestow more flowery blessings on his second cousins’ five year old cow who was just about ready to die anyway, but George glared him down. That same old monk never said another word. He could never drink milk again either. Or do up his shoelaces, but he’d never been able to do that anyway. “It is to more serious matters that I turn your attention, Children.” George bellowed. “Children?” Linda scolded Errol, who shrugged. “I’d like to hear your story one day.” Errol smiled and said “Look into my mind. You can do that, can’t you?” “Er. You see. Well, the point is. It’s not that I. Well, actually. Er, no.” “Oh. Well then, come here and I’ll tell you.” He took on the universal whispering stance. Linda lent to him, listening intently, and then smiled knowingly after a few moments. The others wanted to know why, but by then both Errol and Linda were smiling that self-similar mysterious little smile, as if laughing without laughing. Errol handed Karen a piece of paper, its torn edge revealing only a handful of words: ‘There must be maintained a balance between...’. “Bugger,” Karen hated these ‘little’ suprises. George was doing the flowery speech up the front, going into the usual church things. “There is a great evil in the Universe,” He was saying, which was true, there was always a great evil somewhere. If there wasn’t, many film producers and writers and people in general would be most displeased. Every so often, the God pointed at a random monk. “And it is up to You to do something about it. There must be maintained a balance between order and chaos or chaos will rule and alst thy lives will be rend worthless.” George waited. It had to come. Errol had figured out the notes on the pedestal before him and had even written in the cues of when to pause and when not to. It was very well planned, He thought. He could see Errol sitting way up the back, but he couldn’t see Linda, and in fact, didn’t even know that she was there with them. He could see Errol’s hand dancing like a conductor leading the symphony. Finally, Errol swung a large stroke and somebody up the front dragged George’s attention away with a question. “Right on time,” Errol whispered. “But, O, uh, God, What can we, uh, I mean, us mere mortals do in Your aid to fight chaos? We haven’t got your powers and all that, yeah, uh.” This was it; this was the big moment. And boy did He feel silly doing it. “Moore loore poore laar jaar moor loore jaare karre vmore-” George chanted, waving his arms in such a way as to suggest that they all join in. Very slowly, his cheeks turned from now red back to normal as more of the monks stood and chanted the strange nonsense, each looking decidedly blank. “Now My Children, I have placed a magic power on this, the Vox Multiformis, the Big Loud Song of Order and Power. Should it be so stoppered, the power will be broken and chaos will slay you all.” That certainly sounded mystical. “I charge thee all and all thy children and thy childrens’ children, and thy childrens’ childrens’- ah you get the idea- to keep this chant going, night and day, until the Universe is no more. Then shalt thee all have overcome the beast that is Chaos.” Then somebody cheered but he was silenced by the thousands of now-frightened monks, chanting for their lives. George displayed his sense of the theatric by tearing off the silly looking robe, jumping off stage and pushing his way through the crowd to where the X-Nerds waited. Errol and Linda had already gone, talking and laughing. “Let’s go outside, then, shall we?” George pushed them through the back door and out into the sunlight. After a warm silence, George noticed Linda and went to her but Karen got to speak first. “Errol?” was what she said. “Yes,” posed Simon, in the understanding that by not asking the inevitable question, Karen had asked the inevitable question. How zen of her. Matthew found a chair, opened his ears to them all, and resolutely closed his eyes, basking happily in the warm yellow sunlight. Errol pieced together the long winded explanation he’d been planning all morning, then shortened it to a shrug and the words “We did what we had to do. Lets go.” In the end, over the dim din of the chant, Linda explained to the X-Nerds what Errol told had told her. “Yeah, but what gives with the bestowing and thee’s and thou’s talk in there?” Karen asked. “And that stupid flowing cape?” Linda added. “You know, The others will just love to hear about this one. I must say, you did look completely stupid up there.” “Please. Don’t go spreading it around. I was talking to history as well as a thousand monks,” George whined. “Ai was talking to hystory as weel as a thousand monks,” Linda imitated George’s silly voice. “And please don’t tell anyone about the cape. I’d hate it to come into fashion.” Linda looked michevous. “You know, one day I might need something from you. I have a very good memory, you know.” She left it hanging. George looked shocked and puzzled. “Don’t worry. Unless you do something bad to me, I’ll not tell. However...” Linda trailed off and wandered over to Errol. Karen followed. George said to Simon “What did I do to her?” Then he said to Matthew “I didn’t do anything to her, did I?” Stuart said “Oh, but you might. You know, foreward planning and all that?” Then he glanced at George’s pained expression and walked over to where Linda now sat with the other two. 58. In the darkness of the room James’ voice carried well. Stuart and Matthew could just make out his shape, a blot against the blackness. “No, I saw them go past with some guards,” he was saying. “If I went out there, I’d be with them now.” “So where’d they go?” Stuart whispered. Boots again creaked past outside. When they’d faded, James said that they’d gone up some stairs at the end of the hall. That was the last he’d heard. “And the others? Gorf and Frank and the rest. Have they been by?” Stuart interrogated. “No. I thought I heard Frank yelling though. That’s when the guards came by. I don’t know what happened after that.” Stuart sat down to think. Matthew was holding his head in his hands and moaning. He had a terrible headache and wanted to lie down on something soft. “They’ll be looking for us, you know. Probably look in here, whatever this place is.” Matthew groaned. “I’ll go.” “What?” “I dunno. Go lie in the hall and say that you left me or something. I need to lie down anyway.” “You can’t do that!” Stuart started. “Well, it has-” James started just as Matthew lay down on a carpeted floor. “No, James. That’s just stupid. Matthew, you’ve probably got concussion or something. Are you listening to me?” Matthew had passed out. Stuart, frustrated, swore. “I’ve never heard you swear before,” James changed the topic. “I didn’t swear. Your word against mine. I know who I’d believe,” Stuart growled hotly. James grimaced. “His plan has it’s merits, though. He’s unconscious now, so we put him out in the hall. They find him, and care for him-” “Who say’s they’ll do that? They might as well just chuck him over the wall. You saw how they treated him before.” “Yeah, but he’s a valuable prisoner. It they wanted to kill us, don’t you think they’d have done it back at the hut, instead of taking us here and locking us up in that bloody dungeon?” Stuart glanced sullenly at James, who appeared to be taking the situation into hand well. “And follow them? What if there’s just a door at the top and they’re on the other side? What if they-” “What if the world just blows up? What if there’s a fire? What bloody if. I’m doing it.” James was bigger than Stuart and easily flung him out of the way. He dragged Matthew by the legs to the door, opened it widely and pulled the floppy body out into the hallway. Then as Stuart was recovering, stomped off down the hallway and sat beneath the stairs, only slightly masked from view. “I’m staying here,” Stuart mouthed. “Just in case.” The door closed to a fraction. James did not say anything. Stuart awoke to the noise of a scuffle and suddenly realised that he’d been sleeping. He was seated, head between his knees, in the dark room. The door was ajar and he figured that for the door to be opened that much more, somebody must have opened it. He now sat in the opposite corner of the room, stooped in shadow. If anybody had looked in, he must have looked much like an dark ornament or statue, sitting in an odd pose in a dark corner, not moving at all. From his view he could see that Matthew’s body had been removed from the hall and that from the amount of noise in the hall, James’ body was being removed at this instant. Stuart shuddered as he heard a familiar sick, empty thud and the crack of flesh against a stone floor. He ended up hoping that it was not James, or at least not as final as it had sounded if it were. He put his head back between his knees, his eyes wide, but not dareing to breathe. A shadow moved across the doorway, but the door crackled on harsh metal hinges. The room resonated with the click that meant the door had been shut. Stuart could hear a drum, perhaps music, perhaps a war drum or something. It was a full minute before he realised that it was his own heart, rushing inside his head, the pressure spurting past his ears. It had gone very silent, save the now easing blood rush. He could no longer hear the screams from far below, nor the punctuated echo of leather boots on polished stone, nor the icy wind racing past the hollow stones of the wall. He had come to the eye of the storm. Stuart was too scared to be frightened. He was also very, very alone. 59. The nippy little Time vehicle zipped through space, down one great long stretch of the pan-galactic freeway. The occupants were happy because they’d been able to join the freeway at no charge, as Gods, those carrying Gods or vertically inclined churchmen got on free. At this very moment they were zooming along at insane speeds behing a big pink caddilac convertible at the end of a long line of space vehicles which also included a bright red VW omnibus, a white yuppie-carrying Mercedes Cruiser and a two-tone winnebego. Every now and then the procession would be passed by a white spark, a bad news carrier in the hyperluminal lane. Approaching on the event horizon the occupants of the time machine could see a huge ball of fire out from which stood a MacCushions sign and the rear end of a forty-kilometer long space freighter. The rear section of the spacecraft had splattered all over the freeway, and even now, the traffic was getting a bit tight. Another VW Microbus pulled in behind them, this one white with a blue stripe and large tinted windows. Heavy bassy techno music thumped out over the waves36, unmutable even by the silence of space. About half an hour later, on God’s watch anyhow37, they passed the stricken MacCushions. Apparently, according to the live news broadcast, one of the new MacSpam Lite burger processing machines had exploded. The news reader (a little purple wart-like critter with multiple eyes on coil-like sticks) reported that other MacCushions franchises should check their MacSpam Lite machines due to a manufacturing fault- it appeared that if the burger bun were exposed to light at any stage through the steam-frying process (prior to the final few minutes in the oven), then there would be an instant nuclear fusion reaction within the bun crust, posing a potentially lethal environment to the whole planet concerned. But not to you, the buying customer. Scientists were now working on how to incorporate trilithium crystals into the burger to impede any possible reactions. There were suggestions of reversing the polarity of the steam fryers too. The X-Nerds, George and Linda sat avidly watching the news broadcast on the little TV screen in the Time machine, as the news cameras always seemed to follow the best action; looking outside at the flames just didn’t seem intense enough. Bits of the planet were falling off everywhere and a white glow could be seen eminating from the base of the huge MacCushions sign. A moment later, the was a big explosion - bigger than the explosions in Star Wars even - and a white nuclear cloud vaporised the planet. On the TV it looked most excellent, enhanced, brilliantly choreographed. Ouside the windscreen it looked somehow unreal, dull. Anyway, the show was over and the occupants of the time machine decided that it was probably time to put a few planets between themselves and those horrible, dirty, arrogant, post-modernistic, techno freaking hippies in the van behind them. Just for the hell of it, the little white machine actually indicated- left- and then turned right into the superluminal lane. By effectivly using their time shifting capabilities, the X-Nerds and the two Gods and their time machine actually arrived at the other end of the universe before they’d even left this end. Which was to say that they’d gone very, very fast. “The next problem is finding James,” Simon said to the others as Linda got out. They had arrived at the Lorna Minor World Deisgn Institute, a classic modular superstructure of steel and earth strung together with billions of kilometers of metal twine, cables and magnetic force, and had docked at one of a million docking stations. Bits of mountains and oceans floated around in the strange void, not floating off, just hovering menacingly, and ready formed planets hung noiseless nearby, awaiting their departure. “Just look for the little white fluffy packing foam things,” Karen said. “Huh?” “These things,” She produced one of the unoffeding little items from her pocket and dropped it onto the metal floor. It wafted away on an extrememly light breeze only to be caught on a strategically placed corner. George picked it up and handed it to Simon, who put it in his pocket. “I’ve seen them in a few places. I have no idea where they came from but I remember finding them in that room beside Mikal’s dimension.” “Where?” Asked both George and Linda. “Never mind. Just someplace we’ve all been in a different time.” “Oh. When?” persisted the male God. “Is it some time I know?” “Never mind, I said. Look, the point it, that if we can somehow home in on these silly little through time then we’ve basically found him.” Nobody spoke for a moment, then Linda said “Nope. You can’t do it. At least not with this machine.” There went another moment when nobody spoke, then Simon, depressed, said “Well. That’s that then. What’s next on the list?” After a moment shuffling through papers inside the glovebox, Stuart pulled a sheet of bleached white paper from his top pocket and fingered his way through the notes scrawled on his side. The other side contained a hand sketched image (in red pen) of the space/time craft. It’s quality was very low. “Ah yeah. The Flux Scalis thing. We’ve got to bag it and put it back on Lorna Minor’s Bio research moon, or something like that,” he read. Phlup! Simon was phlupping his lips again, a sound not at all similar to opening a refigerator door. “Might as well get going then,” he finished. “What? You’re not going to stick around for a while and have a look at the World Design Institute. You know, their research into five dimensional physics, although obsolete, is quite interesting.” Linda was saying as Simon clambered back into the spaceship. Simon didn’t want anything to do with five dimensional physics, especially considering it was obsolete and completely unprovable. However as expected, the others all wanted to go see everything. Simon grudgingly agreed to tag along, but kept complaining about his leg. It was healing as it should, perhaps a little quicker than it would if he were a unionist recieving medical benefits. The group of seven were now walking through a round glass-like tunnel floating above thousands of kilometers of void. The sense of vertigo along the two-kilometer length of this particular link tube was astounding, especially due to the fact that although the other side of Lorna Minor was well over a light-year away through relative space-time and the edge of the universe, they could all quite clearly see the structure and people wandering through the glass-like tubes on unknown errands. “I think I’ll be sick,” Simon complained. Seeing his moment, he hastened to add “And my leg hurts.” They wandered unhindered through a series of grey rooms and more tunnels until finally they came across a subway-like train station. The gods were allowed free travel on the train, but any form of payment was requested of the X-Nerds. Simon, unthinking, removed the little white peanut of foam from his pocket an handed it to the ticket officer. The little female behind the glass completely freaked for no apparent reason and handed them their tickets. Then she fled the train station screaming incoherently. “Oh. What’d you give her?” Linda asked. “That little foam baubel thing,” Linda looked impressed. “You’ve just set her up for life, you know.” “How’s that. People like little peices of packing foam around here?” “It’s not that,” Linda told them. “Here at Lorna Minor, people deal in energy and bank energy and the whole systems a giant energy generating system. The whose system, you could say, is made of energy. What you gave her wasn’t made of energy, it was made of matter, and you would not believe the amount of energy it required to create an atom of matter.” “Yeah?” Simon wished he’d kept the little white thing. “No,” Linda laughed. “You actually gave her about twenty bucks worth and those tickets are worth about five cents each. You got ripped off big time!” Simon looked at his feet. “Then why did she run off screaming?” “I don’t know. Perhaps she was a schizo or something,” Linda smiled and stepped onto the train. The X-Nerds followed and the train buzzed foreward down the glass tube. Vertigo has nothing on this train ride. Imagine sitting in a train, staring out the window at a landscape that hardly ever changes perspective, with the feeling that there is nothing below you for the next, say billion kilometers, except a big, dark abyss, and that you are tumbling helplessly into it. Then imagine feeling this for an entire two-hour train ride, trapped in a little glass bubble with only a sweet-sounding voice-over coming from a speaker that you can’t turn off telling you about how great a deal you’ll get when you invest in a planet made by the World Design Institute. Over and over and over. Then imagine the shock you get when you realise that you are actually going up and you dock in a port that you didn’t even see approaching, and are tossed negligently out of that same little glass bubble into a room with no texture or colour. It can be quite strenuous, to say the very least. But imagine what comes next; a non-dimension at the border of the universe; a kind of fuzzy greyish not unlike an untuned trinitron TV showing rgb static seen from four hundred metres. And depending on how you ‘land’, your physical dimensions become subjective to your own physical reality and you can see everyone else but cannot interact with their physical realities, and therefore tend to pass through them, walk normally on a different physical plane and discover new and horrfying things about perspective that you’d never even dreamed about. The only thing worse than imagining these things is actually having to go through them. As did the X-Nerds and two golf clad gods. After bumbling around in the grey dimensionlessness for a moment or two, the occupants of the bubble train stepped out of a cement wall into a tasteful and well furnished office. Out the window was a beautiful vista of a golden sunset of glacier covered peaks, and it appeared that they were now standing around forty stories above the ground, wherever that was. The X-Nerds looked around, and back. Behind them lay the cement wall of the office, hard and cold. To their left, two hand-carved oak doors and a bookshelf. To their right, the window. Ahead, a desk and a large chair, facing away, puffing out smoke. Technically, the smoke wasn’t coming from the chair, but from the presumed owner, sitting back in it, staring up at the rows of books aligning the walls of the office. When the smoking chair turned38, the woman sitting in it gagged, coughed, spluttered then stood up and coughed again. “How the hell did you get in here?” She exclaimed once she’d recovered from her raking cough. She appeared to be in her very early twenties, blonde, and was, how to put it? Top Notch B-Euatiful. But Stuart had already rushed foreward: He knew who this was! “Amy!” He cried. Karen’s jaw dropped. 60. Darkness filled the air with its cold prescence, reeking acrid ozone through a grill in the stone walls. Chitter filled the crevices and holes as rats and other bloodthirsty animals fought and burrowed through the seemingly endless walls, scratching and scathing at the impenetrable rock. In places, foul smelling liquids seeped and oozed down the walls to pool and stream across the floor, dissapearing down the strange grills set ocassionally and unskillfully into the wall. Spider webs turned and tossed dead in the air. Malevolent eyes stared up through a rusted grill in the floor, screaming out in twisted pain, not making a sound. Though a chill wind, a voice edged down from a high place, a madness of twisted charms and spiteful well-wishes ordering everything to a flaming and bloody hell. A huge iron-clad door stood at one end of the keep, muffling a long rumble of sound. Stuart crept. He would be discovered soon, he knew that, as he was drawing near to the place where the voices originated. He’d started hearing the voices at the top of the first set of stairs, and he’d also heard Karen scream. There was blood on the ground. Stooped in the dread silence the fortress castle offered, Stuart moved from shadow to shadow, chasing echos and following instincts. Twice now he’d ended up in the wrong spot; stairs leading down or locked doors. In a remote part of his brain, a little process posed that this was one of the best designed castles he’d seen in real life or in computer games and that he’d have to remember it. And he’d remember it, all right. There was nothing that could make him forget. He stopped. Voices came from the left, then the right, and somewhere far those leather boots creaked against the stone cobble. He could hear something breathing and it was not him. He turned, but he could see nothing but the dark shadows. There was a hand over his mouth and his eyes were wide. Not long after that, everything became an aching blur as the horrible taste of ammonia and some other chemical filled his mouth. The guard came to attention and saluted. Far away at the other end of the cathederal-like throne room, in a shroud of smoke and cloth stood a man warming his hands on a red fire. His back was to the room but he dismissed the guard without turning. The four X-Nerds and James stood huddled together about halfway along the room, silent. Each faced the distant man, not dareing to tear their eyes from him. The room was warm. His voice was hard, yet somehow familiar, as if one heard in a dream a long time ago. “Do you mock me with you prescence?” He asked without turning. “Where are the people we came with?” Simon spat defiantly. His wounded leg stung but there was no time for that now. “They are, shall we say, safe? Yes. But, young brat, why should you care for the ones that wounded you?” The strange man rolled his ‘r’s slightly, as if English was not his natural language. He was well informed, thought Simon. Yet what was the extent of his knowledge? “We choose the lesser of two evils,” Simon stated flatly. The man laughed then stopped. Suddenly he spun around and strode towards them menacingly. “Then I am Evil? Am I evil? Have I not welcomed you here into my home, offered you shelter and food?” He spoke Simon continued to speak for the group. “Do you sleep in the dungeons? You certainly treat your guests with an esteem matching your command.” “So young and yet so bitter.” The man was within five metres. “I note a new arrival in the group, yet one is missing. Tell me how this can be so.” Since nobody spoke, the strange man requested the guard to re-enter the room. “Tell me, Captain. How is it that six prisoners left the dungeon yet only five appear before me, two of which, I might add, need medical attention and one in need of amenities?” He smiled at Karen, who appeared gracious, stunned. The guard faltered, then told the man about the incident in the hallway. The guard was dismissed, however the commanding man did make a note of his report in a small notebook. “Forgive me. My name is Luther. You probably remember me, yes?” “I’ve not seen you before, that’s for sure,” Simon reproached. Then Luther had a gun in his hand, a small, black chrome semi-automatic pistol. He was pointing it directly at Simon. “Do you remember me now?” “No,” Simon confessed, hoping that it was the right answer. He was nervous, as would be anyone stareing down a loaded barrel. “State you name, I.D. plate and mission,” the evil man gruffed. “What?” Simon’s left hand fell to his side, where instantly he could feel Karen’s warm hand clutching it in absolute fear. Luther put the gun away, into the top left of his jacket, then spun on his right heel. “Interesting,” he murmered. After a moments pause, he once again summoned the Captain of the Guard, and requested him to escort the ‘guests’ to a safe but comfortable room. The order was followed instantly. Behind them, the X-Nerds could hear the man summoning their origional captors Frank, Gorf and the others. Stuart blinked the blurriness from his eyes and stared into the darkness. At this point he could make out the large shapes of pipes and taps. A small electric emergency light bathed the room in an ugly blood-red glow. There were people in there too. “Things aren’t what they seem, young lad,” said one of the shapes. Suddenly there were hands reaching out for him, tearing him from the uncomfortable security of his daze. A moment or so later, his vision had cleared and the ringing in his ears stopped. His eyes were quickly adjusting to the red light and he could make out a small but technologically advanced room lined with dim lights and computer monitors. “We saw your party arrive,” that same voice said again. “Everyone else has been taken to Luther.” Stuart shook his head at the mention of the name, not daring to speak. “He’s master of this wretched fortress, living in the dark ages and tearing all of us back with him. Damn him. From what we’ve heard over the waves, your party is a hot topic. The Man seems to think you’re some kind of threat to his rule.” “The Man?” Stuart’s voice sounded weak, frightened. “Luther. Come, you’re with friends, here. We must talk quickly as he’ll be searching for you. How’d you escape anyway? He’s got guards just about everywhere.” Stuart walked around in a tight circle, breathing the humid air deeply. “Have you got anything to drink? Water or something?” “Get him some water,” the man said to somebody else nearby. The person hesitated but dissapeared. “I’m Karl, by the way. We’re the good guys here.” The other person came back with a steel mug full of warm water. “It’s still hot,” he said. “We boil the water down here. Never know what’s in it.” Stuart drank half and set the mug down ona huge valve nearby. “Where am I?” “In the castle. Under the castle. What’s it matter? You don’t need to know.” In the background came the noise of somebody typing at a computer keyboard. A long haired woman sat with her back to them, labouring over the technology, reading through lines of strange numbers and symbols pouring across the small green screen. “The kids are in a guest room and He’s with the others now.” “Are the kids all right?” the man asked the woman, not smiling. “It seems so,” the woman at the computer read through a few more lines of the strange character set onscreen. “It appears he got them in there and then sent them to that room without interrogating them.” “That’s not good. How’s the guard? Can we get them out?” “Why’s that not good news? He hasn’t done anything to them yet, has he?” Stuart asked. “That’s right. ‘Yet’ is the important word though. This is Karen, by the way.” Stuart looked at the computer operator and smiled sadly. “The girl in my group is called Karen.” “Right. She your girl or something?” “Huh! No. Just a good friend, that’s all.” “Somebody to miss,” Karl said. “Karl!” scolded Karen. “Think what the kid’s been through.” Karl grimaced. “Yeah, sorry kid.” “Stuart,” Stuart introduced himself, then stuck out his hand. Karl shook it and smiled curtly. “Well? Why’s The Man want to see you so bad? What do you know that’s got him so worried?” “What? How do I know? I don’t know.” “Hey, kid. You must know something if he’s gone out back across the fields to get you and your group. Where you from?” Stuart paused; was it right to just tell anybody that ‘Hey, I’m a time traveller trying to save the universe’? It sounded so unreal, so dumb. If he did say that anyway they’d probably just laugh and think he was just some kid that got mixed up in somebody elses problem. He took another sip of water from the steel mug. “I’m not from around here. Where is here, anyway?” he added. “There’s a good one, kid. Where is here? Have to pin that one up.” He looked at Stuart and saw that he really didn’t know. “Hell kid. Where are you from? You’re mixed up big time in some god awful world war and you don’t even know where the hell you are. Do you know those people you came in with?” Stuart shook his head. “We’d crashed through their roof and they took us prisoner. Simon got shot in the leg and then we were saized by this Luther or whatever his name is and brought here.” Karl spun around. “Bloody hell. You’re just some kids messing around in a friggin’ war zone. I thought you were something special, something big.” The man had started to pace, but on his third step spun and said “Wait. You said you crashed through the roof.” “That’s right. Came nearly right through it.” “That must be it. What were you in? Some kind of car or a tank or something?” Stuart decided to go for it; they could only laugh and he had nothing to lose. “A spaceship.” There came a sudden, prolonged silence. The computer bleeped and carried on, and liquid gurgled in the overhead pipes, but otherwise, nobody even breathed. Stuart could hear the blood pulsing past his ears again. Karl rubbed his chin and pursed his lips, his eyes gone wide. Then he spoke. “You’re telling me-” “Yes. A spaceship. A big white ceramic and chrome spaceship. Virtually indestructable too. We crashed upside down through the roof of whoseever it was’s house.” Stuart told the truth. “Deep,” Karen said. She turned back to the keyboard and continued to type, but her focus was still on the boy Stuart. She could see him in the reflection of a computer’s screen. Karl wiped his brow. “Damn deep. Come with me, kid.” He guided Stuart through a door and down a pipe-encrusted corridor. Spider webs dangled from everything, all bathed in that horrid red light. After passing through the door at the end, Stuart was confronted by a room full of unclean looking men and women sitting around a hot stove. All were stareing right at him. “Tell them what you told me, kid,” Karl told him. Stuart told them and the room was wrapped in more silence. None disputed his claim. “Tell us more about this craft. Why would The Man want you? Is there something special about your particular spaceship?” Stuart seemed suprised. “You don’t mind that I’m an ‘alien’?” “Hell, kid. Half of us got here in the same way- crashing or replying to fake distress calls. Most of us are in some way familiar with some kind of spaceship.” Stuart relaxed. Perhaps he could talk a little more freely here. He had made up his mind not to tell them about his real reasons for being in the spaceship just yet. “All right then. What we arrived in-” “There’s others?” somebody asked. “Yeah,” answered Karl. “Five else of ’em got brought in with Frank’s lot. Keep going, kid.” “Okay. Anyway, we arrived in out spaceship and crashed into the house. The spaceship’s, uh, I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s also a time machine.” The room echoed with laughter. Karl silenced them, but he also looked as dubious as the rest. “No, I’m serious. The ship’s probably the most advanced peice of engineering in the Universe. It’s capable of hyperluminal travel and time travel, although we haven’t quite mastered the time travel bit.” Some of the ruffians had heard of or experienced hyperluminal travel and so this knowledge was passed on through the others. Still, the atmosphere of the room still seemed unsatisfied with the claim that the ship could travel through time. If it were from the future, why hadn’t anyone else come back through time. “Why else would Luther want us so badly?” With this question, Stuart singlehandedly convinced ninety percent of the crowd that his tale was in fact truth. The question he’d wanted to evade, of course, came. “Where’d a kid like you get a ship like that?” Stuart tried to think of a way to keep God’s name out of this. It would sound so rediculous to say that a whole bunch of misfit gods in goofball clothing made the spacecraft. Eventually, he said “It has to do with the monks at the Lorna Major Academic Academy. We’re kind of on a mission that has to do with them. It’s a holy thing.” “Kind of-?” Karl asked. “Yeah.” Stuart wasn’t going to say anything more. “I don’t want to go into it, it’s too wierd and I’m not sure I can trust you with the informaion.” Karl looked humorously at Stuart. “Can’t trust us with the information.” Then to the crowd “I think we’ll accept what this kid says as true. Whatever the real story is, we can’t afford not to. And nobody asks him further of his history or future, whatever that means. But it appears that these five-” “Six,” Stuart interrupted with the correct figure, his eyes elsewhere, calculating. “-then six people have to be trusted. We can’t let that rabid dog Luther get his hands on that machine. What that’d do for us and indeed the entire universe is, well... who knows?” Karl went on further to make preparations to rescue Frank’s team from Luther and then to start to think how to free Stuart’s friends and silence Luther once and for all. Stuart was taken to a squat but functional room where he was shown a bed and facilities. Then, once again, he was left alone, this time safe in a cramped but welcome room, somewhere deep underneath a medieval-like castle, whose cold purple-grey stones only added to the torn and sorrowful landscape. Somewhere, a sorrowful owl hooted its haunting song and drifted away on a wind that wasn’t even there. 61. “Whoa!” Amy cried, her head in a spin. “Run that bit by me again.” Stuart was rushing to tell Amy of all the experiences they’d had. Karen sat with him, keeping a close eye on them both. She’d said she didn’t want to go with the others earlier, but Stuart was beginning to suspect that that wasn’t the real reason for her wish to remain behind. He couldn’t think of another reason. Simon and the others had gone off somewhere with one of Amy’s associates to peer out into the works of the planet building firm and marvel at the wonders around every corner. It was about time to have a good break and settle down for a couple of days in real accomodation and relax. George and Linda had meandered off on their own paths, mumbling and chatting something about tees and fairways. “George and Linda are Gods. We picked them up at the start of the Universe and at the Lorna Major Academic Academy before the Celestial City was made and then in a roundabout way came here,” Stuart smiled his nerdy little smile. Amy was still unsure about ‘the god thing’. She’d been raised an athiest, or more precisely, ignorant of the existance of gods. Up until the point that Stuart first implanted the idea that a giant hamster created the universe (“Unghk-g”) when trying to express that he couldn’t stay due to something important (“Unghk-h”) that he had to do elsewhere, Amy had believed that the Universe and all it contained was the purpose and result of a catastrophic explosion that was otherwise known as the Big Pop. She though she’s known that asking silly questions like ‘What came before the Big Pop’ was futile and the answer was, as always, ‘Nothing. Anyway, what does it matter?’. Still, when Stuart had placed the germ of thought in her mind that she could blame it all on an anomaly known as ‘God’ (or as was the case, The Giant Hamster), someone who was mysterious and withdrawn and also someone who’d she’d probably never get a chance to meet, she had decided to take the easy way out and blame the existance of the Universe and all it contained on God and hope that He knew all the why’s and what if’s of everything. Now she’s met God. Two God’s actually, and now knew that they were just as stupid as the next person and didn’t have a clue. Her very life’s foundations were crumbling and apparently she was suffering a bit of a nervous breakdown. “Never mind that, Amy,” said Stuart, placing his left hand on Amy’s shoulder affectionately. “Forget it. Tell me- us- how you got here. How long have you been here?” Karen nudged Stuart seemingly neglectfully and Stuart released Amy’s soft shoulder and sat back in his seat. Amy gathered herself from maudlin thoughts and stared kindly at Stuart. Karen bit her upper lip and reached for a glass of water, her eyes calculating, narrow. Finally she excused herself, saying that she needed to find a bathroom and freshen up. “You don’t look a day older than when I saw you last,” Amy said to Stuart as Karen closed the door. “No. I’m probably only a couple of months older. A week. I don’t know. My watch has stopped. I lost track of time a fair way back.” Stuart looked at his watch, the black case surrounding a blank grey screen. “You look about five years older.” Amy turned away slightly, slightly shocked. He meant well, she thought, and probably didn’t realise what he’d said. She smiled and turned back. “Thankyou, I guess.” “How long have you been here. Are you in charge, or something?” “Gosh no. I only work here. Cheap labour,” She paused, recollected. “About the time that you first found me-” She paused in memory. “-things started to happen that I didn’t understand. People started appearing and dissapearing just by themselves with no warning. I had a pet wolf then. He was loving, careing, young. One day he was just running along through the grass chasing a bearcat and pop! Then he just wasn’t there anymore. Between step.” A thoughtful silence. “Oh. I’m sorry,” Stuart blinked at the blonde. “Thankyou. He was a good friend. Anyway, one day a big object fell out of the sky onto the ground and we all rushed over to see what it was. Then I was taken inside the ship and that was the last time I saw home. They brought me here and I’ve been working here ever since drawing pictures and words for them to make into planets.” Stuart thought for a while, sipping on his glass of water. “Do you miss home?” Amy spun about in her chair to stare again at the bookcase. There was a long pause, whilst Amy silently sobbed in the memory of her family. “I miss my mum and dad,” Stuart mumbled sadly. “I want to go home too.” Then both Amy and Stuart stood, crossed the barrier that was the table, and hugged each other, each thinking of their own families and that safe, warm place they called home. And, of course, it was at this point that Karen re-entered the room with her mouth open, ready to speak. For an enduring moment her mouth remained open as she stared openly at the embracing couple. Then she flared hotly “Well. I never!” She slammed the door and her footsteps could be heard stamping away. Something smashed. There was a stunned silence. Stuart disembraced Amy and started at the door. Then he turned back to the older woman and genuinely puzzled, asked “Do you know what that was about?” Amy however pushed Stuart to an arms length away and surmised him. “You don’t get it do you?” She said evenly. “What?” Stuart puzzled. “Uh, never mind. You wait here,” Amy pushed him back into the chair and pounded off through the door after Karen, the wooden door slamming behind her. There was the glib sound of leather-based shoes walking carefully over thin, broken ceramic. Stuart poured the rest of the water down his throat then sat stareing out the window at the beautiful vista, wondering what the hell was going on. Simon opened the door. His host was ushering them along at a fair speed, and they hadn’t had that much chance to actually see the planet being engineered. “Grag,” Simon asked the blue-skinned alien herding them along the hallways. “Do we actually get to see the planet being built?” “Next door,” Grag replied. He was right. Through the next door was a long glassy tunnel out through a dark grey construction zone. The touring X-Nerds could see great arcs of blue electricity falling from one side of the construction zone to the other. They wandered slowly for about a kilometer along the see-through tube, then stopped to view the dangerous work outside. “What’s this do, then?” Errol asked the guide. Grag pointed to where the lightning was striking. “See there? It hits a barrier there and builds up energy. When there’s enough, it releases the energy but confines it within a gravitational field and then the field compresses and collapses. This causes the high movement of the energy to slow down bump into each other. Then a big lump of matter falls out and down there-“ he motioned downwards to a red-looking magma bubble. “Then it’s just poured onto the planet where it’s needed and the mountains are formed. Watch.” The X-Nerds watched a mountain range being formed. It was a beautiful sight although it all happened very fast. First, the bolt of lightning stopped and then a large white ball of fire droped down into the magma pit. Then the lightning bolt started again and the process continued. Everything was just so big. It was fascinating. “Obviously, there’s a bit more to it than that. Now, down here you will find the core supply...” The X-Nerds followed their guide Grag down a nearby staircase and away from the arcing electricity. Linda and George sat calmly in a nice looking office. Holograms of planets hung everywhere, each a little different. George noticed one planet etched with a giant yellow ‘M’ shape, golden arches, if you will, and wondered who it was for. Some doors opened and a pleasant-looking man walked briskly in, taking a seat at his own pace. He smiled and greeted the pair in his office with a calm delight. After the usual bout of small talk and a nice cup of tea, George said “We’d like to see your range of planets.” “Aah, to business is it then? All right,” the man sat back in his chair comfortably. “Now then, before we get started examining the ranges, would this be for advertising use? We can do great deals if you agree to let us put our name on the planets as well.” Linda looked a George. George replied “No. It’s for personal use, actually. We’d like a large planet, not too mountainous or oceanous. Just a nice rolling world, grassy and with enough water to look pleasant. And some trees, too. Sand bunkers, that kind of thing.” The man hesitated and stared at the sign on his desk. It read Henry Fblodd, Phd. Engineering, Sales. “I don’t get many personal buyers these days. Might it be too much to enquire as to the purpose of this planet?” “Golf,” said both the gods simultaneously. “Golf? Hitting a ball with sticks for absolutely no reason at all? Are you mad?” the man, whose name appeared to be Henry Fblodd, sat forward suddenly. Then he realised that these two old people probably were mad and that it was none of his business. He was here to do sales. Sales was his thing. He was a Sales Engineer Phd, for god’s sake. He apologised and sat back once again. “We’d like to see a range, please,” George stated. “And a price, too.” After the front-end man, Henry Fblodd, has left the room, Linda asked George if this was the right thing to do. “Of course. We’ll let them take their time. You know, come by every hundred years or so and make sure it’s right. Then we’ll be able to put it up somewhere, maybe even out near my place and retreat there after everything is over and have a tournament or something. Winner gets to keep the planet. That kind of thing.” “Mmm,” Linda finally agreed. “But it was your idea. It might not be allowed, you know.” “Linda, we’re Gods. We’re in control. We can do what we like, and what we like is playing Golf. Right? Who’s not going to allow it? The Creator? Has anyone actually ever seen him?” “But-” Henry opened the door and walked back in. “I think I have just what you are looking for. But there is a waiting list, you do understand?” “Yes. We were hopeing that you’d actually take your time. You know, touch it up a bit more than usual.” “Sure. I understand. Right. Would you like another cup of tea?” “No thanks,” Linda replied. George shook his head. “Oh, okay. All right then, about the price. We usually require some kind of downpayment first, that is after you’ve decided on a planet and a style. We need to see your credit details and a few other things, but don’t worry. Our accountants are the finest in the universe and will patch you up for that in no time. “Anyway, lets not discuss the price.” “No,” interrupted Linda, glancing sideways at George. “Lets.” The Sales Engineer sat down cautiously. This is all wrong, he though. People didn’t wan’t to talk about the price. They wanted results. It’s a test. It’s something to do with my Phd. Sure it is. “Yes. The price. Uh-” “If it’s no trouble, we’d like to pay the full price now.” George smiled at the confused man. Linda, however, glared at George. “Uh huh. Yes,” Henry was very much taken aback. “I’ll just go, uh, get the accountants then, shall I? Yes. I’ll do that. Yes, haha, be calm.” Henry Fblodd, Phd, Sales Engineer for the Lorna Minor World Design Academy fled the room screaming incoherently. Stuart jerked his head around as the doors snapped open again. His chair spun with him. “Karen-” He started but was cut off. “I’m so sorry, Stu,” She never called him ‘Stu’. What was wrong? Why was she sorry? Where was Amy? What was that flowery smell? “I wasn’t thinking when I came in before,” Karen closed the door and wandered over the where Stuart sat. She reached out and gently pulled him out of the chair, smiling. She surfaced the back of his hand with her thumb. “Oh. Uh, I never-” Stuart tried again, but this time his words were not allowed to come out, as suddenly his lips were covered by Karens. He pulled away long enough to say “Oh my.” “You should see the place,” Simon commented to Amy. “It’s so big; and wierd.” “I have! I live and work here,” She laughed back. The X-Nerds had just walked in from an elevator to find Amy all alone in one room. “Where’s Stuart?” Matthew asked, looking around. “And Karen?” Amy paused, smoothly gravitating towards a door protectively. “Uh, they’re around. Went for a walk, I would suppose. Where’s the other two- George and Linda? They went with you, didn’t they?” Very cool, one part of her brain stated. “No.” “Oh. I wonder where they are.” “They’re not here? They could be anywhere!” “Yes, I know.” Amy looked to the side in concentration. The door behind Amy opened and Stuart led Karen out by her right hand. “Oo,” Stuart hollowed, looking around at the other X-Nerds with his eyebrows high. Karen was her head down a little and didn’t let go of Stuarts’ hand. Simon raised his right eyebrow, grinning, and nobody said a word. Amy broke the elation. “There’s someone comeing up the elevator. I wonder who it is.” “It’s probably George and Linda, looking for a golf course,” Errol mused. “Yeah. Why a golf course?” “Never mind. It’s a long story.” But when the elevator bell binged and the doors opened, it wasn’t George or Linda. Everything very suddenly went extremely quiet and still. 62. Stuart awoke again, but this time to the silence of the pipes. They weren’t really silent, as water or some other liquid sloshed through occasionally, but there was no other noise. He swung around from his bunk and let his feet rest on the floor. Everything was too silent. He couldn’t hear anyone ouside, nor the computer up the hall bleeping and bipping as it had done all through the past night, if it had been night, anyway, as he had seen no windows. After releiving himself in the adjoining bathroom, he wandered out to find his shoes and clothes. He found his clothes but no shoes. There was a dead rat beside the door. Stuart became nervous, frightened. He threw the door open and heard more silence. He turned right and ran up the passage towards the computer center he’d been in the night before. It was dark, silent, empty. The computer equipment was smashed and ruined beyond repair. And it was so so quiet. Stuart’s stomach gurgled and the blood thumped behind his skull. It was the silence of death, but he wasn’t dead. He ran back along the passage, looking for any signs of life. Nothing. He knew he’d go insane if there weren’t any sound, any movement. He welcomed the sounds of the pipes when a flush of water gurgled its way past, a hissing, shoshing noise. A noise. A sound. He could not find any stairs. There was, however, an old door, but it had been locked or bolted from the other side. He’s need a battering ram to break it down, and even that would have been slow. But he didn’t have a battering ram. He didn’t have anything. He thought he’d heard a slight shuffle at the dark end of the hall, the end that housed the now-defunct computer equipment and within a moment, Stuart had located a door painted to look like a part of the wall. There was no handle and no visible hinges, suggesting a one way door that you had to push. It would not budge. If he only had a battering ram or something heavy, maybe he could knock it down. In every room, the chairs and tabled were large, cumbersome, and very heavy, as most were either long thick planks or solid iron. He had nothing to bash at the door with. Water sloshed by once more in the thin pipes above him. Stuart screamed with frustration, then got an idea. He could only just reach the pipes on the ceiling, but only just was enough. He grabbed a firm double hand hold on a two inch pipe and jerked his body up and down. The pipe did not even budge. He tried a different pipe. This time, the pipe seemed to bend a slight amount, but that was all. On his fourth go, the pipe he was jerking on broke free. Pressurised water hosed forth from the uncomplete pipe. Unfortunately, on the way down, the pipe Stuart was now clutching clipped the light, shattering the blood-red bulb. Everything went very dark. Stuart clutched the pipe still, water gushing down all over him, sloshing all over the floor. “Damn it,” he shouted. Then he yelled his frustration, swinging the two-inch pipe in a wide arc. It struck the wall before it should have, jarring his arm badly. He dropped the pipe into the absolute darkness and fell to the wet floor weeping like a small child, in the darkness, alone. He felt a peice of the shattered light peirce mid torso, but he now didn’t care as red warmth spread over his left side. Water was freely flowing about him and starting to pool and trickle away down the corridor. There was a light seeping up from the watery abyss. It wasn’t a bright light, but any light is something in a totally black room. Stuart was waist deep in the cold water, still gushing in at a tremendous rate, filling the rooms with its black wetness. The floor was well waterproofed, and hardly any water was escaping under the two sealed doors he’d found. He hadn’t found his shoes and twice he’d felt something cut his feet, which would be bleeding slowly but surely uderwater. The cut on his side had stopped bleeding, but his wet shirt was sticking to the cut, making it hard and painful to move. “Help!” He screamed once more. He knew it would be no good. His noise was mostly drowned out by the rushing of water. He’s found the two-inch pipe again and had a bash at the painted door, but it didn’t work. His only worry now was that the water would be reaching the computer equipment very soon now, and he wasn’t sure whether or not it was still live. If it were- well. He was hoping that it wasn’t. That light, though, filtering up from somewhere below. That had promise. He clutched the metal pipe, took a deap breath and- Underwater, the sound of gurgling, splashing water filled his ears. He shuffled down towards the light and saw that it was a small clear panel under some carpet on the floor. He went up for air. Just after dropping below the surface once more the sound came, amplified even by the water. Boom! Boom! Boom! A slow but sure rumble similar to a distant thunderstorm, or the missle fire one sees on the news every night about some foriegn country. Always a foriegn country. Stuart popped up for air as the booming sound continued. It was clearer above the water. There were audible explosions associated with the heavy rumbling sounds, as if artillery were shelling the castle. His shirt was stinging his side and in a desparate, painful moment, he tore a hole around the wound, leaving part of his cotton shirt clotted into his side. He took a great deep breath and ducked once more below the rippling water into the shroud of frightening darkness. He tore back the carpet and light burned his eyes. The floor here was like glass or perspex, and he was stareing down over a three-metre drop into roaring light over a strange room. Using the awkward pipe, he bashed and thrashed at the floor. Suddenly there were round shiny faces below him and he let out a burst of air in fright, which bubbled to the surface. He followed the bubbles up and gasped for air. White light echoed up through the waist-deep water, lighting up the hallway. He could hear and feel a tapping on the floor below him and also the distant shelling. Water poured from the pipe above him, sloshing about his head madly. Then the floor gave way and he was sucked in a great torrent down the tiny hole in the floor and into pure whiteness. “Do you hear that?” Boom! Boom! Boom! Karen whispered. “Hear it? I can bloody well feel it!” Simon whispered back. Creeping along a hallway, the X-Nerds accompanied by James stopped in an alcove to plan a little further ahead. “If we go up there-” Matthew was pointing into the dark hallway ahead. They could hear footsteps somewhere behind them, but they were far off and not hurried. “Hey, this moves!” Errol rasped. Everybody turned about to see Errol leaning on a dark wall. Simon and Karen joined in and suprisingly, the stone wall swivelled around to reveal a cold and unused secret passage. Each of the people filed in and James, the last through, was asked to close the door behind them. He struggled to do so, but finally managed. With the stone door closed, the darkness folded around them like a glove. White light cascaded and played in front of them. The polished whiteness of a room, the chrome and polished stone of strange spacecraft. The X-Nerds danced and fretted about one particular craft, a small white ceramic ship about the size of a small caravan. It was their ship, except all smashed and broken looking from the outside. Errol pulled open the door, rusted with age. On the floor just inside the door lay a skelatal forearm and hand of a human being. The rest of the ship looked bareable. Errol threw the skeleton away before Karen or the others could see it, shivering with cold and oncoming fear. “It’s our ship,” Simon stated. “But it looks a hundred years old.” Matthew was over near a rack of spacesuits. “Here, look what I found.” “Yeah,” said Simon. “So what?” “Well, if we were to just jump in the Time Machine and do the deed and end up in deep space, how do you think we survive with no windscreen?” He was right, of course. The Time Machines windscreen was blackened and broken. The X-Nerds and James rushed over to put on the shabby copper-coloured spacesuits. “What about Stuart?” Karen was asking repeatedly. Simon stopped to think. “Best I can think of is that we’ll come back for him.” “Leave him? They’re damn well shelling this castle out there.” Karen shouted. “There’s sections of the walls being blown out of this bloody place left right and center and you want to leave Stuart here!” “Wherever he is,” Matthew said, not adding his feeling that Stuart might have already gone- elsewhere. “Yeah. And that’s why,” Simon yelled back at Karen, angry and frustrated. “You go out there and you’ll either be shot by some paranoid guard or scattered around the counrtyside by one of the bombs coming over those walls. Think about it, woman!” Karen glared sullenly, defiantly, at Simon and fastened her gold-tint helmet on her head. It smelled dusty. There was a muffled thumping noise. “Look! Up there!” Matthew said, pointing. Everybody turned their heads up towardws the dark ceiling where the outline of a face could be seen floating above the darkness Then the room rocked with a huge explosion. Suddenly everything was wet and peices of the ceiling rained down on them all. Stuart way lying moaning on the floor, blood gushing from his bare feet and left side. His shirt was torn and twisted and he clutched a thick metal pipe in his left hand. His ankle was twisted the wrong way and he looked terrible. More of the roof rained down. “Stuart!” The others all cried, rushing over. The door was creaking open, a brash sound amongst the thunderous destruction. “Stop!” Ordered a voice. The X-Nerds only glanced at the man who’d spoken. He was dragging his leg as it appeared to be broken. Blood dripped from the side of his face. “Luther,” Stuart whispered before he passed out. “Get in!” Matthew barked. He was already up the front of the time machine, making ready for takeoff. Simon and James dragged Stuart’s limp body into the the machine even as the desparate Luther attempted to cross the wet, tile floor. He slipped and landed heavily on his broken leg, and screeched in hard pain. “He needs a suit!” Screamed Karen as Matthew was about to hit the button. One side of the room caved in apon itself. Underneath the dusty carnage lay the rest of the coppery spacesuits. “We’ll have to chance it!” Matthew yelled back over the noise. “If we don’t make it, or come out somewhere in space, then it won’t really matter much more anyway.” Karen, past fear now, saw the logic in the situation, and gave the all clear. They didn’t even bother closing the door. Matthew looked out the windscreen at the screaming man outside, dragging himself along the wet tile floor towards the ceramic time machine, vengence and excruciating pain in his dark, dark eyes. A trail of hot red blood washed across the floor as black dust tumbled down. “Go you idiot!” Karen was screaming at him. His hand smashed the big red button even as the roof collapsed, raining pipes, dust, water, mortar, stone, cables. Then he stared for a very long time at the nice polished wooden floor, listening to the soothing musak, breathing slowly and evenly into his loose-fitting gold-tint helmet. “Get him in here,” Matthew heaved. He was standing in a quiet little elevator. The time machine had landed in somebody’s office, one with no doors other than the elevator. They’d had no choice other than the window, but it was a twenty storey drop out there. “James,” Instructed Simon, who held the unconscious Stuart by the arms. James lifted Stuarts legs easily and they carried him into the elevator. As Errol and Karen walked in, Matthew pushed a random button, and the doors edged closed uneasily. Nice music played. The X-Nerds, dressed in copper coloured spacesuits, dusty, torn and wet stood silently in the welcome silence, each silent in the non-thought that comes about after any terrifying life-threatening incident. The elevator hurried along, playing some more very light fractal music, soothing and calm. Then the little elevator bell binged and the doors slid open. Everything very suddenly went extremely quiet and still. The X-Nerds and James stared disquietly at the X-Nerds and Amy. In the elevator, Karen fainted, falling across the threshhold that was the doorway, keeping the elevator doors open. The X-Nerds stared at the X-Nerds, too astounded to speak. Then George and Linda bumbled in. “You’ll never guess what we just bought!” Then George saw the X-Nerds stareing at the elevator. He looked into the elevator and saw the X-Nerds stareing out of the elevator. Linda looked like a statue from a wax museum. “Okay,” God fretted, waving both hands in front of his body. “Nobody move.” End of Part 1
The Discriminant This poem was created entirely by Tim St.Clair using Descrimination in the Workplace and at Home as its theme. For a long time, the workplace has been a sector where there is racial tension. The community is divided into sectors of race. There is, for example, the Italian food sections where natives of the country can work with others of the same fellowship. The society is therefore disintegrated as a community and each race forms a microcosm of her roots. The workplace has then become mistrustful of each separate segment for it has no clear integration except, perhaps , a physical line where workers of different backgrounds live or work together. This barrier can be very tense, and is mostly where inter-racial discrimination can occur. Since Australia is, or would prefer to be known as, a multicultural society, there are many races and creeds all packed into dense population centres. Without fail, there are clashes. This poem endevours to look, firsly at the problem itself. Who is the discriminant of which society? Who is right? if the question can be answered. Secondly, it attempts to percieve the difficulty in changing the Workplace for the better and just if it is at all possible. 1. The Aborigional. ‘Ah ya bloody Abbo! Y’slimy piece of shit!’-White- One. ‘Onya bruddah. Hah. Fuckin’ black cunt!’-Greek- Two. ‘Hey whatchit buddy. And smile so we can see you comin’.’-American- Three. ‘Two’s a company, three’s a crowd. Something must be done.’ The Native Australian counts and plots The demise of his working brother. ‘Heya, bro! Godme sumoney foragrog mate?’ He dribbles, drunk from dole money. ‘Oh, piss off. Piss off!’ The teased Aborigional runs off, crying. ‘Fuckin’ stupid lady. Don’t give me me money! Dumb spag.’ The black mumbling. ‘Have some god-damn pride in yourself. You are the scum. You are a disgrace To our proud Aborigional race.’ Why do they not fight? 2. The Italian ‘Greasy wog. Git back to ya cunt-ry.’ Across the bar. ‘Italiano mama. Goa homa andi makea maya la pizza’ In the factory. ‘Hey! Go rub yaself on me car. She’s a bit rusty!’ In the Police station. ‘Why did we ever come to this country? The Lucky Country. A place to work, a place to live. Italy was better than this hole. Should leave, but this place could be better.’ 3. The Anglo-Australian ‘Fuck off, you Asian shit!’ A miner hollars across a wide, busy street. ‘Greaseball Greek. Nice nose! Get back to your mama!’ The nobody in the pub. ‘Black cunt. Fuckin’ take that.’ The worker hits the black, in an office with his mates. ‘Piss off. This is our country. We were here first. At least we brought civility to this bloody land. We own the land, you only live here. You only have rights to your own land, not ours.’ 4. The Argument And we all ask ‘What is wrong with us all? Why do we segregate the community and world?’ Get real. We do. That’s that. But to do it in such a way? Yes. That’s that. Don’t seek the answer, It’s not worth the effort. Give up. What? Give in to them. That’s lowering ourselves To their standard. We must act now! Give it a break... 5. The Discriminant And who is right? Me? You? Us? Anyone? Is there a right answer or is it something inbuilt into every man and woman? Is there an answer or just a solution? There is a difference. Perhaps a story? Why not imagine the utopian society? ‘... And the world of man was not divided as are continents. Humanity had not racial trait, man could not hate fellow man. But there was fueding, only with friends for there were no enemies. And it were not true feuding. It was, just, a play with friends. For there were no enemies, and there could be no hate, Could not there be true love either? ...’ Need more be said, understanding our otherwise utopian society? Face it, Racism, Discrimination and a split world is here to stay. And not a thing there is to be done about it. Unless we face ourselves, unless we face our workmates, Unless, of course, we all want to. Unless of course, we cannot.
Mind Game Invisible. I can see through you, child of deciept. As a ghost, a Wraith of despair come to haunt the soul. Imagination superimposing sweetness on impenetrable truth. Eyes like curtained windows of a darkened house. Hope. A glimmer of recognition. I see in through your blue eyes. A wind, a straw strand of your long hair falls. Then movement spoiling a photographic still of perfection, Creasing the mood of suprise. Anger. Memory of a recent accident, dissapointment in a wish. A scar in the childs’ mind. Turning your head, away, away. Denial of regret. I forgive. I forget. Can you do the same? Love. Kindness in two eyes, a smile creasing the mood of hate. Memory of a feeling, deep rooted, obscure in origin, Like a image of your childhood. You leave me alone, cold and hard, for another part of yourself.
Giant Trees Between midnight and dawn, when sleep will not come and the old wounds begin to ache, I often have a nightmare vision of a future world in which there are billions of people, all numbered and registered, with not a gleam anywhere, not an origional mind, a rich personality, on the whole packed globe. -J. B. Priestley Night. Cold and dank in the room that is the world. As it is, always, Unforgiving. Night eyes watching cold time pass. Night eyes waiting, perched high in a tree. A tree of glitter and glass, a tree higher than no other. A tree full of eyes and ears and lights. The squal of nature when nature is dead. Sounds not sounds, just noise, filling up space. Everything filling up space. Night ears, listening for the sound of a tree falling. A tree falling where nobody can hear it fall. Night ears can only hear the noise That justifies what the Night eyes can see- Night. Night light waiting, cold and dank. On a corner of the tree of liquid sand, On the floor in a forgotten room. No more in the sky where once it burned endlessly, Warm and forgiving. Night eyes waiting for the shadows to come- Procrastinating, suspended in animation.
Latent Exhibition - Inherent Inhibition Sort of bizarre. Out of phase living in surrealism places. Faces adorned; punk, and yet, Norm by circumstance. Digital phantasms adjourn to the street, cast out of their screens. Moods in colour; Need: overcome, Want: dominator in selfs. A grim cafe, pure leader in wierddom, casting shadows in the light. Crystal laughter; out of place, and yet, Norm under civility. Coffee and chocolate a lust by an inflation of inadequacy. One in a window staring, A view from a broken life. Screaming falling out from the underground unknowns, Tunnels down defended by the unloved, Also just standard. Art noveu sprayed random in xenophobic dissaray, A message of peace; and yet, A message of death. Of lives disorder, wander aimless in nontime happiness, Structured anarchy, Useless dithering of society. Stemming from the genes of a reproductive wasteland, Barren thought patterns in status Develop into barren continuum. Loveless society, uncaring as to death and the other, Unworried existance, like High on a clouded trip. Flawless society, unmoved as to a life other than no other, Ready to pass on life, Ready to retain their’s knowledge.
Horizon lost. Again he lay down to sleep as he had done countless times before. In his minds’ eye he imaged himself - looking down into the shrouds of mists - Down into society itself. The people together - A stagnant pool of water. Flat, featureless. No current, no flow. Occasionally a ripple, quick to fade - Quick to die. He saw himself stepping from the pool. A silent thought: ‘I am no longer A part of their society.’ All was dark, he stumbled blindly around The dead pool, just as blindly as if He had never left. In his minds’ eye he saw a void. There was nothing - no light, no dark. Pax regnare. Then, from the nothing grew a light And instantly the nothing was dark blackness. The light edged outwards, to be Forever surrounded by the dark. The nothing faded. Again he saw the pool, again a ripple, another. Another still. The pool- still and whole- became Separated, disjointed. All meaning was lost. Where the gentle pool had lain stagnant, Now it writhed and lived, separate - each pool quick to fade. Each quick to die. The pool faded. The image of the earth, hanging in still space. No! It was not still! There was a hum of movement! He could discern the cycle - a vestige of life emerging. Trees, weather - the Earth itself. Then he understood: The planet itself was alive! Then there were people - a flaw in the motion. The cycle did not stop, it simply move differently. The waters still flowed, the mountains still climbed. And mans ultimate conquest continued. He understood: Wheresoever there is still life, Be it of the Earth or apon it, The cycles will continue - Must continue. Amongst some people - each a stereotype of another - He saw a human being - quiet, unobtrusive To the movements around him. The being stood waiting peacefully. There were others too. They, like the first, stood alone in the group. Ever so gradually, they were lost amongst the others. ‘Why? Why do they not step from their chains, Even as I have done? Why do they Not open their locks and walk free of their bindings.’ He lunged forward, his intention to reach the Human Beings. He could not. They were gone, lost to the people. In his minds’ eye, he searched around himself, Stumbling to see the obvious. He lurched about, failing to see. He tripped, A fall over one already lost to where he now stood. He could discern that he was a part of the stagnating pool. Separate - yet still a part of the people’s existence. He was searching for the exit that was not there. There was no escape... no escape... no escape... He slept.
Forgiveness For all the misdoings, The wrongs, And hurts I have caused you. For all the pain, And anger, And sorrow I have given. For the misunderstandings, The hate - And all the little things - I appeal to you: If in your heart You can forgive - Do as you will. I repent. Forgive me.
Moments ©1993 Tim St.Clair It was a storybook morning. Probing tendrils of gold pealed across a pale expanse of blue sky, a never ending dome of immense nothing. The air was almost still, a zephyr breath tossed a single rust-red leaf gaily over an tract of dew-soaked grass. A tiny bird hopped along the ground, each insect within reach was carelessly devoured by the probing beak. A spectrum of colour gleamed as an individual drop of moisture slowly rolled along the sharp leaf drooping from a bright flower. The droplet fell noiselessly into the abyss so far below. Across the landscape of tree-mottled acres, somewhere out on the distant horizon, an enormous range of jagged grey-green peaks rose from the undulating scenery below- a shadow rising from the cool ground. A long, straight gravel road sliced through the countryside- a scar tearing the flesh of the land, bare earth exposed. Flirting across the western horizon amongst the receding night, a whish of puffy cloud was pushed by the unseen autumn winds. A golden leaf fell from a tall tree to join the plethora amidst the grassy earth. The warming sun burst forth in a spray of gold-rich light, its tentacles enwrapping each and every dying lifeform across the land. Against the oncoming winter, the dazzling radiance of colour glazed the scenery. Pink and yellow flowers under the dim forest of twisted and knotting branches that seemed to engross the multicoloured trees. A single grey-trunked tree, dead, reached imploringly for the unreachable and ever-present blue, so very far above. -A moment of absolute silence- Then the birds. Trills and caws mingling through the dense scrublands and across the open plains of green grass. A yellow breasted bird teased the ground, hoping for the tasty reward. Elsewhere, a tiny ant made a slow path towards its home, its noiseless feet stampeding the ground, occasionally turning a single grain of the rich-brown soil. The roar ceased as quickly as it had begun. The car had sped from nowhere to be again lost in its own world of carbon-black smoke and loam dirt. Beside the road, a battered body of the small bird lay, its meal, still alive and almost devoured, yet able to escape the newly dead body. Two fresh car tracks led of down the harsh and unforgiving road. Like diamonds across a black satin sheet, the uncountable stars gazed down on a still land from their place in the heavens. A cresent moon hung low over the black horizon, its cool light infiltrating the sombre night. The autumn chill of a lonely night gradually felt its way into the narrow crevices of the darkened landscape, icy fingers poking into the warm and secluded nests and homes of sleeping critters. A whisp of white, the greyish own lifted from a perch and swooped to the cold earth. Its large night-eyes had again picked out another meal. The field-mouse no more, the silent bird dissapeared into the night. Like two tiny orbs the animals eyes gleamed through the darkness. Slowly, the furry creature made its way across the silent road. Not a sound crossed the darkened meadow as the wild cat prowled through undergrowth. The sound wavered across the unseen distance, long before the two white eyes gleamed through the darkness. The furious roar and bright lights startled the hissing cat standing defensively in the centre of the road even as the immense body bore down carelessly. The scenery seemed somehow different under the overcast sky. A misting drizzle washed the dust from the metallic hull of a dusty car, carefully spread around the immense butt of a broken grey-leafed tree. Inside the crushed shell, deep in the slightly smoking remains of the blue vehicle, the body lay cold, scarlet robes of blood decorating random patches of the female flesh. Perhaps it was the blue lights whirling or the presence of sirens and multitudes of humans that caused the once rich-in-life scrublands to grow silent. Maybe it was the washing rain, a steady flow of the worlds’ life-blood that freely poured down in through dim forest and cold soil. A mosquito landed of a spiny leaf of dead grass and gazed strangely at the scene. Suddenly, a huge globule of falling water bounced along the leaf towards the defenseless insect. With absolute skill, the tiny creature manouvered on silent wings away from the colourless liquid, off into the wet distance. Before long, the bare earth had once again been exposed to the warming sunlight. As immense clouds parted and illuminating yellow glared through, the dark soil where the car had been just a short time before glistened. New life was waiting just below the dark surface, holding for the moment to burst through to the calm world above.
A question of Prayer Why choose a God that is not willing to help in time of sorrow, to keep ahead and be lost unto them that fall behind? To fight the neverending battle that doth rage even now, to strive to win? Why choose a God that can be the ultimate presence in ones life, not as mush to directly help, but to guide and be counsel in time is need? To use the might of a select few to change the might of rage, to sacrifice for another that which he had pride in most?
Archer had never seen the sea before. For the previous two days he had become increasingly aware of the salt pang in the air, and had actively noticed the changes in the landscape and environment, his mind full of wonder and questions about all nature of things, from the nature and composition of the trees and soils, to the startling range of insects here in these parts. Neardra was indeed a magical land, he thought as they rode along under the great corroded sandstone cliffs that divided the high country from the low river flats ahead. In his youth he dreamed of travel, adventurous of his inquisitive mind failing him in his disciplines as a man of the cloth, his time spent as much in the study of histories and theologies as in exploring the geography of the opposite sex. Studies which had shortly earned his expulsion from that particular profession, also earning some of the public ridicule that now troubled his name. Something other than the fresh salt smell caught his nose, and he mistook it for the gracious pollen of an unseen flower before noticing the company riding beside him; again lost in thought he had not detected one of his riding companions trotting along beside him now. “Adrift on the sea of thought again, my lord?” Archer heard a light voice beside him ask in a mild humour. “Again.” he mused. “In this honeycomb mess of trails I could take a wrong turn and end up back where I started and not know it, I’m afraid.” “You already have,” giggled the young woman beside him. Archer pulled his horse to a standstill and took in the scenery around him, noting his displacement from his caravan, some hundred yards down the track. He laughed out loud, and turned to inspect his companion, inclining with his head that she should lead the way back to their companions. As they rode, she spoke. “I’ve noticed you fall behind a few times. You’re new to these parts, if I’m not mistaken.” “New to Neardra, in fact.” Archer edged his mount forward to match her pace, and turned to inspect her face. She wore her somewhat carmine hair in an unfamiliar way, with what may have been the faintest blue ribbon woven into a single braid that hung nearly halfway down her back. Her nose was not round nor angular, yet somewhere in-between, a gentle concavity ending with what could only be described as a blob. Above, under thin black bows eyes of the richest blue met his. “You’re looking at my nose.” Archer had the decency to blush and broke her gaze. “I’m afraid I was. Though for good reason; it’s probably the prettiest nose I’ve seen.” “Cheap flattery will get you nowhere with me,” she said, then after a pause, added “Although that’s no reason to stop.” Archer smiled and was going to pursue the matter but a whistle from ahead took their attention. From this distance he could pick one animal down and a number of items strewn about the track. Taking cue from his companion, he spurned the horse into a light gallop down to the caravan, careful not to be swiped from the saddle by low-hanging branches and vines. Still mounted he could see that a packhorse at the lead had broken a leg after stepping in a sharp, shallow crevice in the stone. Had it happened near a town or farmhouse, the horse could have its leg set, however here on the narrow downwards path the horse would have to be put down and then tossed over the edge to make way for traffic. The luggage would have to be dispersed amongst the other pack horses, but it would not slow them. At most they would be put back half an hour; this early in the day that was of no consequence. Archer turned his horse and rode back a ways, dismounted and sat in the warm sunlight. Soon he was joined by his female companion, who tied both the horses and came to sit at his right and lean back against the sandstone cliffs. “What brings you this way?” Archer asked her. “You haven’t told me your name.” “No? Have you not guessed?” “I don’t understand. Should I know you?” “My name is Archer.” The woman paused before answering, squinting as she looked up at the morning sun. “Just Archer? It’s an odd name. You haven’t a last name?” “No. In fact I do, but I won’t speak it. I owe my family that much, at least.” “You’ve shamed them?” “You’ve not heard of me?” “No.” Archer scratched his ear. “Well, that’s one, I guess. I have earned an air of bad reputation in my land.” “But as you say, you’re new to Neardra.” Archer turned to the woman and grinned ruefully. “That’s true, I suppose. I was forgetting.” The woman sidled up beside him. “You haven’t asked me my name yet.” “You were talking so much I thought you’d just blurt it out.” Archer said with a poker face, and patted her on the arm. He sighed, leaned back against the rock, and closed his eyes, enjoying the appalling silence. It took a minute or so for her to respond to this. Archer found it hard to keep his face straight, however he still managed. Eventually the woman said “My name-” “Your name is Lilla Marrakech, daughter of the exiled Lord Alchemist of the same name.” Archer opened his eyes and looked directly into hers, a stare that somehow empowered what he had spoken. Lilla turned away. “How could you know?” Archer turned her face back to his and he had lost all sense of what may have been humour in his eyes. “I see what I see. Your secret is safe with me; nobody else has guessed. Or shall. You seem to require this privacy, at least. I guess I should know the name by which you travel.” Again Lilla turned away, this time her face ashen. “You have Power?” “There is no Power, only science. As I said, I see what I see.” The woman turned to him once again, sunlight playing shadows across her face so that her eyes blinked in dark sockets. “Whatever may be passed through generations was not passed on to me. My sisters have the Power: I have seen it with my own eyes. And I am not even a Seer, as is the right and duty of the first born. I am the exception to the rule.” “You may well be a seer, as blinded to yourself as you are. It’s in your mind.” Archer harried. Lilla sat upright, stood. “What do you mean? That I lie? I have the right to Power, and yet I possess none. There is Power, that I know. Science is merely tricks with words to explain what is obvious.” Clever, she ‘thinks’, Archer’s voice sounds in the privacy of his mind. He stood to confront her. “I am sorry. I was wrong to offend you this way. Please accept my apology.” Lilla strode over to her horse, prepared to mount. “If there is no Power, how is it that you can read my thoughts?” “Merely a trick, as you might phrase it, there is a science to it. I see it in your eyes. In your body. The way you ride your mount, the way you talk. Perhaps there is Power, as you say, and there is power. You come to me to talk, you draw me out of my reverie to converse and yet you now want to ride away, though your body speaks as though you are neither offended by my withdrawn presence or my recluse nature. Therefore I must assume you are afraid of what I have to say, and to offer. Perhaps what I see does not need Power, only a little reasoning and educated guessing: Isn’t this what we call Science? Perhaps if I can see what I see, then others may too. Does this disturb you? What is it you run from?” Lilla was on her horse, and had turned it back down the path. She spoke nothing, and rode away. Perhaps there was a reason. But perhaps she was just seeing things where things didn’t actually exist. That was it. Archer thought exactly the same thing.
Irony of Conquest A room with no doors- No entry- no exit. Still air contained within Still, stone walls. The Void solemnly rests, Unattended, silent. There is no light within The ultimate Heart The endless beating waves batter Cliffs of stone- the solitary island. A cloud-mottled night sky- The lonely room submerged in the thick dark. The ropes and ladders slowly crumble, The room with no doors stands firm. The people try and try again To find out what lies behind the strange walls. Battering, thrashing waves lash and tumble At the unmoved, impenetrable stone- The walls containing nothing Stand firm, stand still. As the sea batters the walls, As the ladders fall and crumble, As Man and Machine grimly attack, The empty Void waits in the still, dark room.
Silence© Tim St.Clair 1993 It was now unfamiliar territory. The road stretched on and on, leading somewhere into the unknown future. Tiny against the long-dormant volcanic superstructures otherwise known as mountains a clashing blood-red vehicle sped, showers of gravel clogging the road behind its diminutive mass. The grey-blue landscapes usually on the distant horizon were now all about the vehicle, casting long shadows throughout the dawning day. Across the misty grasses and slopes saturated with a netted jungle of lush scenery, further beyond the cascading waterfalls and trickling brooks that bumbled their joyous way to the distant ocean, somewhere through these mighty peaks lay a goal- the destination that seemed would never be reached by the dwarfed red car. Ever so high above, touching the very clouds, it seemed, a single bird circled on silent wings, its slothful movement occasionally affected by a turbulent cycle of air. The great hawk seemed to stop- to pause for no longer than a heartbeat- before its mortal plunge into the shrouded scenery below. Moments after the screeching bird had entered the overcrowded landscape it burst forth from the giant trees aligning the sides of the dirt road. The carsÕ brakes screamed their way into torture, the minuscule pads on which the car would normally have stopped slid helplessly into the path of the doomed hawk, sending a great torrent of feathers into the air. The vehicle suffered an almighty shock as it swayed unwillingly from its original path into the dense forest at the side of the road, spraying green life and brown earth high into the silent air. A gradual cough and one last screech as the lacerated bird twisted in agony on the silent road, finally, ever so slowly, to die. * * * It was unnerving, the blackness all around, the point of floating existence only reached apon death, and yet, here she was, alive in non-existence- a painless dream from which she could not awaken. Moments before, was it? she had been driving towards her family so far away, a holiday in the giant mountains then suddenly, from the peaceful surroundings came- Agony! The tortured flesh burned its way into her very soul and she could feel her very skin being split away from the bubbling flesh hidden below to be devoured by the scorching tongues of living fire. She screamed out, a long wail that seemed not to have penetrated the neverending darkness all around her. The scorching heat intensified, the tissues of her pulp being reft away into the unceasing flame. Wave apon wave of mortal pain lashed her entire body time and time again, shocking, biting, her feelings twisted one inside the other. Brokenfingerstubbedtoe Bittentoungescorchedhand. Wave after wave ripped muscle, skin and bone from her hideous features. Black. She could feel the coolness enshrouding her meagre body, seeping deep into her subconscious mind, a relaxant of awesome might to feed itself to her needs. She instantly became a victim of its wondrous talent, lost somewhere in the soggy mush of its abating grip in her mind. Feelings washed in and out, a constant throb of wavelike motion- gently forced up and down to the pulse. Ah the beauty of it, the marvellous laxness of it! She saw herself momentarily from far away, existing alone in an immensity that was forever heinously dark. She glimpsed herself as the only being sharing her solitary confinement, lost in the simpleness of its peace, alone. Alone. Alone. The reality of her situation crashed throughout her mind, sending images of her fear to gnaw at her sanity. * * * The resulting entanglement of the red car and the overgrown shrubbery echoed throughout the grey-green hills, yet one more sound to fade away into the lone silence. A scream echoed against the catastrophic crunching sound only to an abrupt stop as the car plummeted into a tree, wrapping itself around the red-brown trunk. A burst of flame shot upwards out of the front of the mangled car, scorching the dusty atmosphere about the accident. Gently, silently, a yellow and blue butterfly hovered above the freshly ploughed ground, flitting gaily across the uprooted flowers and teasing the tiny critters that writhed and squirmed in the moist soil. A minuscule fly settled on the broken body of the red vehicle. * * * All was dark, as black as the night around a burning campfire. Yet it was not night. It had been morning when she started her long drive to her family- And the pain of loss hit her like a physical blow. Her fragile body jerked under the hurt and sadness. The holiday... The holiday on which she was on... That poor bird, he must have been through so much and then... On the holiday to see her family... It was that silly bird that... There was so much pain and... She saw flame and tried to back away, though it reached with its scorching hand out towards her... She once again heard the shrieking wail of the giant hawk as it emerged from the trees... The pain caressed her arm... Alone. * * * He drove not like a madman, not like the roaring monsters that roamed the endless roads and highways. His silent car, a deep Prussian green, rolled on silent wheels along the gravel road between the gentle peaks. He smiled peacefully to himself, as he had always done when listening to his soothing music and driving amongst the sheer beauty of this natural landscape. Green tendrils of vine swung in the breeze and a lush mat of green covered the roadsÕ edge. Then would he smile no more, then would he see the synthetic humanity that wounded the land, made a scar on its unending wonder. Then he would see the hawk, its frail mass lying still on the hard ground. Then he would see the still breathing mass that was so much as himself a human, so twisted and severed inside the blood-splattered vehicle. A tendril of oily smoke rose deftly into the air to be lost back into the hidden greenery. The wailing siren cut through the bleak mountains, the midday sun threw images of heat down to the angry land, a viscous threat of rain tingled on the distant grey-whiteness of fluffy cloud. The ambulance sped the dying woman to a distant place, far away from the recent scene. Apon the still road, the dead bird lay, ants and flies pestering the decay of its still body. The now-grave founder of this freak accident slowly drove back the way he had come, the grating wheels adding yet another sound to the oppressive mat of silence hanging over the high, distant mounts. * * * She was alone, cold, and unloved. She felt the tingling fear creeping into her soul, finding the memories of her childhood and twisting them into an unimaginable lump of evil sadness. Her screams went unheard, she herself could not hear the endless silence all about her, only the perpetual sound of tortured flesh, burning, searing, scorching in those giant licks of red heat, flames that tore at the flesh, ripped at the very fabric of her meagre existence. And her family, she would not get to see them on her holiday... When would she get there? Oh how she wished she would arrive... ArenÕt those mountains big... That poor bird...
CHERISH 5.11.98 and it’s true, here I am to prove it a lot of things said about me are true a lot of things said about me are false it’s a matter of perspective, I guess; more where you stand what angle the light falls where the shadow casts of course, there’s a million other metaphors a million other ways of saying the same thing you see, even though what they say is true; from their perspective I am a permanent fixture: furniture that is, I don’t find myself in their scene but they are also wrong from my perspective I do go out, from my perspective I go many places again, its where you stand that determines what you see those stories that we all hear of our childhood the silly things we do as children the ones that make the grown-ups of the time laugh my stories were all out me, harry houdini the escape baby that’s all in the past so what if I don’t do the scenes all the ones that most people do besides, what’s wrong with sitting on some steps watching the world walk by it is an experience to experience time passing to me, from my perspective you see people, individual boys and girls normal kids who have normal lives who go to parties with their friends, and play and fall in love and make enemies and everything else that normal people do that I miss my childhood is granted; everyone does that I missed my childhood is the feeling earlier than that was a surreal dreamland my adolescence was put on hold at school and it must have been given to somebody else because I haven’t seen it yet on those steps, watching those people, I see my own missing adolescnce, I see people with the freinds I never had, falling into the love I was never blesssed with but you get used to being alone at least, you learn to forget what you never had and cherish what little you do.
Driving Force Driving is hard. It’s too hard to concentrate in this heat, but this is summer, and I can’t complain: It’s summer’s job to be hot. I can feel the sweat on my back, and under my thighs; the way it glues me to the seat, the faint tang it adds to the humourless air. I’m not fond of long car trips. I don’t like driving any longer. I recall liking it, loving it in fact, wanting to throw myself in a vehicle at any hour of any day, and drive to some place I’ve never been. I think it’s just these last few years with Miranda has changed me. I know she never liked cars at all. She used to fly, or catch the train (never the bus- I don’t blame her), or ride her mountain bike. Maybe that’s rubbed off on me. I guess a lot of things have. She’s there beside me now, curled up in the seat as best she can. I can see her head bouncing on the window, vibrating with the car. It’s funny, she always used to complain about our bed back home, how it hurt her back, how she couldn’t sleep. Now here she dozes, sitting in an awkward upright position, head bouncing against the window in time to the bumps. I do it too; it’s just one of those things. Why would anybody live here? The land is just flat. There’s nothing to see. Oh sure, there’s trees and power lines, but there always are. You take them for granted. This land, it’s dark grey-brown soil netted with farms and roads, it’s just dull. I’ve always been a mountain person, and so, I guess, has Miranda. Surely there has to be a better way to farm. What I mean is a more efficient way to farm. Look out there at that tractor. It tows the plough or whatever it is, stirring up the soil, which blows away in the wind. You hear about the conservationists are always ranting on about how valuable the topsoil is, and how we should look after the environment for the future generations- fair enough, I guess. So why doesn’t somebody invent a better way to till the land. Or why can’t they invent some sort of factory that can grow grain? Why can’t you make use of all that space up above the paddocks- build giant pyramids out of aluminium and grow grains and rice in terraces alone the faces, using giant solar panel mirrors to reflect the sun onto the dark faces, and generate power at the same time¼ This happens. I get in a car and drive, and my mind wanders fantastically. If the images in my mind were real we would all be living in a surreal interpretation, a mosaic world of overlayed fantasies, a place where nothing was real and everything existed. I start to imagine that I am the last person on the Earth, here in my little car, putting around, consuming the fruits of humankind in a kind of dejected, burnt out joy, knowing my eventual punitive destruction would mean virtually zilch to the world, the universe at large. Just another grasshopper going splat against the windscreen of time. Damned things. I should pull the car over and get out, go for a walk. In fact, I should get Miranda to drive for a while. I don’t think she’d get lost if I went to sleep. She’s got a much better sense of direction than I have. I couldn’t find my way out of a sleeping bag. That’s what I’ll do. Now, to find an appropriate spot. If only those imbeciles who build this road had installed some form of rest area, or left a nice big tree standing near the road, I could pull over and sit in the shade. Maybe they should build a big long roof all the way along the side of the road where people could pull over, so they’d be under cover wherever they stopped¼ Again, my mind is slipping, but farther this time. If I keep this up I could doze off myself, and lose control of the car. I’m not terribly worried about the car. I mean, it is a rental. It’s not worth anything to me but the deposit. I doubt they’ll give that back anyway after what happened to the boot. No, it’s Miranda I worry about. If I was at fault when we crashed into something and she was hurt in any way- well, you know. Miranda is… precious. I’m going to pull over. “What’s wrong?” I hear her ask as the car comes to a halt on the grass beside the road. “Why are we stopping?” “I just need a break. I keep daydreaming. Can’t concentrate. I’m in no state to be driving you or anybody else around. Getting tired, I guess.” “Do you want me to take over?” “No. I just need to stretch, to take a bit of time out.” “There’s cold water in the esky. Do you want some?” Without my reply, she gets out of the car anyway, and I pop the boot for her, and accidentally open the fuel cap too. I open the door and get out onto the soundless road. I can still hear that tractor, going round and round, stirring up dust. I walk to the back of the car to close the fuel cap. Miranda hands me a little green plastic cup full of cold water. “Quiet out here, isn’t it?” I listen. There’s the sound of the engine cooling, little clicks and pops every now and then. There’s the sound of the wind far off, rustling the leaves and the grass, and the low grumble of that tractor. I nod and drink the water. “It’s an empty landscape,” I say, perhaps trying to inhabit the silence. Miranda smiles at me. She has the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen. Her big blue eyes light up, and I am again instilled with that sense of wonder at this woman. She’s so beautiful. We’re coming up to our forth year together as man and wife, so that would be about six all up, and she still fills me with that joy every time I see her. I hope this is all there is to life. It isn’t. The drudgeries of everyday life still exist for us to contend with, and we are two separate people, we do have our differences. Maybe that a good thing. It highlights these little moments, makes you seem all the luckier. “I don’t know,” she says thoughtfully. “I mean, there’s the road, and the trees. The land itself has it’s own kind of beauty. It is its own purpose, there’s beauty in that. The way the wind ripples through the grass, the way the dust curls and eddies. Everything is unique to this one moment, and in the billions of years past or to come, this moment will never occur again. See, look at the birds. They fold and slide on the air itself. There aren’t any grand-looking buildings, or neat palms lining the road. It’s a kind of natural completeness though, not empty. Do you see.” I don’t think I do. I know what she’s trying to tell me. It’s the same thing she’s always tried to say to me, how everything is beautiful. She seems to see the inner interplay between the natural and human-made objects of the world. She’s explained the concept to me any number of times, how to truly see something for what it’s worth you must see it how it is, as it stands, with no preconception of the object. You must see the object in the objects terms, the entity it’s own purpose. It’s just not something I can do. If I could only see the world through her eyes, then I would understand. I don’t answer her. To me, this is still just an empty landscape. Crossroads I come awake. Miranda says something nice to me, or something I think is nice. I was dreaming of home, the view of the mesa-like mountains, grey-green trees a forefront to golden stone cliffs. Not gone two days I already miss it. Maybe Miranda wasn’t mumbling something nice, for the car is parked in the dusty car park of a roadside takeaway. She’s already halfway to the door, and I have to scrabble around for my wallet. I’m not wearing my watch, something that bugs me still, but I told her that I would not wear it while we were on holidays. She’s always going on about how my life is ruled by the time. So, to prove to her wrong, as she is, I’ve resolved to not wear my watch for the duration. I look silly with a little white band of skin around my wrist. I wonder what time it is? My wallet is in the glove box, where I put it. Sometimes I forget to take it out of my pocket and sit on it. I’m one of those people who keeps change in the wallet itself, not in my pocket, so sitting on it is quite uncomfortable. I know Miranda likes to keep loose change either in her bag or in the ashtray. Why would you put money in an ashtray? You need your money in your wallet; imaging carrying an ashtray around for when you needed change. I guess it’s handy to have some in the car, though. Miranda has gone into the shop. I lock the car because she’s taken the keys as usual. “Howdy,” says a truckie in passing. I can tell he’s a truckie because he’s wearing a blue singlet, black shorts and boots. I’m told it’s bad to stereotype people, but I can’t help it. If somebody asks me to think of an accountant, I get this mental picture of a man with a white shirt, black pin-stripe trousers and a brightly-coloured tie. This isn’t a stereotype, it’s just how accountants dress. The truckie is the same, they just all happen to dress, out of pure coincidence probably, in a blue singlet and black shorts. “How you going,” I reply, but I’ve taken too long again. He’s halfway back to his big black rig. Sometimes I just don’t know what to say to some people, they say something so normal and my mind blanks out for a second, and by the time I recover, it’s too late. The story of my life, I presume. As I walk into the takeaway, I reel at the smell of hot fried food. It’s just like walking into the shop on our corner back home. I have to admit I am a sucker for hot fried food, against Miranda’s better judgement, of course. She’s up at the counter with a chocolate ice cream in one hand and what appears to be a salad roll in the other. “What time is it?” I ask her. “About five,” she replies vaguely, atop the waitress behind the counter, who mumbles “Four forty-two.” Miranda says to me something that she always says in these situations. “You buy the Cornetto and I’ll just have the bottom.” “No, you have it. I think I’ll have a choc-mint one.” “I can’t eat all this.” “Buff could eat that, and she’s only a dog. You’re much bigger, more room to fill.” I’m waving my hands around in circles, trying to convey the difference in size. It’s not working. “It’ll make me fat.” “One gram of chocolate equals one kilogram of fat. Oldest law in the universe.” I grin because Miranda hates it when I tease. I turn to the waitress. “Can I get some fish and chips with chicken salt thanks.” “Just on the chips?” She asks. “No,” I say, picking up a pack of orange Tic-Tacs. “On the fish too, thanks. And can I have some lemon? Just a couple of dollars of chips, and two or three of whiting.” Outside, a truck’s air-brakes bleat into the evening silence. Miranda is giving me on of those looks. “You should be eating healthy food.” “Fish is healthy, being white meat,” I say. “And chips are potatoes- they’re healthy.” It’s the line I always fall back on. I’m smiling because I’m happy. She’s not about to be sucked into that one again. She just continues to give me that look. I think it’s the reason I married her, that look. I’ve never doubted my decision, that’s for sure. I walk over the freezer and pick out a honeycomb flavour Choc Wedge. I wink at Miranda. Finally she smiles. The Morning After Something I’ve never been able to convince Miranda of is the fact that I can’t stand TV in the morning. The radio either. She has an incessant habit of turning the wretched thing on first thing, and turn it up loud so she can hear the news while she makes herself a cup of tea. “I was having a nice dream,” I call out to the hall, wondering if I close my eyes that I may again return to the surreal world inside my head. “Sorry,” I think I hear her call out from downstairs. She must have turned it down because now I can only just hear a burble of noises, like listening to a dinner party from out in the garden. “Can you at least shut the door?” I call out to Miranda, fully knowing that I’ll never get back to sleep. Miranda normally takes the opportunity to say something along the lines of ‘It’s time for you to get up anyway’ but today she hasn’t. Why hasn’t she? Why is today so special? Is it our anniversary? No. And it’s not my birthday. It’s not Miranda’s birthday either. I would certainly remember that. The natural progression of the morning is for Miranda to wake me, then for me to complain about it, then for Miranda to somehow force me out of bed. But this day is different. I wonder why? I decide to call out again. “What’s wrong? Do you need a hand with something?” There’s no answer. Miranda remains silent. I can still hear the TV, but the volume is down. Maybe I’m getting paranoid. Maybe she’s just letting me sleep in. We are on holiday, after all. I’m just being obnoxious, is all. The kettle begins it morning whine. As if the TV didn’t wake me, the daily whine of the kettle is far greater alarm than any clock or radio. “I’ll never get back to sleep,” I say to the room. The kettle is still crying out in its shrieking crescendo. “Miranda?” Finally I hear the kettle release it’s cry, but the silence is replaced almost immediately with a screech from Miranda herself. “Shit!” I hear, and then a metallic clatter and a splash. I’m out of bed, the sheet around my waist, like that. In the kitchen, steam is rising from the tiles, and kettle lies cracked on the table. “What happened?” Miranda has her hand under the cold tap. “I wasn’t paying attention. The steam burnt my hand.” “Are you okay?” I ask, realising that she is not. “I’ll be okay.” “Let me see,” I say, but she has wrapped her hand in a wet Chux. “I’ll be okay,” she reminds me. “You should keep it under the cold water for a while, or it could blister.” “I said I’m fine.” She gives me an irritated look, and walks out to watch the TV. “I’ll get you a bowl of icy water, then.” I don’t get a reply, so I start to fill a saucepan with cold water, and get some ice from the freezer. When I’ve put the ice in the saucepan, I take it out to her. “What’s so special on TV, then?” “Shhh!” I put the saucepan of water in front of her and manoeuvre her hand into it. “What’s on?” Miranda says to me “Turn it up a bit.” I shrug and walk over to the TV. On the screen, a man with a microphone is standing in front of a very large grey dome. I can see police helicopters and fire crews working in the background. I turn up the volume. Rare to early morning news, the man on the TV surprises me with his story: “…in any depth. You can see the dome itself is without any visible lines or markings. I’ve just heard reports from fire officials on the site that the metal appears to be a thin, seamless material. Apparently the whole surface of the object is a single sheet of metal. How this is possible, nobody is sure. Preliminary reports also suggest that the metal is resisting the methods employed by the fire crews of cutting their way in. It appears, Joanne, that the metal itself is impervious to their attempts to cut it, although the fire crew did have limited success with their heavy duty equipment.” The scene switches back to a studio, where a panel of grey-haired old men is assembled beside a prim blonde reporter. “I see. So how about the people trapped in the building itself? What kind of attempt has been made to free those trapped inside the grey sphere? If the metal cannot be cut, how can the volunteers gain access to the building? From my vantage point, Rod, The sphere appears to have intersected the building. How is that possible?” “Well, Joanne. That remains a mystery to this moment, however the rescue teams are working round the clock with the city planners to find another way into the building.” Then, as the reporter held a finger to his ear and listened to some untelevised voice, I ask Miranda “What’s going on?” She doesn’t turn to look at me, just stares aimlessly at the TV. “I’m not sure. They say the great big grey sphere appeared there sometime last night. They think it’s some kind of new military experiment. Stupid Americans, can’t why think of anything else?” “What do you mean by appeared?” Miranda’s voice is almost never this quiet. “I don’t know. It just appeared there stuck into an apartment building, as if someone has cut a whole section of the city out and put it there instead. People went to bed last night as normal and this morning there it was. There’s people trapped inside the building. Look!” “My god,” I hear the CNN reporter say. “The size of this thing can’t be relayed through your sets at home. It must be at least fifty, sixty metres high, and from that last report, the grey metal surface actually extends both inside the building and under ground. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it appears that this grey ball has somehow materialised inside the apartment building, trapping hundreds of people inside the apartment…” I’m still by the TV, so I grab the remote, which is sitting on top of the TV, and I mute the sound. Miranda protests. “No,” I say, putting her hand back in the cold water. “You have to keep it in there or it will blister.” She gives me that irritated look again, takes the remote from my hand and removes the mute, but thankfully leaves her hand in the water. She’s acting very strangely this morning. She normally has the TV on for ‘company’, and I don’t think I can remember when she’s been so obsessed with a single strange news story that she would burn herself on the kettle. I’m actually worried about her this morning. I wander back to our bedroom, and clamber into bed. The sheets have gone cold. Questions Arising I don’t think I’ve ever quite gotten the hang of holidays. I’m used to working day in day out. I’m a nine to fiver for sure; the drive home through the traffic is enough to calm my nerves after a long day. Most people I know hate driving through the heavy afternoon traffic, but I like it because you can concentrate on using your hands and feet to drive, which leaves the mind open to other things. Miranda tells me to concentrate when I drive many times, but I find I can just set my mind at the task of staying on the road, and then think about other things. She doesn’t believe me when I say so, but I can. At home anyway. Out here in the middle of nowhere, all I can do is wait. I don’t like fishing. Miranda’s brother always wants me to go fishing with him, and I do, because I like him. But fishing isn’t a great pastime; all you seem to do is waste a whole lot of time doing nothing. You don’t even have to work up a sweat. Well, I don’t at any rate. I enjoy walking, but you can only walk so much. I’m walking up a fairly steep trail today, because I want to see what the little white tower with the blue circle at the top of the mountain is that I can see from our bedroom window. Yesterday after Miranda’s incident with the hot kettle, she and I talked and wandered around, and lying in the afternoon sun on our bed I noticed it up there in the distance. So today I’ve left Miranda to her book and am taking the long walk. These last few nights there have been a lot of meteorites. I saw a few go over last night, one large one lit up the whole sky, and we could hear it rumbling like distant thunder. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard anything like it. They say on the documentaries that sometimes if the meteor is big enough it can whistle as soon as you can see it, the noise generated by its magnetic field. I don’t know if that’s right; light moves faster than sound, and most meteorites burn out while they’re still hundreds of kilometres up. The planes that go overhead fly a few kilometres above the ground, and their sound still carries on long after they’re gone. Scientists are always discovering new things, so I guess they’re right. They know what they’re talking about, even if I don’t. I am wondering what the difference between a meteor and a meteorite is. I can never remember which is which. Asteroids are big things in space, and meteors are what you call them when they fall, and meteorites are if they hit the ground. Something like that. I trip over a half-buried root, and graze my knee. The little tower at the top of the hill isn’t a little tower, it’s just a pole with a round blue or black circle on top. I guess it must be some kind of marker for navigation or surveys. It might even be a seismic station or something. Those things are usually out in the middle of nowhere. I keep walking towards it; the trail goes on past it, but I’m staring to get hungry, and I don’t want Miranda having to throw away my lunch because I’m not there to eat it. It’s only a kilometre or so away, so I’ll just go up there, then I can go home. If it’s a seismic survey station may I shouldn’t be going near it, because it might upset their graphs. I know they can pick up a minor earthquake on the other side of the world, so me walking around on the ground nearby would upset it if it’s that sensitive. But then again, the sound of the meteorites or meteors or whatever they are called would have shaken it around. I guess it doesn’t matter after all. I keep on towards it. I’m standing in front of the pole, It’s maybe two metres high with a dark blue circle riddled with holes welded on top. There are a few names and initials scratched into the paintwork, but other than that it’s just a pole on a mountain. It’s just a marker. Well I guess this answers my questions. I turn around and the first thing I see is a big grey dome down in the next valley, like the top half of a sphere stuck in the ground. Miranda’s father owns this mountain, and that valley, as well as the house we’re staying in, and I don’t think she’s mentioned the big grey dome before. I’ll have to ask her what it is when I get back. Worldly Affairs I’m eating my egg and salad roll when the helicopters arrive. Miranda told me once that the power companies use helicopters to fly all the way along the power lines looking for broken insulators or leaning poles. The big lines that run through these hills are inaccessible to most vehicles, and the choppers are much faster. I saw one while we were driving here the other day. It flew right past the car, maybe five metres above the power line. I’m still chewing my sandwich, and I’m seated at the table, looking at the local paper but not reading it. Miranda has gone back into town to get some milk and a few other things. On the page in front of me I can see pictures of the big grey dome things that have popped up all over the world. Nobody has any ideas whatsoever what they are, or how they were placed in the ground. I just look at them. I look up, surprised, because I can hear the engines of the ’copters winding down, as if they’ve landed. I put the sandwich down, and scoop up a Tim Tam from the packet on the table, and then head for the front door. There’s a great big black helicopter sitting out on the grass in front of the house, and another white one about the land a little down the road. I break of half of the chocolate biscuit with my teeth, and walk out the door and down towards the flying vehicles. I’ve never seen helicopters up close, and these ones are big; much bigger than the one we saw chasing the power lines, and these ones are full of people. I can see at least six heads bobbing inside the first one. Waves of heat distort the air behind the choppers. The grass and flowers are being blown flat. I hope Miranda doesn’t see them. The door opens, and I take another bite of the biscuit, this one smaller than the first in the vague hope that if I eat it in smaller chunks, there will be more to it. I can go through a packet of these things in a single sitting – I love chocolate. A man steps out of the helicopter and is followed by a couple more figures. He’s an official looking person – the grey suit blowing away any doubt there. I know he’s not an accountant because he’s not wearing a tie, and I know he’s not a politician because he has a mean-looking face. He’s wearing a white polo shirt under his coat, and dark sunglasses. He’s flanked by a middle-aged woman wearing army field greens, and a young blonde-haired guy with a pony tail, glasses, a goatee and wearing denim jeans. I hate to stereotype, but I’m guessing a computer nerd of some sort. I wander out to meet them, biscuit in hand. The woman steps forward, smiles nicely. She’s pretty. “Are you the owner of the land adjacent to the rear of Mount Hopper?” she says, and I flounder for a moment, wondering where Hopper mountain is. I put the remaining portion of Tim Tam in my mouth and realise I should have answered instead. “You mean this one,” I say, recalling yesterday’s trip up to the white pole on the hill, and point in that direction. I’ve tried to swallow the biscuit as is, and it’s stuck in my throat. I hear the other helicopter’s motor slowing down. “Yes,” she replies, and smiles at me. “No. My wife does. Well, actually, her father does. We’re here for a holiday. Is this about that big grey sphere thing?” “What do you know about it?” “Only that it’s there,” I say, knowing now that it’s not something Miranda could have answered even if I’d remembered to ask her about it. I recall the pictures in the paper from a moment ago. Suddenly all of my freshly-discovered relaxation begins to dissolve. The world finds me again, or something. I think I’m happy about it. “Have you seen it, or been inside it?” Says the man in the grey suit. I’m not sure what he means by ‘inside’. “No. I only saw it from the hill.” “When was that?” “Yesterday, about lunchtime. I was hiking up the hill to see the little white tower thing. I saw it and thought it was just a shed or something.” The man doesn’t seem to like that at all. He seems agitated by what I’ve said, even though I’ve really said very little. The computer nerd doesn’t appear to have heard anything. He’s preoccupied with a little grey device in his hand. “Or something?” says the grey suit. I’ve started to cough; the Tim Tam residue in my throat becoming too irritating to ignore. “What?” The woman interrupts him before he can speak again. I’m terrible at reading people. I don’t know what is going on anyway, or who these people are. All this stuff couldn’t have happened at a worse time, either. My lunch is grumbling at me from down there in my stomach. I think it wants more. For a silly moment I wonder if I should call my stomach Oliver. It seems to burble away happily to itself after I manage to swallow the rogue Tim Tam. Amazingly enough, I haven’t missed what the woman has said. She asked me whether I would like to take a ride up and see the dome. “Take a ride? You mean in that?” I say, pointing at the black thing out on the grass. The grey suit leans back and says something to her. I can’t read his lips. I get this impression from them that they know I can't. I’m not getting many good vibes from that man, he’s actually a little bit scary. She isn’t really smiling like she was before, but I’m still getting good vibes from her. Miranda would be saying (if I ever told her stuff like this) that it has to do with her body language. She sometimes goes on about that kind of thing, and even thought it’s really interesting stuff, I just can’t get the hang of what she’s on about. I think I’ll stick to my vibes, for now. One day I will understand Miranda. “We’ll take the other unit,” she says to me, smiling again. “Sure,” I say, and it then hits me. Unit equals Helicopter. I’m ok now. “I’ll have to leave a note for Miranda.” “Don’t worry about that,” she says, “These guys are going to stay here for a while. They’ll be here when your wife comes back, so they will let her know what’s going on.” I wish somebody would let me know what was going on. I’m feeling excited. “All right then. I’ve never been in a helicopter before.” “It’s easy,” the woman says, and I’m glad I’m trusting my vibes because they’re all good so far. “We can go now if you’re ready.” I nod, and then we’re walking side by side back towards the second helicopter. I look at the grey suited man but he’s talking on a phone, or it must be a radio because cell phones don’t work out here. “What about them?” “No, they’ll stay here and organise the base camp. It’s just us.” Flights of Fantasy We walk for a bit. I’m thinking about lunch, because I don’t think it’s sitting right in my stomach at the moment and I’m not sure that bouncing around in a helicopter, if it’s anything like a small plane, is going to be good for me. I’m also thinking about what the hell is going on. I haven’t got a clue what the grey ball is, I mean I only looked at it for a couple of minutes yesterday and then I forgot to ask Miranda about it. It’s obvious that it’s not something she would know about because of what I saw on CNN and in the paper this morning (which is yesterday’s anyway so maybe the scientists have worked out what they are now). Suddenly I rear backwards – there’s a hand on my shoulder and I can see my reflection in the glass bubble on the front of the helicopter which is about half a metre away now. The lady says “Slow down, you were about walk into it. You’re looking a little lost there.” “Sorry,” I say automatically, and then wonder if it’s an appropriate word. “I guess I wasn’t paying much attention – again. I’m good at that.” “Well start paying attention now, because if you’ve never been up before then this is going to be an adventure.” This is another one of those times where I know there’s a second meaning to what she’s just said, like it the kind of sarcasm you use when you don’t say it sarcastically, but I’m not sure what else she’s saying, or not saying, or whatever. If she’s being sarcastic then she’s really saying it’s going to be dull instead of fun, but I think it will be fun, so maybe she’s not saying it that way. Of course it will be fun – I’ve heard from people at work who have gone on the joyrides in these things at fete’s and things and they’ve loved it. Apparently it’s expensive, so I’ve never gone. I mean, five minutes ago I was sitting down eating lunch and reading about – well ok looking at the pictures of – the big spheres, and now here I am about to get to go up in a helicopter – for free – and get to see one of them in person. Wow. Anyway I don’t think she was being sarcastic, so I guess she just didn’t say something else that she could have said. Again, one of those things I’m not good at, so I just ignore them. “Ok. What do I do?” I ask her, getting in the chopper beside her and sitting down in the seat to her right. “You have to do up the seatbelt like this,” she says and reaches across me with her left arm to grab a seatbelt that I’m sitting up against. Her hair is nice and smells like the shampoo that Miranda uses, and bits of her press up and down me as we struggle to get into the seatbelt, which is kind of weird and I’m not sure if I like it. Its funny but I’m just trying to get into this seatbelt that comes down over my shoulders and around my middle, and she’s only trying to help me into it, but since she smells like Miranda and she’s pressing up against me and we’re breathing on each other and smiling and Miranda isn’t here then it’s… just a little weird that’s all. I’m not doing anything wrong, but some of me feels like I am. I’m in my seatbelt now so that’s ok. She says “Now you take the headphones and put them on. It’s so we can hear each other and the pilot while we’re in the air.” I make a half-smile at her and the suddenly I’m really quite tense about all this. I take the headphones she’s offering me and put them on, and fiddle with the microphone so it’s not poking me in the mouth. I’m actually sitting in a helicopter, strapped in, with headphones on about to take off from home without Miranda knowing where I am with people I don’t know. I could be being kidnapped without even knowing. My hands are balled into fists but I can’t seem to make them relax. The engines are starting! I don’t even know their names! “I’m really sorry but I don’t know you’re name.” I say, holding the microphone near to my mouth. I can’t hear what I’m saying but maybe that’s the whine of the engines. I look over to the woman but she laughing at me, and reaching down somewhere between the seats. She pulls out her hand and in it there’s a headphone plug. She reaches up the a panel on the back of the seats in front of us and plugs it into a socket and throws a blue switch, which lights up. Instantly the sound of the engines isn’t so loud, and I can hear her voice. “It helps if you plug it in.” Ok that makes sense. “How come I can hear you so well? Has it got that noise cancelling thing like on mobile phones?” “Yeah,” she says, her voice eerily vague in my ears, coming from both directions at once even though she’s on my left. “It helps cut out the noise of the engines while we’re in flight. You’re looking a little wild around the eyes.” She is so relaxed that I actually soak up a bit of it. Finally I’m able to unball my hands and stretch them a couple of times. The whole frame of the helicopter is vibrating now, and the engines are panning out into a steady noise. “I’ll be okay.” Oh my god! That’s the ground down there! We’ve just taken off and it was just straight up, like somebody picking up the chair I was sitting on. I can feel the blood draining from my head and pooling in my arms and legs. I’m actually flying in a helicopter! I hear a noise and it’s the sound of me whooping out loud and laughing. “It’s really something isn’t it?” I hear in my headphones, but it’s just a background to what I’m seeing outside. There’s trees falling away, and the ground getting bigger, or more of it. I can’t see the house because it out over the other side of the helicopter, but I can see the road here and there through the trees, and the horizon which is getting a little further away all the time, and out there beyond the forest is the farmlands and the hills. It’s all so amazing, more amazing that just seeing it from the top of the hill yesterday because we’re moving. The helicopter tilts forwards and I hold on to the arm rests but the helicopter just speeds forward and I’m pressed back into the seat with a rush of acceleration and adrenaline. “This is so amazing,” I am whispering, and I turn to look at the woman, who I find to me looking at me with a large smile on her face. “I didn’t know we had taken off until we were up over the trees. It was just whoosh –” I indicate with both arms. “Straight off the ground.” “I love flying,” she says and turns to look out the window. There was something I was going to ask her before we took off but for the life of me I can’t remember what it is now. Look at all the trees! You can almost see into the next valley. I love this! Fact Finding
Empty Bored. Alone. Tick-tick-ticking watch. Cold. Cement. Brick. Glass. Steel. Birds. Clouds. Road. Grass. Sun. Solitary. Forgotten. Recollection. Repetition. Concentration. Waiting.
Night Mist ©1990 Tim St.Clair Voices called through a swirling mist, dusty white on a black road. The brightness of the stars was hazed by the deep blanket of eerie cloud. Streetlights flickered on and off as the unused roads decayed, the clatter of horses’ hooves somewhere against the deafening silence all around. The stranger wandered alone in the streets, deep blue-grey eyes glinting as a peircing shaft of pure white light flickered on his presence. An eddying wind swept under the fog, tossing and turning it in a flurry that breifly exposed the abandoned roads, breif, as it was quickly lost again under the misty air. The voices wavered and dissapeared slowly, as if the speaker had moved off out of range. The strange foreigner only remained, alone, unwanted. The blond was beautiful, even lush. She wore a Kaftan, silky black in the nights’ lurid atmosphere. Wavy blonde shoulder-length hair cascaded down the sleek, unmarked body, gently flowing in the gentle cleft between slim shoulders. She stepped out of the smoky haze of a red-black environment- the Ming Wan chinese restaurant- into the strange and forboding world of the silent fog that lay beyond. A ghoslike atmosphere had settled across the entire settlement, the fog quietening even thought. Far, far above lost somewhere in the unknown sky, a snowy white creature gently glided on noiseless wings. The owl continued on with its uncomprehendible mission to be lost in the distance. The stranger meandered through the whiteness, through the shattered beams of light that sliced through the silence. Walking uphill, the shadowy form moved without deliberate speed, without destination in mind, aimless. Footsteps echoed along the dark road, the sound of shoes breaking the mind-shattering silence. A small white owl drifted calmly down from the night above to land softly on a high gutter. Its steady eye watched as the two-legged land animal slowly passed by. Her footsteps played rhythm against the strange ground, strange against the unnerving fog. She walked a on a while, then turned down a dim and broken alleyway and was swalloed up by the cold night air. She stopped, listened. Silence, silence. Slow, measured footsteps. Silence. Her lush form again moved off within the night. Somewhere ahead a light flickered, broken, unattended. Shadows slowly moved as her form walked up the gentle slope of the uneven road. Against the cold and wet stones that made up the high walls either side of the road, shadows played an eerie game, thrusting beams of light and blotches of absolute black all about her through the wet slime of air. She first saw two eyes, blue-grey, under that perfect face, short brownish hair dangling down, shiny and wet. The strange man wore a thick overcoat which covered his body all the way to the polished black shoes, unmarked hands, short neck. She smiled a warm smile, as if is in mistaken recognition. He smiled back, an even smile, white teeth gleaming through the dark night. The cool wind swept apart the blanket of haze that surrounded her body, exposing her to his sight, exposing him to hers. They stood silently admiring each other until the angered fog once again separated them. Each sighed, looked back only once, and continued on without incident.
Untitled So, so slowly, it was ever so slowly, The creaking door jerked open On awaiting victims, serene and lowly, It was employment for they were hoping. Their horror was great, their chances slim, The boss looked them straight in the eye. And with their fading hopes so dim, Some so weak, they hoped to die. The lucky got in, the misfortunes out, Back to the jobless queue. But for the fortunate some, without a doubt, It was off for the job to do. And so the group went, their working lives set, To rigorous tasks yet to try. They became part of the great interdependable net Of the job which would become their lives. Now let us look-see at one, two or three Of both the employed and not. It seems that a worker you need to be Or else you’ll be forgot. The forgot will, or will not, find another job, In which they can spend their lives. Their work can become their heartbeat-like throb, Or their bad luck becomes their demise. The worker gets paid in money and friends, And soon he can get his new, big car, Yet to be tied into a knot with no ends Is quite, quite a big hassle, by far. A knot with no ends? but what does it mean? To be tied up in work, friends and plain life? The worker is happy, or so we have seen, And he seems but in no strife. But worry he does, for family, for sure, Is there enough to pay the bills? Money is still a problem, rent, rates and more In the job his life quickly fills. Now, good listeners, the coin has two sides, And the workers are at home on one. Now how say we turn over and realise That the unemployed do not suffer this fun. And so for a job the unemployed try, And dole money collected as they shuffle through, And so slow, it seems they all get by, And life is just something to do. ‘Why bother’, they cry, ‘Why try at all? There’s no hope for us here.’ And so the weak will stumble and fall Into a miserable life of fear. But so the jobless, they are the free To do what they wish, when and how. As long as it costs less than the dole can decree They enjoy the here and the now. And so, gentle reader, dear listener and all, You must hear what there is to say. And hear it with ears and eyes and all For it may change even as we do this day. Is it so bad to out of the Job- To live lifes’ life as it comes? Where worries are nil, except for a bob To shelter and fill hungry tums? Or is the best to work life to a stump And die like a dry, shrivelled-up Date? And to save the earnings into a useless lump Of cash to be spent far, far too late. The job force has changed, the unlucky too, They’re now all in the same boat. Those with jobs rushed, the rest nought to do, But sit down- through life they can float. I take, dear follower, dear reader and you, The easy way out in this life. I sit unemployed, with enough money for food And, well, just too much for my wife.
The Hermit The Phone. Do I want to go out? To a movie perhaps? Leave here? Go somewhere? But today is so special. Tonight I am here. There is nobody here tonight. What do I want to do? What am I doing? What more could I do? I turn out all the lights in the house, Switch off the TV and radio if they’re on, Turn it all off and just sit there waiting. Waiting for dark. Looking at the sky in it’s crimson glory at twilight. Gazing up at Venus as it pops into the air. I take a chair out beyond the garden and sit there. I sit there in the cooling air, Watching the dark arise in the east. Sitting in the balmy blue under a wan moon That washes filtered light across a polaroid landscape. Cooling off in the night sun, Watching the lights of a town twinkle in the thick air, Dreaming of reaching up to the stars with my hand And picking out the one that I fancy, Then place it on a necklace or ring and give it to one I love So it gleams through the dark and vanishes under yellow day. Then I sing a song that’s in my mind. And sing until the songs are done. Then I know I am cold and alone. So I take the chair into the house and turn on a dim light And sit and wait for the sun to rise, thinking of a star. The Day. Sun through the clouds in beams of hazy love. Birds in a birdbath, cuddling, quivering. Frosty ice on composting grass, crackling under the feet. House on the land, upright, stunted, sharp. Song in my mind, gracious in its calling, Set my mind at rhythm, thinking of a star. Zephyr flutter, a leaf falls. Autumn. Falling of leaves, curling of a flower. Cold pulse of a reptile lying in hidden trace. Cold hard seat resting in a garden- Staring upwards, waiting. Eyes, searching, staring. The Phone. The TV. The Radio. Dormant. The house. The trees. The birds in splashing song. Window of the mind, In hue of Earth and Sky and Air and Sea, Waiting to call, to hear, to see. Loving in slow motion, glazed and smudged with time, The giant Eye of God stares down eternally.
Then, she screamed. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen it before, just that, well, not this close, that was all, and it had crept up on her, after all. The- thing- was rather larger than what she had imagined, quite a bit larger, actually. Of course, it had to be, she had only seen in while it trundeled across the flat horizon, a twisted silhouette against the twilight sky. It had, sort of a turquoise cast to it, like it was under blue light, yet the noon-day sun was unblotted by even a whimper of cloud. Actually, it reminded her, funnily enough, of that paint set that she had spilt so many years ago (when she was ‘little’, which seemed a little strange. She was twelve that month.) and the paint had sort of mingled with the carpet in her room. That was about the colour of the great thing wafting aimlessly away. When she called it back, its silly looking head turned (what else could she call it. It sort of resembled a head, or maybe more a- hmmm, it was a bit like the top of a blender, a square thingy plonked on top of a shaggy lump which could almost be described as the things body.) and revealing a hansomely disfigured face. (A face? Who could tell under all that shag?) It was sudden, her decision, and the classified the thing: Thing. It was a perfect description. What more could describe the- thing- than ‘Thing’? She would, of course, think of a real name to call it, but for now, ‘Thing’ was it. “Thing. Come back,” she hollered hoarsely after the poor vague turquoise beast as it dragged its way back from the little girl. “Come here.” The from under the fur, somewhere near its top, two little eyes lit up, like a torch in a dark room. They shone out, orange, (What else? What more dastardly colour could they be? Orange? Gah!) from the wonderous thing. Two black dots in each eye made it rather hard to look the thing in the face, especially when the four little dots all moved separately, as if the poor beast was cross-eyed. It, however, managed to make its way back to the spot were the little girl was sitting, and even managed to sit, (well, what else could she call it. It appeared to have no legs, only a number of wormy like runny things under it which acted as feet. The creature, she could see, was not all turquiose, it seemed to merge blue nearer the base, but maybe this was just it’s shadow.) “So how are you?” The question was really silly, imagine asking a thing with no other name than a ‘Thing’, shaggy and the rest, any question, in plain English. And it was no longer there. As a matter of fact, the Thing had vanished, as if it was never there. The little girl blinked, as if to reassure herself that it was actually there to begin with. Obviously, it could not have run away, not with those legs- ah- feet perhaps? Whatever. Just to startle her? Perhaps a little joke? Whatever it was, the Thing sat gaily behind the little girl. (Where else.) No shaggy ball of fur would be anywhere else. The girl sat and stared at it, for a moment puzzled, then said “I give up. What are you? Who are you? Et cettera and so on and so forth.” Her hazel-green eyes were direct. Well, it was something. At least it responded. Now, where had he produced all that from? He had hands, real arm-type things that dangled from his upper body with fingery-like suction caps all over then. And he ate, of all things, rocks. Now rocks were hard to come by in the area, as a matter of fact, in near desert-like conditions, where the wafting sands shifted and meandered with the breeze and little drabs of grass clung to the wide cracks of the earth, there was not a rock for some vast distance- in any directrion. And Thing here had produced one and was eating it, of course, out of nowhere, after vanishing and reappearing behind the stunned little girl. Thing burped. The earth rumbled. Rather severly. The girl got up, dusted off the layers of packed dirt heaped on her and stared uncomprehending at Thing. Then she laughed, her tiny white teeth exposed to the afternoon sun. She had never heard it, apart from that burp. It was laughing too, the fur nearer to its eyes glowed a momentary pink, then returned to ‘normal’ colours. “What’s your name?” It gruffed, trying to mimic the girls speech, unfailingly, of course. Thing definately did not look like the sort to talk like the girl, let along talk. Maybe more grunt or roar, or just sit and stare into, well, whatever it stared at. It was an automatic response. “Lily.” Then realised the possibilties. “You can talk! Oh! I just thought you were-” She was cut off abruptly. “Lily. Lily. Lily. Lily.” Over and over Thing tried the name. Different pitches, accents- even backwards- over and over. Then he started again to walk away, still saying the name over and over again. Not far from where he and Lily had been, he vanished. Fortunately, the repetition of the name also stopped. As a matter of fact, everything was dead silent. It was like everything had stopped. The more the girl named Lily thought about it, the more she realised that all the time she had been with Thing, everything else was silent, there had not been a sound. But thing had vanished, and slowly she began to hear the scraping wind return. Thing had vanished... There was something about Thing disapearing like that... Lily was not to be fooled this time. She spun around several times, trying to locate the shaggy thing. She even looked up in the air, just to be cautious. But, thing had gone. “I saw a big shaggy thing out there,” Lily was vaguely pointing in the direction she had come. Home was a small house, occupied by her parents and sole sibling, an older brother. It was to him that she spoke. “A cow?” he mused. “No a thing, like a big hairy monster, but more just like a thing.” “Oh, as if! A monster, eh?” He laughed, a mocking laugh. Lily hated when he didn’t believe her. Which, realistically, was all the time. But she still persisted with it. For this, though small, she had an idea of how to get him back. Not lasting and only a sentance long. He had crossed her one too many times to get away with it any more. Still, she didn’t want to hurt him in any way. She had a big heart, one could say. It was dinnertime when the brother, Julian, told his parents about Lily’s ‘monster’. “Oh, that’s another thing,” He spurted a mouthfull of cabbage back to his plate, blushing as it happened. “Lily said she saw a big, shaggy monster lurking outside, with horns and a dragons tail.” Exaggerate, why don’t you? Oh yeah, why not add the big motor-bike he rode and the evil red eyes, oh and don’t forget the bandanna and leather jacket. There, that should fit your description of a real monster. It was on the distant horizon by then. Thing, she could see it clearly by the setting sun, turned and waved its strange hand once, and was gone, forever. “Oh yeah, Julian. As if!” The forteen-year-old mocked. “Mum don’t listen to him, he’s only trying to annoy me...” Dinner continued. Someone burped. The house seemed to shake. Lily looked smugly at Julian. She raised one eyebrow, turned and left.
The Day of Wrath The Day of Wrath is at hand, The Mighty One will sweep the land. The Lonely One will show himself, And havoc replace all the lands heath. The Mighty One will fall down, And the Lowly Ones will not be found. The Unseen One will be shown And the seeds of life will be sown. The Lord of light will come and then The World of White shall shine again. The Prince of Black will be denied So the Children of Peace will override. The Peace of God, which for so long Has evaded the entire human throng, Will shine forth from each one soul And peace will reign, as fortold. But the Evil Man and his money with Will bring corrupt activities To the World of Light, the Place of Love And shadows will soon be back above. The world will die and man within, The peace will fall and fall to sin, The Silent One will shout out no more And the world will be what it was before.
The Flowers’ Bloom. Where there were two there now stands one. Alone, silent the one stands to one side. He stood and watched the throng pass by. ‘It’s a race,’ He thought. ‘Though to what end?’ Another one stepped slowly back into the crowd To be pushed away - lost into the unseen future. The one stood alone - watched the race. ‘A race, yes. They go this way, they go that. Pushed and shoved, stumbling blindly in circles.’ Some fell to the merciless feet of others - Trampled into the void - trodden into the forgotten past. The one sat peacefully on the ground - the multitudes pressing on. Finally he lay down on the unmarked ground - Soil and grass still where ‘they’ had not stood. The ground was a mat of life, simple - uncaring. ‘The grasses and frowers - they do bustle through life. They live simply, uncaring. They have no future, no past. They live a season, then die an unmoved death. ‘The crowds move on towards the future together, writing a history as they speed towards their doom. ‘If there was one not a part of their existance, That one must have no future, therefore no past. To them, that one would not - never had - existed. He is not dead. He cannot be dead if he never lived.’ He sits alone, the multitudes of self histories Written before his eyes. Then he understood: ‘One who has no past cannot be p art of the past. One who knows the past of the others cannot share their future for he has no past.’ He lay contentedly, watching thier slow demise. He shut his eyes and thought no more. He listened no more to the endless noise of man. He felt no longer the gentle buds supporting him. Yet he smiled - a knowing smile - He knew his future. He knew his season had finished: He had come to ful bloom. He sighed a last breath and passed unknown into the void.
Bus Trip Pay the driver, an hours journey- Too much, even for a ‘Quality Coach’. A terrible video, who chose it? It doesn’t matter, the video player doesn’t work anyway. A full bus, crammed into the aisles with caches of personal items, As if of a load of refugees fleeing a forlorn city. Seated, moving, the orange curtain drawn. A beautiful reddening sky, clear Heralding a frosty morning, perhaps. An uncomfortable seat, even extended back. Cramped knees- the seat in front crashes back. Pearl of all laughter, soft, sweet. Ringing in the ear, delicate, even sensuous. The bus is not so crowded, the stiff air even sweet. The flowing hair cascading down the crevice- Cleft in the back, groove between seats- Like a perfect creek ticking rocks in trancing song. Skin of a fairy tale, unmarked, smooth. Warm radiating out like a soft animal in the lap. Another glance, then a sliver of goosebumps down the spine. A pulsing rhythm- A heartbeat heard by another- under the sleeping sun. The journey complete, too soon, too early. Stiff air returning.
Football That was it. He has not moving anymore The horizons streched away into indefinateness Clouds smudged the pale sky as a golden orb Burned Gentle rays into the field And into Him No. He was definately still against the hard earth There was a motion on the horizon It came towards him, unstoppable, improbable and Graceful He surmised its collision And was right Now he was moving The forgotten pain of impact Was nothing at all compared to Flight Where was the had earth now? He thought Not only moving, he was literally flying Air, gentle air, eddies and streams rushing past A white and blackened body that Floated Without effort, without worry Without control What goes up…
The knot in the wood There he sits, lonely, he’s lonely and still He sits, yes alone and quite still. He takes a long black knife And begins to carve. Yet one more statue of wood One more, cold and dry wood Is lined up neat and straight Perfect in every way. He will shape and manipulate And shave, and manipulate But a slip, a Knot in the Wood She’s held right out in contempt. Now they stare and they point And they mock and they point What is this? This unwanted thing? And he has gained their hate. Yet they move on from his sight And more move into his sight. But the one, he shifts to the side And did watch them go. There he sits, lonely, he’s lonely and still He sits, yes alone and quite still. He takes a long black knife And begins to carve. So alone, the one he forgets Alone, unwanted he mopes. Forgets his ambitions and pride Then takes the final plunge. There he sits, lonely, he’s lonely and still He sits, yes alone and quite still. He takes a long black knife And begins to carve.
Burning Soul Fire apon fire Kill enters mind Hate from fist Into arm and nerve Adrenaline into muscle And blood to bruise Foot kicks knee And body falls down Relent, sorry, Stop! Hate forms for plea Fist ends up blood Nose cracked ease No memory No mercy No reason Fun, satisfaction. Mercy, plea, Love Fist caught in air Foot stopped in flight Love Hate from fist Blood to bruise Forgive Questioning Hate leaves mind Kill becomes Support Love Love
In a flash, it was gone. Waking: The time the dream stops; right then at the crucial point when- The image runs, terrified of a new, gentle light- Flees from the opening eyes that let It in. But the dream goes on, regardless, for a moment longer, transparent images float by, a sound, a smell perhaps; The story unfolds just the little more, silent, as It peers in. In the dream is a picture. A picture of some trees. It is a picture on a wall. A wall in a room. Wood floor, polished, burnished, tarnished. Red walls, old paint peeling and cracking in the corners. A high roof, pressed iron pained old white. A door in the wall, a hallway someplace too, the same. No windows, but a fireplace that is old. And a floorboard is cracked, near to the hearth. Cold, stale air seeps in, moistness apparent. People are in the room. The people are all listening. A group of people sit near the burning fire. One person sits apart, to the back, cold. One person sits opposite, chatting, also cold. Two people are lonely, but together. Light bursts in. Sound pours in. Warmth floods in. Aromas barge in. It, the coming day arrives, And the dream is finally gone.
Dedication to a Friend The pleasure of satisfying a savage instinct, untamed by the ego, is incomparably much more intense than the one of satisfying a tamed instinct. The reason is becoming the enemy that prevents us from alot of possibilities of pleasure. - S.Freud. Look beyond the cross- beyond your vision- Turn into yourself and see. Look beyond the lust of your obsession, And look ahead- at me. Amongst the reaches of your desire and lust, The loneliness and hate. Am I the one that you mistrust Or merely contemplate? Am I the one that hurts you; The one that you desire? Or am I the one that uses you: To hate and not inspire? I didn’t mean to hurt you: To push beyond ‘enough’. But you must ask the question: Is it me you really love?
Photo Album Green. and Blue. and Red. Chemicals so distorted by the negative light, Composite crystals twisted under the dim lights, On sleek paper, shiny paper. Just paper. A house, a car and somebody there- All out of focus, hard-to-see figures- Still, just chemicals. A boat, a car, trees and the sun. All on paper, somewhat enclosed by a plastic sheet. Memories, of a sort. But whose memories? Then more faces. Happy faces, people- Chemical representations of memories; But isn’t the mind just a chemical? Smiles of people known, unknown, happy smiles. Eyes of the people, happy, eager eyes. Eyes that reflect the light. Pages and pages of paper, altered like a memory, Their souls coalescing into the sheen and shine, Glossed over by the plastic retaining sheet. Memories come and gone all remembered on paper, Unable to be remembered in chemical thought, So dissolved onto paper- Forgotten, as it were. Stolen by a book of paper and plastic and card, A book of chemical theives that feast on memories; Photo album.
banal fools!
what did they expect? to find in me
a pot full of fond recollection
overflowing with guilt
insurmountable freedom
stratosphere; above the clouds
taking over the government of a small,
dead
starved
country
oh how? do they think
how? do they act so
banalities! those commonplace linguists
thieves
business houses
number shuffling accountants
credit card companies
what! is mine, anymore
dig, social anthropologists, dig!
dig, man
cool, man
i hate you
you owe me
dig psychological archaeologists, dig!
dig your way all the way to china
(the hole undermines itself)
beach sand is warm
obsessed with geology
there’s nothing in there
i know! i have been there
i know! the holy mother resides there
i know! the fire burns low
the box
the package
the whole god-damned! kit and caboodle
everything
a pot of gold
but black gold, snoozing on the quiescent waters of a misty lagoon
laughter echoes again! as the trapdoor falls shut
what did you not find?
what did you not see?
what you expected?
Please go home now
Deny Yourself Voice # Part: A Verse 1 You Rejected us, You will pay the consequence. You denied yourself To our lnowledge. A Verse 2 You’re an individual. You owe us no respect. You denied yourself To our wisdom. / Chorus A Verse 3 There is no love for you In your lonely world. You denied yourself To our freedom. A Verse 4 We rejected you. We will offer nothing more. We abandoned you For our freedom. B Response I am strong. A You will die. B I will live. A You shall not survive. / Chorus B Response I am strong. A You will die. B I will live. A You shall not survive. A Verse 1 You rejected us, You will pay the consequence. You denied yourself To our freedom. A Response You have no love. B I will die. A You are too weak. B I cannot survive.
HIGH Knocking? Who could be knocking at this hour? A clocks tiny green digital numbers glow above the TV set, the reading just a blur. The TV is muted and figures scurry back and forth in frenzied pandemonium. Andrew slowly rises from his chair and answers the door. “Yes?” In a rather tiring voice, not that he’s tired. Just boaring. Two people at the door, one of each sex. Didn’t say anything, just walk right on in and unmuted the TV before sitting. They don’t speak, nor offer anything like enlightenment, just sit. “Oh. Hi,” Andrew managed. “I’m, ah, Andrew,” He’s not suprised. This is probably just one of those loony dreams where you dream something like this after dozing off. So he smiles, closes the door and then he’s off into the kitchen. Sounds of the TV waft through to him, as of course they would, since the TV’s in the same room as the kitchen extension. He stares over the bench at the duo who are engrossed in the useless display, as if they hadn’t seen anything like it before. “Yeah, and also coming up on After Three, this morning, find out how an angry businessman held up a corner shop with just one magnetic number plate. But right now, sit back and let the Toni Glasconson Experience relax your entire soul. Over to you, Toni.” “Thanks there, Erwin. Hi everybody, this is Toni Glasconson with this weeks stimulating corneal exercises...” Typical TV for a Sunday morning at 3 am. Trash. Junk news that they probably read in People. Or Plain Truth. Or make up from extracts from Reader’s Digest. Stuff like this always sounds like news to lots of people because they read something about it in The World’s Most Read Magazine: Over 17 million copies in 27 languages, and all that. Trash. “’Liz and Fred.” Names? That’s odd, for a couple of druggies or winos or retards on a spree. Losers, perhaps. Just siting, watching TV (with the sound on) and looking really happy too. “Coffee?” “Yeah.” “No.” “White or sugar?” “White, saccharine if you’d got it.” “I said I don’t want any.” Andrew pours hot water into the brown powdery stuff in the bottom of two mugs, then adds a bit of milk and saccarine (he too liked the stuff). Then he takes the cups out and places on in front of the man, Fred. Man, some dream. Drinkin’ me coffee and all. “You here long or just passin’?” Liz askes, taking Fred’s cup and drinking some. “Hot, ’s stuff.” “I live here.” “Oh,” She seems unaware that this she and Fred had walked into this house, not that Andrew had intruded upon their privacy. “So, you’ll be here a while, then? Yeah.” “Lives here, Liz. Like, owns the joint.” “I don’t own it. I rent it. With a friend. He’s not here now. He’s gone down south to visit his Olds.” “Live here and don’t own it. Oh.” She states. Fred takes his coffee from her and drinks lightly. “Yeah. S’hot, right.” “Where you going?” Andrew asks. “Like, are you two passing through or just out or what?” “Going? Man, we’ve been everywhere, now we are going to stay.” Liz replies, as if it were the most simple thing to understand. “Oh,” Yeah, some dream. If this were real... “Well, I gotta get up in the morning and so...” “Yeah, goodnight,” Fred offers. “Where are you going?” says Liz. Fred is sitting at the table still with Liz, talking about god-knows-what to do with some newsgroup sex thing. It is the morning still, but this time it is light with the sun already established and Andrew still wondering what the hell these people are doing in his house. He figures out that he hadn’t dreamed the occurences of a few hours earlier and decides to remain calm and boaring. “Yeah.” Liz was Liz, still. No brain in her head, just a mouth and eyes and all the other stuff. Andrew was eating his cereal and still staring at some hard-to-see green digits on the clock above the TV, which was still going but with muted sound. Finally he gives up, knowing that he didn’t need to know the time anyway. He knew he was late for nothing and so didn’t worry. He was doing quite a bit of not worrying. “Where you going?” He ventured, knowing the answer but trying anyway to get the others to talk about something other than bondage with hamsters. “Going? Man, we’ve been everywhere, now we are going to stay.” Liz. Nope, nothing. Just like a broken record player too. Just keep repeating it over and over and over... Then the door bursts open and in stumbles somebody else that Andrew has trouble finding a name for. He and his little dog, a stupid looking browny mophead of a thing, follow the exactly same path that Liz and Fred had taken: Unmute TV and sit. Then Andrew does his coffee bit without the saccharine this time and goes over the scant conversation with him. Finally, after only seconds of silence, Fred and Mrs Einstein (that seems like a good name for her) start up conversation. They do not know this fellah either and soon the sofa is in uprourious silence again. Well, they had found out that this guys name is Bill. Nice. Here he is, Andrew, surrounded by people with one syllable names and one syllable brains. And he doesn’t, basically, give a shit. When night comes, the house seems full. What, did he have a sign out the front that said ‘Hey, come in and meet absolute strangers and live here too, but only if your name is real short.’ The house is full of people and devoid of thought. Bill and Fred and Liz and Jan and Bob and Gen and and and. The list goes on. The TV has a fairly good day. Recieves a good bout of attention then non attention then somebody else arrives and receives a bit more attention et cettera. Andrew is now sitting on his sofa with x number of people he doesn’t know. He is out of coffee both caf and decaf and saccharine and milk and sugar and food and everything else. Probably toilet paper and tissues and all those little obscure things like toothpaste boxes and baked beans and those little fluffy balls that go inside his bean bag and- everything. The he says “Hi, I’m Drew. Outa coffee. TV there. Have a seat.” Notice he has dropped the ‘An’ from the front of his name. If you can’t beat ’em... “Andrew.” It’s his Flatmate, rentthingie and all that, Nicholas. “Remember me, Andrew? I am Nicholas.” He is extending his hand. There is nobody else in the room, just Nicholas and Andrew. He is waving as if to check whether Andrew is awake or not. “Me, Nicholas. Nic.” It is now that Andrew who is again Andrew, not Drew, flees.
The Selfish Cube A light side, a dark side, a side I can not see. In the corner of a corner, a place in which is me. An image of a consciousness, small and looking strained, A wooden box; within the cube is my soul contained. Locked without a key, hinged without a screw, Glued without a trace, hidden away from you. Pick it up and shake, within it does not sound, Searching for a soul- a piece that can’t be found. An Ice Kingdom; winter within. Locked away; free from Sin. Buried well, routed deep, In for ever to purge and keep. The selfish cube, six sides the same, Eight sharpened corners on which to blame, The hidden truth inside the skin, So similar to the place within.
Smudged Impression On A Window Night as it was was stormy Electric lights browning out suddenly Howl of wind roaring like ocean Fresh smell of rain dripping in Brilliant flashes lighting up the night Fire warming room with orange ripples Bubbling stew in black pot Coffee black against creamy white cup Something banging in distance Bellow from some animal, lost perhaps Smudges on window, tricking downwards Swaying green branch outside Tricking sound of water off roof Both. Voices, mumbling, low under silence White teeth smiling through dimness Coffee cooling and diminishing Bubbling stew in a crucible of taste Squeaky chair, rocking slowly Smell of wet pleasance in air Tiny indigo flowers smiling from vase Green twigs smoking in fire Red hand cut wood are walls Straw lined shingles complete roof Large brown implements adorn fireplace Doors loosely fitting frames Whistling wind through tiny gaps Mosquito whining someplace Pair. Laughter through home Red flames dancing in joy Chair creaking congradulations Coffee spilt on rough wood floor Storm subsiding, building up again Lightning moving back, slowing Lucid fragrance wafting though air Moist atmosphere cooling thought Gratitude with a spoonful of hot stew Smile with a meaning shining though Hard floor but soft understanding Fire low, charred smudges of hot coal Straw mattress inviting company One.
I am the Onion I am a bowl of fruit: There are many flavours to discover, But many are left for mould. I am a tomato: A glazed skin and juicy taste; full of little seeds, But I will pop and tear when in hot water. I am a banana: tall, proud and ready to ripen, But I peel away to reveal a soft interior. I am the citrus: golden, earthly colours so tempting and sweet, But so sour and bitter when peeled away. Through the eyes of a string bag I can see, Looking up at you from a paper bag in the corner. From the masses of sweet and sour stalks of green and white I come. I am the Onion. I have many, many layers that slowly peel and flake. Soothe me and I will flavour your mouth, But cut me and I will whip your eye.
What you are to me. Music I can hear is music to my ear, But what you are is music to my eye. For when you are with me, you are my sanity, Your loving grip slips graciously ’round I. My words for you can describe you not, I really should not bumble like this on, But I would surely die the day I turned to find you’d gone. So I will look you in the eye and say Just exactly what I feel. Then you’ll just look back at me and smile And know that my love for you is real.
Just tell me I saw you in my room. I was there, do you remember? Lying accusingly on the stiff bed, Standing hidden behind the hard door, Staring unemotionally through the pale window. You never knew, you never cared. You come up my road, You follow my so carefully weathered path. You enter my house, You don't even knock. You steal from my richness, You take what is not yours to take, You don't even notice me watching you. I was there, I saw you do it. You never gave me the reason. I handed everything over directly. You never even looked at my giving hand. I offered all I owned, even myself. You took it all, all but me. Why did you do it? Did you not see the face in the window? Did you not see the person who opened the door? Did you steal my world right out from under me? I do not understand this. You take all, even my love, Yet you never give any back. I say your name- All I ask is why?
Exam. Consternation. Waiting. Blinking. Nerves. Fingernail. Stress. Breathing. Sniffing. Relaxing. Recall. Presume. Install. Sleep. Coffee. Breakfast. Pencil. Blank.
1. BOUNTY Montgomery Reuben’s eyes cautiously panned across the bar as he sat. He grimaced; a thousand slits eyed him back. He ordered a straight Bourbon, tipped it down his throat, then ordered another, and did the same. Warm up. Then he ordered one of the house’s cocktails and nurtured it. He had a price on his head, three-quarters of a million credits. At that price he was hardly game for another bounty hunter. Of course, after last night’s little escapade, that would change. He was set to become the galaxy’s number one wanted man. That meant fame, fortune, and a great deal of respect. The way Reuben had it figured, he’d be worth at least ten million. He sat wondering what to do now. Of course, it also meant a great deal of money. Enough to buy his good name back again. Thick red hair obscured his thin, calculating green eyes. The bar was the Outer Hope; classy little joint, the most hip place this side of absolute zero; stood on its own, over the ice. Outside, the ever-present blizzards raged, forever obscuring whatever was out there. The city was a few miles away, covered in its synthetic diamond dome. Some Dexians were caged up, filling in a cluttered background of sounds; music, dance, talk. The air was thick with blue smoke. Reuben reached into a deep pocket in his shabby beige overcoat and pulled out an expensive Cuban cigar, one of his special ones from Earth. Savouring the smell, he bit the end off and proceeded to smoke it slowly, blowing rings over his cocktail. After a while, his eyes found the bartender, who gradually made his way over. “Ratz,” said Reuben, and almost smiled. He nudged the bartenders cybernetic left arm. “Finally got a new one, eh?” Ratz glanced at Reuben as if he did not recognise him, his left eye a milky white compared to his piercing blue right. Ratz was bald and had skin like an old baseball glove. He only just had a moustache, which strangely accentuated the lobeless ears which instantly identified him as of Icanian heritage. “You pulled that stunt last night, Reuben. Heard a lot of people got blown over.” Reuben sat back, a fringe surprised, his voice almost inaudible against a thousand others. “Me, Ratz?” “Find a new sun, Reuben. Get out of the game.” “What game, Ratz?” Asked, his voice perfectly acquiring the mood. His eyes narrowed even further. “You’re half price. Keep in touch, Reuben,” Ratz lifted Reuben’s untouched cocktail from the bar and shuffled away. Reuben knew the call. Ratz had overheard something; knew something like he always did. He had taken his drink, and that meant trouble was too close to even finish it. Without a word more, He stepped off his seat and found his way out, pulling his coat up around his ears against the roaring wind. For a moment at the door he stared into a pair of feminine eyes, a beautiful woman of a race he’d never seen before. Her hair was pure white and flowed easily from above her face to near her slim waist. She wore a single-piece outfit of a blue that perfectly matched her eyes, and rather strangely, accentuated an almost invisible vertical dent cresting the centre of her forehead. Her lips were of a sensual deep blue, her black eyelashes contrasting vividly with her pale-white skin. Reuben held the door open for this strange woman; she turned and seemed to see something in him, deep in his soul, but floated by on those perfect long legs. In the safety of his infra-red resistant windbreaker he made his way off into the swirling white snow, listening to the distant sounds of engines and gunfire. Ratz, as always, had been right. Already the local leo’s or the merc’s were on him. He hit the deck, thinking ‘Shit! They’ve named five. I’m worth at least seven.’ For a moment the blizzard turned orange, and then billowed as the explosion’s shockwave hit. Reuben stayed buried in the relatively warm snow for an hour and a half. Only after windy silence had descended did he finger his transport. 2. ESCAPE “They named five. I’m worth seven at a minimum.” Reuben’s ship, an Andromeda E Class, plodded through the relative safety and comfort of space at a mere one hundred and fifty thousand miles per hour, too slow to even be a pinhead on the scanners. It was slow, but safe. The Andromeda E Class could go faster, much faster. It was one of the fastest ships around, and also one of the most expensive. It could even escape a black hole, or so it was said. They didn’t make them like this old baby any more. Reuben lazed at the controls. Inadvertently, he wondered who owned it. “Five point three-two-five, to be more precise,” said the ship in her slight voice. “Named by the president of the Milieu, one hour and thirteen minutes after you destroyed the Milieu High Council building on Dexia. Report one thousand three hundred and seven killed, no known survivors.” Reuben fingered his palm, smiled to himself. “Guess I did a good job then.” “Do you wish me to notify the Milieu of our current location?” Andromeda asked politely. “Fuck no. Under no circumstances do I want anybody, and I mean beside myself, anybody to know where we are or where we are going. Is that understood?” “Yes, Montgomery.” “Andromeda, honey, call me Reuben.” “Yes, Reuben.” the Andromeda said. “And Andromeda?” Reuben relit his cigar and slumped back in his chair. “Yes, Reuben?” The ship responded in her rhythmless voice. “Relax.” Andromeda was about to respond, then suddenly didn’t. It was a small asteroid, the Cave. It was called the Cave, but it was really a big ship planted firmly inside an asteroid. Disguised as a lump of space rock, free to dally around in slow orbits without attracting too much attention. Mechanisms in the rock allowed it to change shape periodically so nobody could wise up to a familiar-shaped rock showing up at every turn. Reuben didn’t live at the Cave, but knew somebody who did. Knew the proprietor. Just as well, too. Ships and people poking around too close to the Cave often mysteriously crashed into the asteroid or vanished without a trace. There was good reason. The black ’roid lurked at the edge of Reuben’s radar now. A tiny speck, no infra-red trail, no spectral data other than flat black. To anybody’s sensors, it could be just any old large, cold ’roid. Just a lump of rock. It was in Reuben’s scanning field; no doubt he was in theirs. He instructed Andromeda to slow when he was within a kilometre of the obtuse object, matched speed and held it right there. No radio or digital contact, that was the deal. Pure old-fashioned stuff; he got Andromeda to flash her lights in a prepared sequence. His code; those on the asteroid didn’t know the ship, had all their tractor beams pointed its way, ready. His code finished, was met by a silent black loom. It took a second, but a faint old-fashioned red-light laser ticked over the ships body, scanning, sensing, seeing. Reuben waited. A section of the outer face slid back, open. Reuben instructed Andromeda to slide into the opening. Andromeda naturally obeyed her master, docked even as the giant rocky door slid shut. For a while, all was very dark. Last thing Reuben said before he left Andromeda alone was “Forget everything you’ve just seen.” He was talking to the ship. Inside the Cave he met an old friend, so to speak. A l’Borg woman named Millennium. Millennium was unbeautiful in a well-groomed way. She had a poker face; no emotion crossed her lips as she spoke. Pure yellow hair hung to her shoulders, where it hit the black artificial skin or her shoulders. She had grey eyes, no expression. Her face and body was living pink skin, her arms and legs robotic. In a black and chrome hand she held a cup of something blue gently. That arm raised the cup to her lips, which only parted long enough for the drink to go in, then resealed. “C’mon, Millennium,” Reuben was saying. Side by side they ambled up grey stairs, towards an equally grey door. Somewhere below, the stolen Andromeda E Class sat quietly. “Talk to me.” “All right. I don’t have time for you.” It was all she said. Those sullen red lips a flat line. “Hey, if it’s about getting’ you busted up by the K-men, I’m sorry. Hell, Millennium, they were going to pop me in the airlock. I hadda get out of there. Sorry if you-” Millennium spun around, angry, and lifted Reuben by his neck with her chromium arm. “I said I don’t have time for you or your games, Reuben. I’ll take the Andromeda if you want, but you are out of here today, either in a ship, or with the dump.” Reuben started to choke, and the l’Borg woman dropped him, then strode away. 3. CHANGES Reuben found his own way to the bar. Like all bars he frequented, this one was a seedy, dark hovel, it’s inhabitants permanently obscured by a reeking blue smoky haze and blaring noise no-one dare call music. Once in the room, he had to fight his way through stinking sots and hookers to reach the bar. He ordered a Bourbon, and kept the bottle. He nursed a few, then took the time to observe his companions. He recognised somebody over the other side of the bar, and their eyes met, but neither made the effort to join the other, and they did not make eye contact again. “What’s the news?” he asked the barman, not expecting a reply. “You gotta lot of nerve, Reuben, coming back here after pulling a stunt like that. You’re damned lucky somebody didn’t blow you out of the sky out there. I heard you pulled an E Class Andromeda out from nowhere. It’s been a long time since anybody’s seen one of those babies, you’d better hope for your sake that nobody’s seen where you’ve parked it.” The big Dexian barkeep said in hushed tones. Hie eyes passed beyond Reuben, then he turned away. He had company. A voice behind him said “I thought I told you to be out of here by now.” Reuben turned. It was Millennium, and she had three huge l’Borg security bots with her, each carrying several highly visible phaser weapons. He was urged to his feet, and gradually they found their way to the door. “Hey, I was just on my way. I came here for one last drink, that’s all. I’ll go now.” “You know how I like to keep my promises, Reuben. You remember how I promised to even our differences someday.” “Hey, come on. Take the ship. It’s worth everything between us and more. I love that ship, but you can have it. Hell, Millennium, I’m no good to anybody dead, take the ship.” Millennium laughed; the only time the man could remember her doing so. “I’m not going to kill you, Monty, which is to say, you’re not going to die today. Instead, I’ll let you guess what you’re going to give me- but first a hint. What did you take away?” Suddenly, Reuben pitched forward into a painful blackness as one of the soldiers butted a steel gun against his temple. He awoke with a splitting headache. The first thing he noticed was the room: A white room filled with pernicious looking robotic surgery equipment. The second thing he noticed was that he had been carefully strapped down to the table. Across the room stood Millennium, and next to her, a man dressed in white overalls. Immediately he became very frightened, suspecting the torturous things he was about to incur. “Have you guessed yet?” she asked, an evil smile on her face. She motioned her the doctor to help her into a person-shaped frame near Reuben’s, and as the doctor strapped her down she spoke again. “Give up? Well, no matter. In a few hours, I will be able to feel with flesh and blood hands. You, however, I can’t speak for.” “Millennium, you bag of slut!” Reuben screamed. “You’re going to cut my hands off. You’re a dirty turd hanging from the arse of a dead Icanian!” “Oh calm down, Reuben. I’m not going to cut off your hands. What good would they be to me? No, while I lie here and sleep, these robots are going to cut off your whole arms and swap them with mine.” She paused for effect. “See, we’re not cutting off your ‘hands’.” Montgomery Reuben had long gone totally white. He shivered uncontrollably, and screamed incessantly when the robots dislocated both his shoulders. He lost control of his bowels and passed out when diamond-edged blades cut through the meat and bone of his shoulders, severing them from his body with the ease of a laser welder cutting though a stick of butter. 4. MISSION He just couldn’t get used to the new weight; it threw him every time. He leapt for the ledge once more, but his arms had acquired an inch or two more size, and he felt the edge hit against his forearm. That was the other thing he couldn’t understand about his arms- feeling. He had two perfectly serviceable cybernetic limbs, yet could only feel in three regions; upper arm, forearm and hand. He had no individual sense of his fingers, and a touch on his wrist felt the same a bruise below his elbow. He found he had to watch his hands to see what they were doing, meaning he now had to realign his balance and visual sense. He leapt for the ledge once more, this time making sure he was watching the extent and position of his new arms. He caught the ledge and drew himself up with considerable ease. His arms contained the strength of around ten strong men, and could withstand up to twenty times the pressures human arms could suffer before breaking. The chromium substance coating the delicate robotics was impervious to most phaser wavelengths, and resistant to temperatures in the far extremes. In fact, had they had perfect feeling, he would not have wished for anything better. He sat back on the ledge and wondered once more why he was still alive. He simply couldn’t understand why Millennium would swap arms with him, then go to so much trouble to keep him alive and healthy. Obviously the bitch had other plans for him; she wouldn’t keep him alive and next amputate his legs for a vile swap. He took a hold of an iron bar to swing down from the ledge, but accidentally crushed it in his strong hand. “These arms are so weak, Monty.” Millennium called from the door. He hadn’t heard her enter. “But I guess that’s the price of biology.” Reuben dived down, allowing his arms to take most of the fall, then tried to flip over onto his feet, overcompensated for his acquired strength, then landed hard on his face. From the floor he growled “What the hell do you want?” “Be civil, Monty. I was merely coming to see how you are adapting. The doctor has finally let me out of the infirmary, and taken the wretched plaster off. I had completely forgotten how much pain is involved in living tissue. Oh, but the pain is a pleasure after so many years of vague senses and misbegotten itches. You’ll come to hate those illicit feelings in your body.” Reuben stood up brushing the fresh blood away from his nose. “Have you come here for a reason, or just to torment me?” Millennium blinked, then she was back to her usual cold self. “A little of both. Now we are even, I have a business proposition for you.” The bleeding man snorted and tried to rush Millennium, but a security bot held up a cybernetic hand to restrain him. “Even! You cut my god-damned arms off to get even? I offered you the Andromeda. You know it’s one of the fastest ships in the galaxy. An E Class, they don’t construct them like that these days. Offload it to the right buyer and you could afford immortality with half the money it brings. God-damn you, you dog’s arse. Taunting me with a business proposition. If you want to kill me, just go on an do it. I don’t want to see your face any longer.” Millennium stepped around the security bot and told it to leave. She put her arm around Rueben’s shoulder, obviously relishing in the new feelings generated by the action. “Careful what you say, Monty. You don’t want to offset things again. I can see you’re a little angry about the changes your life is taking, so why don’t you listen to what I’m about to tell you. As I said, I have a business proposition for you. If you accept, you’ll end up in a position to buy your way out of those dealings that brought you to where you stand today.” Reuben had calmed down a little. “And if I decline?” Millennium stepped away from him, and as kindly as she could phrase it, said “We’ll flush you out into space with the dump.” “You are a dirty thieving bitch. What option do I have?” 5. PHOENIX “I knew you’d see it my way. Well, I’ll give it to you straight and simple. The K-men, of whom you are obviously aware, have been giving the Cave trouble for the last few cycles. They of course are aware of our location, information we lack about their headquarters, which puts them in a dangerous position, as you will realise. There are rumours around that they were the ones who put you up to bombing the leo block on Dexia. Now I can’t say if that’s true, but if it is, then we both may gain something by erasing these treacherous fiends.” Reuben tensed his hands. “You want me to take out the K-men? You’re completely mad!” “Perhaps. But we can take care of the warships; the Cave is very well armoured. What you have to do is take out their base. Find it, then take it out. Any questions?” “Any questions? What the hell am I supposed to take it out with? A couple of core-phasers and a portable nuke? Do you see me packing?” Millennium strode away from Reuben, rubbing her- his- arms sensually. She’d had the hands modified, more feminine than he’d remembered. “Are you aware of the so-called ‘Firebird’ project?” Reuben spluttered. “You mean the Phoenix? Can you name me one person in this galaxy who hasn’t? It’s said to be capable of annihilating suns!” “If you were suicidally insane, I guess you could. Why don’t you come with me?” Millennium led a scared-looking Reuben from the room, and down a complex series of hallways and stairwells. When they finally stopped, Reuben looked out into the vista of open space, only a forcefield between him and the emptiness. Reuben wandered around the null space. “So where is it?” “What I am about to tell you is strictly between myself and you. If you breathe a word of this to anybody, well, just fear the consequences. The only other who knows is The Man. You know that I can hurt you.” Reuben walked over the edge and looked out into space. He motioned for Millennium to continue. “You have probably guessed that we are in possession of the Phoenix weapon. Do you know what it looks like?” “No. I guess it’s some kind of particle projectile weapon, but that’s about all I know.” “It’s a phased wavelength sub-atomic particle beam device, very unstable. Very few people know what the Phoenix looks like, and only one knows how it works. Okay,” said Millennium, looking around to make sure nobody else was present. “Hold your arms together like this.” She held her arms close so her forearms touched from her wrist to her elbow. “Why?” “You’ll see. Just do it, okay?” Reuben held his arm together like shown, then pending further instruction, linked his fingers. His elbows were cushioned by his stomach, and due to the nature of his muscles, he could not point his arms at the floor. “That’s right,” smiled Millennium. “Now, clap.” “How? My hands are together.” “Clap, make the movements in your arms like your going to clap.” Reuben did as instructed. Then he watched in horror as the black chrome robotics of his hands melted into each other, as if made of liquid. He closed his eyes as if to clear away this hallucination, but when he opened them, it was apparent that what had happened was no hallucination. “Behold, the Phoenix.” Reuben could feel the gun. He no longer had arms as such, they were joined in the middle into some kind of awesome-looking tube that was the weapon. All those senses that he missed in his arms and fingers were all there inside the rod that his arms had become. He could feel the trigger mechanism where only moments ago had been his finger. He could feel the potential of the weapon inside his arms, and by moving what he thought of as his hands, he could change the intensity of the weapon, the potential ranging from barely more than a hard slap to... godlike proportions. “Clap again to release the weapon,” said Millennium, in awe. When Reuben’s robotic arms had magically transfigured back to their normal shapes, he turned to Millennium and stared disbelievingly at her, who was smiling appreciatively back at him. “You carried the Phoenix with you all the time, in your arms? That I carry the Phoenix?” “Yes, but you are the first person I’ve seen who can assemble it. The ng’Karmian Prince I retrieved Phoenix from could not activate it, and nor could I. I tried the same process, after exhaustive research to find out how to activate it. The ng’Karmian gentleman in question had certain difficulties disclosing the information. He began talking once I tore the arms from his living tissue, and I had to beat him to death with them to shut him up. I guess I just didn’t have the knack for activation. Well, there you go. You have the most powerful weapon known, and I’ve kept the Andromeda just for you. What’s stopping you from your date with the K-men?” “What’s stopping me from taking the ship, sailing out a light year or so and then blasting you to dust with the gun?” “You are, Monty. Here some incentive. We can clear your name. We can credit you with enough chips to buy the galaxy. We have the technology to replace cybernetic limbs with real live tissue, as we have demonstrated with your generous offering of arms. Nobody you know can do that yet, and we know that because it’s one of the reasons you first came to the Cave those years ago. How is the foot, by the way? We have contacts, Monty, and knowledge. You can’t kill us because we own you. We made you what you are today, and you owe us for that. You’re even with me; the promise has been discarded. But we are the Cave, and have many contacts outside the Cave. If you kill us, you’d better be prepared to kill them as well, because you’ll be running for the rest of your life. Besides, you have ethics.” Reuben snorted, began to smirk. “Stopped by a god-damned ethic. What is the world coming to?” 5. CONTINUUM Very soon after that little meeting Reuben was kicked out of the cave by Millennium, on instruct from The Man, whom he did not know. He had Andromeda request access to the Cave, but he couldn’t even see them on the radio spectrum, and figured correctly that his days with the Cave were coming to an end. But with that realisation he also concluded that his options were becoming clear, and the future was again a dark area; unexplored territory with many new directions and paths. “Andromeda,” he said idly to his ship. “Yes, Monty?” “Monty? I like that. Good to see you’re finally kicking back a bit. Where’s someplace you’ve never been?” “Monty?” the ship asked, perhaps confused. “Never mind. Did you scan the Outer Hope?” “Yes, Monty, as per your instruction.” said the ship. Reuben gulped down a fistful of the thick grey ale nestled in a white glass nearby. “Did you see a tall woman with white hair and a dent in her forehead? What race was she? What ship was she in?” “The female is of the ng’Karmian Maestro-Artisans; the last known presiding race-family of the Fourth Empire. ng’Karmian tradition forbids those of the Maestro-Artisans of leaving the confines of the origin system unless in time of dire need. The last known ng’Karmian Maestro-Artisan sighting was over four-hundred and fifty years ago, with the collapse of the Third Empire, during the evacuation of the outer Terran colonies.” “What ship did she arrive in?” Andromeda paused as if in thought. “The female did not arrive in a craft. Data indicates her presence at the site was instantaneous.” Reuben scoffed. “She materialised from nothing, is that what you’re saying?” “The data is inconclusive. Data gathered from the Continuum indicates ng’Karmian technology of past millennia to have superseded many the technologies of current known civilisations as current communication with the races of the Empire are formed.” “Oh. So, what happened to her?” “Cache data on the woman ceased a moment before the explosion.” Reuben smiled. “So she’s out there, somewhere.” The great ship accelerated out away from the Cave, in a direction Reuben felt was unfamiliar. “Where are we going?” he asked. Andromeda, slipping into hyperspace, replied “I predicted you seek the ng’Karmian origin world, and have proceeded to begin the voyage.” Reuben again swilled a mouth of his ale, and relaxed for the journey ahead. “Oh my Andromeda, you know me too well. You and I are going to have a beautiful life together.” Far down in the organo-electronic mind of the ship, the spirit of Andromeda tossed the various meanings of this concept in her mind, causing something deep and obscure to stir in her living memory banks. Had she form, she would have smiled faintly. Coming out of hyperspace was one of those things Reuben always dreaded. Although he knew the Andromeda knew what she was doing, he still sat on the edge of his seat every time, wondering if they would emerge back in real space only to plough at three hundred thousand miles a second into an asteroid or moon. “You sure you know what you’re doing?” He asked the ship in what may have been mistaken for a nervous voice. He did not get nervous. Tetchy, perhaps, but never nervous. “Trust me,” Andromeda said almost too casually. Then the grey fog of the spatial hypermath realm fell away and the great ship slid back into the universe like a stone re-emerging from the lake into which it had been flung, the fabric of reality rippling away into the inky void. Together, they were thrust into the icy tail of a comet. Andromeda knew what to do, but hadn’t the power to achieve it. “Unscheduled systems failure. Automatic navigation systems are failing. I need you to take manual controls. Now!” Reuben hadn’t been prepared at all for this. He found himself flung from the seat before his brain told him to hold on. The ship screamed around him. “What?” he yelled. “Take the controls! I can’t navigate.” Andromeda replied. Reuben jumped back into the seat, muscling his way into the g-web before attempting to grab the wildly swaying flightsticks. “I need help!” He shouted but it was drowned out by a malicious boom and ferocious shuddering sound from deep down below him somewhere. Outside, the universe started to spin. Reuben in his struggle to control the ship forgot about his new-found strength, and managed to tear one of the joysticks from its housing. “That’s not good,” understated Andromeda mildly. Reuben wished he would pass out, but it never happened. He could only sit and wait for the end to come. “Damn it to hell. Can’t you do something? Shit!” Andromeda did something. She flooded the ships ventilation systems with nitrous-oxide, thereby rending Reuben virtually senseless. “Now I might be able to concentrate,” she pondered, and set her sensors guilefully on the blue icy moon flashing in and out of view out the front portal. After that there was nothing else she could do but watch. It was black. The room was black, and outside it was black, too. There might have been a mountain range outside, but it could just be imagination. Reuben was bleeding all over himself, he couldn’t work out why. “What happened?” There was no reply. “Andromeda? Are you there?” He asked the darkness. Somewhere, there came a grumbling noise, and oxygen flooded the room. It occurred to him that he’d been suffocating. He spat blood. “Hey Andromeda?” Some lights came on; little ones across the front console. His eyes adjusted and he saw less ruin in the cockpit than he’d imagined lurking in that deep darkness. He figured he has caused most of it anyway. “Monty, I am here.” He thought he heard. “Shit.” He said, rolling around on the floor. “Where are we?” “I encountered the tail of a comet upon re-emergence from hyperspace. Due to the irregularity of the particles in the comet and the nature of this region of space, I was unable to correctly deduce a safe route through.” “You screwed up, then.” The man smirked, standing uneasily. Andromeda may have chuckled, but the sound came out all wrong. “I think it would be an appropriate time to say ‘Whoops – My bad.’” At that, he laughed out loud. “I think I said this before – we’re going to get on great together, you and me. Once you learn how to drive, that is.” Andromeda tried a sigh, and it worked. “I am stuck.” At once, Montgomery Reuben realised the distraught nature of that sigh, of that sentence. All he could come up with was a drawn out “Oh.” 6. FAITH
bad dreams it is the time of sleep. one side of the world an effervescent black, another side a dull spectrum of colour, and the rest, a gray timeless mix of the both. as like the rest of the universe. lying in the shadow of a shadow. and eyes are closed, the wondrous dark plentiful, but ears open and white noise ecstaticates in silence, senses nullified as the body warms the sheets. as does everyone, sooner or later. for a while the dark is perfect. the brain cools inthroughout, the body feeds and heals, the stomach squirms and dissolves the energy, the sheets go cold and the body moves. as is the way it is every night. then there is a memory or something else. it stirs the figments of sub-thought, it recollects the dimensional flash photos, it hears and sees and feels and does everything again, as there must always happen. then there is a rupture, a seam in the fabric. the beautiful dead gray that is the dream is lost, the silent hiss that is the mournful toll is gone, the glorious wash of illogic non-thought slinks away. as the real world dreadfully returns.
Gamita. It snakes through the unsurpassed depth of blackness, riding a feral serpent's back. Once every two seconds a grey ferrous support bolster pockmarked like a Swiss cheese flashes by, lit up from somewhere above by a seedy orange light. Every two seconds, swish, then swish, then swish, the effortless yet eternal seethe of featureless vertical metal shafts are passed by. Beyond that, only that ageless emptiness, the other side of night, a potential universe unfurling somewhere there. Forwards, ever forwards, gently curving this way, then again before lurching viscously around the other way once more, pulsating side to side on some deranged sinusoid motion. It makes an inhuman active keening; aural verve on it's edge. A wail bordering on an introspective curse, punctured by a cantankerous constant churn of heavy pulses, of syncopated thunks, rattling from way forward until way back, one after the other. Here, there, a rush of what may have been air, or may just be some idle thought made real somehow, a heavy huff in the ear. The air itself has an appalling texture, one of fetidness, of greasy carpet and old cigarette stains, of a hodgepodge array of human odours, of a queasy inescapable grime inhaled and processed with every reluctant breath. Like a hospital ward under reserve electricity the little cramped environment itself is lit by a series of pallid and somewhat cold yellow lights sealed behind oblong shafts, the plastic imbibed into the faded metal roof. One of the lights flickers with a somewhat random attitude, but the rest do little enough to just form pods of sebaceous glow across the ceiling. The windows, if indeed that's what they are, not just some build up of a crawling and oozing transparent grey bacteria, serve as portals between the emptiness outside the carriage and the vacuous inertia within. Row on row of vinyl-covered benches to serve as seats, the greenish material tacky with a wet edge of reminiscent atmosphere, and sealed in place with a once silver-coloured steel pipe now dulled to a harsh grey sheen by countless human hands. The floor had at some time long past been buttered unevenly with linoleum, then worked up into a gritty carpet of dirt, dried soda stains, hair-collecting oily sheens and hard-case relentless pods of blackened chewing gum imprinted with the sole marks of a thousand different feet. Observation through the sheathes of two slit-like eyes reveal a collage of images twisting inside one another; a cubist interpretation of a pointillism nightmare: a seething, oozing overlay of colourful lines like computer circuitry meld with the fabric of the wall in a fixed space not too long, and not too high. To study the image would reveal bunches of characters, written in an obscenely familiar language, though through no means could interpretation of individual words be achieved. These slits like elongated singularities in the fabric of space-time, vanish but moments later reappear, this time not slits but gashes, and focus on the map on the wall, following first one line of colour along its length, then following another colour back. In a few moments it would become clear along which line this carriage shuddered. A few moments later, it was clear the map did not indicate this journey whatsoever. Abandoning the map, the focus of those eyes shifted to first the left and then the right, assimilating the immediate environment, seeking some variation. To the left the soggy haze slowly resolved to form some sort of portal, a foreboding black emptiness falling away into a stale hallway. To the right, the rows of green seats, the pointless view from the windows, that icky and every-so-slightly undulating horizontal surface of the floor. The focus returned to the map on the wall, again tracing and seeking across the array of lines and amassed congregates of letters, but still no meaning could be found. This time the focus shifted upwards, evident of the laborious effort taken to keep the eyes focusing on anything. Several times the heavy slits folded down over the eyes, a dark haze falling over the two orb-like shapes underneath, but now – always now on – the sight returned; the slits reopened. Sliding up the wall, the focus picked out more words, yet the meaning, the grasp of shape of individual letters and of whole words remained veiled. Some other understanding bubbled to the surface of consciousness – “blue”. More words arose, but they had little meaning. Soon the effort of holding the focus on this object came too much, and the focus fell away sharply, this time back to the floor. There was a sharp snap, but not that of something physically breaking, but of sudden realisation deep down behind those eyes. Strong enough was it to dissolve this cloud of vision; a few blinks followed this process through. There was some other kind of recognition going on, and not through the eyes. Still, the focus remained low until they found another item hereunto undiscovered: feet. Shoes actually, though there were feet in them. Here another bubble of understanding interjected itself into consciousness: Red shoes. Drawing back along the feet, kinking at the ankles and flowing along the legs until they became obscured by a indurate red cloth. Still flowing against the underlying shape, the focus passed by as legs became hips, and there formed a tubular mass which bulged out at one point in two strangely familiar geometric globules. The focus could not travel much further along the red mass than that, and so returned to the familiarity of the map. Still that other sensation continued behind the eyes, and as time passed it became apparent that the sensation had a tempo, a repetitiveness about it that seemed enticingly comforting. Again the dawning sensation of understanding resolved several unasked questions, and also brought forth words and concepts: this noise; the sound of breathing. This hideous flow of air drawing back and forth, the sound itself as corrupt as the texture of freshly rasped timber – not rich and supple and warm and wet, but dry and harsh and hard and stale. Breathing? How could life be delineated from such an abominable noise? And what is this punctuation – this puncture in the fabric of sound; this differently accentuated rhythm that happens deep down inside? This ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom that continues on eternally under its own ceaseless ideal? A beat, a beat and something else, a pulse. This pulse, this beat, this rasp of breath: this aggregate of noise becoming sound is not without meaning, only explanation.
Frail Age She wakes early– crack of dawn Tea in the hand, a good book in the other She doesn't like the book But it gets read anyway because Somebody told her that it is a good book The tea goes cold, as tea does She sips, sips and spits it back out The crack of dawn has come and gone The sun is rising up off the ground She must rise up off the bed again It is now midmorning The kitchen is cleaned, the clothes washed The radio is off. The TV is off. The lights are off The food in the fridge is off– The refrigerator is broken The man has come to take it away It is now raining, midday, lunchtime Lunch is not cold On a radio, somewhere, A man talks about the weather It is afternoon The dry clothes are wet again, the rain Splashing down to destroy her labours She stops, picks up her book, sits She reads the book, but she does not enjoy it She has lost her glasses She searched the house through She cannot remember what she is searching for She reads the book, drinking from a cup The tea is cold It is noght, early enough still to watch the news The refrigerator has not returned Dinner from a packet The clothes dry, the washing up done She takes her hot tea and goes to bed She recalls the day Pondering her achivements She has gaps in her memory, holes in the head ‘Oh how like is so droll, waiting to die’ She cries, silent ‘When you're too old.
Mind Words Writing- pen and paper. Lying on my back. In bed, tired and cold, Alone, of course, in a room, somewhere. Words, a communication of thoughts, Strung together to form ideas, Compiled by the dying brain Into an image of itself. Words nobody reads, Stuff duplicated, stuff discarded. Images drawn, compositions played, Words still just words on a page. Poetry expelled as ink symbols and gestures Creative expression copying a feeings description. Loss of energy, loss of communication- Despair! Just words on a page.
Touch the Darkness Black like the slimy, grotty swamps Infesting the nether reaches of the mind - Filmy grime on the inside of a cup. Dark as the evil of a cold night Infiltrating the loose boards of a small home - An icy wind against wet skin. Firey hot as the magma from a volcano, Scorching, blackening, burning - A shower too hot. As cold, As bleak, As grimy, rotten And dark - As Death.
Illusions of the Mind ©1993 Tim St.Clair The raging machine sped along a tunnel of flashing lights that spun the world into oblivion. At the metal beasts’ roaring heart sat a simple, crazed human child. The female body sat in a contorted shape, pushed into the seat by the magnificent forces acting on the strange craft. The tunnel, thought the driver, was rather like an enormous picture that she was somehow falling towards, yet never reaching. The swirling light were a fluorescent green, but they changed and swirled- green, blue and yellow- the colours mixed and ran like a water-colour paint set left in the rain. Abruptly, the machine stopped, the colours fell back to their original image and the girl slowly, shakily, removed her helmet. The dark room was mostly silent, apart from the cooling fans somewhere lost under the mass of computer hardware. A young female adult stood atop a circular contraption massed with an assortment of rainbow flavoured wires all knotted in a haywire fashion. The woman wore a black bodysuit lined with cables and tiny metallic threads. She removed a dark full-face helmet and allowed her long golden-brown hair to gently hang down her back. She wore an expression of incredible fascination and joy as she glanced back at the two tiny dark screens that sat encased in the Virtual Reality mask. Somewhere in the darkness, a switch clunked and within a few seconds, bright fluorescent lights shone down through a thin smoky haze. Around the now-illuminated room ran a series of flickering screens, computer keyboards, cables and tiny flickering lights. On the cement floor lay more computing equipment, forgotten and obviously broken. A man’s voice broke the humming silence. His tone was slightly cynical and abnormally loud, partly due to the amount of noise buzzing through the silent air. “So, wha’d’ya reckon? It’s’a friggin’ bewdy, eh?” Again the silence. Somewhere in the electric room a computer bliped and grated as its hard disc searched for some irresistible data. The beautiful woman sighed a long breath. She looked over at the man with lush brown eyes and grinned her applause. “Shit.” She sighed again. “ That is what I call a ride and a half. You are a bloody genius, Ed. A bloody genius.” She laughed in affection and then smiled uncontrollably. She stepped down from the apparatus, unzipping the suit and revealing a well-tanned, scantily clothed body. She only wore a bright green one-piece swimming costume. Placing the helmet on the floor, she walked daintily to where the man stood, pausing momentarily to gather her other clothes and belongings. “I felt as if I were actually there, flying about in that place. I could feel it. It was fantastic.” She was now wearing a tracksuit top and was attempting to get into the bottom half while walking and stepping over cords. Edward Evans was smiling adoringly at the woman. He was a short, reasonably built man, though not old. His high forehead was protected by a pair of metallic-gold glasses which were spotted and greased. “You sound if you liked it?” He teased. “Nah, it’s not that good.” “Bullshit!” She snapped, her initial response disreguarding the use of Edwards sarcasm, then with a melodramatic sigh, she added “Now that you mention it, it was rather crappy...” “Ha, ha. Joke, joke. I am working on another one- alot better, this one. It about-” “Ed. Don’t tell me. Just give me another go in that gizmo when you’ve finished it.” She led the young adult towards the door. The light switch again clunked as the door shut and the room was again dark, save the tiny lights and dark screens. Again, a computer ground a shuddering sigh and fell silent. When the girl awoke, the first thing she noticed was the heavy, warm arm across her naked breast. Somewhere outside in the dark night, a dog barked once and a metallic clang was heard. She awoke from a dream about a tall machine that spun her through a make-up world and of the man she loved, the same man that now slept fitfully aside her naked body. He, she had noticed earlier as they made love, still wore one of his socks. He had again absently been caught up trying to do more things at one moment than he could handle, which often happened as the excitement grew. The woman manoeuvred the sock from her partners foot with her own and peacefully again drifted into sleep. When next she awoke, the sun shone golden bands of warmth through lacy curtains hanging across a broad bay window. Outside, the blue sky, the green grass, the old rusty cars, the half full garbage can lying on the road. She lay in a world of soft, warm sheets, tepid blankets atop them, steaming breakfast next to her- The tantalising aroma of coffee and toast, eggs and bacon with a touch of parsley and chives awoke her with a start and she found eyes on her. Two blue oceans of adoration staring at her perfectness as she lay back in the soft wonderland. He had cooked her breakfast in bed! And he now waited for her to awaken and devour the lot. “Oh. Dear Eddie. You... I... Oh!” The fascinated girl was speechless. “Well, Jess. This certainly is your lucky day, isn’t it? Make me get out of bed with you and make you breakfast next time!” the sleepy-eyed man tested. “Do you like it?” “I love it, chef. But thanks for ruining my morning already.” “What do I do this time?” “Check out the garbage out there,” Jess indicated the garbage can lying on the road. “You forgot to put the lid on the garbage last night and it looks as though some creature had knocked it over and it’s now all over the road. But apart from that, I love you and I love it when you cook for me.” “Oh, isn’t that sweet.” The short man said, honey words gushing from his lips. “It was your turn to put out the garbage last night, but you were enjoying me so much... I didn’t want to bother you!” “How could anyone enjoy you? You were still half-dressed in bed last night. Take off your socks next time before we get together.” Offensive, but in a kind way. “Well. Hmpf. I am going to have a shower while you stuff yourself and laze about. Then I am going to pick up your garbage and then go back to the office and work, while you laze about in bed eating.” Edward grabbed a towel and entered an ensuite bathroom before his lover could answer. “Laze about in bed eating, indeed.” Jess said to herself, then lay back in the soft pillows to engorge her breakfast. “Nice of you to turn up, Evans. As if you aren’t an hour late or anything.” The office was busy, probably because work had started some time ago. It was the same room that Edwars had been in the night before with the woman, Jess, but now it was crowded with a flock of casually-dressed people all working around computer screens and over grey-green boards lined with circuits. The speaker again spoke, this time, his voice was not as humorous. “I would like to see you. In my office.” It was Edward’s boss, Tony Watson. A few of the other employees ‘ooh’ed eerily but quickly got back to work, dismissing his misfortune without a second thought. Tony Watson was an ageing man. His receding hairline was mostly grey and he wore thick glasses. In his left shirt pocket he had a number of pens and a piece of grubby whitish paper. He sat in a huge chair which was teetering back at an incredulous angle. On the desk was a large computer, screen and keyboard, a digitising pad and a number of discs. Also, another VR helmet, identical to the one Jess had worn the night before. John sat entered, closed the heavy hazy-glass door behind him and took a seat across the desk from his employer. “’Morning, Mr Watson.” He said, expecting the reply he received. “What the hell do you mean by that? I bet it was a good morning. Sleep in, did we? Think it was a public holiday? And what the hell were you doing in here last night with that stupid Jessica girl? How do I know? Because when I came in here two hours ago, all the equipment was still on. That’s how I know and that’s why you are in here.” Well it wasn’t that bad. He was at least trying to keep his voice to a manageable level. “It doesn’t hurt the equipment leaving it on, though-” “It hurts our power bill. You’re lucky we are funded by the government. I certainly wouldn’t like to pay out electricity bill, especially when some dickhead leaves it on all the time.” “Well, I-” “You most certainly won’t leave it on again, will you? And what was that woman you have doing here last night?” He was settling down again, Edward thought. He decided to tell his employer the truth rather than a humerous story or a blatant lie. “I gave her a spin on VR as a test run. We’ve all seen it and know it, but what about someone outside us? They’ve hardly ever seen it and we do need to know how it will effect them, don’t we?” “A spin? What do you mean a spin?” “Full suit, helmet- the works. I ran her through the virtual tunnel and she came out looking like it had really happened.” “Oh, fine! Fine indeed! You run someone off the streets through a billion dollar heap of junk just to give them a thrill? That really is intelligent.” The employer paused a moment too long, then added with mock disgust “Get out of here, Evans. Don’t give anyone a go until it’s finished, okay? Then only the ones we tell you you can.” Just as Edward Philip Evans reached the door, he glanced back only to see his employer leaning a little too far back on his chair, smiling gleefully until he overbalanced and fell backwards with a loud thump. Onlookers outside the door all laughed. “Wha’cha workin’ on, Eddie?” a golden voice whispered in his ear. A tall, blonde woman dressed in a velvety blue dress with six silvery buttons down the front bent over the back of John’s chair, over his shoulder and peered into the screens in front of him with her giant grey-green eyes. The answer seh recieved was dry and unaffected by her sensuous syllabic pronunciation. “The same as what you’re not. Can’t you tell?” He gestured at the rows of numbers and letters cascading down his main screen and at the blocky computer graphics on a smaller screen beside it. “The usual. I’m designing another world for VR. This one is an apartment block. The hardest thing in are the sliding doors at the elevators. Everything else is just dandy.” “Well keep it up. I’ll be out in the office if you need anything- special. You know where to find me.” With that, the sensual woman delicately swayed to and fro as she glided back to her separate secretarial office. “Ooh! Look who’s with all the women, now? ” The other technicians teased. “Piss off. With that slut? I am solely a one-timer and quite happy with Jess. You’re all just jealous ’cos I get all the good ones!” Edward joked, smiling like a pompous child. “Two-timer!” “Loser!” Quietly the secretary worked behind a tall, brown-red desk. The floor shone in perfect brilliance, the reflected image of a man moved swiftly below the image of him walking across the broad foyer. High beams arched across a grey marble ceiling, some twenty metres above. Morning sun shone across the glittering sheen of floor. Green sofa-chairs sat next to perfect green plants in front of the high plate-glass windows. Outside was an incredible surreal world where the ground was alikened to a blue-and-yellow chessboard, the trees were blocky and undefined and the sky was a solid single-colour blue. The man looked back at the secretary. Her metallic lustre shone reflections of the room about her. She looked from a square blocky computer at the tall man as he spoke. “Can you see me and hear me well?” His voice was calm but verged almost on eagerness. The strange creature seated behind the computer rose and walked around the desk. Her sheen easily reflected from the floor and she cast almost no shadow. “Bloody beautiful, Tone. Clear as a bell. And I can see your blue shine without fail.” Came the reply. The female image then indicated to her body and pointed to other silvery creatures that lurked about the perfect room. “Why did you choose blue instead of this lovely silver like the rest of us?” “Because I wanted to be different, didn’t I? Not like all you nerds that ‘wear’ that stupid silver. It makes you look... Virtual. Why not choose this lovely blue suit, like I have on?” “Oh yes, nice suit.” Another silvery figure spoke. It sounded just like Edward Evans, but looked just the same as the other silvery figures. “How about this?” He added and turned sideways, sat, it seemed, in mid air and then did the strangest thing. He lifted his arms to his head and removed the silvery blob from his shoulders. Within seconds his form had dissolved into thin air and he was no longer there. Then, to everyones amazement, the blue man standing in the middle of the foyer started to shape-shift. He was gradually ‘morphing’ into another shape- not completely different, but suprisingly more ‘humanlike’. When the transition had finally finished, the recently withdrawn figure reappeared- bit at a time- wearing over his metallic skin a bright pair of shorts and a shirt. He wore dark glasses. Across from him the blue figure wore a dark blue suit and carried a brown briefcase. Gradually the other beings evolved clothes, their ‘naked’ forms transmutated and the outlandish colours that returned with buisiness suits and pyjama-wear. All the people in the foyer laughed at each other and eventually turned to ‘Edward’ who was sitting happily in mid air. As he seemed to roll a ball invisible to all present in the room, he floated highed and higher, then around the room. Eventually, he returned, stood up and walked up to lean on the secretary’s desk. “So, whad’ya think? I decided on some clothes instead of just colours. Now you can be both. Coloured and clothed.” “Smart, I think. Maybe get some designer fasion, eh?” The secretary spoke, her female voice as smooth as ice. “Oh yeah. Like, you can program it in if you like.” The voice teased. Again the figure moved the unseen oblect. His form gradually cycled through the rainbow of colours, eventually to become black. Dark as any night, he hovered across the room without walking and slowly sunk into the ground. When he returned, it was with a pop and a glittering shower of gold flecks cascaded to the floor around him. He was dressed in a buisiness suit and appeared to be an exact duplicate of the man oppisite him. “You’re the expert. You do it.” She rhetorted. “Okay. I will. But down to buisiness, everyone. Can you all take on a bit of exploring here. I think I might have messed up a bit in the level duplicate because I added this high roof and the figures got a bit out. If you could each take a floor and look around. Check out the view, see what’s on the television of you can find one. That sort of thing. Write it down on the computers back in the lab and I’ll go about fixing it up later.” The robotlike creature suddenly looked at one of the people in front of him. “Jenn, What’s wrong with your arm? It’s not there.” The group all turned to see that the statement was correct. “Oh, shit.” Said one of the humanlike blobs. “Looks as if some wiring’s fucked. Jenn, get out of you suit and I’ll see what I can do, then I’ll be with the rest of you guys. Maybe these suits get a bit much use or can’t handle it. Have to sort that out with the Cybersuit manufacturers.” The two figures lifted their arms to their heads, removed them and slowly peeled back into themselves- disintegrated. “Well, whoever’s left, get back to your computers and fly. Oh and by the way, don’t use the elevators. It, for the moment, has tendancies to link you straight into the tunnel ride. I coudn’t get them to operate properly so I thought I’d do something useful with them that moves!” “Good on ya, Evans. Mess it up again.” The identical twin who was in fact Tony Watson, thre employer, stated humorously. “Hey, I got the floor and roof right and I got the sun working didn’t I? Can’t complain too much, can we?” “Benefit of the doubt, this time. Anyway, I’ll be in my office if any of you need me.” With that, he opened an imaginary door into a black void and stepped through. When the door closed, the man in blue was gone. “Hm. I prefer the dissolve, melt or sink actually.” John called out to where the man had stood only moments before. An eeire voice reverberated a reply from nowhere “We have our favourites.” And was gone. The room was dim, hot and boring. The fluorescent lights shone dully on the room jammed with computers. At a desk, a man sat slumped on the desk. His short body was cloaked in a black suit lined with cables and on his head he wore a helmet not unlike a full-mask helmet worn by motorbike riders. His slowly rising and falling chest indicated that the wearer of such outlandish clothing, was asleep. Somewhere in the room, a computer blipped and its spinning disc once again grated a heaving sigh. The electrical lump at the desk stirred slowly, but then yawned and went back into his fitful doze. The door creaked, opened and a shy female face peered in. Jess had come in search of Edward, who had not come home. She felt concerned and had tried to contact the office, but could get no answer and so drove down to check it out. Now, she had found her goal asleep literally in his work. ‘He must be exhausted’, she thought, coming closer. Her hand reached forth and tapped the sleeping lug on the shoulder. He stirred, his eyes still inside the helmet, opened just as Jess pushed the computer keyboard out of the way, inadvertantly pushing some of the keys as she did so. Thunder rolled through the dark cloudy night. Lightning broke down on the black earth. Where in God’s name was he? He looked at his hands with sleep-filled eyes. Where were they? All he could see was a blackish shiny blob which moved as his hand would have. Again the white bolts stuck down at him and he saw his position. He was standing on a black featureless plain where the lightning struck with ferocity at the unmoved soil. A great peal of thunder bore down on him, his head rung with the aftermath of such a blasting explosion. He could feel another prescence in his vicinity and desparately looked around as if in fear. Then he felt his head being lifted from his body. Frantically he tried to stop it, but, oh! Where were his hands! What was happening to him! “Hey, Evans! Wake up. You’ve slept ‘in’ again.” Jess spoke firmly to the waking man encased in a suit of wire. The helmet lay on the desk beside his head. The short man inside looked up at the sweet woman and smiled weakly, though his eyes were a little wild. A few minutes later, the male and female made ready depart. “Oh, I musn’t forget.” the man said as the duo were leaving and flicked the switch that shut the office computers down. Then he disarmed the lights, locked the door and took the hand of his beautiful girl and went home. A few days later Edward was back in the office on another late-night journey through the maze of computer-generated material and worlds quickly typing in figuresfrom an alpha-numeric keyboard onto one screen and watching articles of clothing shape-shifting on another screen. He was creating a wardrobe for each of the suits that transported the wearer anywhere he or she wanted. Electronic racks of suits, dresses and casual wear had all been created by Edward using the console he now sat next to. In fact, entire Virtual planets had been created on the million-dollar computer environment lugging its way through the sums it had to perform. Eerie lights flashed occasionally at the front of the creamy-grey hull of the computer, the two working screens beside the madly-working employee flashing all-important data out into the blackness of the darkened room. Then, from under the steady halogen lamps above the human came other sounds, elsewhere in the office. Sounds muffled by closed doors and grating computer discs and clicking keys wafted in towards Edwards eardrum and ultimately, to his brain. In that dark nothingness surrounding his minimal perimeter of light he could suddenly hear an argument, or was it? Tony Watson and- Who? The voices faded. He sat up to listen and bumped his head on the light just behind him and it flickered out, the loose connections they had all been meaning to fix had finally broken properly. As he rubbed his head and stared widely at the screens in the darkness, his now-sensitive ears again caught the momentum of the voices elsewhere in the building. “Look Watson. We won’t stand for this much longer. Either you give us the stuff or we will get it out of here ourselves. You can’t hide it all away. We will get It anyway. Just think, the opposition may have beaten us again. They could have utilised this technology-” “Mr Lombeck, I realise that you wish to have this stuff and you will get it, as soon as the CIA and-” A closing door. The voices had become even more muffled. Edward, suddenly interested to find out just what the arguing pair were referring to, found his way to the door and stood by it silently. The voices were clear again. “-in the cold war again. The world isn’t like that no more. America isn’t the enemy of anyone except some of those industrially inferior countries. Japan is only a contender in technology and gross manufature. They invented this stuff, they should be bloody well ahead of us anyway. What you require the programmers and their stuff for is totally out of the question until the Government clears it.” Tony was saying. The other voice considered with a pause. “We were the government. We should have kept Ronnie in the hot seat when we had the chance. Then you would be working for us anyway.” At this point, the eavesdropper turned away and returned to power-down his terminal and go home. What he had heard sounded like his employer sticking up for them to save his own butt. But who was the man he spoke with? What did he represent? Obviously this stranger was well-known to his employer and knew probably just what they were working towards, therefore would have been in the CIA or the Government somewhere. Edward caught a taxi to the place he stayed on nights when Jess worked her security job, a small flat under an enormous office block. Later in bed, as his troublesome dreams infested his sub-conscious imagery, he saw faces from his past, the early days of Virtual Reality back in the late eighties and early ninties. The badly designed Cybersuits that featured in the films of the times, the rapidly increasing technological breakthroughs that derived mainly from the home entertainment market, the tensions between the socioeconomic supergiants. It all piled up, all ino his dreams. Somehow, he felt that the incident at the computer lab had been related to that tension- the star wars program that was so important at the height of the cold war, the wars and bickerings that inspired economic ruin and further bickering. Yes, that strange faceless man whose deep voice had seemed somehow desparate was in one way or another interconnected to all of this. Eventually dreams troubled him no more and he fell into a long sleep that lasted well into the next morning. Fortunately, it was Sunday and he was not required at the office. Around lunchtime, as he sipped from his half-flat Pepsi and ungracefully munched through a greasy burger his meandering thoughts took him out the window, along the footpath and off into the distance. Far away, way past the din of the office and New York surroundings, in fact in the western states where he had first lived when he moved to the States, he pictured himself alone in the desert of Calafornia on a lonely road where the midday sun shone down on his open car, where the free air raced through his hair, where whatever he saw was real, not some computer generated impression. His thoughts again became his own and he sighed, knowing that those days were gone.
Enclosed The window greets me. I sit staring from the chair. A pane of glass between me And the world. The TV is off, There’s nothing on the radio. The computer stares past me, Uncaring, blank expression. Two chairs and a table Under the window. Past papers and old magazines Stacked roughly on the floor. Ever above me - the roof: White and unadorned. Below my chair, warm coloured carpet: Rough, old and dirty. The window greets me. I stand outside. The sky above, Streaked with blue-grey clouds. Hills, trees, grass soil. Flowers murmuring in a soft breeze. Forever below - Earth. Green, blue, red and brown. The entire World is shut out By a single pane of glass. I sit in silence on a chair, Enclosed by a window.
The Butterfly Effect Part 2 - The Actuators 0. In deep space, no-one can hear you scream. This is true also for shallow space, but here people can see you scream, which is usually good enough. In deep space however, you’re on your own. It’s probably why you’re screaming in the first place. There are some things that don’t really belong in deep space, and there are some that do. You would expect to see the occasional asteroid, perhaps a comet, even a tiny, lumbering spaceship, or more likely, a speck of hydrogen, but never an entire solar system. What it was doing way out here was anyone’s guess. You see, this kind of space is meant to be empty (save that occasional speck of hydrogen). It’s not designed to contain anything bigger than an atom, and not many of those. That’s how it got the name ‘Deep Space’. This kind of space isn’t meant to contain lunar bodies, let alone solar systems. And yet… These are the shores of reality. This is the border between the true universe and those universettes that contain every conceivable possibility, every creation and every absence of creation. Strange things wash ashore on the shores of reality, especially after a cosmic storm; concepts mortalised in matter, ideals expressed in morphogenic fields, possibility blurred into probability. Here, the waves of reality crash and break on the headlands of deep space, and within the froth and foam, bubbles of something that is not real float to the surface to burst into existence. Amongst the grains of improbability along the beach, small creatures come to nest and burrow into the sand, making out their meagre lives feeding on the driftwood that washes against these distant shores. Like the Deep Ocean, there are strange creatures with more eyes than toes, more teeth than brain cells and so many tentacles you can’t tell where one creature starts and another finishes: Lurid things abound here¼ 1. “Huhmay gunha get hat sthuff huf?” “Say what?” Big Al pulled the wooly jumper down past his face, finished his yawn and indicated to his acquaintance. “I said, how am I going to get that stuff off? It’s like flamin’ molasses.” They both look across at the Mack truck, viewing the black liquid stains all over the front. Big Al sniffed, then attempted to rub the mess of his truck. It was sticky and abnormally warm. “I wonder what it is,” He commented. His friend, a dark haired woman named Maline stood back a ways as Big Al found aim with his high pressure hot-water cleaner. Some of the strange black stuff came off. Some didn’t. Maline decided that she was just filling up space out there, and so she turned and went inside. The gauzed in door clacked behind her. A little black fly bumbled against the window. “Hey, where’s Al?” It was a nice room, as nice as that kind of room could be. It had a few plants in the corners, a sickly ergonomic green floor tile and pinky-orange coloured chairs, finished in black plastic and polished chrome. The effect was psychologically interesting, but nobody had noticed. Another woman was typing away at a computer keyboard, a telephone handset balanced on her right shoulder. There was Coke machine happily burbling and clacking to itself, a dog outside watering some trees and blatantly ignoring the plastic water filled bottle lying on a lawn, and two people sitting back watching the TV. Oprah was on, talking new weight loss schemes with the stars. “Uh, outside cleaning his truck,” Maline replied. Computer keys clacked away. “He hit some kinda molasses pit out there on the road,” Oprah muted; if only. “A what?” “Yeah. Some kid’s practical joke, I’d reckon,” Maline scraped one of the strangely coloured chairs across the green tiles. “There’s black stuff all over the front.” A sign on a wall said ‘Big Al’s Removals & Haulage’. It had fancy scrollwork and all. “Kids these days, huh? It’s that heavy metal music, that’s what. Puttin’ things in their heads.” “Hey,” Maline countered. “I kinda like that stuff too. Drowns out everything else. The world. It’s kinda relaxing, in a funny sorta way.” Big Al, of Big Al’s Removals & Haulage stomped in, dirty and wet. He thumbed one of the big fat squares on the front of the Coke machine and after a thoughtful second the frolicsome machine crapped out a can. Big Al cranked open the can and dark liquid burst forth in a desperate leap for freedom, spluttering the now silent giant red and white plastic block. “Dumb ass,” Big Al said to the machine. Nothing happened. Up the other end there was a commotion; a strangled voice and a little yap-yapping noise. Instantly, a chihuahua tottered out from under some feet and jumped up onto a nearby seat. A pair of hands slapped at the stupid little dog and chucked it way back across the floor. A fat and overdressed buttock pressed down onto the seat, curtly followed by another fat, overdressed buttock. The chair let out a sorrowful little whine. From somewhere above this strange obesity there came a voice. A voice that, if harnessed the right way, could take over the world. A voice, that if trapped inside a small Pyrex crucible, could knead and grind away a diamond into a carbonic powder in no time at all. A voice that was so annoying that it could only belong to a hag. And a fat one at that. So she was a blimp. So she had a chihuahua. So the chair wasn’t designed for industrial use. So the green floor clashed with her pink high heels and voluptuous billowing curtains of orange apparel coating her body like warm chocolate icing dripping from an undercooked cake. So Big Al was her step-son. “Alistair!” Big Al’s head was heard thudding deftly against the inanely jovial Coke machine. If that Coke machine had had the power of speech, it would have said something like ‘Been nice knowing you, Al. Helluva mum you got there, Al. It’s your time, Al. Here, as a token of my farewell, Al, have a Lemon Lift!’ And then the Coke machine would have smiled and that would be that. Or something of the sort. “Alistair!” Certain Death called again. “I want you to take your Father’s dog and, and, er, just take the darned thing. I don’t know why he’s got it.” Yadda yabba, blah blah blah. Big Al walked past the fat and ugly wildebeest dressed in his step-mothers clothes, picked up the little pop-eyed rat and threw it out the door, to be short company (dinner) for his pit-bull terrier, Mongrel. Which was louder- his step mother, or the terrified puss of yapping Asian burger meat he’d thrown out the door? Before Big Al could answer, the telephone rang and he raced his secretary to answer it. She won, but it was for him anyway. “Get her out of here,” he whispered firmly to his secretary and took up the handset. Even as he greeted the handset in his practised response, the wobbling step-monster was harried out the door. The double-glazed door snapped shut in joyous tranquillity. The little black fly still butted the front window, hoping. Big Al’s truck rumbled along the little road. Dust appeared behind the ferrous vehicle, dabbled a while in the air as if it were going to escape into the yonder of blue an interval above, stared vaguely at the white loam on the ground, then decided that it was probably a good time to settle down again. Even as it melded back into the familiar comfort of the chalky dirt, more was thrown up as cars and motorbikes whizzed past in disturbing succession. After a while, the dust once again forgot all about the cars and the trucks and the motorbikes, and floated thoughtlessly back to embrace the flat mass that was home. A breeze wafted overhead and a bird ate a grasshopper. Big Al looked across at the girl Maline and didn’t smile. He stared soberly at her for as long as he could before having to regain control of the vehicle and steer it back onto the road. In his mind’s eye he saw his memory of the passenger sitting there beside him in her abbreviated clothing- a sleeveless white cotton top, a dark shiny mini, those knee-high boots, clouds of dust pouring past the open window, flicks of her dark hair sloshing around in the wind. The truck’s cassette player sang away, Nirvana’s “Come as you are” competing with the rumble of the engine, until the engine won by default: the tape player spooled out a ream of thin brown plastic. While Big Al was slowing for the corner and thrusting the gear stick this way and that, he was also looking at those extremely red fingernails and the small, soft hand that thrashed his tape player into submitting the ruined cassette. Chaos replaced Nirvana as Maline swore and twirled the chewed tape into a ball. She put it in the ashtray. The ashtray was no longer empty. “Look away, I wanna get changed into something else,” She said to Big Al. Big Al mumbled something back, and sidled a glance at her. The truck was slowing; red and blue lights swirled through the trees, casting discoloured dimensions between the dank hardness. Big Al’s left eye poked and probed as far as it could without being seen. The little jelly mass could view two legs kicking and thrashing away at a black leather miniskirt, trying to dash it from a tangled web on the floor. Maline twiddled and turned as she then pulled up a pair of tight denim pants, covering those raw, narrow thighs, those firm round Big Al landed on the brakes and large rubber wheels ploughed into the wet soil. An airbrake hissed as a little man all dressed in blue jumped out of the way, tripping, twisting, landing softly without effort. The truck stopped. A motorbike whizzed past and a car pulled in behind the truck, two yellow lights flashing. Maline scraped herself from the windscreen, tiny white cotton panties and all. “Geez, mate. Scared me half to death.” “Sorry, Officer-” Big Al, said, stepping from the vehicle. He had turned the engine off already, and flicked the handbrake upwards in an off-hand kind of way. Maline was wandering around the front, doing something on the front of her denim pants. “Sergeant, actually,” The man in blue smiled. “Oh. Sergeant. It’s these brakes. Having them in for a service soon.” “Uh huh,” The police sergeant said, nodding, and turned to see Maline. “Well.” And another voice, this one from behind a car said “Chris?” Big Al and Maline were escorted over behind the police car. Red and blue lights guided vague reflections over a polished white roof. There was a pool of black slime on the ground. And a backpack. It was wet. Everything was wet. The other police officer looked up. “You been introduced yet?” “No. I’m Alistair McFarlane,” Big Al introduced himself. He indicated then to Maline “And this is Maline Copper.” They shook hands with the policemen. One of the policemen introduced himself as Chris Duchovny and the other as Acting Constable Susan Duchovny. “Well then,” Acting Constable Susan Duchovny started haltingly. “You’ll be wondering why we’ve asked you here. No, I mean, why we pulled you off. No! Over. The sirens and all. You, off the road.” The sergeant coughed politely. “Sorry. I didn’t mean-. Anyway, the thing is, we understand that you hit something out on this road a few hours back, a large tar-like puddle out on the road.” “News sure travels quick, huh.” The big truck driver wondered where this was going. When it would get there, and which vaguely damp corners of expression they would explore between now and then. “Do you have any idea what it was? Oh,” Susan pointed to the truck. “It that it on the front of your truck?” The four of them wandered over to the truck and examined closely the black muck that had not washed off. It was abnormally warm to the touch and sticky. “So what is it about this stuff that makes you so interested in it?” Maline asked. A new voice answered. “We have found it at some other crime scenes.” The man wore a grey suit, a white shirt and red tie. His head was balding and his wispy hair white. He wore dark glasses, and had a small gold watch. Maline asked “Crime scene?” “I’m Detective Carter. David Carter,” Big Al shook his hand. It was weak and wrinkled. “This is a crime scene, would you believe. Three days ago, a man was reported lost around these parts. Yesterday, we found his car. He took that backpack over there and wandered away from his car apparently searching for rare species of butterflies. We found this black smudge this morning and a backpack. It contains a fair number of dead butterflies and some books, and also a small tranquilliser pistol.” “So. Why did you pull us… over, then?” Maline queried, meeting the eyes of the Acting Constable. The detective turned, pulled a notepad from his jacket pocket and wandered over to where the backpack was found. They all followed him. “Because you have seen this black molasses. You ran over it and now it’s all over the front of your truck.” Big Al made sucking noises as he probed his teeth with his tongue. He flicked a piece of chewing gum from the roof of his mouth back to his rear teeth and started to chew slowly. The gum had no taste. “Strange as it may seem,” continued Carter. “We’ve found this stuff in other crime scenes, all exactly like this one. Some years back, a whole range of people disappeared in a hillbilly town up north. About twenty people disappeared from there, all within about a year, including our main suspect. Now people go missing all the time in these back road shanty towns, and mostly they turn up having left the country or dead in some city street and the case is solved. Here, like there, we have a man who has just gone out for a walk one day, and that’s it. I doubt we’ll ever hear of this one again.” “So who was he?” Al asked. “I hear you’re into these butterflies too, Mr McFarlane.” Big Al shrugged. “It was a hobby of mine a few years ago. Before I got into removals.” “The man who went missing was John Smith, of Smith’s Pharmacy, over in Bournestown. He was a chemist and apparently loved to walk through these parts searching for butterflies and other insects. He’s been doing it for years. Two days ago, he never came home and then we found this backpack. It’s his. We believe he was murdered.” Maline nudged the black stuff on the ground with her shoe. It stuck to the sole and she had trouble wiping it off on the grass. “So what’s this stuff then? Why’s it everywhere?” Carter grunted. “It’s at the crime scene. As far as we can tell it’s molasses, and for whatever reason, it’s been at every crime scene so far. Every time somebody goes missing, there’s a bit of molasses left over, lying in a ditch or something. Whatever the reason, it has to be somehow connected with these disappearances simply because it has been at every scene so far. It could be, you could say, a calling card. Though I wouldn’t keep it in my pocket.” Nobody even smiled, though it had probably been a deft joke. “Now it’s on our truck.” “Yes,” Detective Carter stared. “Now it is on your truck.” There was a moment’s silence. “We’d like you to come down to the station for a little questioning,” smiled Acting Constable Susan Duchovny air-headedly. A firm hand urged Big Al McFarlane and Maline Copper back into their truck. Thunder rumbled in the distance and a black crow cawed anxiously. Maline felt a chill. 2. The radio cackled. The only sound: Darth Vader effects coughing throughout a misty, dank silence. On one wall, a little red light flicked off, a yellow one stammered on. There was a hiss, tunnelled out into a resonatative scream. Flash! A fluorescent tube hiccupped, another stabilised, yet another tinked on, then withered out. Tinked on again, then withered out again. Tinked on, stayed on. Abruptly, the yellow light ended. A green light showed and then steam and oxygen flooded the room. All the fluorescent lights came on, most illuminating the room in their white, purescent ways. Above the door, one bulb remained dark. Fans. Cooling fans. Seducing themselves into an appalling crescendo, pleading in their circular ways for the electricity to be once again reunited in loving harmony with racks and rows of thirsty hardware. A bunch of cords dangled from the ceiling, open ended, dry from power or liquid, the stains of a hundred years of liquid proteins and foodstuffs caked on the floor below, a hard crust of raw dead energy. The computer terminals coughed into life, freeing raging electrons, silencing the cooling fans with wave on wave of beeping, blurting, self tests, parity checks. The room recoiled in fascination as a myriad of sub-processes activated, paused and then deactivated again, each in turn. A printer spooled out the remains of paper, dry, crusted, torn, recycled into its strange elements. The doors then opened, closed, opened, closed. One door did not open and a red warning lamp shone beside the door. A small glass panel was cracked, yet stable. Through the damaged door could be seen row apon row of domed cylinders, each crusted in a wet white fog, each frozen in many layers of carbon dioxide. On all except two of these strange cylinders, red lights glared upwards through the dry ice. Of all one thousand and sixteen hypersleep tubes, all bar two of those one thousand and sixteen of the spacecraft’s apparently snoozing crew were a hundred years beyond dead. The hypersleep tubed rumbled open, a cold cloud of carbon dioxide plumed into the air to do battle with the warm oxygen hissing from black, shiny pipes. Somebody- something- coughed. “Nakata-san, please wake up.” The computer talked into one of the hypersleep tubes, the synthetic voice barking from a small speaker in the tube itself, as it was simultaneously doing for every other member of the dead crew. The computer was talking to the deceased. Another voice, far off; “Attention engineering. Reactor breach, level 4 radiation warning, sector J4 through L9.” Dry, withered bodies lay gnarled like dead Shetland Ponies, beyond bloated, bordering on a husk of sleepy imagination, like a splattering of Pollack, twirled by Dali into a plagiarisation of a Da Vinci. Husks of humans lay dead side by side, a new cemetery grieved by an accident. The computer stared down. “Nakata-san, please wake up.” For every one of the one-thousand and fourteen dead sleepers, the computer barked this command over and over, rigorously pleading that the occupant wake from his or her eternal sleep. None did. For the two humans still alive, the computer greeted them with a flush of fresh oxygen, and the simulated smell of bacon, eggs and baked beans. “Good Morning, Nakata-san. Did you enjoy your sleep?” The being in the sleep-tube coughed, a sound similar to drinking sand. From deep within buried sockets blue eyes regarded the ceiling. Grey. He remembered grey. It might have been blue, but he couldn't remember what blue was. A radio crackled. The beings’ head had sunk deep into the pillow, so that over the hundred or so years too long, the shape of his body had adjusted to the shape of his environment. He had no arms. He had no legs. He had no real body to speak of. His shape was that of his sleep-tube- a generalised square. He was on life support- a panel beeped steadily, a screen showed a gala of lines, a button glowed orange. Suddenly a face appeared above the computers’ mass, a withered body too hideous to describe, a grin unmasked by decayed, blue-looking lips . The body toppled, balanced, fell into the hypersleep tube with the other victim, a grey barky-looking limb smacking a switch. The sleep-tubes protective housing came down slowly, a hydraulic lever not stopping for the two wooden legs still protruding from the now-white tube. Blood sloshed across the inside of the hypersleep tube, the victim already dead. A white maggot flopped and twirled in the warm, red protein, awash with radiation from the breached reactor, ready to mature into something that was different. The cooling fans whirred ominously. 3. “You’re where? Why? What did you-” Mrs Elain Binford, secretary at Big Al’s Removals & Haulage sterned into the phone, her finger hovering over a blinking button on her telephone. “Uh huh. I see. Do you want me to call anybody?” She paused, staring at the urgent little red light. It stopped flashing, slipping back into whatever ether it had arisen from. “Oh right. Okay. Uh huh. I’ll see you Monday then. Goodnight.” Elain hung up the phone, switched her computer off, packed her handbag and then went home. On the table lay ‘The Guardian’ newspaper, folded neatly. Thunder suffixed lightning and rain dashed empty plastic bottles down the gutters. “Questioning, huh,” Maline stooped low to try to hide from the rain, failing of course. Al unlocked the truck’s door and helped Maline up to reach the handle. She was warm. He was quite wet when he reached the other side, unlocked the door and lurched into the seat. Maline handed him a towel to sit on. In between cracks and pops, the radio sang country and western music in the weekly hoedown special. It was too loud, too glee, and far too twangy; didn’t suit their mood. Maline turned it off. The truck rumbled to life, and three long windscreen wipers shooed water from the wide glass surface. It was very dark, and the truck’s headlights lit up only a small portion of the road. Gears threw the truck forward, the wheels helping energy transmogrify into motion, rolling along in a pained effort to attain inertia. Maline looked over towards Al, out past him towards the dancing electricity, lighting the sky in purple arcs of ozone enriched air. A hammer of sound hit the road, truck, trees. Thor striking his anvil, carving the storm in a series of muscled strokes, sparks fleeing the might of the smith’s sledge. Maline let her vision grace Al’s outline, momentarily silhouetted by an arc. He had a large face. Al was a large person; that’s how he got the name Big Al. He wasn’t fat in terms of obesity, but in terms of muscle. His works spewed out his shirts and trousers and neckline. He was hairy and big, and on a dark night might have been mistaken for a bear, if they had bears in this country. Al was thirty-two and he owned his own outfit- Big Al’s Removals & Haulage. It paid the rent and he was happy with it. Herself, Maline, on the other hand, didn’t work for Al. She considered herself. She didn’t work for anybody. Sure, she’d done the rounds- a general labourer working part time, her office in the pub. It paid for the next week, but there was no profits, no goal to work towards. Then they’d given her the social security payments, and what a hell that’d been going through all those bloody forms- pink and red, and in triplicate the yellow and blue. She’d had to have ID and all sorts of stuff every time, and of course, she didn’t even have a bank account. The banks guzzled her money last time and her miserable life savings had been chewed up in the works somewhere. It was only two hundred dollars, but after those little hidden tax payments, and the account fees, then the term fees, and then some other fees, plus the rent for that little weasel. Greasy, slippery rat-faced man, probably a drug-dealer and child pervert. He had those sharp little eyes, dark tint on everything, even his face. They’d found him a day after rent under an industrial waste bin, knifed in the gut, stripped of his cash. Nobody knew anything. Nobody cared about that little weasel. Anyway, Maline’s account had fizzled and disappeared one night when nobody was looking. Her payments stopped because some new bureaucrat introduced some new clause or something. No sweat, time to move on anyway. She’d left the city then, backpacking up the coast, doing pub shifts and trolley-pusher jobs to earn bed and breakfast. She’d lived in a caravan park one month, even had a visit from her drugged up old mum. They hospitalised her for good after that; died from withdrawal. And Maline took to the roads, up and leaving the van one night just there for anyone. Then she’d met Big Al. One day later, bumming her way along the highway, Big Al had spotted her through the fog and picked her up. Into his truck and into his life. A month ago now. A whole month and she’d not moved on since. Big Al, single, age thirty seven, with paid job, seeking attractive young female for casual relationship. Snared, she’d been. Maline was twenty six and had light blue eyes. Bright blue eyes and dark hair. “You going back to the Royal tonight?” Al asked, slipping his way through the gears. The engine groaned as he started up a slight hill. “Because my place is on the way.” Something stirred deep within Maline. She smiled faintly. “Okay. I’ll give you a game of cards before I go home.” Big Al kept a careful eye on the road. Don’t want no silly little accidents now, he thought. 4. The X-Nerds and James stared disquietly at the X-Nerds and Amy. In the elevator, Karen fainted, falling across the threshold that was the doorway, keeping the automatic doors from slamming shut. The X-Nerds were watching the X-Nerds, too astounded to speak. Then George and Linda bumbled in. “You’ll never guess what we just bought!” Then George saw the X-Nerds staring at the elevator. He looked into the elevator and saw the X-Nerds staring out of the elevator. Linda bit her lip. “Okay,” George fretted, waving both hands in front of his body. “Nobody move.” Everybody moved. The elevator doors were trying to close, and they were being very obnoxious, in deference to Karen’s body. In the elevator, Stuart was moaning and coughing as Simon, limping, helped Matthew carry him out. Karen was helped to her feet by Matthew and Errol, and James followed, pausing to push a random elevator button. Old habits die hard. And the other X-Nerds rushed forward to draw Karen from the elevator doors. Stuart nearly ran over everybody else to see what had happened to his other self, and was pushed back by Karen, who leapt up to help herself to her feet. Amy had a firm grip on Matthew and Errol, but Simon slipped through to attend to the Stuarts. Put simply, it was pandemonium. Pandemonium on a stick. If you bought pandemonium in a show bag at a regular, perhaps even annual big function, which would usually cost you three times its worth and last you only half its expected lifetime, you’d get all the little bells and whistles that go with it but it would amount to diddly-squat against to this pandemonium. This surpassed even the definition of pandemonium. Linda had to sit down and George decided that he might try walking into the room again, just to see if that helped. No. It didn’t. Eventually, however, a silence descended over the room. Everybody was breathing in and out, sitting around staring at themselves staring at themselves. Which in other circumstances would have been extremely difficult. And rather dull. Amy stood and ushered James and the two senile old golfers from the room into her office. She remained, though. “Right then,” She started. “Why don’t you split up into your original groups and we’ll start at the beginning. And nobody say anything until I-” Amy pointed to her chest. “-tell you that you can speak. This is hard enough as it is. I’m Amy, by the way.” Her office door opened and George, a God by profession1, was just about to walk out. Amy spun fast, pointing. “Get-” She yelled in an awfully silent voice, and the door slammed shut. “-back in there.” The unconscious Stuart moaned a little, and soon was floating in and out of sub-consciousness like a cherry blossom floats on a clear Japanese stream in Autumn. “You.” “Who?” Asked the Simon wearing the copper-coloured spacesuit. He was sitting next to his double. “You!” Amy was cross, and she was pointing to him. “Nobody else speak and you, Simon, will tell us what happened.” Simon shifted his body a little on the seat, and pulled at his dusty wet spacesuit. It must have been very uncomfortable. He was obviously experiencing some sort of pain in his leg. “Er. Well, just a moment ago we were all running from a man in a castle. There was a war on and somebody was shooting at the castle with bombs. It all started when we left the Lorna Major Academic Academy-” “You’ve been there? We just left it a few days ago.” the Simon double stated. “Shush, you,” Amy husked. “Simon?” “Oh. How odd. They didn’t recognise any of us when we went there. You must have been there after us. Oh, anyway, two days ago we materialised upside down just above a mud-brick house and crashed through their roof. There were some people inside and they took us hostage, thinking that we were spies or whatever. Some other people arrived and then we were all taken away in a surprise attack by these guys in army greens to a big eerie castle. Stuart escaped and we picked him up just before leaving.” Amy looked at him. “Then how did he get in this, er, condition. His ankle looks swollen. Is that blood?” “Let me finish.” He exasperated, watching her. “Sorry. It looks like blood.” She pointed out, watching him. “Hmmm. Well, when we got to the castle, we were separated from our captors-” Karen cut in. “Then the people whose house you fell into, were they like guards or something?” “No. No I think they were rebels or whatever. The good guys. Anyway, we were taken to a dungeon. This place, it was like a medieval castle, except there were electric lights and they all had guns and grenades. “Then after a while, we were taken one by one up to see the owner or leader, except Stuart here never showed. He must have run away. The place was a labyrinth of hallways and rooms. I think they were out all night looking for him. “Anyway, this guy Luther, he owned and ran the place, and he interviewed us all in a group, then separately. We were treated nicely, I suppose. Funny things was, though, that he acted as if he knew us or something. Then last night we broke out of our room and came down a hallway looking for Stuart, who we hadn’t heard a word on. We found a secret passage which led us to a room full of space stuff. That’s where we found the other time machine. And then bombs started going off and Stuart broke through the roof in a shower of water. He must have been trapped in a reservoir or something. He fell down and twisted his ankle and we grabbed him and escaped with the castle falling down around us. I think that Luther guy was buried in the remains of the castle.” Simon lapsed into silence. “Hang on,” edged the other Simon, who sat chewing on the side of one finger in thought. “What d’you mean by ‘the other time machine’?” Matthew answered. “It’s downstairs somewhere. We landed in an office down there and since the elevator was the only way out, we got in and pushed a button. The things that’s down there is a hundred years old. It’s windscreen is smashed and its all dirty and black. Our time machine crashed through the roof, remember, and something went wrong with it. That one was handy so we took it.” “Er, Simon,” asked the Simon who’d been resident in the World Design Institute for the past few days. It was difficult addressing yourself like this, he noted. He had the strange urge to call himself ‘me’. “If you came in one ship and left in another, and we’ve got one here, then-?” “I was just thinking that myself. I don’t know.” Amy told everybody else to settle down and to go through things one step at a time, looking for a clue. Then she asked the Gods and James to re-enter the room. She was rather firm on the point that they remain silent, however. James had introduced himself to the Gods, not knowing that they were Gods, then had found out that they were Gods, blubbered and mumbled whilst the Gods told him all about fairways and tees and then decided to just shut up and tag along with his fingers in his ears. “Hang on!” Simon interrupted his double. “You were shot? Where?” “In the house.” “No, where. Where on your body?” Simon showed him. “Oh dear,” depreciated Simon. And then he showed his double a similar wound, made by a similar weapon in a similar position. “Are you okay?” “I could use a doctor. And some painkillers,” replied Simon. They both bit their upper lips at the same time, and gave everybody the same look, thinking the same thoughts. The was a long silence. “Well,” Errol broke in. “I’m hungry. Let’s eat and have a long rest and we can sit around discussing this later on.” His double seconded the motion. 5. Big Al had lost again. He threw his cards down on the table in frustration. One fluttered to the rich red carpet, face up. It was the King of Diamonds. “Well, fine.” Maline smiled. Al got up from the low seat and wandered out of the room. “Coffee?” “Mm, thanks. Black, no sugar.” “Aah, a real coffee lover.” Al voice sounded from around the door. “Look around, if you want.” Maline did that. Here was a nice room. She’d never been to Al’s place before. Al was renting a whole house for himself, a three bedroom job with a big bathroom and laundry. There was a garage out the back, but Al owned a truck and not a car. It remained empty. Maline wandered over the dark carpet towards the front door, glancing back at the table in the middle, where cards lay hap-hazardly amongst empty glasses and magazines. Here, at her feet, lay the TV’s remote control. She picked it up and carried it to a sideboard, where she placed it down carefully. Al’s place was a big mess, but it was nice and warm and homely. It had a certain ‘lived-in’ feel. Pictures hung along the wall- a couple of family-type snaps, mostly featuring a young Al and his parents. One was of a black and red cattle dog. And one of a dark, round shape, motion-blurred and out-of-focus, above some trees. In the background, a microwave oven squealed its finality. “Are you an ‘oo-foe’ nut?” Maline called to Al. “A what?” came the reply. Maline walked over to the kitchen door and looked in. Al was thrashing up some cups near the sink with a faded green dishcloth. The sink itself was a giant pile of white plates and pronged utensils. Steam poured from a pot full of black stuff and an opened plastic two litre milk container sat on the yellow laminated benchtops. There were loose linoleum tiles, black and white and a fold-up table, loaded with junk. “Are you a UFO fanatic? I saw a picture.” “Oh, that. I took that photo about, oh, six years ago inland. I was up there fishing with some mates and we all saw this thing flash across the sky. I got a snap.” “Little green men?” Maline asked. “No,” Al said in an authoritative manner. “But I firmly believe that UFO’s exist.” “Oh, of course they do. The Air Force doesn’t exist.” Big Al grinned and forced a laugh. Had he heard that one before? Still, he was on a roll here, and he didn’t want to seem dull or arrogant at this stage, save that for later. He poured the coffee into two mugs, and poured milk into his own, leaving the opened container sitting on the bench. Maline received one cup and noted it’s warmth. She smiled vaguely at Al and wandered back out to the living room, to lounge on the sofa, head and feet taking up two of the three partitions on the lovely, soft seat. She sipped from her cup, kicked her shoes from her feet and set the cup down on the floor. Al sat on a nearby seat and placed his cup on the table. “Well,” Al introduced. “Well what?” Al paused a moment before rising from his seat. He picked up his guests’ hot coffee mug from the floor and placed it on the table next to his own. Then he sat down beside Maline, took his own cup and drank a sip, placing it back down afterwards. He put his arm around Maline’s shoulder, turning her head up. “Well nothing.” And kissed her on the lips. She conceded. A card fell from the centre table to land purposefully apon the other, face down. It was the Queen of Hearts. Somebody was at the door. This early, on a Saturday morning, banging away at the wooden strip underneath the doorbell button. The sun couldn’t have been up for two hours yet and already! It was probably a Jesus freak, handing out those silly little free2 pamphlets that inevitably become beer coasters or telephone doodle-pads. Al woke to the feeling of warmth stretching an infinity away down the right-hand side of his body. Maline’s face was buried in his right forearm and he could see her firm shape clearly through the sheets. He felt good. Still the knocking, pause, knocking. Birds were tweeting out on the lawn. Al managed to get up, though it took him a long time, and pulled a robe over his naked body. Maline stirred and pulled all the bedclothes over her body, turning away and curling up. A single, sensuous moan. Al opened the door and didn’t speak. He shielded his eyes from the eight am. sunshine and managed to see a familiar face in the door. “Big Al,” said the dark shape in front of him. It resolved into a person, somebody holding out his hand in order to shake. “Thought you might like to come fishing. C’mon, wakey wakey. Have to get there early.” Another section of Al's brain woke up. “Rod!” and shook the man’s hand. “Wow, how long have you been in town? Here, come in.” The man called Rod wandered in and went to sit down. He noticed two white coffee cups, filled almost to the brim with cold coffee. “Do you have company? Is your mum visiting again?” Rod grinned. “No,” Al said and remained standing. His head toggled from side to side and then grinned and shrugged. “You know, Friday night. Anyway, go make yourself a cup of coffee and make me one too. Just take these ones in and nuke them and scrape the cakey bits off. They’ll be right. I’m off to have a shower.” Rod turned up his nose as Al walked back towards the bedroom. “I think I’ll just put the kettle on.” There were cards on the floor and a car drove by outside. “Rod? This is Maline.” Rod smiled nicely at the woman in front of him. “And Mal, surprise surprise, this is my old friend Rod. Fishing partner from way back when.” Maline smiled sleepily at Rod. “Mal?” she asked of Al. Al shrugged, grinned. “Al and Mal.” “Sounds a lot like Mike and Mal,” suggested Rod without a trace of humour. Maline grimaced at Rod. “Well, Rod. Thanks a lot. We appreciate that, thankyou very much. Hello Mike,” she then said to Al. “Are we going on a great northern adventure this time to see the stunning native wildlife and become one with the beautiful countryside?” Al turned Rod away from Maline. He sucked in a deep breath, raised his chin and in no uncertain terms, thanked Rod for setting the days theme. “Hey, you’re welcome,” countered Rod, beaming. Things were going just fine. And about an hour later, Maline was seated in the back of a red station wagon stocked with esky’s, fishing tackle, smelly bait, a tent and some blow-up mattresses, a bag full of clothes and who knows what else. Rod was just getting into the drivers seat and Al had only a moment ago gone back inside to answer the phone. The house door closed and Al was walking down the steps. “That was my step-mother. She, the dear old bovine moose, wants to drop in tonight for a visit.” “What? You can’t come?” Rod distressed. “No, just the opposite,” Al sighed. “She can’t. Well, she is coming, but we won’t be here, will we? I left her a note on the door, and she’s going up the coast for some reunion thing anyway. I’ll probably cop her on her way back home.” Rod laughed. He knew the wrath of these visits too. Maline stared out the window, reflecting on many things, her lips smiling but her eyes sad. Across the street, somebody someone would recognise glanced casually at Maline, his weary eyes direct. He nodded, knowing Maline could see him nod, then turned and wandered purposefully away. It frightened her. To her very shielded core. The road was not busy. It was a dirt road, fairly narrow but wide enough to let two cars pass safely. The road wound down a mountain into a squeaky little valley, green with trees and quaint farms. The valley was small and very long as it existed down the bottom of steep gorge country. Clouds constantly hovered uncertainly overhead and they drove the red car into and out of sunlight. It was half past ten in the morning. They would arrive at their destination, a public reserve down on the river, in just over forty minutes. “So I said,” continued Rod, chatting constantly into Al’s ear. “You might as well, and what do you know, she bloody-well did. Right over. You know, there goes my twenty bucks. I wasn’t going over that.” Al grunted, picturing the event. Jumping from one high-rise rooftop to the next. City life; it must be so incredibly dull that people will resort to doing completely stupid things for some entertainment. “Yeah?” was all Al could manage. Maline was asleep in the back, her head rattling against the plastic strip behind the window, a soft pillow fallen down beside her. She was dreaming of another place, another time. A memory was stirring in her, of some people she’d once known, or people she thought she’d known. It was all such a blur now. She snapped awake to the sound of bald rubber tyres gliding across an uneven surface, and to the yell of two men who knew what no man should know. Then everything turned upside down and the world became bone-jarring noise and a spinning, twirling nightmare. A balloon of powdered glass echoed through a tight, personal existence. The car narrowly missed a lone black and white cow standing squarely in the middle of the country road, masticating, and arced out over the seventy degree incline of the grassy embankment at a speed of roughly eighty kilometers an hour, pausing only to consider the reality of a tree racing gracefully to meet the sky. The green car fell and tumbled down the slope, end over end, until finally resting side on against a pale white tree. Silence descended. Everything was a blur. A throbbing, painless blur. This was not a part of the nightmare, she knew. This was not how it should be. There were things out there, moving around, and they weren’t meant to be there. It wasn’t meant to happen this way. Voices. Voices! Out there, in here. Hands! Hands helping her. The green grass, the blue sky, the glory redness of the back of her eyelids. She was being carried away on the glowing wings of an angel. But everything went away, and the gloom of Silence once again instilled its forgiving arms around her. 6. In the beginning, it was very dark. But before the beginning, before they switched the light out, even before the Great Hamster was reverse engineered into existence by a beautiful but somewhat confused young girl from Earth many billions of years later, very late in the week before it all started, everything was a shambles. Everything was not chaos, however. Think of chaos; those pretty book covers and computer screensaver designs that in their psychedelic ways reminisce of spirographs on a huge hit of Sandoz Labs LSD-25. Strange patterns repeating and spiralling away from the eye, baffling perspective on a lurid floating-point battlefield hovering somewhere between the third and second mathematical dimension. Order rising gloriously from the impossibility of negative probabilities, willing itself into existence through reams of unrelated numbers one on zero decimal places long. A shambles is different to that sort of chaos in that while nobody knew what the hell was going on, everything got done somewhat efficiently. Before the beginning, there was grass, and a hell of a lot of it, too. Miles of happily swaying tendrils of chokingly green grass. It grew over the little wavy hills. It grew over the excruciatingly high mountains. Where appropriate, it grew up through the snow. Who knows, it probably grew on the bright grey cotton wool clouds too. The things was, there was no soil underneath the grass. Soil hadn’t been invented yet. There were two tents. One was not black, the other white. Instead, they were done up like a circus- does red with a light blue pin stripe work? How do those circuses get away with it? They were big tents, more like tall instead of wide. There stood opposing each other and their flaps, as they were engineered to do, flapped in the wind. It was an interesting scene, there out on a field of grass and nothing else, two kindergarten-painted tents standing flapping madly at each other. A strange caravan-like bubble shape stood of to the side, half hidden by the statutory grass. Inside these tents, however, it was a different story. Take for instance the red (with light blue pinstripe) tent. In there was a very big hole. It was like having two holes, except both in the one hole. It was a really, really dark; really, really dank; and really, really deep. This place was, on the whole, a big hole. And, to add to the whole hole-ness of the place, something odd, perhaps even holy, was going on down the bottom. Some people were having a party, each wearing a red stocking over their head and shouting obscenities at each other over loud muzak simply because the shouter knew for a fact that the shoutee couldn’t hear a word they’d said, therefore they could say whatever they liked and nobody’d be the wiser. The effect was interesting. Infinitely more interesting down a hole, too. Why was there a shouting party down the hole? Don’t ask. You don’t want to know. In the other tent, a ludicrous shiny yellow and purple check job, steam poured everywhere. Smoke poured after it. Hot mud and a foul yellow lava sloshed after the smoke, only to sink through the trampled green grass, hissing and spitting; Schrodinger’s cat being put into its box. In this tent, the preparations were being made to create the universe and everything in it. And there were pits of bubbling lava, and a big pot of ethereal-looking grey. It wasn’t grey something. It wasn’t even the grey nothing that everybody was used to. It was a cauldron of colour, and all the colours together amount to grey; the lint of the universe. There were other pots and beakers, all bubbling or steaming away madly. One such beaker was bubbling some brown liquid. Out of a smoky nearby mess of lab equipment and high-school science books came a hand. This hand grabbed the beaker, turned down a flame underneath it, and promptly withdrew the beaker and it’s contents back through the jungle of Pyrex and into the white, acrid smoke. When it came back, it was a muddy brown colour and around the top third of the liquid was missing. Something gulped, gasped and the hand set the beaker of bleak coffee back on it’s warming flame. Without warning, a random beaker exploded. Smoke billowed like a fat, orange velvet curtain. 7. A piece of paper had fallen to the floor. It had, as gravity had long before predicted, hit the ground at a speed relative to its mass, which was not great, and such had not left a mark or other visible sign of impact on the floor. The floor was a nice imitation wood grain, polished to the point that if it were to be polished any more, the chances would be that the buffing cloth would penetrate the surface of the floor and end up polishing whatever it was that lay underneath the one-piece mirrorative substance- the roof downstairs, probably. Soot and dust lay everywhere. There was a wet patch. A dull red footprint by the silver elevator door, cut by the gleaming metal doors. A huge ceramic space vehicle was in the middle of the room. The light was on. There was a nice looking desk and some books bound in expensive cloth. There was a leather chair. Something had changed since the last time the rapidly blinking woman had been in the room. The answer was so obvious too that she had to concentrate very hard to even see just what that change was. Mental notes recalled memories out of their happy short term bunkers and lined them all up neat and straight. Light; check. Desk; check. Chair; check, Spacecraft, uh check? Yes, that was it. This was not her spacecraft. Hers was a green, brick shaped Vlovod Mk. II. And it was company policy that she didn’t park it inside. That was it, sure. Spacecraft. Spacecraft… After banging ludicrously on the elevator button, waiting a few nagging milliseconds then repeating the process, the gelatinous doors slid open and the withering female rushed in, pausing only to rap sharply on her supervisor’s button. This was not to be tolerated. It was that horrible Remilliard from three down, that’s who it was. He’d given her those looks. The supervisor had to hear about this. The supervisor worked twenty stories up and the elevator was frighteningly slow. Music blithered in her ear. And was that- what was that?- dry blood? on the elevator button? The elevator stopped when the lights read 39. Her supervisor was on 40, but the elevator wasn’t going that high. Not yet. Somebody had pushed the button; the doors slid open. Turmoil was the word that sprang into the mind of the woman in the elevator. Oddly enough, so did the sentence ‘My dog, the lawn ornament’. She recognised one person in there, that Emma or Bambi who’d been working here for years. She remembered seeing her at last years office party, sitting there gazing out the window. Was her name Susie? No. The rest of the people were unknown to the woman. An elderly couple, wearing ghastly clothing, were waiting at the elevator doors. The old man was smiling like an idiot, the woman looked slightly worried. The man had his foot in the doors to stop them from closing, but neither he nor the woman even looked like stepping into the elevator. They were just standing there. “Will you get your foot out of the door you silly old man?” she shouted, enraged. “No. It’s stuck.” The woman in the elevator looked down. She could see his shoelace. Half of it was in his shoe still, the other half had disappeared down into the workings of the elevator. “This is not very comfortable, you know.” George said to the woman. Amy had come over, smiling. “Yes, can I help you?” “This old geezer has got his foot stuck in the elevator,” She motioned to George. Linda was down on her hands and knees peering down the elevator shaft, looking for the tangled shoelace in the works. “And I have to get up to see the man upstairs.” “Are you having breakdown?” George asked her, thinking about another man upstairs. “I mean, wouldn’t there be a woman upstairs for you?” The woman from the elevator spun around. “No! I mean, I need to see somebody upstairs. Mr Bigge, the wing manager!” “But there isn’t any stairs. There’s only the elevator. There’s stairs in the lobby.” “What are you talking about?” The woman almost struck the god in frustration. “Shut up you old fool,” Linda was saying. “Move you foot.” “Who are you?” Amy asked the woman. James was walking towards the Gods. “Do you have an appointment to see Mr Bigge?” “I can’t. It’s stuck. That’s the problem.” George sighed. “I’m from downstairs-” “There’s some other stairs down just out that door.” George cut in, pointing to the side door. Trying to be helpful again. “- on level twenty. Somebody parked their spaceship in my-” “Spaceship?” one of the Stuart’s asked. “Big white one?” He and his double limped over to Amy and the new person. “- room.” The new girl looked at the Stuart not wearing the copper-coloured suit. “Is it yours?” “No it’s his.” Stuart said, pointing to his right, where Stuart stood. “Mine’s in a space dock someplace.” “What’s wrong?” James asked of God. “My foot is stuck,” God replied, as if it was totally obvious. It was totally obvious; James was just stupid. The new woman looked at Simon, then looked at Simon, and then looked back at Simon. “Are you two identical twins?” “No, actually we’re the same people. Just from different dimensions, that’s all. I suggest you disregard that if you talk to us, though. We have different histories.” The woman looked around the room then, seeing that nearly everybody else not already around the elevator had a double somewhere. He could see that some of them were wearing copper coloured space suits (old ones, she thought), and some looked hurt. Two people, a boy and girl, were holding hands, attending their doubles, lying on the ground with their eyes shut. “Somebody call the paramedics,” A Karen said, and the dusty Simon groaned. His wound was festering. “Is it just me or is there something strange happening in here?” she asked Amy, hand on her chin, scratching something that didn’t appear to be there. “It all seems fine to me,” Amy didn’t even smile. It was an effort. “The spaceship is his.” she said pointing at the Simon who was now attempting to remove the wet spacesuit. It was squeaking and stretching, but didn’t want to come off. “I’m Amy, by the way.” “Yes. Yes, I remember you from a party one time. I thought your name was Elly.” “No, it’s Amy.” “I was told it was Elly. At a party, a year ago. I don’t think you were there. Elly was, though.” “Oh. I’ve only been to one. The other one I had a broken wrist and couldn’t make it. Took a nasty fall down the stairs in the lobby. They have spherical steps so you don’t hurt yourself if you fall down them, which you do.” “Well. That was the one then.” She extended her right arm regretfully. “I’m, uh, Bob.” “Bob?” Simon asked. “See,” Linda was pointing at George’s shoe for James. “It’s gone down there.” “Can you get some scissors?” James pondered. “My damned parents,” Bob told Simon. “They called me Bob. All the other people my age are called Jade or Pemry or Lija or other normal names, and I get ‘Bob’. You'd think it's short for Bobby or even Robby, but no, I'm just-” “It’s a cruel universe out there.” the other Simon patted her on the back. “What would you know? I’m the one that has to live with it.” “Would you like some tea?” Amy asked. “I’d like that spaceship removed.” James was pulling at Georges shoe, trying to get his foot out of it. “It’s no use,” Linda said. “He hasn’t had that thing off for millennia. The smell is holding it on, I think.” “You aren’t going to chop that shoelace!” George tried jerking his foot away. “Here,” Amy was guiding Bob to a chair. “Sit down here.” “There’s broken ceramic on the floor.” Crunch. “There, there. Just have a little rest.” “What floor are you on?” Simon, the one in the spacesuit, as his double helped pull him out of it, asked. His leg definitely was festering. Continuing, he mumbled “I mean, I don’t know where that damned ship is. Can somebody please call the wretched parame-” and fainted. “Twenty,” Said Bob, and put her head between her hands, obviously frustrated beyond belief. Simon came put of the spacesuit with a definite suction-pop. He fell backwards, onto the broken ceramic, on his back. Crunch again. No matter; he was unconscious. “Do you suppose he wanted us to call some parameters?” Karen asked Stuart. “Thirteen left! Two degrees! X is always equal to, less than or greater than the sum of it’s sides!” Amy was turning a kettle on, getting a handful of cups ready. She made the mistake of asking the room’s general populace if they would like tea or coffee. She didn’t have ten cups. She needed fifteen. Karen, the one in the space suit, had woken up. She looked a little blurry eyed, but came over to the other Simon, asked him could he help her get out of the space suit, and then helped him brush the bits of ceramic out of his doubles back. Presumably somebody was calling the paramedics. Simon pulled Karen’s suit. Karen squirmed and wriggled and pulled and tugged. The suit slid half way off, pulling her shirt most of the way up her chest. Her skin was fairly white; wet, dirty. Pretty interesting too, thought Simon. “Nice belly button you’ve got yourself, there.” “Oofhg!” She was saying, the voice muffled by the strong suit. Her arms thrashed around as she tried to pull the shirt back down, without much luck. She ended up on the ground. “Ghet ths fghing ff mef!” “What?” Simon was laughing. “I mean, Whaf?” Karen found her own way out of the suit; pulled the shirt down indignantly, as Simon found his way over to the wall, where he sat. She made her way over to him, sat close beside him, looked angry. “What’s the matter, Karen?” “What’s the matter, Karen?” She mimicked Simon’s silly voice. “I need a shower. And thank you for all that help getting me out of that bloody thing.” “You have a nice chest, you know?” Simon grinned at the girl at slyly as he could manage. Mouth smile; no eyes. Karen went a little red, fought it back. “Last you’re going to see of it, I can guarantee. Amy, is there a shower and bathroom anywhere around this place?” Amy left the kettle, motioned for Karen to follow her. The other Karen left Stuart, walking along beside herself and Amy, chatting. They left the room just as the kettle started to whine. 8. The cycle screamed up at him; he could feel the bike twist and sway beneath him as he pulled back on the handlebars and let the throttle slip a little. He'd hit the red line, twelve thousand revs too many, the corner coming at him like a falling space station. He eased the brake on, but it was too late. He hit the cement wall doing two-hundred and forty three miles per hour. The slide along the bitumen ground him into a red bloody mash. Another bike screamed past, made the turn, hooned away, before everything went black. The words 'Game Over' passed over the screen in gouroud shaded three-dimensional Gothic styled characters. The hydraulic motorcycle went silent. So silent, in fact, they all the passers by could clearly hear the most foul string of words flowing from the mouth of the man riding the bike. He was describing, in quite intense graphic detail, what he would do to both the machine and the all the other machines around it if that ever happened again. Strangely enough, the video game completely ignored him and promptly displayed the crash in loving slow-motion replay, from a variety of angles. The angry man kicked the machine, but it refused to give in. He swore at it. It showed a close up of his virtual body being run over by a passing bike. He cursed the machine, it ran the crash backwards. He threatened to pour his Coke over the machines circuits, the computer ran a short scene where the newly-dead virtual body was picked up by an ambulance, put it the back, where suddenly it exploded, the virtual body thrown high into the air, where it struck a passing helicopter. Graphically. When the man did pour his Coke down the machine, he was removed from the shop. Silently, the machine laughed and had the insight to burn that particular crash scene into its memory chips, just in case the guy ever came back. A second later, the Coke had infiltrated the machine enough to get on some of the empowered circuits, thus fusing them. Oddly enough, the only part affected by this act was the computers memory circuits, which were instantly erased. The computer cursed to itself, but suddenly couldn't remember why, and so forgot the whole incident and continued on happily. Meanwhile outside the shop, many things were happening. The man had seen another person stare solemnly at him, nod once, turn and walk away. This did not worry him as this was the city and those sorts of people were everywhere. In the act of noticing this second person, he failed to see the vehicle. He noticed it was very noisy in the ambulance, and for an unknown reason, it seemed to be speeding away from the direction which he thought the hospital to be in. He looked up, but the faces above him were indistinct, as if very far away. In their eyes he could see infinity. He was frightened, and in his efforts to get up off the stretcher, he noticed one other body in the ambulance; a woman, badly cut. The mask came down over his face, seemingly from nowhere. He smelled the pleasant odour of nitrous oxide, and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. He was away of helping hands around him, supporting his broken body. Sirens screamed. He saw a lot of things that in other circumstances would have sent him way past insanity. He hadn’t been hit on the head but he still saw stars. He saw planets. But the nitrous oxide; he didn’t care. The last thing he remembered seeing was a whole lot of grass. 9. The woman said “Oh this is repugnant.” “Repugnant,” mused the bearded man beside her. “Odd word. Nauseating springs to my mind.” “That’s not where it springs for me.” The man regarded this comment stoically. Smacking his lips, he stated “Now, that’s repugnant.” Like an unfelt wind the hiss of air poured out of a thousand tiny cooling fans. Grey. The remnants of this ship were that achromaticity. Apart from the occasional mercury lamp, multicolour LED or even a fuzzy screen, the ship was dark and unpleasant. The air felt heavy, as if it had the texture of felt. There was a window looking out into space; occasional dots of paint sprayed from a wet toothbrush. Bunches of cables, fatter than a baby’s arm hung splayed from the ruined walls and ceiling. White fungus lurched from under a blackened door. In the forward room a thousand skeletons lay in their frozen tombs; a thousand more scattered about the room. When the woman stepped on the remains of a hand, burnished with time, it made a sickening crunching sound. A finger, one with the vague remnants of flesh still clinging desperately to the dead bone, snapped off and lay upright in its slightly curled position. “Simon!” the woman shrieked, desperately retreating from the sight. Desperate eyes stared up from their intertwined existence, deep within a corroded skull, a pale green exterior of velvet fungi. A ghosted voice croaked up from somewhere below the body, words unknown. Simon caught the woman as she doubled over, half tripping on an unseen jawbone. “I thought it was Stuart. It reminded me of Stuart.” Simon looked down at her figure, now three or so years his senior. He wore a serious expression; almost his only mask. Turning the woman from the ugly sight, he spoke gently, easingly to her. “You cared a lot about him, didn’t you Karen?” Her eyes flashed up without delay. Her voice was uncommonly stern. “Of course. Of course I cared about him. You remember, don’t you?” “No. I mean, it wasn’t me. I’ve been alone for ten years, Karen. God, it’s so strange to see you now. Such a cruel joke, in which there is no humour,” His eyes were so dull. Devoid. “You know I’ve been searching for you, any of you. Any of the others. Even though there are a million or more of us now, since the Nova, it has taken me these ten years to find even you.” “Yes, I know.” Simon took Karen by the shoulders, straightened her face to his and said “He’s gone, you know. The chances of you finding him, or any of him for that matter, is almost non existent.” “There’s always hope.” Karen’s brown eyes became unfocused, her breathing audible. “Had I known that ten years ago, I may still remember how to smile.” There was a bleak, silent moment. “I wonder where they all are now.” Karen’s voice was a whisper as she stared around the dead room. “The others, I mean.” “Who’s to know?” Simon shrugged. “ I mean, look at us. You are older than me. A day has passed here. Any number of years may have passed everywhere else.” “Damn the machine.” Simon regarded her, walking her slowly back to the craft. He had his left arm around her shoulders, his face remaining, as always, impassive. “Oh yes. Yes, damn the machine. Damn the damned machine!” On the heel of his foot he spun, his voice angry. Karen’s eyes widened, her lower lip began to tremble. “Don’t grieve over the past. You can’t change how things are, how things were. You can go back and try but it never works, things always end up different. Another choice is made and you know what that does to things.” “What is your problem, Simon?” Karen struck, her voice as stern as the mans, yet calmer than the heart of a black hole. “The same as yours. I’m lost, the people I came here with are dead, or as good as.” “That’s not true.” “It may as well be. I may as well be. Ten years I have been as much alone as in company with others. In ten years time, you’ll be the same too.” “No,” Karen’s voice was cold. “You’re wrong. I won’t be alone, or as heartless as you are now. I remember how you were. You weren’t so different. Things don’t change. You never changed anything.” Simon was hardly listening. Karen regarded his ice, decided that arguing wasn’t the answer. She turned away from him, walked back towards the ship, momentarily pausing to kick the frozen grin of a skull from her path. It clattered against something metal. “What did you mean?” Simon raised his voice so it would carry into the small spaceship. He stood alone in the dark, empty dock. He was wearing a long navy blue overcoat which flapped around his ankles. Some distant lightsource behind him illuminated the white fog that splayed around him. He stood his ground firmly. Though he couldn’t see her through the yellow glass, he knew Karen was watching him from somewhere. He stared. The absence of sound he knew he would face came. He stood his ground, held his pose, hands held stiffly in those deep pockets. Stared to where he thought Karen would be. Two long minutes passed. “Are you coming?” Karen’s voice said from right behind him. He felt her hands crest his shoulders soothingly. They were the hands of a thirty year old. For a moment, he didn’t move. Then he grunted a little, moved off into the ship, knowing Karen would sometime follow. 10. “Hello? Hello? Everybody!” Simon had just been taken away by a somewhat confused-looking pair of ambulance officers. They wheeled him away on a white stretcher and left Amy with written directions on how to get the hospital, and where she could stick the dialysis machine. It had all started so well. They’d come in nice and smiled at everybody peacefully, as if to say that everything was in order and under control. But at the point when approached by Simon, Stuart and Stuart, followed by Matthew, Errol, Errol and Matthew, all asking different questions at the same time, pointing at another Simon, order and control had taken a flying leap. The ambulance officers would have shrugged it off if Karen and Karen hadn’t bumbled in and smashed into the dialysis machine. Amy had told them that she hadn’t ordered the dialysis machine the officers had brought in, that her kidneys were doing a smacking good job as they were. The ambulance officers had both stated that they had very specific instructions as to the place and time of the delivery, only then to discover that the work order suggested floor 93, not floor 39. Naturally, they did not relate this oversight to anybody. Soon they found out that there was a gunshot casualty available, one without ambulance cover, and snapped him up, going at once into professional mode. They parked the dialysis machine next to the elevator, popped Simon onto a stretcher and were soon gone. The place was still in an uproarious mood. People dashed one way, followed by their doubles. Other people dashed the other way, carrying cups of coffee. In then middle stood a confused woman, silent. Amy had to settle them all down again. So she did it the easy way. She screamed. A peice of fern leaf fluttered to the floor. Everybody heard it touch down. It made a soft flopping sound. “We have to figure out what to do now,” said Amy, smiling kindly. There came an almightily crash from Amy’s office, followed by the gentle tinkle of glass. Considering the past couple of hours, this was nothing unusual, and Amy ignored the interruption, eager to maintain these dear, dear moments of peace. Bob sat in the corner, paging aimlessly through a brochure entitled ‘Pangalactic Holidays you’ll want to avoid’, looking vaguely distracted. Amy continued. “I mean, you all can’t stay here. None of you can stay here. I don’t think that would work. I don’t think you should all leave as one big bunch, either. One lot of you is bad enough.” This got an exuberant laugh from the X-Nerds, both of them. “So, once you’ve all figured out what to do, do it. I have work to do, you know.” “It’s the figuring that’s go me,” Simon 1 said. Stuart 2 nodded. From Amy’s office next door, an aged voice said something, and the doorknob fell off. Then the door was opened and Amy, without turning, used her emphatic screaming method of inducing silence once more. A man stood in the doorway. His eyes panned the room professionally, like a TV cameraman watching a car go by. He saw a lot of things we would rather have not seen. He saw some faces from the distant past, and two faces he found excruciatingly familiar. He gasped without realising it. He punctually stated “Oh my dog.” After a moments silence, Bob, from the corner, said “This is getting complicated. Will somebody please tell me what is going on here?” Nobody could. Stuart had aged. He was now nearly thirty. He sat talking about himself while the others X-Nerds sat in mute silence. He had just told them about Simon’s disappearance, roughly a year before the present. “Some time ago, probably a month or so back, I was separated from Karen. She, Simon and I had travelled for ten years or so, after the other two disappeared. We never saw another one of us in all that time. Now, after we separate, I get this. Ten of you, and a few freeloaders.” “I’m not a freeloader. I work here,” Said Amy. “You work here? I think I remember you. Aren’t you that girl we found on prehistoric Earth?” Amy nodded, smiled. Stuart smiled back at her. Normally he had to look up his own name. For some reason, he had never forgotten Amy’s. “Well there you go. How did you end up here? Any where is ‘here’ anyway?” “Lorna Minor World Design Institute.” “Oh yeah, really?” Stuart said, nodding. “The place where they make the planets. I’ll have to have a look around this place one day. Always been meaning to.” Amy made the new introductions and then went about describing how everybody had arrived at the location. The old Stuart held his eyes low while he thought, and rubbed at the thin whiskers upon his chin. He could not remember James when re-introduced. When he spoke, everybody listened. Stuart had acquired a voice to be heard, and the wisdom in his eyes demanded attention. “We need to sit down and plan this out carefully,” He said, sitting by the door. He noticed George and Linda, fiddling with something deep within the works of the elevator. “Just what I said,” Amy murmured. “Well it’s a good idea. Apparently you have all been bumming your way around the universe, not really achieving anything. One lot of you found this James character here, the other lot went and picked up these two humans here,” Stuart indicated the so-called gods fussing over a shoe. He looked at Bob. “And how you got mixed up in all this is beyond me.” “Oh I’m not mixed up in any of this,” Bob brightened up a little at the chance to speak. “It all started when they parked their spaceship in my-” One of the Karen’s interrupted. “What did you mean by saying the gods were human?” Stuart looked genuinely surprised. “They’re human, pretty much like you and me. Didn’t you know that?” All of the X-Nerds and James shook their heads. Linda was glaring not unkindly at the old Stuart. Apparently, this was new to her too. George was being George and wasn’t listening. His shoe had his full attention. That is to say, the shoe had the shreds of attention normally attained by George. It was obvious to George that the elevator problem was more than it seemed. Somehow his shoelace had become entangled in some fundamental part of the works and not only resisted the attempts to dislodge it, but used these attempts to further complicate the matter. Now, half the shoe had fallen into the crevice between the elevator and the floor, though there didn’t appear to be enough room between the objects to allow such an action to have occurred. Thus the problem was this: The shoe had fallen into a place where all reason said it couldn’t have fallen. The space in which the shoe was stuck was smaller than the size of the shoe. Logic was out the window and down the road on this one3. George began to notice the fetid sock smell, and gave the shoe an unapproving tug. Some dark and misplaced part of his mind recognised somebody talking but wasn’t on speaking terms with the memory department, and thus forgot to mention it to the rest. Stuart couldn’t believe it. “You mean you actually thought you were a god?” He asked of Linda. “Well, yes. I mean, as far back as I can remember.” Linda’s face knotted in concentration. “I mean, the things I can do, other people I know, except the others gods, of course, can’t.” “How far back can you remember?” Stuart asked, obviously concentrating on something else. “Well,” Linda started, but stopped when Stuart vanished. “Oh.” There was a moment where everybody adjusted to the change. Then there was a silence. “I’ve just got the knack,” Said Stuart, stepping over George and out of the elevator. Twenty eight eyes followed him as he moved back to the place where he had stood only a twin second before. “How-” “Parlour tricks. Spend a couple of years in company with some of the Universes finest minds and you pick up a few things.” James then said “Start from the start. Tell us everything. I’m sick of doing nothing.” “Get used to it. Do we have any coffee?” On impulse, both the other Stuart’s passed what little coffee remained in their mugs, about an inch, black, cold. The thirty year old Stuart regarded the hazy muck in the mugs, mixed them together and took it in one mouthful. He’d learned over the years to get what he could, because mugs of coffee, no matter what state, were few and far-between. “Thank me,” He grinned, and sat down next to the two Karens. He held the hand of the Karen to his right, who didn’t object, now having a Stuart on either side, doing the same thing, with that same faint grin. “The beginning. I guess you’ve figured out when we split apart. The big supernova. It was my fault, I seem to recall. If I hadn’t waited for the nova’s energy, then I think the apparent multi-dimensioning wouldn’t have happened. Still, it did, it has, and you can’t go back and change it. That, for some reason, never works. It always ends up different to what you expect. Guess it makes sense, really. There’s only one way to change it for good, but I haven’t worked out what it is yet. “Anyway, the way I have it figured, our original instructions from the end of the city are all obsolete now because the celestial city can’t really exist anymore. When we all left that first time, I think the celestial city and everybody in it disappeared the instant we re-entered the universe because no matter what you think, I feel we have just about messed up everything there is to mess up, and in just about every dimension possible. I don’t see how the Celestial City could be in the same state now.” A Matthew said, “But how was it there in the first place? Apparently it got there just fine before we went back in time, which means we did something right and didn’t blow it up or whatever.” “The mash mish,” Stuart grimaced. “Remember that, oh, what was his name? The fellow who wrote the Hitch Hikers Guide book.” “Adam Douglas.” Someone said. Someone else corrected her. “No, you idiot, it was Douglas somebody. Smith. Adam Douglas wrote The Galactic Hitch Hikers guide to Cuba.” Stuart smiled. “That’s right. I always forget his name for some reason. Anyway, in the Guide, do you remember the principal behind the general mash mish?” “Mish mash. That everything effects everything else, in both directions of what we call time? You wouldn’t think potatoes are capable of it, would you. You have your own universe, and everybody else has theirs. Something like that. I haven’t finished reading it yet.” “Yes. You know that Time is relative to an objects movement in space as perceived by another object. Space is relative to a path’s passage through time. Well, everything happened once, and what we experience is just the aftermath” Errol looked up and said “That’s an interesting way of putting it. Brings up some interesting points, though, like multiple dimensions.” “Well, the point is this. There is actually only one real universe, one Lorna Major and one Lorna Minor outside the universe, and the Celestial City and that other fractal room, whatever the hell that is, and that’s it. And the Antiverse, of course. There is, or was a Lorna Major in the universe as well, but that can be explained fairly easily and I’ll get to it. But the interesting thing I have found is that there is also only one Lorna Major outside, and all the other things I mentioned for all the infinity of dimensions. Because they exist outside the universe, they are excluded from the laws that apply inside the universe. Those laws are basically the old choice equals another universe type rules, and, interestingly enough, the word created the object. Note the tense.” Stuart felt a compulsion to change his posture slightly, taking on a faint lecturer pose. It became him. If only he had the doodly little black square hat with the yellow frilly string. Still, hat or no hat, need compelled him to continue. “There are places in the universe that exist simply to cater for all the possible objects people can name. They must pop into existence the instant somebody conceptualises it. I mean, there always there, everything exists, but it doesn’t become apparent until somebody conceptualises it and puts a name to it. It is a very obscure phenomenon and leads to some interesting places and things in the universe. Did you know a frog with purple wings is called a Nefr? Somebody thought a frog with wings would be a good idea and named it. Suddenly, there it was, and more to the point, everybody suddenly knew what a Nefr was. “Everyone knows what a Nefr is,” said Bob, who wasn’t really listening. “With the dimension thing, although there is only one universe, there are an infinite number of dimensions included, and each one can and does affect the others. It’s all very confusing and easier to think of everything relative to yourself. Just keep the image of yourself being the absolute centre of the universe and you’ll go just fine. “That Adams fellow in all probability got it right in the Guide. His idea that the universe happened and no matter what went on while it was happening, it still had the same start and the same finish. Strange how he had so much vision, without actually realising that it actually existed. You know, it’s quite possible that whoever thought that time and dimensions were related in this way and named the concept, actually invented multiple dimensions.” He dropped the lecturer pose because it hurt his back. He went back to his boring old self. “There is one interesting quirk, though. The Great Hamster, wherever He may be, is said to have founded the Universe, but he came into existence after the Universe had been created, as if he created it so it could create him. I don’t like multiple dimension problems. I’m so glad our maths teachers back home never gave us four dimensional equations.” “You remember maths classes after all this time?” Errol asked, while his double hummed a tuneless ditty. “Oh yes. Nothing will make me forget Maths. It left a scar cauterised on my brain. If we’d done four dimensional quadratics, I think that scar would be more like a gouge, possibly a canyon.” Amy finished her cup of water and looked at the old Stuart, seeing a little of the boy she once saw on a faraway planet, many aeons into the past (or maybe the future). Suddenly all the memories returned. She brightened visibly. “I think I might lay a hand of help in this one. You remember when you left earth that first time, when we first met?” “Not really,” Replied the old Stuart, but the other two younger Stuarts both nodded. Amy put her cup down, and started to pace the room slowly. “Well, I remember now. You said goodbye, and then tried to say something in the old language. I don’t know what you would have said, but I clearly remember you saying that the Universe was created by a Hamster made of cheese. It’s funny how much you could say in the old language. Anyway, I guess I needed something to believe in at that time, not knowing about gods or other concepts at the time, especially after Wolf disappeared, and I started to believe that the Universe was created by a Giant Hamster. I told everybody.” “I remember now,” said the young Stuart holding Karen’s hand. He looked at his double, his triple, then at Amy. “I was trying to tell you that I had to go and I’d probably never see you again and a few other things.” Stuart then looked up at his older self knowingly. “Do you know what this means?” Stuart’s older incarnation asked Amy. Without waiting for an answer, he ploughed on. “You, as a direct error made by Stuart, uh, I mean me, created the Giant Hamster, who then went on to create the Universe, thus allowing you to exist. There’s a paradox, for you. Why do I always get the big mistakes?” Amy smiled in spite of herself. Well, she thought, if it’s the only thing I ever do that’s worthwhile, then I am happy with it. Imagine, mothering the idea, thus the object, of the being that created the Universe. Of course, not physically mothering the object. A human giving birth to a rodent is not probable and also not a great conversation starter. Oh by the way, Janice, I gave birth to a cheese hamster last Sunday, and he’s a three pound blue. It just doesn’t work. Many hours were lost to the topics of multiple dimension, movement of time through space, matter and anti-matter and a whole assortment of general theories or other equally unprovable ideas often presented in such times (including the whole science is art and art is science debacle). James was quickly asleep, and Bob had long since disappeared. Linda and George never recovered the shoe, and the elevator remained stuck, doors wide open, infiltrating the air with ‘Kenny G does the James Last Classics’. Predictably, night came, and the original threads of Stuart’s narrative were lost to history. 12. Seventy, a hundred, possibly fifty above that. One man stood calculating the number, counting the nameless bunch with an open fist. He was old, balding, and carried a single golf club. His eyes speculated the infinite panorama, it’s perfect flowing valleys of grass, the endless fairways of lawns. It was as if the entire landscape was created for the one purpose that was in his mind. “I’m missing the Masters,” He told somebody nearby. Somehow he failed to recognise the gravity of what had just happened. The other person looked at him. She pulled her stained pink jumper tighter around her slight body, feeling both cold and numb. Her voice was almost non-existent. The pain of exhaustion caroused her face when she said “I’m dead, aren’t I?” The old man regarded her sceptically. “I don’t think so. Dead people are normally have a bluish tinge around the eyes and lips, and are rubbery. I know, I found my wife like that one morning last year. I remember waking up after a good night’s rest, and turning to kiss her good morning. I got quite a shock. She had been dead for about six hours, and I remember kissing her good morning. No, being dead is quite different. You’re not rubbery yet and you’re still moving.” The woman regarded this old beast stoically, then let out a faint smile. She was about to speak, but the man’s attention, like his person, had wandered elsewhere. He swung his driver experimentally, accidentally striking the earth. A chunk of grass flew up, landing an impossible distance away. “Well, would you look at that,” He said, kneeling down to examine the ground. A small patch of grey nothingness now existed where the grass once was; where the ground should be. On closer inspection, the old man found he could place his arm in the ‘hole’ left by the misplaced turf. He reached down as far as he could. He felt nothing. Removing his arm, he tried gazing down the hole, looking for anything the hole might contain. It revealed nothing, on a light grey substance that appeared to be no substance at all. He put his head down through little hole and found himself looking around at an hue-inverted expanse of swaying turf, stretching towards the horizon; the pink grass in contrast with a yellow sky, all light and dark inverted, as if a negative of what he thought reality. Vertigo found a place in his head and without a pause he removed his head, stood up and walked away, not saying a word, his face like hot putty. The grey hole beckoned. Soon, something small, white and hard struck the woman in the stained pink jumper on the temple. She found the grass surprisingly comfortable as her face struck. When she awoke, she was alone. Then she noticed the three objects; a caravan, and two tents. They each stood silhouetted against an ambient light source. She thought she heard dance music filtering through the nothingness. Groggily she wandered towards the strange objects, wondering many things. Her mind still swum with transparent visions of the past days. A cow on a country road, a silly old man with a golf club, a strange black butterfly. She stumbled on something, a large object buried in the grass. It was a golden sword, but she left it lying where it was. She moved on with unease. After some long minutes, she finally came up hard against a tent; yellow and purple checks. Around the front of this tent, a flap flapped. The dazed woman stumbled in, her hand going out as darkness put her in its mouth and swallowed. She failed to see more of the caravan-like objects materialise. “Well what do you mean we’re one short?” A man waved his hands frantically around, knocking his empty wine goblet over. Penetrating eyes looked out from under a bushy grey brow. “Well, sir,” another, slightly younger, man ventured. “She’s here, it’s just that when we sent everybody into the fractal room, she didn’t come along. I guess she’s still out there in the grass somewhere.” “Franklin, do you realise that there is over twenty-four billion kilometres of grass out there in every direction? How are you ever going to find her?” “Find, sir? Me, sir?” Franklin cringed. “Yes, you. You’re the one that’s gone and lost one our pure human lifeforms, one that is dearly needed. We can’t just grab them whilly-nilly, you know.” “But, I didn’t, I mean, it wasn’t-“ “Yes, yes, Franklin. I know how eager you are to get started, so I won’t delay you any further.” The man with the bushy eyebrows turned slightly away, greeting another man. A moment later he turned back to the man named Franklin. “You still here?” “Yes sir.” “Hmp. Well, all right. Take a rover, but remember to fill it up again when you’re finished. Off you go, there’s a good chap.” Franklin visibly sagged. “Yes, Mr Tobler.” Mr Tobler’s eyes shone like magma in a milk carton. “It shouldn’t take you more than say five hours.” His voice was good-natured, but to Franklin’s ears, it sounded like the gates of hell. Mr Tobler almost smiled to himself as he watched Franklin slump out the door on his impossible search. He looked on a moment longer, and then his attention curved back to the man standing beside him. Mr Tobler was an administrator, and currently his job was to administer the start of the universe, and make sure everything was ready so that when the light switch was finally switched on, everything looked and acted as it should. Mr Tobler liked to administer. He had a Ph.D. in it. Chewing a thoughtful fingernail, he went off to get a nice hot cup of tea. Franklin, bored with administrative processes, endless preparations and pointless errands, let his mind wander. He had permission to use a Rover. He’d never had permission before, usually opting to just take one. Of course, when you did it this way, you didn’t bother filling it up with fuel when (and if) you returned it. Having explicit permission to do something always had its drawbacks. Franklin liked to drive. He had an insane streak, which, when driving, could be confused with a death wish. Sometimes, when screaming along over the countless miles of grass, he let his mind wander. Combine a naive death wish with a mind a thousand lifetimes away from the body in question and put it in a car. Then run away, very, very fast. Probability says if you had an infinite space, a moving car and a single tree, then sooner or later, the car will hit the tree. For an inexplicable reason, the car will hit the tree sooner rather than later. Perhaps it has to do with the microgravity forces that affects every atom. Perhaps there is some psychological attachment of the car with the tree. Probably it’s because some people are really too stupid to drive. Now, take away that single fateful tree, and the probabilities change significantly. Now the chances of a car hitting the tree that isn’t there are completely obscured. In any case, Franklin was now quite a long way away from his office, amidst the remains of an upturned smoking mess that was once (possibly) a Rover. Lying face up on the grass, he wore a faint grin the shape of an orang-utan wearing a yellow jumpsuit. He thought he could hear children playing in the distance. He knew with unerring certainty that he could see a woman standing over him, blocking the light. It began to snow. There were ninety nine of them seated in on comfy chairs in the fractal room, all facing a raised dais. A gentle light shone down from above, presumably from somewhere higher than the strange glutinous fog. Infinity tossed and played on the event horizon. Shopping mall ambience filtered in from an unidentifiable source. The whole effect of all this seemed to be to make everything a little hazy and indistinct. A side effect happened to be that it was also utterly annoying. From on high a bright beam of light shone on the center dais, and because of certain conventions the near hundred people all settled down and turned expectantly towards it. So much of the last few days had been the most exciting things to ever happen to them, certainly more exciting than anything that could have ever happened to anybody any of them knew, that the definition of the possible and the impossible was blurring. “I guess you’re all wondering why I called you all here,” Said a voice from the pedestal. Since there was nobody there, only that beam of light. Oh well, it was pretty darned self explanatory, if you ask me. “But we were stolen and brought here,” Said an old man with a golf club, who sat near to the front. “Stolen?” The light beam flickered. “Are you sure?” “Well,” said somebody a little further back. “Maybe nabbed, nicked or permanently borrowed would be a better way to describe it.” A slight murmur of agreement arose, but a few people disagreed. One man jumped to his feet and absurded “Nicked? Just nicked? I was run over by a god-damned ambulance!” “Well,” the other voice came again from the seething mass of people. “I guess some of us were nicked harder than others.” The old man with the golf club glanced around the room and asked the woman sitting next to him if she had seen a TV anyplace. Evidently he needed to see how some guy call Norman was doing on the seventeenth. Whatever that meant. The woman told him he was a jerk. The voice from the pedestal swallowed a couple of times and mumbled just enough to get most of the attention in the room. “Okay, so is everybody here?” “Where’s here?” The beam of light took a step back. “Doesn’t anybody know anything? Why is it always me who gets these jobs? I mean, why do I always have to explain to everybody what’s going on all the time? I think its jolly well about time that some of the others here took on a little responsibility,” Even as the light beam spoke, the rabble of half-annoyed voice started up again. “Take for instance the last time we did this-…” But meanwhile, the strange old golf-fiend was on his own wavelength; tees? Holes? Bunkers? What in earth was the old fool on about? Also meanwhile, everybody else was back on track with the beam of light, nodding and smiling piteously as he vicariously put forward his matte life story. For as far back as he could remember, which was either so long or so short that he could not recall, Franklin could not think of a time that he had seen snow falling in a children’s playground. He didn’t know where he hadn’t seen the playground, only the fact that he hadn’t seen the playground full of falling snow. He spent a moment getting his thoughts together. So far they had been jumbled and mixed up. Or maybe, he thought, as a woman wearing a thick woollen overcoat helped him to his feet, that they only seemed jumbled and mixed up and that they were really normal. If they were normal, he decided it was about time he had them fixed. If only he could find a Brain-o-Fix machine. Maybe there was no such thing as a Brain-o-Fix machine; that he had just made that up. Now, unsure, he would definitely have to have it fixed. Possibly by a machine that did not exist. That would do it. “Are you okay?” The woman asked, breathing a mist into the cold air. A police car screamed by in the background. Two brightly coloured tents stood defiantly at the other end of what now appeared to be a long park. “I think I hit a tree.” “Looks like you’ve got a nasty bump on your head. Let’s have you out of there,” The woman helped Franklin step out of the Rover’s remains. “Where did you spring from?” “I think my problem is finding out where I have sprung to,” He glanced over at the two tents, perhaps five hundred metres away, their flaps flapping in the wind. “How long have those tents been there?” “What tents?” Asked the woman. She acted as if she could not see them. She turned around. “Oh, those tents…” Franklin had his head slightly forward, expecting a response, but the woman had trailed off, as if forgetting that she had been saying something. He still had his head forward when he asked slowly, motioning to continue. “Yes-…?” “I’m sorry, were you saying something?” The woman asked, her shoulder-length coppery hair flecked with snow, and walked away, singing a song about a bird, a bee and a bathtub full of banana custard. Franklin decided that it was time, too, that he wandered. So he glanced at the destroyed Rover, wondering if he still had to refuel it, gave it a rueful kick, and departed for the two tents. The rover vanished. 13. “Isn’t it about time you all found someplace else to go?” Amy stood up, brushing back her frightfully distraught hair, careful not to tread on anybody. “I mean, my place is getting crowded and messy.” Okay, so the room was worse than a warzone where the weapons consisted of cherry cream pies and the armies were undoubtedly floppily shod clowns wearing ermine wigs, indigo vests and squishy red noses. Okay, so ‘a few days’ had turned into a week or so. Okay, so somebody had stolen the trashed time machine that had been parked in Bob’s office, and Bob herself had mysteriously vanished. Okay so they were running desperately low of coffee. Old Stuart stood up and put a friendly arm around Amy’s shoulder. “You see the problem, though?” “No, not really.” “Well,” and glanced around at the dozing people scattered all over her living room. He put his finger in his ear and scratched around for a while. “With only one time machine besides mine, it’s going to be a fairly cramped experience trying to get the others back to their own dimension, even in two vehicles. Even if following a trail of chronafluxions down a multidimensional wormhole wasn’t impossible, as the wormhole generates a negative black hole in monodimensional P-space, and the rip in the spacetime fabric into H-space invariable sucks other chronafluxions down into it as well, some of which infer themselves from H-space into M-space through sub waveforms inside the wormhole, well, I think you can see what I’m getting at here.” Amy pondered all this. After nodding for a while, chewing a bunch of hair, and breathing deeply, she pondered it again. “So what you’re saying is…?” He turned to look her in the eye. “Come with me.” For some reason, this rocked Amy. She fell away from Stuart’s arm, back into her chair. Her petite eyes slid shut, a fairly usual giveaway on fainting. “Perhaps I should rephrase that,” Stuart considered. Both the Karens were awake. One of them said “What about me?” “What about you?” said the other, smirking. “What about me?” “What do you mean?” Stuart asked them. “What about Simon and Stuart?” The second Karen, absently fussing a sleeping Simon’s hair, opted at this time to point out that he [Old Stuart] had been until recently her possible other future selves boyfriend; that he’d only been separated from her for a short time; that he couldn’t go grabbing another girlfriend willy nilly, even somebody as attractive as Amy. “Karen, are you aware that Simon also had- has- that particularly annoying trait?” Karen began to inquire into what he was talking about but a very direct stare shut her up. “You’re too young to understand those things.” Karen scoffed. “That’s the most chauvinistic thing I’ve ever heard you say.” “You idiot. That wasn’t chauvinistic, it was patronising. If I was being chauvinistic, I would have said ‘You wouldn’t understand because you’re a woman’.” Stuart explained. “You know what I mean.” “Do I?” “Don’t do this to me.” “Do what, little kiddo?” “How did you-? What I mean to say is, don’t call me that. I don’t. I hate it.” She looked embarrassedly at her other self. “I could go on. You can learn a lot of secrets in ten years, you know. Some people might like to know these things,” He glanced at himself in younger form, snoozing, hand on a coffee mug. Also at Simon. “You wouldn’t. You can’t,” Karen went, then paused, feigning dignity. “What kind of things?” Amy stirred, and Stuart sat beside her, put his arm back around her shoulders. “Wake up sleepy head.” “Is that you mumble mumble, my love?” Amy nestled in Stuart’s arm, giving him a faceful of hair, whilst Stuart shrugged at the Karens. When Amy opened her eyes, she saw the situation and sat bolt upright, profusely apologising et cetera. “Mumble wumble, my love who?” He asked her. He was indeed intent on casually putting his arm around her shoulders. “I didn’t say anything.” Said Amy, bright red. “She didn’t say anything, Stuart,” said Karen. “Thanks for explaining that, my little snuggle wuggle.” Karen’s face went hard. Both of them. Stuart smiled. It was a smile that said ‘and there’s more where that came from’. “Let me think for a minute,” a Simon was saying. Everybody, including Amy, James and the two elderly golf nuts were gathered in Amy’s apartment, preparing to leave. It had been quite a day, gathering them all together, but somehow they had all managed to do it. In fact, the only reason that they had gathered in one spot was a matter of random chance. Odd as it retrospectively seemed, everybody had decided at the same moment at go looking for everybody else, and had turned up at exactly the same time, in exactly the same place. Funny how things can work out. “Okay, I have it.” After a minimal silence, he added “No, I don’t.” “Yes you do,” said the other Simon. “We pack half of us into one machine, the other half into the other, and strap them together, and finger the fat button.” “It won’t work,” his double insisted. “And I know it.” Matthew stepped forward, though he didn’t need to. “As I see it, the chronafluxion engine should only generate enough temporal anomalies to …” he fumbled for a word. “… environate the one ship. Rigging them together won’t work.” Simon said “I already said that.” Amy had to ask what ‘environate’ meant4. Matthew’s double explained it to her. And what a chronafluxion engine was. And a temporal anomaly. And pickled onions. He put that in for good measure. Errol spoke up. “We could just go someplace there is only one of. There are two that I know of.” “Two places that there are only one of. That’s a gramadox5 for you,” Amy said. She didn’t have to explain what a gramadox was to the X-Nerds, they’d already figured it out, and she couldn’t be bothered trying to explain it to James. “You should say that there are two places that you could go, and that there is only one of each.” “What she said,” followed Errol. “The start and the end. There can be only one.” “Two,” counted Linda. “Start, end. That’s two.” “One start, one end. That’s one.” “Two,” insisted Linda. “One,” hissed Errol. “Two. I’m not quitting until you recognise that my answer is the correct answer.” “And I’m not recognising that your answer is the correct answer when it’s not. One.” “Then I’m not quitting.” Linda folded her arms and glared at Errol menacingly. “Will you to shut the-” Amy had screamed before realising what she was about to say. “Up. Just shut up.” Simultaneous to this pitiful argument, the Simons and Matthews were gathered around Stuarts and Karens, coolly hammering out details. “We go our separate ways, and meet up at the end.” Stuart said. “Start,” Stuart corrected. Stuart looked at him. “Start, end. Makes no difference.” “The start would be a better place to go, though,” Simon pointed out. “In the end, everything was dark. We’d never find each other. Besides, there’s nothing to land on once the universe finishes.” “A point I hadn’t thought of,” murmured Stuart, nodding. “So we just cram into the ships and go back as far as we can?” Errol said. “That’s the general idea, yes.” “What if there’s nothing there?” Errol wondered aloud. “There’s grass,” George said, finally taking an interest in the universe around him. “Billions of miles of blissful greens.” “How do you know that?” somebody asked Him. “I was there.” “I was also there,” Linda added, glaring angrily at Amy. “Lots of grass. And two tents.” “I don’t remember two tents,” George scratched his head. “All I remember is lots of grass.” “You were too busy teeing off to notice anything back then.” “It’s only been a year or two,” recalled George, a new experience for him. “It’s been over ten thousand years, you fool.” “No, these people came and got me not that long ago. Before we went to that monk place.” That monk place? Linda figured He meant the Academic Academy. Like a grandfather clock, it clicked in place, complete with whirring sproingy noises, precluding the dreaded bong-bong-bong. Linda spun to the X-Nerds, not really knowing which set to talk two. “You mean this is the George from way back at the Start? I have a vague memory, a memory of a forgotten memory of a memory of somebody- no. You! You took George away. I remember now. Jesus, he doesn’t know anything, then. He never learnt anything. But I remember him being there. I used visit him every thousand years or so.” But Old Stuart was on a different track. A very fast track. A track a bullet train wouldn’t be ashamed to be seen on. “What did you just say?” Linda looked up at him, going over what she had said. “That I used to visit him every thousand years or so?” “Who is Jesus?” he probed her. “He dies on a cross I remember… My god I remember.” Silence aplenty. “How? There had been an accident. A man on a,” she began fumbling both for words and more memories. He face drained of colour, and her eyes darted one way and another. She was staring at nothing, seeing her past as if for the first time. The room remained dead silent, as did the people it contained. “A bicycle. Crashed into a taxi. I was eating KFC. It was midday. I was wearing a blue dress. Green, dress. Yes, green. Long. I remember being struck? Or I fell. Maybe I was struck and fell. I fell and struck my. I remember a lot of grass. A grey room full of mist… What the hell am I?” George stared at his feet for a while, listening to the ghastly silence, wondering if everybody was waiting for him to say something. He figured that this was the case, so fetched “I remember a lot of grass.” Old Stuart threw his head back and laughed. “I told you. I told you all that these fakes everybody calls gods were human, Terran, at least. Now I have proof. Wow, that’s got to be a first.” Surprisingly, it didn’t take all that long for everybody to find their way to a spaceship and prepare to temporally vanish once more. Old Stuart sat inside his machine, still half sideways where he’d crashed it on top of Amy’s desk. He put on his most pleading expression, meaning every squiggly eyebrow of it. “Come with me.” Amy stood outside the ship, at the door, hands clasped in front of her, eyes downcast. “I can’t.” “You can. You can step out of your life here and into mine. All you need to do is join me.” Amy looked hard at the space Stuart had made for her inside the ship. It wasn’t much, but that wasn’t the point. It was a space in his life that he was making for her. She cast her eyes down again, turned away to let him know that she couldn’t6. Stuart turned to Karen, who was sitting at the front of the vehicle, ready to activate the time controls. He gave the nod, and reached up to shut the door. He had to do this quickly. “On my mark,” he told Karen. Amy was turning, and Stuart was reaching up for the door. With no hesitation, he hijacked Amy, pulling her into his arms, and shouted “Mark!” even as the door clicked. In the beginning, there was a major grass problem. Throughout all eternity people had said The Creator had a lot to answer for, but in the galactic phone book of time, his number went unlisted. Perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing. He most certainly wouldn’t enjoy the endless calls from lawn-mowing services. Long before anybody available could recall, there had been two tents, each flapping madly at each other. In a land where grass existed and nothing else, they did well to break the monotony. A caravan-like object stood off to one side, partly hidden by the high grass. A caravan-like object materialised. A moment later, a caravan-like object materialised. Now there were three. A couple of moments later three more caravan-like objects appeared, but two of these materialised inside each other and vanished in a field of disassociating sub-phase relativistic improbability and the third, for something different, exploded. A serious number of moments passed as bits of space ship rained down all over the grass. Then, after that, if was dreadfully- latecomers would say blissfully- silent. Finally the moment came that all the other moments that had passed were along to see. Cacophony rallied across infinity. The X-Nerds had arrived at the beginning of Time. 14. The flux was getting pretty damned annoyed, now. It had failed the first time; okay, it was inexperienced. It had never tried killing before and the killing by erasing future history trick- although clever- didn’t work, although she did make a lot of money on related enterprises. For some reason this made her feel good. The second attempt had had promise, modifying the temporal field throughout the many dimensions to replicate and hopefully destroy her enemy. The butterfly guise had worked well until a recent unfortunate incident; that is, being run over by a truck. Oh well, she could hardly tell if her temporal tampering was working anyway. The third had to work. It had to. There was no possible way that it couldn’t. Third time lucky, somebody had once told her. She had told that person that if she wasn’t lucky the third time that she’d come back and place a cricket bat in an obscure location7. Lying in the grass on some uninhabited planet, she gazed at the sky. It was yellow, but she didn’t see that kind of thing. She knew this universe was the enemy. She, to the universe at large, was the most evil thing anywhere. She knew a pool of dark matter like herself shouldn’t be able to lie down on a planet theoretically made of ‘light’ matter without zapafying everything around it. It wasn’t happening. She couldn’t figure it out either. But that didn’t matter. Didn’t matter, get it? Never mind, it’s an ‘in’ joke to dark-matter beings. She was actually thinking about her opposite double; Him. The one who moved around, the one made of pure Light Matter, the one who had escaped her twice, now. If she could only touch him, it would be all over. She and He would vanish in an instant, cancelling each other out. Sure, she would die, but she figured she would have to live with that. She formed herself into a human, adopting the same figure and personality as in her first plan (the trial run). Not wasting a moment, she checked her hair to see if it was okay, then vanished into time. 15. The beam of light sighed. The soon-to-be gods had just shuffled out into the newly formed universe, their heads full of new ideas and vast knowledge. He mumbled something about it having been a long day, and realised that there hadn’t been a day pass yet. In fact, it was one of the shortest days in the entire history of the universe, starting at a nice comfortable 9 am one Tuesday morning, and finishing early so that everybody could go to the opening party and not end up being late for tomorrow. He had been told that the Universe was to be started later that week, but he rarely received new information. Maybe somebody must have decided to actually get on with preparations and start it early. Then, a RIO8 door opened and the Universes’ administrator Mr Tobler rushed in. Nobody knew his first name. He was simply Mr Tobler to everybody, and had been around literally since before the dawn of time. Schools have people like Mr Tobler, who have just always been there, and nobody, not even all the old people who live just down the road in the home can remember them not being there. Generally these people are withered old gardeners, obese cross-eyed chefs and bald little historians. “Oh hell. They’ve already gone,” He said, and turned around, searching for the doorway. Mikal, the beam of light, projected himself beside Mr Tobler. “What’s wrong?” “I’ll tell you what’s wrong. Somebody’s gone and started the original, that’s what’s bloody-well wrong. I didn’t want it started until I had had a chance to make a recent backup. I mean, there’s, you know, the original original, which was buggy and had exploding suns, comets crashing into planets and all sorts of terribly dull life forms. Of course everything with the new one that could go wrong does. I’ve lost Franklin; he’s still off driving around someplace, and a purebred human is missing, and I’ve people running around everywhere poking their noses into things that noses can’t be poked into. What the hell am I going to do?” The swirling grey mist had found a foam bauble and vainly attempted to toss it against Mr Tobler’s foot. “Hide?” Mikal suggested. A marble rolled by, burbling to itself. “And somebody drank the last of my coffee. How do you get out of here?” Mr Tobler was fumbling around looking for a doorway. “There are doors all over the place, but I can’t use them.” “Well how do you find them. I can use them.” Mikal shone around for a while, occasionally reflecting off something that wasn’t there. “Damned if I know. If I knew how to get out of here, do you think I’d be shining around here for all eternity?” “Fat lot of good you are,” Mr Tobler stated. He chose a direction at random and started walking, hoping to run into a door. Moments later he was lost to the fog. Mikal sighed again. The fog blatted at the foam bauble. “I think there’s one over here,” he called into the fog. A clatter from the distance, and a spray of baubles erupted into the air. “I may be wrong.” Mikal hadn’t had an easy life. Well, to be brutally honest, he had had a perfect life; nothing ever went wrong. He had never received an overdue bill for anything. The local tax authority had never busted in demanding a full audit. In fact, nothing that could have ever gone wrong, even slightly bad, had happened. Sticking to the brutally honest theme, nothing had ever gone right for Mikal, either. To summarise: Life was unbelievably dull, so incredibly not-worth-mentioning even early one drunk Sunday morning after countless days bilge drinking with people you don’t know, who don’t remember what you just said, or remember that they just forgot what you just said, or recognise the fact that you’ve missed the past three months of the conversation after your liver collapse and transplant at a rat-infested backyard hospital in another country. This didn’t happen to Mikal. It’s just a simile used to describe the dullness of his life so far. If it had in fact happened, Mikal wouldn’t be as bored as he was now. He would have achieved something in his life, however unhealthy, not the nihilist destitution that had so far occurred. A long time ago, or perhaps a short time ago, as time had a distinct lack on existence in his plane, Mikal had dallied in the arts. Having no history or artistic experience to start from, the boxes full of marbles and foam baubles which constituted the base and indeed entirety of his severely dull artworks, were an achievement in boredom, the marker at which Mikal hoped his life would take a turn. It didn’t. People completely failed to notice the Boxes of expressionist art. In general, people completely failed to notice Mikal himself, and his entire dimension. He recalled the previous attempts by The Creator as he bashed away at creating and running a proper universe, in which Mikal had no part, did nothing, and indeed knew nothing about them until after the event. That was long before the Creator hit upon the idea of employing somebody else to get the universe going. He had come across Mr Tobler (Ph.D, Admin. Srvc), frozen inside a comet left over from a previous universe, forced him to sign the pink, yellow and green forms (necessary for his tax return), then mysteriously vanished in an equally mysterious puff of lawn-clippings. More recently in Mikal’s awkward sociotemporally inactive existence he had watched as a blob of dark matter seeped through a hole in one universe, and slithered uncaringly through a hole in a different universe. He knew all about the light and dark matter problems, that one cancelled the other, that the cancellation nullified both universes, and that there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it happening. The thing he was really annoyed about was the fact that if the two universes cancelled each other out, there would be nothing left outside his dimension, meaning a perpetually dull future. Which is why he willed a large Caravan-shaped temporal-reality field into existence in one of the universes. With any luck, anybody who used the time machine would probably muck everything up to such an inconceivable level that the dark-matter would be swept under the rug by the Laws of Reality. Well, apparently half of it had worked, thought Mikal, watching the stumbling form of Mr Tobler vanish into the eternal fog. He’d managed to muck up everything- buckle the walls of the universe- with considerable ease. It was something. It wasn’t necessarily something good, but it was something. Hell, if it all went wrong, the Creator could just wave his hand and run another Universe. Couldn’t he? Anyway, beside Mikal’s existive Zilch Esset Demonstrandum, it was about this time that the Laws of Reality tripped on something hidden under the rug and were bending to see just what… 16. The frolicsome flap flipped in free folly. Franklin flicked a finger at the frosty falling flakes, finalising their frigidity. He shivered. It was Fubar out here. Yes, this garish monstrosity was definitely the right tent. And that tent over there, the one with the car parked halfway though it, flaps flolloping flappily, must be the other tent. He brushed the snow from his head, then walked forward into the inky blackness of the tent, right into the path of a beautiful young woman. “Oh, excuse me,” He said, pulling the woman to her feet. “I’m sorry, did I hurt you?” The woman looked around at the snow for a while, then fell heavily back down on the ground and started to cry. “I need to sit down,” she sobbed. “But you are sitting down,” Franklin observed, and rushed around wondering if he should help her to her feet again, then help her to a seat. “Here, come back inside and I’ll find you a nice cup of tea.” The woman accepted his hand once more, allowed herself to be pulled to her feet, and together the ambled blindly into the tent. “Excuse me,” the man said again, then his voice trailed off. After a moment he continued. “Did you come here with a large crowd, or did you just wander in?” The woman looked at him, or in the dimness, it may just have been that she looked his way; Franklin couldn’t be sure, as he was rubbing the snow off his face, and replied something, which to his ears sounded much like “Mmnurf, wurgle.” “Oh well, it was worth a shot. Would you like a cup of tea?” He quested, and together they walked into the mansion-sized enclosure of the ten-metre diameter tent. They both, not for the first time either, gasped in awe both of the impressive expansive beauty of the tents’ interior, and of the confusing five-dimensional physics at work. Franklin had wandered through the miles of corridors inside the tent many times in his grossly dull life, yet he was never any less amazed than this time concerning the reality of fitting so many thousands of square metres of floor space into a tent with a radius of only five metres. He was definitely no mathematician (he could only count up to pi on his fingers), but it didn’t take maths to figure that you need a bigger tent to encompass the area encompassed by this tent. Probably a tent with a ten-metre radius would do it, he guessed. The woman found herself being led to a small kitchenette, and had to get down on her hands and knees to see through the door. An itty-bitty chef was cooking a minuscule Mississippi mud-cake, and a wisp of steam rose from a teensy-weensy kettle. “That’s just a model of the kitchen,” said Franklin. “The real one’s in here.” Here was the real kitchenette, where a much-larger, and more round version of the itty-bitty chef was baking a cake, and a much larger wisp (but still only a wisp) of steam was gaily wafting above a kettle. “How do you like it?” Franklin asked. “That’s getting a little personal, isn’t it?” the woman asked pointedly. Franklin grabbed the kettle from the stove and held it for all to see. “The tea! How do you like your tea?” “Oh,” said the woman, wiping a teardrop from her eye. “Yes, I’ll have a cup.” Well, they’re on different wavelengths. Franklin set about making the tea, a task he had become famously good at; it seemed to be his only real function here- the fellow who makes the tea. Things seemed to be going well so far, the chef had left the room in search of a sprig of coriander for one dish or another, and the cake smelled nearly ready. Franklin thought it almost time to make some conversation, but decided against it and made the tea instead. Whilst pouring a cup first for his visitor, then himself, said “I’m called Franklin.” “Yes please,” replied the woman, her mind elsewhere. “And two sugars. I seem to have a bump on my head.” “Yes, as do I.” concurred Franklin, and handed her her cup. “You should have it looked at.” “Looked at? Why, it’s just a cup.” “The bump, I mean. I’m called Franklin.” He smiled nicely. “Why?” “Why what?” “Why are you called Franklin? Is that you job? A Franklin? What do they do?” “Well,” started Franklin, his mind buckling under the strain this conversation had placed upon its gentle mass. “I believe they are manservants or some such, you know, the people who chop the wood and muck out the privy.” “Well, pardon me for sounding, er. What’s your name then?” “What? Oh, Franklin.” “No, no. I mean, your name.” “My name is Franklin.” The woman sat back and laughed, deliberating whether to drink her tea or rub the lump on her head she’d taken earlier from a rogue golf-ball. “Oh, I see. Your name is Franklin, and you’re the Sewage Man. I’d never take that job, it’s way to smelly for me. I mean, I’ve done nearly everything at one time or another, the check-outs and McDonalds. All the usuals. I worked in a bar once with a guy who did part time on community service at the sewerage plant. He had to stir the smelly turds in the local plant with this big pole, just standing there swishing them around day after day. He was drunk and got caught stealing a wheelbarrow. Like, you steal a wheelbarrow and they make you go around everyday stirring up shi-” “No!” Franklin intercepted. “You don’t understand. I’m an Assistant Administrator. My name is Franklin. I don’t shovel anything. I don’t even know what a sewage plant looks like9.” The woman sipped her tea. “This is tea!” “Yes, it is.” “I haven’t had a cup of tea since.” Franklin wore an ogle in his grin as he waited for something more, but the woman had raised the cup to her mouth again and drunk nearly two-thirds the cup. He raised his eyebrows, then offered the tea-pot for a refill. “I’m Maline Copper,” stated Maline Copper, yawning. “Would you mind telling me where the hell I am please?” Franklin gasped. “You are the human!” Maline came to at least a measurable percentage of her senses (the tea was working), and thought ‘Uh-oh, It’s loony-bin day again.’ Franklin measured her sudden hostile look carefully, then started to explain everything he could to her in the simplest possible terms. He got this far: “Well, you were brought here with the other gods…” Maline boggled her eyes at him, spilling her hot tea all over her lap. She screamed something incoherent and depictingly nasty, turned to flee but found her passage obscured by a malevolent chair, tripped over a toy fire engine made entirely of broken wooden spoons, smacked her head against the door-frame, then slumped to the ground, unconscious. Oddly enough, Franklin mumbled “Oh no, not again.” 17. “Wow. That’s a lot of grass.” “Yup.” “Well, here we are. That seemed to work out well.” “Yup.” “We all got here.” “Yup.” “A pity about the other three ships.” “Yup.” “You suppose it was us?” “Yup.” “I guess we should see what’s in those tents.” “Yup.” So far nobody had spoken twice. “Yup.” A little silence found its way in here, like the probing roots of a pretty little flower, up though a tiny gap in the conversation. “Er. Stuart?” “Yes Karen?” “Why did you just say ‘Yup’?” “What? Didn’t somebody just say something?” “No.” “But I was sure somebody else said something.” “Nobody said anything.” “But I was so sure. I had this strange feeling that there’s somebody else with us, as if looking down on us right now, as if reading from the script that is our very lives…” At that point, everybody felt a little chill run up their spines, like the finger of a dead monkey dragging along the ridge of a broken guitar10. Somewhere behind everybody there came a faint ‘bong’ sound. It didn’t ring on like the bells in a church. It fell away, muted, as if stuffed with little foam baubles. For a moment, everybody went silent again. The grass swayed. It swayed again. And again. “Well,” said Amy. “I agree,” agreed everybody else, and they tromped off through the swaying grass, towards the tents. George bent down to pick up something. It was a golf ball. A new one. He put it in his pocket, alongside many others just like it. “Wow, it’s just like the movie ‘King Arthur’,” commented Stuart, rushing ahead and pointing at the tents. “Where all the tents are those big round spiky top ones painted in checks and pinstripes, except we aren’t dressed in tights and there’s no knights on horses.” Amy’s brow grew wrinkly, then her lips squished together like she’d just refused a tobasco sandwich. “You mean the movie ‘Prince Valiant’.” “The one with the guy with a hairdo like a motorcycle helmet.” “That’s Prince Valiant. King Arthur was the guy in the chain mail t-shirt and alfoil crown who wields his long sword at a lake full of voluptuous, naked, young blonde virgin girls.” Stated Amy, a fan of the terrible old movies she watched as a girl, back in the cave on prehistoric Earth (on Nick at Nite- it’s been repeating those shows for ever). Then she heard what she’d just said and blushed furiously. “No! What I mean is he grasps his long, hard shaft and wields it towards the lady in the lake… He… He pulls his sword out, and later on he thrusts it back into the hydro-avoirdupois prestidigitating nymphs. His sword, I mean, of course, not his-” Simon, all in a rush, saved her from stuffing her other foot in her mouth as well. “There were a lot of cop shows left over from the seventies that had people with hairdo’s bigger than motorcycle helmets. Some of those big black guys had afro’s bigger than motorbikes. Like wearing a furry dinghy on your head.” “I see,” Stuart looked at him. “So what’s your point?” Simon shrugged. “Er.” Stuart’s earlier observation was well justified, however. These tents had been infused with the embodiment of fashion psychosis. In an unspoken agreement, they all headed for the yellow and purple silk tent, finding the red and cyan pinstriped tent simply too garish to go anywhere near. Anybody who did so would need sunglasses with lens made from asbestos. As one, the X-Nerds walked into a RIO11 surrounding the tent. They left little imprints of saliva and sweat on the totally invisible surface, like bugs squashed on a windscreen. “Oh bother,” Said George, but only because he had nothing to hit his golf balls with. He tried to reach out and summon his mighty Wood12, but his sorcery coughed and spluttered. A few sad little golden sparks poofed into the air, followed by a drizzle of smoke, then nothing. He tried again. This time he was simply waving his arm around in a silly manner. “Damn. Linda, can you try?” Linda gave it a go, dejectedly. Nothing happened. For some reason, this didn’t seem to surprise her. She had been moping around lately. George didn’t understand women, but he knew when somebody was feeling bad. He tried to cheer her up a bit by offering to play a round, just on the green. She naturally reminded him that they didn’t have any clubs, which dragged his own feelings down to her levels. Now they both shuffled around, moaning and mumbling, feeling dejected and annoyed with each other. “Errol,” Matthew mused. “Do you suppose that all this is some kind of elaborate joke?” Errol looked at his double, then at Matthew’s double, and replied. “Well, as you gave no context to the question, I presume you mean the universe at large, which at this point appears to be a whole lot of lawn and a couple of tents sealed up in glass bubbles. Given this context, I must confess, I don’t understand the question.” Matthew smirked. “I was only making conversation. Filling in space.” “Well you go right ahead. There’s plenty of space out there to fill.” The grass swayed their way, as if acknowledging them. Old Stuart was about to ask Amy just what a ‘hydro-avoirdupois prestidigitating nymph’ actually was, and what they had to do with the Excalibur story, when a man came out of the tent and said “Oh, well there you go. That seems to have fixed everything just fine. Well, come inside, all of you. Hurry up, time’s a-wasting.” To this remark he added a little chuckle. They, all fifteen of them, like a bipolarised family, wandered through the fabric of the strange glass bubble that had squished their noses only moments before, and into the small tent. It was obvious- they wouldn’t all fit. But they did. They could have parked their spaceships in the foyer (but not on the hand-crafted wood, or the pile carpets, on the tiles), and there were hallways fanning out, including in the direction from which they’d just entered. ‘Wow’ and ‘Cool’ were words repeated with frequency, as were ‘¿’ and ‘!’. The man turned. “I’m Franklin, and that’s my name, not some kind of poop scraper.” Amy looked at him quite oddly. “Excuse me?” “Pardon?” “I mean, what do you mean, not some kind of, uh, what you mentioned.” “What?” “Uh, never mind. Hey look, I’m Amy. Ay-mee,” she said, pointing at her chest. Old Stuart grabbed her arm and whispered “You don’t still introduce yourself like that, do you?” “What ever do you mean?” she whispered back. “Like what?” That particular Stuart whispered a little softer. “That’s how you introduced yourself to me.” “How on earth did you remember that?” “I remember everything about you.” Amy gave him a smile. “Oh, that’s so sweet.” To Franklin, she started to introduce the others. “Okay, now you’re going to have to pay attention to get all this. This is James, and Linda and George, and Stuart and Simon and Karen and Matthew and Errol. You got that?” “Karen and George and Matthew and Susan and Edward?” “No. Listen carefully. George and Linda, James, Stuart, Simon, Matthew, Simon, Karen, Stuart, Errol, Errol, Matthew, Karen, Stuart and I’m Amy.” Franklin’s brain went gaga. “Sarah and Lucy, Jurgen, David and who?” “No no no no no no!” “But, who are they then? Koran? Elodea? Wooblomuffin? Filbert?” “I’m Amy.” “Ay-mee. Yes, yes. Ay-mee.” Franklin had the hang of this now. It was some kind of guessing game. He decided to actually look at his guests, and his eyes widened as he saw two sets of them He rubbed them, thinking he’d gone mad. He had in fact gone mad, but that was so long ago now that he’d stopped worrying about it. What he was worried about was that he’d gone mad- again. And so he rubbed his eyes, trying to dislodge this double sight. When the doubles failed to disappear, he shrugged and said “I’ve gone mad.” Amy smiled at him. “Yes, that helps.” Franklin smiled faintly. “Amy.” “Yes?” Amy inquired. Franklin rubbed his forehead. “No, no. I was just saying Amy.” “Yes?” Amy inquired. “Stop it! Oh, I’m sorry. Would you like a cup of tea? It’s just made. There’s a nice cake too.” Old Stuart stepped forward, hand up to indicate silence from the others. “Yes. That would be nice.” He took Amy by the hand, and Franklin led the raucous crowd towards the kitchenette (the big one). “Just don’t tread on the body.” Everybody, together. “Body?” 18. In deep space, no-one can hear you scream. This is also true for shallow space, but here people can see you scream, which is good enough. In deep space however, you’re on your own. It’s probably why you’re screaming in the first place. There are some things that don’t really belong in deep space, and there are some that do. You would expect to see the occasional asteroid, perhaps a comet, even a tiny, lumbering spaceship, or more likely, a speck of hydrogen, but never an entire solar system. What it was doing way out here was anyone’s guess. You see, this kind of space is meant to be empty (save that occasional speck of hydrogen). It’s not designed to contain anything bigger than an atom, and not many of those. That’s how it got the name ‘Deep Space’13. This kind of space isn’t meant to contain lunar bodies, let alone solar systems… And yet… These are the shores of reality. This is the border between the true universe and those universettes that contain every conceivable possibility, every creation and every absence of creation. Strange things wash ashore on the shores of reality, especially after a cosmic storm; concepts mortalised in matter, ideals expressed in morphogenic fields, possibility blurred into probability. Here, the waves of reality crash and break on the headlands of deep space, and within the froth and foam, bubbles of something that is not real float to the surface to burst into existence. Amongst the grains of improbability along the beach, small creatures come to nest and burrow into the sand, making out their meagre lives feeding on the driftwood that washes against these distant shores. Like the Deep Ocean, things abound here. There are but five planets in this solar system, each finding its own time to orbit the single yellow sun. Whilst some of the planets have as many as ten moons, others suffer but one, or even none. The second of these planets could be thought of as barren, yet at the same time, life is abundant on the surface. Plants and fungi abound, each feasting on the other, not minding an ever-present bacterial battlefield, nanometres away. For a moment longer, the planet remains serene. Because there are certain conventions of reality, even here on her shores, this serenity is short lived. From the pleasant skies above come streaks of white brighter than the most vivid streak of lightning, streams of brilliant fire arcing across a blue dome. Soon great sonic booms go unheard across the surface of this undiscovered, unnamed planet, and white-hot meteors if aluminium and titanium rain down, tearing great gashes into the surface, burning terrorised lifeforms to a cinder, vaporising those battling bacteria, and drowning acres of land in dust. This is unheard of. This planet wasn’t harming anyone. Now along comes the rest of the universe and within a few minutes, the whole place is nearly wrecked. Nearly. Life will go on. At least, that’s what life thinks. According to Life, Life has this funny way of going on. It’s not always the best option, and life can have some pretty hard lifestyle choices to make, but always in the end, life goes on. It’s just that this time, it won’t. It doesn’t know it yet, and won’t know it afterwards, but this is the last day of the rest of its life. It’s all a little sad, but that’s life for you. Look, up there in the sky. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s four-hundred and twenty million tonnes of spaceship breaking apart, raining down in impossibly large chunks of metal, grey lumbering masses containing living tissue and biotic matter, ploughing into the soil at ferocious speeds, throwing up thousands of tonnes of dirt high into the stratosphere. Giant mushrooms of dust and radiation that may encircle the globe for many months to come bloom in the air, and soon the darkness comes, not the darkness of night, but the darkness of a slow death by concealment. 19. The chef stood in the doorway, shouting as loud as he could, yet nobody could hear him. In fact, they could only just see him. This is the itty bitty chef, just arrived from the kitchenette. He’s nearly four centimetres high. He’s real angry right now. But nobody knows why, because they can’t hear a word he’s saying. All they can hear is this itty bitty ‘Eme eme emem. E Eme eme ememeMe!’ coming from his general direction. Franklin picked him up. The chef went “Eeeeeeeeeeem!” Franklin had to whisper as softly as he could, but his words were still too loud for the little master cook, so he put him back on the floor. The little chef jumped up and down a few times, and they could all see his itty bitty jelly belly wobble. Finally he turned and ran from the room. Franklin sipped somebody’s tea, then followed him out. Before anyone had had a chance to speak, he returned and said “Somebody stepped on the kitchenette. There’s footprints in the butter14, and the cake is nearly ruined.” So it was that Franklin had to steal a chocolate crumb from the large cook’s nearly-baked loaf to give to the itty bitty chef, so he could finish icing his itty bitty cake. “Where did I put my tea?” Somebody popped a delicate china cup down with tragic results. “Yes, I’ll have another, thankyou.” “Franklin,” another woman queried. “Who is this woman? Why did she steal my tea?” “And mine,” said a man. “That was the second cup she’s taken.” Some colour finally drained into the tea-pinching woman’s face, and her dazed eyes laboriously uncrossed, eventually to focus on some unseen point, some three inches from her nose. “I think I’ll have a headache,” she stated casually, and slumped forward, sliding under the table and from view, down into a pile of snoozing sounds. “There’s something going on here,” said a somewhat wild eyed Amy. She pointed at the man who called himself Franklin. “And you’re going to explain yourself. I want everything.” “I don’t understand. There’s too much to understand. I couldn’t possibly explain everything.” Amy paused, looking at the woman slumped on the table. So alike, she thought. How is it that she could look so much like me, yet in so many ways appear so different; older perhaps. She stomped on the thought, passing it on to coincidence, not liking the alternative, which was probably true. Looking at Franklin now words flowed from her mouth. “I don’t want you to explain everything, just what the hell is going on. Who is this woman, why is she here? She doesn’t belong.” Franklin grinned, the expression of an insane man fleeing. He moved nowhere, however. “I don’t know. I don’t know! I DON’T KNOW!” Everyone unconsciously backed away from the table a fraction, as one would when confronting a madman wielding a pot of hot tea. Old Stuart held up an open hand. “Hey, fellah. Settle down, will you? Calm down. Just put the kettle down, we can talk about it if you like.” Young Stuart 1 stood up, and Young Stuart 2 smiled for no obvious reason. Old Stuart sat down. Everyone waited for the kettle to spill, watching it fall in slow motion, tumbling end over end, a fat dolphin in mid flight. It clattered to the floor, the hot leaves attiring the floor in a piteous decorousness. Franklin’s brain had finally had enough. Reality can only bend and wither so much before one’s mind must conform. But Franklin’s mind was already bent and withered so much that it snapped under the strain. His eyes rolled upwards and out of sight, and he let out a little sigh, toppling like an avalanche. Now there were two bodies on the floor. “Damn it! This always happens with you people!” Amy started, and Old Stuart said to everyone else “See if you can find some coffee. That cake looks too good to waste.” Then to Amy he held his arms wide and herded her from the room. “I think we should have a little talk.” “A talk! Drag me off on some stupid adventure and you just want to talk?” Amy almost screamed as Stuart hustled her out of the room. “I’m going to get fired for this! I want to know what the hell is going on! Somebody is going to tell me or by damn I’m going to shove somebody’s- and I mean yours- head up their big fat-” The door swung shut, which was, for sake of decency, just as well. The X Nerds were all open eyed, and open eared, too, but all there was to hear was a faint “Fuffurble nurfle unf kiff muff fuffing fubble!” The door swung open, the hinges screeching. “Now you,” Amy’s wild eyes said all by themselves, her mouth left far behind. But Old Stuart popped a grinning head around the door. “Pray, excuse us a mere moment more.” The door swung shut. “Whuf huf guff unf duff huf fuff? Huff huf fuffing fubbled? Whuf huf fuff duff huf bruff muff huff fufft? Yoff fuffed-huffed fharfwuff!” “Burble, gurble. Mrubble, pubble drummel, hurble gurble.” “Hurble Gurble?” Everybody heard with undeniable clarity. “I’ll guff yuff Hurble Gurble!” After a brief smacking sound, the door opened a fraction. Everyone saw Old Stuart’s face, and cringed. “Coffee, white no sugar, save me some cake. And see if you can find me an Aspriiiiii-” The door slammed hard. A foot-shaped indent magically appeared near the door handle. “-iiin.” The X Nerds all looked at one another, then fled through the rear door. Some time later, Old Stuart came out of the tent and into the unoppressive sunlight. “I think we’ve got things sorted out.” There was something different about him. He hair was ruffled, and his shirt was missing numerous buttons and all the material from one arm. His pants were virtually shredded, and he carried one shoe. “Amy is just cleaning up.” There was a faint lipstick mark on his exposed shoulder. “So how much cake is left?” Amy appeared in the doorway, somewhat demurred. Nevertheless, the X Nerds kept a respectful distance. Amy had fared better than Stuart, if only just. Because her hair was much longer than Stuart’s, it looked more frightful, yet she held her composure well. She also carried her shoes. “Excuse me if I seemed at all out of place in there,” she blushed. Karen eyed the pair speculatively, and quoth “I won’t ask what you’ve been up to.” Old Stuart and Amy both eyed each other sidelong, then looked away at some invisible point nowhere in the vicinity of each other, feigning innocence. “Well well,” she said, and smiled. “Things do move quickly, don’t they?” Amy coughed, though she had nothing in her throat, however a small brown frog leapt from her ear. “Where are the others?” The X Nerds looked around. Simon said “James went back to the ship. He said he was tired. George apparently found a golf stick inside and went out with Linda for a hit.” “It’s called a club,” nursed a Karen. “You go out for a round.” “Same thing. You whack the puck with your racquet, and whoever gets the least points procures the match. Something of that nature, I do believe.” “It depends on the handicap.” Simon scratched his head. “Why would it depend on their hat?” “What?” “Pardon?” “I’m sorry?” Simon’s twin looked about, and took a deep breath, taking over from where his near-twin left off. “Franklin and that other woman are presumably in the kitchen still. They were when we left.” Amy asked “How long ago was that?” Simon said “Immediately after you. Ten to fifteen minutes or so ago.” Old Stuart perked up. “So there’s some cake left?” “It’s always you and the cake, isn’t it?” one of the Karen’s grimaced. “Remember my sister’s birthday?” All the Stuart’s groaned. The Stuart beside Karen said “What is it with you and your evil sister’s birthday. I get hungry, you bring up your sister’s birthday. I trip down the stairs, you mention your sister’s birthday. We make out behind the cricket shed, you bring up your sister’s damned birthday.” Karen gave him a funny sideways look. “We never made out behind the cricket shed.” “We didn’t? Oh, it must have been with…” He faded off. His double had a hand over his face, his triple had turned away and was shaking his head slowly. “Is there something I should know?” Karen gave him a direct look. “No.” “Let me rephrase that.” “No.” She took his hand, gently. This was bad news. She stroked it calmly. She might as well have been using red hot needles. He felt Goosebumps all over his body15. “Stu?” she cajoled. Uh oh. There was that name again, this time there wasn’t a kiss waiting on the other end. He wretched his arm free. “Cake?” “Not this time.” “Bye!” 20. Meanwhile, elsewhere in reality… (or, at least, in what looks like reality) (or at least looks like a badly drawn cartoon in a wet week old newspaper) (if you squint) Felicity Scalore graciously accepted a cup of Mason’s tea from the petite maid, and nodded almost imperceptibly towards her companion. He resumed his blithering drivel, on which subject, Felicity was no longer sure. She gazed out over the beautiful Mediterranean vista, letting her eyes grace the solemn masts swaying in the breeze, the sea-planes anchored nearby, and the children playing down by the waves. “Madam?” her companion asked. “I’m sorry,” she commented affectionately. “My mind seems to have slipped off for a moment. What was it you were saying?” The handsome man pursed his lips, turning his own tea cup around in a half-circle, and in his perfect English voice said “I merely suggested you take the afternoon off and come flying with me. We could go to Milan to sup tonight.” Felicity sighed. “Mr Willikins, as you are aware, I must remain here to oversee the Chateau, else I fear it collapse.” “Surely, Madam, your staff can-” “My staff are the crux of the problem, Sir. I feel were I not present, the company could falter in an instant, such is the incompetency of these peasants. Forgive me, Sir, I forget myself.” “Nay, Madam, it is right that you should feel this way. Perhaps it is that they are fleeing the duties of war, where men with more gut would stand against the foe.” Felicity decided it was time enough for the man to leave. “My staff are my own concern, Mr Willikins, and my concern. Do not presume to know them in an instant.” Mr Willikins was shocked by the turnaround. He had of Madam Scalore’s sudden mood swings, yet nothing had prepared him for Madam Scalore in person. For one, she was impossibly thin, with dark green eyes and full bosom; clearly the most beautiful woman in all Italy. Her Chateau stood erect on an island far enough from the coast to endear privacy, yet close enough to attract guests in their air boats and yachts. Guests that would pay large sums to hear her beautiful voice sing foreign song of love and heroism, guests that would gamble in fair combat at her card house, and guests that would come to court the stately Baroness, seeking a hand in matrimony and wealth. “Madam,” he started. “I did not-” “Nevertheless, Sir, I shall remain here tonight. Perhaps fortune will smile your way again one day, your return to be successful. You mention men who have no gut to return and stand with their comrades, yet you have not stood in battle for near the year. You have your leave, Mr Willikins.” The man had begun to compose his reply, but saw the Baroness turn back to the ocean, and he knew the conversation to be at an end. He stood, turned, and made his way out of the Chateau. “Bitch,” he murmured to one of the grounds staff poking and prodding away in the expansive gardens, who returned his black look.
At the Party Lynette. A name I hadn’t heard before. I checked it twice. Lyntette (a combination of Lyn and Annette, perhaps?). I will never know, now. We were drunk- Or at least she was. I think I was still fully aware, Although isn’t being drunk a bit like that? When you think you’re right but you’re not? Still, I remember as if it happened just now. We didn’t do anything- Like everybody says they don’t remember, But they ‘had a good time’ and probably ‘got laid’ And they can remember what it all would have been like, Even though they said they can’t remember anything. We talked a bit, like you do- It wasn’t like we were getting onto each other, Just that ‘How are you?’ type chat that you would have, Like sitting around waiting for the subway or in at the dentist, Talking about the weather and politicians and taxes and all that. I liked her, I really did, she had a great character- Yeah, she looked pretty, but I don’t really look for that. I do a bit, judge like that, but so does everybody. No, she was nice to chat with, over dinner and other’s chatting. It was a sort of sit-down party, you see. She told me what she thought of me- It wasn’t like what I thought of her. I really did like her, I latched onto her, this girl called Lynette. She said I should buy a life, get me a personality. Not in those words, but that’s what they meant. She apologised later- I don’t need apologies, I could see she meant it then. First impressions are good like this, Somebody you’ve known five minutes who says to you Just exactly what they think of you. That’s why I liked her- Not because she was pretty, or because she apologised, Or because she wanted to sleep with me. Because she was herself, Made uninhibited by the alchahol, perhaps. I’ve never seen her since- I know my own ways, I think that’s her good luck. If I see her again, I most likely won’t talk to her. I’ll let her be herself- this Lynette- Because that’s why I like her.
Job. Tall. Vast. Open. Door. Desk. Secretary. Elevator. In. Up. Out. Office. Desk. Clerk. Paper. Discuss. Argument. Paper. Signature. Elevator. Down. Out. Desk. Secretary. Door. Open. Vast. Tall. Next. Job.
...all the best, then. We can see each other by and by, we can think of us, when we were us, we can wish to be together again- But also we cannot. You see, we’re apart again, we’re not as one we reminisce of the times when we were having fun- We could run and play, or lie on grass and sleep, or hold each other in our arms forever in this hold to keep. But we don’t, now. We could love as one, be as one, we were oft unapart, we could take the good times with the bad because love was in our heart. I loved you and you to me did want such evermore, but what did happened between us? We when left alone were sore. And now we’re alone. Yes, we’re apart. I still love you, you know but I wonder if you love me. A year or more has the great rift grown within our small family. And so with life ahead and you behind, my soleful journey must go, And my wish to you that you will find a love like mine- for I’m still here- A great love like mine, you know.https://play.frumbert.org
Gaia Chapter 1 Under so many stars lay an open night sky. The Autumn night was quite calm, yet a little brisk. A whisper of wind stirred across the open grasslands surrounding an old and withered-looking castle. Up high, somewhere amongst the strange thatch and tile rooves a yellowish light shone out into the darkness. Within the glowing room, shadows of women busy at work played on the walls. The groans of pain and joy that eminated from the high room were heard by a worried-looking man who hastned his packing and without a word, fled the castle. Throughout the now-still night air a single cry was sounded. It was a cry of endless joy and was quickly followed by a second cry of love. The dark shadows of the busy women all at once became a blur of hasty motion. Eventually they slowed and dissapeared. “She is beautiful, just like her mother,” The old woman sat on the side of a high bed. Her rustic clothes suited her sweaty brow and tired face. Her eyes spoke a different language to her tired body. She could not help staring at the newborn and mother. The beautiful baby had been born in her home. The babies’ mother lay weeping with joy on the bloodied bed, sweat trickled from her body onto a fine-lace bedcover. She protectively held her new family to her breast and crooned her in exhausted breath. The yellow light no longer shone out into the darkness. An exquisite curtain was drawn across the small leaded window. Another elderly woman appeared from behind a heavy scarlet drape. She spoke to the other female in a hurried tone. “I will now call the ambulance, we have to get her to a hospital for registration and a good checkup. She is a few days early. And her mother is exhausted,” She looked adoringly at the child. “She is so beautiful, isn’t she?” The ambulance screamed along the dark bitumen road, the new mother silent in the back, a tiny red-haired baby sleeping in absolute comfort in fresh snowy-white blanket. An uneven blip on a small blue-green screen accompanied the new mothers slow breathing. The strange blip became more erratic, then finally became an unending high pitch sound. The breathing stopped. Out of the white sheen of blankets two bright blue eyes calmly stared, uncomprehending. • “I was born here seventeen years ago,” The bright-eyed girl stated, trying to remember- failing. She was not short, not tall. Her coppery hair cascaded over her shoulders, over her prussian blue dress. She was exquisite. From her so-blue eyes shone calmness, understanding. She had perfect lips, scarlet red like the drapes that hung on the walls. With a great sigh she added, “That was the night my mother died. My father dissapeared without trace and since I can remember, no-one had heard of him or seen anything. He was reported missing and never found. So here I am, orphaned in the world by misfortune.” “Gaia, don’t fret it. There’s nothing that you can do now. Just live your life and forget it.” Another girl sat on a high-backed chair. She also wore a delicate dress of the finest silk red. In her fingers she held a glowing cigarette which she put to her lips and drew smoke from twice. As she blew the grey powder about the room, her eyes glanced about the mediæval looking adornments about her- the bolster bed on which Gaia lay, the strangly carved door, the dark night outside the window. Clouds moved slowly across the stary night. She also sighed, though not in regret, just boredom and tire. Gaia lay silent, closed her eyes and was transported from the ancient room to another time, another place. The image of her mother edged into her mind. Photographs of the beautiful woman together with her tall husband. She almost seemed alive still- The girl awoke from her daydream. A hazy trail of smoke rose lazily towards the high girdered roof. “No, I suppose you’re right.” Gaia sighed once more. “Well Lisa, I s’pose we’d better get on downstairs. Mrs Mac’ll be starting to wonder where we got to. This is a fairly big place after all.” Somewhere a bird cried out. There was hardly any noise, only a faint murmer from down below where Mrs MacDowell, the owner of the castle, was busy cooking their evening meal. Most of the other guests Mrs MacDowell had to stay did not wish to stay for the night. The strange, ancient castle seemed, somehow, too spooky for them. Lisa and Gaia had been invited by Mrs MacDowell to stay, and the polite girls could not refuse. Before leaving, the girls took another breif look around the room. It mostly seemed as rustic and odd as they had imagined a castle to look like, although it had electric lighting and a bedside digital clockradio. The high bookshelf was crammed with books by modern authors interspersed with miscellaneous decorative items. The curtained window was partly open. A brisk breeze wafted in. Two weeks later, the duo had arrived back at their home in Australia where they lived in a small flat, somewhere in North Sydney. The night of their return, after a takeaway pizza and a rather messy car trip from the airport, the two girls sat lazily in front of a late-night movie on the television. Lisa turned from the screen, the beanbag she lay on screeched and she said, yawning “So, Gaia, that was Scotland. I didn’t expect it to be, well, so cold, for one. Or that Mrs MacDowell actually delivered you all that time ago. She was so kind to let us stay for a week in that place,” She slowly blinked a few times, sleep plain on her face. “That place must be so old.” “Yeah, it is. I’ll have to write to them and thank them for having us.” She paused, thinking. “I did find out one thing for sure, though. Dad is still around, somewhere.” “What? I thought he would have died years ago.” “So did I. But did you see how they all reacted when I asked them if they had heard from him since I was born. They all looked away quickly and mumbled away about him having died a long time ago. No, I know that he’s still alive.” “Gaia, you aren’t going out to look for him, are you? That was years ago. In another country, for God’s sake. He would be long gone. It would be silly for you to go after him.” Lisa seemed to scold, like Gaia’s Aunt had done when she cared for her- before the car accident had hospitalised her for good. That, too, was a long time ago now, thought Gaia. The duo fell silent, fell back into the strange black-and-white world of the silly film on the television. Gradually, unknowingly, sleep eased into their tired bodies, and long after the slowly-breathing pair had slipped off, the quiet TV also gave way to the evermoving static fuzz that indicated that it, too, was ‘asleep’. Chapter 2 “Ha, ha, ha. You’re piss’d aren’t’chu?” Slurred Gaia, the cold night around her and Lisa pushing, seeping into their small bodies like blood oozing from an open wound. Warm air gushed out of the bar in a great flood of heat as the door opened and a number of drunk teenagers surged out into the open air, Gaia and Lisa amongst the dazy throng. The roads leading away from the public bar were as dark and grim in the frigid air as the unmoved streetlights would allow. The winter
The Toaster Erwin, glasses down his nose, looked up over the rim of his book at Sharron. ÒSharron,Ó He said, a sudden inquisitive tone other than his normal droll mumble, ÒHow many existentialists does it take to screw in a light bulb?Ó Sharron was watching the TV, not realising that it was off. Sharron wasnÕt very interested in TV anyhow. She was more into boppy music on her personal HI-FI walkmanÑ tunes like ÔTie a yellow ribbonÕ and ÔDown by the riverside - A Scott Joplin ExtraordinaireÕ. It was extraordinary that Erwin would ask her a question, especially one like that. She didnÕt even know what an exitspatula, or whatever it was he said, is anyway. ÒA Spoonful,Ó She eventually calculated. ÒNo. Two. One to screw in the new bulb and one to observe how the lightbulb itself symbolises a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out towards a maudlin cosmos of nothingness.Ó ÒOh,Ó She changed the channel on the TV. Amazingly, it was the same as the one she had just changed from. Just as dull. ÒDo you get it?Ó Erwin asked, a mad look of glee in his eye. Sharron had a thought. Thoughts were quite rare for Sharron, so when they did come, they had to be worth it. ÒNot when youÕre here. How do you get them into the light bulb, anyhow?Ó It was a good one. Erwin was absolutely stunned. His brain just stopped. Firstly, Sharron had said two sentencesÑ Two whole sentences in the one breath. And they didnÕt really make sense, to him anyway. He pushed his glasses back up his nose until they squashed at his eyes, then lifted the book up again to be lost again in the tumultuous words of aspiring insanityÑ ÔCat in the HatÕ. Sharron had realised it too. Suddenly the entire universe of knowledge crashed down on her, like Mrs BernardÕs laundry upstairs when she drops it down the hole in the middle of the staircase so that she doesnÕt have to carry it all the way down. She relevated in thought. She could actually hear lots of thoughts happening in her head - cogs clanging away, shots fired, the six oÕclock newsÑ Hang on! It wasnÕt thoughts. Silly Erwin had just turned on the TV! Oh well, it was almost epiphany. Hoskins walked in. Somehow he had managed to: undo the three magnetic deadlocks, bypass the laser fed passive infra red centimeter wave radar ranging security cameras, evade the vicious genetic mutant hunting hounds and forget to knock before entering. Or, perhaps, Erwin was thinking of his other home that had all these things and Hoskins lived here and he lived there. Now he was confused. ÒHos, is this my home or yours?Ó He asked, putting the glorious book on the small craftwood table beside him, just next to the coffee he always had that went cold before he had even sipped it. ÒMine. Yours has all those nerdy security stuff things. Why?Ó ÒI was just wondering where I was and why I am here, then, if thatÕs where I am.Ó ÒYou are here, at my home, to return the book you borrowed off me two weeks back,Ó Hoskins informed. ÒYou finished it yet?Ó ÒYes. I just finished then.Ó ÒGood. Sharron, lets you and Erwin go out for a movie, or something.Ó ÒMmm.Ó Both Erwin and Sharron looked stupidly at each other, smiling, as they stood. It was a badly kept secret, but a secret all the same and nobody else should know. Erwin and Sharron were in love. Stupidly, madly in love. The first time Erwin had seen Sharron was when she had puked all over the back of his car after a ride on the ferris wheel at the fun park. Erwin hadnÕt gotten angry straight away. He just didnÕt realise what had happened. Not in the snow. The awful remnants of SharronÕs fateful lunch had frozen on impact to the icy metal car body, and in the blizzard conditions had been smoothed over into a higher than usual lump of badly smelling snow. After she was finished decorating her environment, Sharron had looked through the glazed rear window of ErwinÕs Datsun 120Y, directly into the rear-view mirror, and into giant, brown eyes. Then the car thief drove off. Erwin, keys in hand, was just about to open the passenger side door and put his oversize stuffed gorilla that he won into the seat when the car drove away. Dazed and confused, he had wandered, gorilla in hand, over to Sharron. When Sharron looked at the shaggy furry head, the big doleful eyes, she fell in love. The she looked at Erwin, whose dull balding head collected icy flakes of white mush and distressed greenish eyes peeped out from behind square glasses. Ever since, Erwin and Sharron had been together. As they left the small apartment, Erwin remembered all the times he had gone out with Sharron. He could think, off hand, of three. But of course, they had only met four days ago. Maccas. MacDonalds. The only place to eat in style. THE place to be seen eating. In this town, MacDonalds wasnÕt just a restaurant, it was the Palace MacDonalds, one of the largest known MacDonalds in the history of all MacDonaldses. The Hilton Hotel of eat-in, take-away and drive-thru food franchise operations. Palace MacDonald was a stunning six storey, 10 star, top rating food palace, where service is personal, dinner comes on a silver plated stainless steel platter, wine is a must, and after six pm, the topless bar and custom burger maker become available to a select amount of very special customers. But Sharron, Erwin and Hoskins couldnÕt afford to go there, so they went over the road to the ÔQueen of the Burger PeopleÕ cafŽ, where they could sit, forcing down the real food, blissfully wishing themselves across the street, into the ethereal abyss of greasy, computer rendered sesame seed coated buns, 5 percent meat 95 percent vegetable extract Ô100% Real BeefªÕ meat slices, crinkle cut plastic lettuce and that weird yellow gooey stuff that you always find when you lift up the top part of the cyberlogically engineered, most average human tastebud tantalising, burger. Just at the non-eventful climax of the trioÕs hallucinogenic surrealism expression of subconscious fears expressed through the worlds most eaten burger, the small cafŽ burst into flame and the chef fled screaming, pausing only to take the cash from the register and an airline ticket to Cuba that he had picked up earlier that day. They, the only ones enjoying the cafŽÕs delightful menu that evening, decided to run riot on behalf of everybody who had ever entered the small room, and threw chairs, broke windows and generally made a great mess, before running out, screaming something about the end of the world approaching at horrific speed. When theyÕd finished, they went and saw an old Japanese Samurai movie. Hoskins, who loved this kind of movie, sat avidly watching everything. It didnÕt worry him that there werenÕt any subtitles and that is was dubbed over into German. It didnÕt matter what they said. The sword fights and those silly slow-motion high jumps were enthralling. Erwin sat feasting on the stale popcorn whilst Sharron tried desperately to look like she and Erwin were passionately kissing and not caring about what anyone thought of them doing so. When it was overÑ the movieÑ Hoskins said goodbye and waddled off home. He was a fairly big man, and he had skinny bowed legs that made him seem to wobble side to side as he walked. And he did walk fast, too, which contributed to the effort. Erwin and Sharron walked hand in hand through the snow, gazing into the shop windows, glancing occasionally up to see an all-night shop being held up by a shotgun wielding manic escaped prisoner or some tall building being burnt by searing red heat with people screaming and jumping to their doom. Walking along, just noticing all the little everyday details. Eventually, they made it safely back to ErwinÕs fortress. It was not a home. Erwin, a toaster power cord salesman by day, had a complex. He was afraid of all sorts of things: The neighboursÕ dog, the mailman (who happened to be an ex Palistinian terrorist), being repeatedly struck by lightning, having his subscription to Readers Digest cancelled, not that the security measures could help that one. Sharron always liked the sense of warm homeliness that she got when she looked up at ErwinÕs home: The satellite dishes, the barred windows, the big shaggy dog-thing called Cranium. Cranium actually had come from a trial in cross-breeding a dog with a mountain goat, a genetic experiment that had gone horribly wrong. But Erwin and Sharron liked Cranium. He was loving, cunning, ate anything, and if a burglar was breaking in via the roof, could be up there in a jiffy. Erwin entered two security cards, punched a few buttons on a keypad, and then the duo went inside to spend the rest of the evening in loving harmony, asking each other all the easy questions out of the remains of the Trivial Pursuit cards. It was daytime, the next day, and at midday, the bell in the post office tower struck a few times. Sharron worked at the post office, fetching boxes, vacuuming and shredding all the bits of paper that needed to be shredded. Actually, she liked the shredding part. She liked to feed in the shredded paper again and watch it all come out even finer, then use some sticky tape to stick it sort of together so that she could run it through sideways. This way, one piece of paper (the machine took one at a time) could take five or six minutes to shred. ÔAlthough IÕm not that smart, IÕm not totally stupid either.Õ she was quoted of saying more than once. Erwin liked his job. He worked up the street at the local toaster repair shop. Toasters were a rare commodity in the community, since most new married couples moved away directly after marriage and alot of the old timers of the town still toasted their bread under the gas grill. But Erwin made a living. He loved to talk Toasters with customers. If a customer wanted a triple speed, low power halogen bun burner, heÕd know. If the springy bit went in a model STM-Turbo Edge-trimming convection toaster, heÕd have one handy. He wasnÕt that much of a toaster mechanic, though. He was into power cords. He had them all. Low voltage cords, high voltage plugs, three phase super charge triple duplex twin silver plate earth toaster leads and universal adaptors for microwave toasters. Erwin, the magnificent power cord specialist, was King of the Toaster Salesmen. It was after lunch when Erwin sat glumly in the shop window, amongst his adaptors and power points. He was watching a great bandwagon draw slowly along the street towards the Tax Haven Casino, a multi billion dollar enterprise specialising in lots of fast cash. The large wagon was kept stopping to let people onÑ rarely did somebody get off. He could see quite a number of public figures, politicians, lawyers, public servants and movie stars boarding the bandwagon and driving off to the Tax Haven Casino, leaving strands of dispirited members of the public to crawl back to their gutter apartments and whimper at passers by. Then he heard the scream. Sharron! Turning to spot her, he tripped on a power lead and fell backwards through a window. Fortunately, there was no glass in it: Hooligans had smashed it the night before, stealing toaster time to make their delicious bread snacks at some ghastly hour of the morning. As he lay, face up, on the pavement, he could see (upside down) the figure dangling indefatigably out a window. Suddenly he was there, staring up at Sharron. It was about this time that the toaster shopÕs sprinkler system went off. Somebody was smoking in the staff toilets again. The toasters (all plugged in, for maximum display activity) pretty much exploded at the same time, a thick cloud of carbonic dust spewing forth from the windows and doors. But here he was. Erwin, ex-toaster salesman extraordinaire, staring up at his girlfriends butt (thatÕs all he could see from directly below) which was about two storeys above, hanging out the window of the post office. Then came the shots. Some mail-happy, berserk, brain fried git was molesting people with sporadic bursts of flesh-hungry lead shrapnel that he blasted from the end of his shotgun. Windows were being smashed (though, funnily enough, not anywhere near the gunman), people were screaming, prams were rolling down the stairs towards the busy roadÑ the place was a shambles. No wonder nobody likes the post anymore, complained one passer-by. Erwin, Ôstate of panicÕ written in bold black letters across his T-shirt, turned, hoping to see Cranium loping to the rescue. He did actually see his goaty dog, but only on somebodyÕs roof, eating the cords going to their TV antenna. Hoskins wasnÕt coming to the rescue, doing one of those swishy slo-mo moves with samurai swords to fend off the crazy gunman. Erwin, first time in his life, was on his own. The idea was simple. Get the gorilla on the ground, put it under Sharron. Sharron drops down onto the big monkey. Sharron is saved. Go home and have some toast. It didnÕt work. Sharron hit a flagpole on the way down, then bounced a couple of times when she hit the stairs. Somebody stole the big shaggy gorilla that Erwin had won five days earlier, and it started to snow again. Sharron, Erwin was sure was dead. She lay there, her frizzy red hair cascading across the uneven staircase, her gentle body twisted into some god awful position (legs donÕt go behind your ears), her face jammed down into the hard cement. Then Sharron walked out of the post office. Erwin was distressed. HadnÕt she just fallen to her doom? If not who was this? Then he thought hard about it. Sharron didnÕt have frizzy red hair. Sharrons hair was a short blackish mop. She couldnÕt get her legs behind her head either. After they had hugged and had a cup of coffee out of the coffee machine, they went and turned over the body on the stairs (nobody else had bothered). Shock and horror crossed their faces. Hoskins! Hoskins, dressed as a desperate woman (the hair? Red hair with that face? A woman with a Samurai Katana? Never!). It appeared that Hoskins had loved Sharron too, and in his desperate jealousy, had tried to take over the building, posing as a suicide threat on the second floor. Not planning on having shootout in the floor below, Hoskins must have tried to get he attention of the public by hanging out a window, not of course realising that some bimbo secretary would close the window on his fingers, making him fall to his death. It was either that or Hoskins just liked cross dressing. Which ever way it all happened, Erwin, the retired King of all the Toaster Power Cord Specialists, hand in hand with his wonderful girlfriend Sharron, the Shredder Queen of the local post office, walked dolefully off into the sunset, pausing only to get Cranium off somebodyÕs roof. They all lived in na•ve absurdity, happily ever after.
Into Madness He gets up each morn, dresses in perfect clothes- Clean, unmessed, does his hair to perfection- he strives to look good In the eyes of others, in the eyes of himself. And what are you? You are the sort of person That will not do his hair to perfection, only flatten it So that it stays out of your eyes. You wont keep your shoes clean, Only that dull black. You wear old clothes, Messy, wrinkled, untidy. You are on the dole, live in a pityful little flat lost somewhere in a forgotten backstreet. It is a one-roomed box, the shared bathroom, The single window, the heavily bolted door. Cold fluorescent lights flicker along the rustic hallways, One, two- more?- windows broken, the winter chill flows on in. You eat badly, when you do eat, that is. Your skin is dry and cracked from malnutrition- You are almost dead, but not quite. Of course, you live alone now. Maybe long ago there was a chance With a friend- but that was long ago. You forgot about them and went off by yourself. There was that little cat. Playful thing- soft fur, irresistable bright eyes, playful paw- But it was killed some time ago. Or there’s that dying plant, brown leaves starved from sun and water in its world where no sun shines. You have no respect for others, You have no respect for yourself. What are you? What is your purpose? Leave me alone.
Seeker Domain © Tim St.Clair 1994 Open my eyes See you Love you, you know How tell you? If you know? Do you know? Ask you if? No reply. Silence. Wait. Wait. Silence. Tell you love you. Silence. Silence. Oh come on. I am waiting, I am waiting. Tell me. I love you. Do you know that? Do you? Please know that. Silence. Silence. You look, you smile. Wait. Wait. Don’t you know what Love is? Don’t you know the pain and joy and hurt and- Please acknowledge at least my feelings. I can not explain it further without showing you. Please take notice. Seek answer. Is answer? Wait. Silence. Pause, ask again. Wait. Answer recieved! You don’t know? Why not? You don’t know? You’re only joking. You do! Relief, joy, hurt, pain, sorrow, question. Feeling indescribed. Feeling new, feeling question. -Love-. Nothing more said, nothing needed said. Non seeker, quench seeker domain. Eternity met.
Alone Once Again Detached from the flow, With no place to go, He wanders his mind alone. What he sees are the birds, The flowers and bees, He has not a place to calls home. A home, to him, Is a magnificent thing, He needs a special place to stay. How he longs for the peace The special room will bring And he dreams of it night and day. There is a man, Who, like this, Can not hear our words of despise. He wanders apart, Alone once again, So no-one can hear his lone cries.
“But I did see it,” exclaimed Andrew, his youthful voice wailing across the uncounted miles as the duo trudged along a dusty dirt trail. As each pace took them a step closer to their goal, Andrew became more erratic. “Oh, yes, and I s’pose that if we find this silly thing that a whole heap of Martians pop out and terrorise the world? So that we have to save it?” James was certainly a sceptic, thought Andrew. Either he had no capabilities to believe in little green men, or he had no imagination. Probably, lack of imagination and adventure accompanied James’ personality. Andrew looked James as he strode ahead. He wore new shoes, phosphorescent white in the morning sun. His green shorts certainly clashed with the red t-shirt and blue fluffy socks. James had messy hair, which hung loosely over even-brown eyes. He always wore a sardonic smile, white teeth occasionally showing as he spoke. They walked a few hundred metres further, then James stoped, bringing Andrew, head down, to falter into him. “No further we go.” James seemed final. His tone indicated his rising temperature, even as the days heat was starting to set in. “Let me get this. You saw a bright light in the sky, which you think you saw fall somewhere out here in these horrible hills, then to add to the story, you assume that it was some spaceship full of little green men-” “You were the one who made that up, not me, Jamie. I never said there were little green men in it. I only said that I saw some big bright thing fall from the sky which resembled a UFO.” Andrew cut in, exasperated with ‘Jamie’, as he called his older brother when teasing or explaing a point. “I told you not to call me that! How would you like it if I called you ‘Andy’ all the time?” James retorted. “I wouldn’t care. You do anyway.” “I do not, but that’s away from the point. Look, I am going back, so are you. Mum will probably start worrying if you don’t come back with me and I will have to come out here and find you if you get lost.” Andrew was annoyed, to say the least. “Mum can worry. Go back, coward.” He mocked, then added with a defiant zest, “I, alone, must conquer this quest. I must find the source of all this-” “Well. I am not going to come out here again to find you when you loose your way-” “I know my way around. It’s not like I haven’t been out here before. I know precisely where I am and precisely where home is.” Tension was high between Andrew and James. Far off in the black scrub, a long whistle, a bird adding a chilling tone to Andrews’ stern manner. “Well. Hmpf.” And with that, James turned and walked away. Only a few paces towards home, he turned about his left shoulder and pointed at Andrew, mouth agape, as if to speak, then closed it, turned and departed. Andrew had been gone for the better part of three hours, that was, from the time James had deserted him to the present. James was still angry with Andrew- he had been a little fearful for his younger brother. Andrew, James surmised, had tendencies to a little odd sometimes. He tended to say thing only to spite others, to seek dominion- perhaps to gain attention and respect. Realising this, James started to feel more at peace with himself, just a little more relaxed. Andrew, he was sure, would be fine. “James? Where’s Andrew?” Angela was the equidistant sibling of the three-child family. Her age was situated two years either way between James and Andrew. “Has he come back yet? Or did you leave him out there, alone and unwanted, to fend for himself in that dark and foreboding jungle?” She loved to be quite dramatic where her brothers were concerned. Angie, as she was commonly known, wore a misshapen outfit, its bright colours certainly ranked as an overstatement. Tiny red high top boots, skin tight green-and-white pin-striped track-pants, a deep blue t-shirt and an outrageous straw hat adorned with colours and miscellaneous jangly items. “What happened to you? Look like a... a bargain shop with all those crappy fake gold chains and hearts stuck all over you like that.” Andrew had a certain lust for teasing his little sister. “And yes, I did leave him fend for himself, as you put it. He and I separated before we got there, wherever there was anyway. Do you think he’ll find his Martian friends?” Angie paused, a split second as if deciding an idea. “Just imagine if he did?” She had a certain twinkle in her expression and tone, one, she was sure, that even her blockhead brother would understand. James was unsure for a moment, then understood. Smiling, he queried, “If he did find his... ‘moon men’, then it would really make his day, wouldn’t you say? I mean, if he were to... accidentally discover two little green people or something...?” The two looked at each other and chuckled. “What do you have that’s green?” * * * Andrew was absolutely sure that he had heard a noise just behind that rock, and started to climb over it. It was only for a moment- he was sure that it was alien. It had to be! Nothing more could look like that! Tiny blue eyes, a yellow fur covering its body, and six feet. He tried to climb closer- What on Earth was that! Andrew jumped to his feet, surveying the densely treed landscape, searching for the source of the loud boom. At the edge of his vision he made out a tall human-like object, clad in multi-coloured green, but as soon as he had turned to face it, it was gone. Another sound! The opposite direction! He spun, his heartbeat racing in fear and excitement, only to catch a glimpse of another similar creature before it vanished amongst the dark grey-green of the forest about him. The child’s’ mind spun a fantastic tale of Martians, creatures from other worlds with ray-guns and dreams to conquer the planet. Desperation took over, the crazed child took no notice of the two blue-blue eyes of the yellow furry creature as it sat in puzzlement of the strange creature running away before him. Andrew had one last image of the six-legged Martian, happily and patiently watching his fearful plight to safety. He could feel the ominous presence of the swarms of green men with their ray-guns and evil plans, ready to attack and kill him. Finally, after so much running and stumbling, he reached the small enclosure he called home. “So, Andy, what did you find? Little green men or UFO’s? You were gone long enough.” James and Angie stood peering into Andrew’s room, where their small brother resided on his bed, reading, of all things, a spaceman comic. “Don’t call me ‘Andy’. And, as a matter of fact, yes I did. I saw hundreds of them. They are planning to attack and take over the world. They were big green men with ray-guns, and there was a little one, a yellow dog-like thing with blue eyes and six legs.” Andrew recalled his brief encounter with the strange creature, a shiver creeping down his spine. “Gosh.” Angie exasperated. “We better not go out there, eh James?” “No, Angela.” James replied with an equal but suppressed sarcasm. “We might get disintegrated by the Martians.” With that, James and Angie linked arms, turned and scuffled off chuckling, closing the door behind them. On the far side of Andrew’s bed, a small, yellow furry creature sat on two hind legs, with its four front legs entwined, as if crossed in a strange manner. When Andrew finally turned around to see it, their eyes locked. Two rich brown eyes stared calmly into two blue-blue eyes. They smiled.
Key to a Cell Round and round! The clock! The cogs! Blessed be they who go in circles, For they shalt be known as as Wheels! Clockwork springing back and forth- In the demure, demental head, In the sogged up tubule of brainy stuff In the cog that isn't part of the bloody clock At all. A head like a squarish room Padded with a rubber tissue that Bounces a chemical ball all tied up inside, Churning over like the ocean tide, Dreaming of a coat with no arms, Sculpting and smashing and moulding and mashing The thoughts all mangled around, Twisted like the coil in that clock. Tense. Jelly balls with an in built camera Recording endless spools of erratic light To twist and reinvent elsewhere later on. Photons thrown away in multi-hued formations From the other body that is so perfect’ The other thing that looks the same and Looks different and is not the same at all. You. - The face is in the clock, a work of art. A grand old wooden timekeeper, never fast or slow. An even tick- tick, tick- echoing gracefully in a silent place. Exquisite tiny hands, clearly guiding the eye. A delicate trace of ornaments complimenting the style. The cute, shy look apologising the time. All in all, a masterpiece of refined beauty. Clockwork crafted by a genius creator. The coil fine tuned to give perfect response. Small wheels and unbelievably exact cogs That think- think, think- precisely all the time. - It is a cog that lies outside. A wheel serrated on edge to give a use. But it has no use, alone, like that. It's not quite right, there's a tooth or two missing And the axle hole isn't quite centred. But the unkept cog lies outside, staring up at the clock, Almost wishing, if it could, to be a part of the perfection. God is my friend, he cries, as is the bird and the butterfly. The wall is there, staring at him, accusing As it does. His watch is lost, broken too. Time passes as it does, who can stop it? God hates me, he screams, so he broke my watch. He tore out the cogs and wrenched out the time. Now I must exist outside time, with my heart bleeding A new emotion into a shred of existence. The square room is padded to keep the brain from Him. He hates me, and I am Him. I hate myself. Sanity? - Scream out, there's nobody home. Clanging gong that signals a certain time. Sing your resonant overtone, chime away. Putrid clock. Evil hand that grips the soul. The key, the hand that winds it, is gone. The coil unwinding, relaxing. Black joy. The clock is stopped. - Void of thought, a dying mind grasps nothing. A space is there, a hole in the lump of soul. A missing bit taken right out of the heart. I have the key. I must wind up the clock. I must turn the key over and over. I must leave the key, but for just one more turn. The coil snaps-.
Death of the Unknown His breathing is constant. He lies in bed, his eyes open. His mind asleep, his thoughts on hold. Time outside his room moves on. His breathing in staccato. He lies crooked in bed, his face pained. His mind races, His life in his eyes. Time outside his mind moves on endlessly. His breathing is no more. He lies prostrate in bed, his eyes closed. Eternally, Time passes. Outside his room, life moves on endlessly.
Why? No inquisition an imperative. No explanation supplied. No incentive for a reason, Just Why?