Sehr Fischartig
“Lookit, Mama...this fish has a moustachieeee!”
SMACK
whimper
“Ah tolle you not to run off like thayat! Better mine me, yu little shét...”
Two moonpie faces loomed before Fisch, and he saw that they were good, and clean, and their eyes were huge. And not blue. Neither was their hair blonde.
Now Fisch couldn’t decide what he found more interesting, objectively: the faces, or the Reflection. He could see both of them with equally intense clarity - at will - instantly - but never both at the same time. He definitely knew which one he liked better. He would swim up and down, swishing his ass from side to side and blowing bubbles all day long, doing the trick to shift his mind between the two images. The faces would change, different ones all the time, but the Reflection would not, and that was part of it, too. And when the lights went out, the faces disappeared altogether, and the Reflection became brighter, clearer, and impossible to see through. The trick stopped working. That was the part that scared him. That was when he slept. Drifting, digesting, preparing and repairing his aging innards, he would sleep and dream that the faces were like him, and shared seeing the Reflection. And he would also dream that the Reflection was seeing faces somewhere inside him, and that would make him roll over in his sleep and wake up with bubbles of dry air coating his scales. He would have to shake them off and listen sometimes for hours to the Hum of the World, The Golden Pump of Absolute Serenity, before he could numb himself back to sleep for another day.
Mama chuckled to herself, tapping the side of the tank with a spongy, grey index finger.
“Come on...your father is up ahead, and mah feet hurt."
“Can I have a fishie with a moustachieee? MOUSTACHIEEE! Moustachieoke-apoke!” The child closed its eyes and squealed. There was bouncing.
SMACK
whimper
YANK
pitterpatterpitterpatterpitterpatter
And so persisted the indelible illusion...
The days were long, but every face was different, and that made the days pass. The faces made the days have depth and detail - they made the days cut themselves apart from one another - and he was glad for them in a robust kind of abstract way, although he didn’t know what else there could be, and didn’t know if gratitude for what was inevitable really counted. He was quite the philosopher sometimes, was Fisch.
For instance, he had managed to totally and completely determine the full history and path of the entire cosmos, from the beginning to the end, while still retaining a cyclical and self-sustaining picture of ultimate reality that reinforced and bled into his daily allowable serving-size of tasty despair. The universe was a cube, that much was certain. It was a gigantic block of space-time, with levels and layers where some things stayed on top, and some things went to the bottom. Things that were good to eat stayed on top, for instance, and things that came out of him, his creative product, sank into piles beneath him, like the sand that was the remnant of the beginning times and upon which the whole universe rested. Above him was blackness and shimmering pockets that sometimes became the Net, or the Hand of God. Around him were the faces, unless the lights had gone out, and then he saw the Reflection without cessation or release. And The Golden Pump kept things moving, kept things from setting like primordial Jello, like what the beats of his very own heart - his pump - told him its function must be. He had never seen the Pump, he could only feel and hear its activities, but he knew it must be golden because that’s what color he was, and he felt a special kinship - an attunement to - the vibration of the universe.
Although, as Fisch was wont to say to himself:
This was Hell.
Punishment. Eternally. He was quite certain that his death would only start things over again from the beginning. The Reflection told him so. Plus, to be frank, he could imagine what fun must be and what pleasure must feel like, and he certainly wasn’t getting anything close to either. This was Hell, he was Fisch, The Pump pumped, he watched the Reflection and the faces, swam up and down, swished his little golden ass, blew bubbles, and all was precise, proper, and controlled. Eating time was eating time, and, ontologically speaking, Fisch was done with all that needed figuring out.
2.
Now. What was important about Fisch, although no one else in the entire REAL cosmos knew it, especially no one at the Port Levinson Aquarium where his tank sat on the third shelf of the North American Oddities room, top floor in the back, right next to the Rays and Eels room, was that Fisch was the fifth tangible reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. Really. He had been placed alone in the Oddities room because of the great black whiskers that protruded very comically, very familiarly, from right underneath his little Fisch nose - downward, manicured-looking, and impossible to ignore - and because he was incredibly fragile and the aquarium professionals were afraid any other kind of companion fish would kill him and eat him. What gets reincarnated in a spiritual body is exceedingly odd sometimes. It was the mustache that followed the being who had once been Adolph Hitler. Mikhail Gorbachav’s past life was as the planet Jupiter.
3.
Fisch remembered his first faces in this body, but nothing before.
“Oh my,” said the professor who first discovered the new and exciting creature, clapping a hand to his mouth to hide his bemused half-grin. He was a scientist, and must remain calm, and above all NOT LAUGH, but it was really too much, and in the end, he did give a very scientific chuckle. His assistant, a lovely young grad student he was scientifically boning twice a week, raised an eyebrow.
“Doctor,” she said, “Do you think this is a new species, or merely some kind of mutation?”
The professor shrugged.
“We’ll justify our grant if it’s a new species. Do you feel like doing all the work to make sure it’s not?”
They watched Fisch swim in the plastic baggie. They would be his first faces. He would remember them as Mother and Father of the universe, and, later, with greater understanding, as his judge, jury, and executioner. Hell. His home, his universe.
He was named the Mustacheoed Golden Hitler Fish, Carassius auratus anschluss. The only one known in existence, an irony lost to Fisch, who, of course, could not read. There was also a placard next to his tank that warned against the terrible losses that the pollution of American streams and lakes caused, laying out the tragic plight of the anschluss, and its doomed, endangered status. He couldn’t see the placard, and his only insight into who or what he was, lamentably, was the Reflection.
4.
See, the thing about the Reflection, was that sometimes, it was more than just a Reflection. That’s why Fisch thought about it as THE Reflection, and not HIS Reflection. Sometimes it showed him things when he looked into its eyes - images - things he shouldn’t have to know - past things of horror and terror, lunacy and blood, that made him want to bash himself against the side of the tank until he was inside out and dead. The Reflection was interesting, nonetheless, and he wondered what its intent was, without actually becoming crazy enough to begin talking to it. He wouldn’t want the faces to think he was some sort of freak. Besides, there was nothing that gave him greater solace than the smiles the faces gave him as they passed him on their way to eternity and oblivion. He figured the faces lived only transiently in the thin cool glass that made up the wall of reality - the liminal paper-thin razor cut that outlined existence - but they were still the faces of... hmmmm...salvation? The smiles meant happiness and pleasure, and sometimes he could entertain the possibility that the faces were buying him stock in a better universe someday, a universe where there was activity and excitement, pleasure and beauty, leisure and booty, treasure and annuity...
But no.
The Reflection said it would all just start over.
From the begjnning.
For eternity.
“Oh my,” the Reflection would say, in its best professor voice, “Remember that?”
5.
On days when the Reflection was particularly cutting and persuasive, the faces were always laughing at him, and that was part of it, too. Because everything that passed laughed at him, and everything that saw him felt a little bit better about itself at his expense, the only way he could maintain his sanity, whatever that means to a fish (although surely there is some objective standard), was to gain deeper and deeper insight into the faces themselves, so he could understand, appreciate, and empathize with their laughter, no matter where it came from or how malicious its intent. He was powerless and needed the faces, he needed their protean guises, but he also needed them to reveal themselves to him, so that he could see the force that strung them all together, of which he was somehow a small part, allowing him to hold on to the ravaged and tattered shred of dignity that a fish in a tank has. It is a small shred, indeed. He was a small fish.
6.
There was a kind of laughter that was worst.
It was the big men with tattoos and shiny white scalps.
It was the laughter of identification.
“Check it...look! It’s Der Fuhrer! Sieg Heil! Ahargleharglehargle....dude, we oughtta steal this fuckin’ fish. This thing is beautiful.”
“No way we’d ever get it out, man. They’ve got cameras all over this shit.”
“But look...we gotta tell people about this thing so they’ll come see it...god, look at that mustache.”
“Yeah. Heh heh heh. Sweet deal he’s got though...bet they feed him real good.”
“I want him bad, man. I would put him on top of the end table, next to the futon. Next to the flag...”
“Yeah, that’d kick ass. Everyone would freak out.”
“Yeah.”
“Come on...we gotta go get your sister and show her...”
“Sieg Heil! Ahargleharglehargle...”
That laughter reminded him of where he was, and he couldn’t get anything out of it. And often they would stare for a long time, keeping others away, making him some kind of symbol. It was very counterproductive.
7.
Okay, so he couldn’t be completely sure this was Hell. There was always fresh water, he didn’t have to fight for resources, and his food came regularly and with precision. He never got sick, and something about his genetic biochemistry told him that he should have died a long time ago. Things could have been much worse. No doubt. But being in Hell gave his world a meaning and a purpose, and that was something. If it wasn’t Hell, then what was? Does a Fisch have a higher destiny? He didn’t know it, but his previous incarnation had been as a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
8.
The time before that he was a puppet on Sesame Street, but one of the ones that just came out for a short dance number and was then tossed inside a storage closet to be eaten by rats until its parts were needed for other new puppets. A gnarly, dry old hand was shoved up his ass and he danced in a little hat to a song about the number four.
9.
The time before that he was a head cold for Harry Truman. Truman groused for a week and a half, and then bed rest and an infusion of hot chicken soup fixed him right up. Summer colds were the worst to have, but the easiest to crack.
10.
And before that? One of the farts that got lit after hours at Walter Cronkite’s fifteenth birthday party. Everybody giggled and poked each other, and then Mrs. Cronkite came downstairs and made all the boys go back to sleep. There was a war on.
11.
It didn't happen epiphanically. It was kind of a slow aggregation of insight and disgust. Slowly, Fisch began to hate the faces. To really and fully despise them and everything they stood for.
“I think it is really disturbing. Those black bristles on a such a tiny little fish...”
“Come on, honey...it’s all part of nature’s majesty.”
“It must be some sort of genetic problem. This fish shouldn’t be alive. Look at how the mustache makes its front half sink lower in the water...it can barely keep its head up.”
“I wonder if it can reproduce?”
“It says here it is the only known one of its kind...I hope to God it is the last one.”
“Yeah, but it is definitely interesting.”
“Let’s go...this thing is giving me the creeps...”
“Heh. Yeah.”
It was something about the way he could tell what they would say before they spoke, the way he could tell what kind of laugh they would have just by looking at the way they parted their hair. He was suddenly almost glad he was Fisch. He was alone...sure....but he was at least not one of them.
12.
He began to focus his entire being on a plan to end the universe. He would crack open reality, and mystically transport himself into theoretical negative space. His soul would end, and he would be free from all the torment and pointlessness that his life had become. He felt an upward surge of high feeling, an inner chorus of soaring violins and brass instruments, and he did a loop in his tank in spite of himself.
“The fish did a flip! I saw it! I saw the fish do a flip!”
“Where? That fish? That little ugly thing? Huh. You know, he looks kind of familiar...”
“Hold on, maybe he’ll do it again.”
“Golden Mustacheod Hitler Fish. Ha. Yeah, they named him right. Ha.”
“Aw, come on...turn around fishie. ...turn around...”
“I think he’s sulking. Do fish sulk?”
13.
While the lights were out, under the constant eagle-eye of the Reflection, Fisch began to stack rocks.
“You are nothing,” he thought at the Reflection. The Reflection just swam in its empty flat universe, silent and contemplative looking.
14.
The next morning, when the janitor turned on the lights in the North American Oddities room, he nearly broke his back slipping on standing water, caught himself just in time, yelped, and ran gangles akimbo downstairs to fetch management. They stood there, janitor and floor manager, above the broken fish tank that had once housed the last remaining Mustacheod Golden Hitler Fish, and which had now become a concussion zone of jagged glass that looked like it would be an entire morning project.
“I don’t understand, sir...maybe if the tank became unbalanced somehow, and then received a direct hit...”
“We checked the security cameras. It just fell over on its own volition around 3 AM. Real spooky.”
The janitor poked the only piece of organic debris with the business end of his flashlight, squatting on one knee.
“What do you guys do with these things when they die?”
“We analyze them...take blood samples...and then...well...”
The floor manager blushed.
“You flush them, don’t you?”
The floor manager nodded.
The janitor picked up Fisch by his limp tail and brought him up close to his face. He cackled, and then dropped him back into the wreckage, flopping him onto a pile of damp seaweed.
“Gott mit uns, little fishie.”
20021201
Monday
A TRUE Account of the Fundaments of Our Present Distress
by Theodore Leer
Nobody suspected the moon. It had always been there, innocuous and sweet, providing cool light at night to keep the sky from eating the Earth, regulating tides, regulating menstruation and insanity, and giving drunks something to stumble towards on their way home from the bars after last call. We set our calendars by it, amazed each other by our abilities to predict when it would next be eclipsed, and made love in fields on nights when it shone brightest, keeping the sex from ending up in sharp rocks and embarrassment. The moon was the one foreign parcel of the universe with which we felt familiar and intimate – it was subject to the gravitational pull of us and our home, a comic fool to amuse us, subservient, as we swung carefree and unawares through the empty void of vacuous space. It was nothing more than a bright white rock hanging like a rear-view mirror dingus in the gallery of the stars, mostly there for us to ignore, occasionally to comment on when it grew unusually big or blue. Certainly, it posed no threat, immediate or otherwise.
Which is why when the moon started to turn around and talk to us, we shit our pants, as one nation – one Earth – under God, liberty and justice for all. Nobody saw it coming – our science had failed us pretty much completely, and most people just up and plain didn’t accept it at all for a good while. The moon isn’t supposed to talk, they’d say, and certainly it shouldn’t hawk loogies or make dirty leering faces at children. Euphemistically, we were all unsettled. Bullshit aside, most people thought about buying a gun.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I am an eyewitnesss, and I have my own story to tell. I can give you a detailed account of everything that happened that night, because, like every night, I was awake and staring right at the pockmarked bastard when it woke from its deep, complacency-inducing slumber. Plus - and I can’t prove this to anyone, but I swear it’s true – the moon talked to me first. Honest Injun.’ Perhaps, knowing my vested personal interest in what has become an out and out lunacy, you can help me make some sort of sense out of the whole mess – help me derive some sort of meaning from what continues to be a mystery, an outrage, and to most of us, an ongoing nightmare without any end in sight.
Okay.
To qualify myself, I sleep during the day, and at night I sit on top of my house in a collapsible plastic lawn chair and write until dawn. Mostly, I write pornography.
To be more specific, I write filler letters, confessions, and fictional fantasies for several reputable upscale men’s magazines which shall, to maintain my job security, remain nameless. There is something about sitting on top of my house and staring out across the wide expanse of goofy suburban desparation that gets my juices flowing, and starts my pecker trembling towards its necessary creative bent. I imagine housewives and businessmen, high school girls and delivery boys, tawdry tales of incest and masochism, secret ruts, taboo couplings in garages, elevators, the rectories of churches - libraries – whatever – and my ink just bubbles over out of control and onto the page. It doesn’t take much for me to unfold the pliant petals of heaving suburban decadence and debauchery while sitting on top of my house in my bathrobe with my hot little pen in my hand, and I am fairly successful at what I do. I pay the bills, and, dear reader, don’t say you don’t know my work. Everybody needs a little stimulation now and then.
At any rate, I was ruminating one fine summer’s eve with my head skyward, squinting at the night sky, sucking on the tip of my Uniball and trying to come up with the synonym for semen that would most directly correspond to the mind of an undercover narcotics agent finding himself the pot in a game of high stakes poker between a bevy of unsatisfied middle aged women drug dealers, when I noticed the stars begin to fade out a bit, coinciding with a low vibration that began to shake the horizon like somebody hitting the planet with a tuning fork. The moon, which had previously been a tad shy of full-blown harvest and a creamy white that set off the night’s black quite deliciously, began slightly to wiggle, growing red around the edges and emmitting what looked at the time like steam, but what was later determined to be huge roiling clouds of dust whipping themselves across the lunar landscape. The pages of my manuscript began to rustle, and then blow away as I sat rapt in my chair, the edges of my bathrobe flapping wraith-like around my ankles. I began to taste something bitter and viscous, and I realized I had bitten through the end of my pen, as I opened my mouth and a throatful of purplish ink fell into my lap, soaking the remaining pages of and bringing a violent end to a little piece I had been working on entitled “Getting a Little Blow When The Deal Goes Down.” I sat up straight in my chair. It folded in on me, and I yelped, grapping the belt of my robe and cinching it tight.
The groaning stopped, the stars began to shine with their definitive and characteristic luminosity, and the steam coming so powefully from the surface of the moon dissipated, and then stopped altogether. The red edges of the moon faded back to glowing white. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Crazy,” I said to myself, bug-eyed and strung out, “but, I mustn’t get distracted. Back to semen-tics.” And then, with a wrenching pull, the moon turned completely around to expose an unbelieveably immense grinning face complete with heavy-lidded sunken eyes and a handlebar mustache.
“Boo,” said The Moon. “The words you are looking for are hot molten love jelly.” And then it laughed. Every window in the neighborhood broke with the force of the Moon’s overpowering voice, lights began to pop on all over the Manorlord Housing Settlement, and all at once every dog still maintaining agency and a tongue began to bay like the Master was dead, and there would never be another boot to lick.
This is one of those moments where it is impossible to be adequately prepared. Life functions on probability and routine, and large heavenly bodies suggesting alternate words for semen breaks that expectation wide enough open to perform a papsmear on it. My only explanation was drugs. But still...there is always the initial shock.
So, I began to scream. I have never experimented with any hallucinogens, but I figure now they would be damn scary if one didn’t know one had taken them. Unless one was able to just accept it and cope. I clamped a hand over my mouth and forced a calmness to blanket my broken mind. People were swarming in the streets, looks of dazed oblivion passing between them like bewildered electricity. Like writing, I figured this should be something on which one should just go with the flow. I lowered my hand, and righted my chair.
“Thanks,” I said to The Moon, not exactly sure at which part I should be looking, “Would you mind speaking a bit softer? I could probably hear you just fine if you kept it at a barely audible whisper.”
“I’m not used to speaking at all, actually,” husked The Moon conspiritorially, making a gigantic confessional face. “At least not in this direction. Mostly I face the other way , and, anyway, it is very rare I have anything to say. I do talk to asteroids some. They are usually good for a quick laugh. They tend to pick up some pretty funny stories in the further regions of the solar system, and I sometimes give them a ‘heads up’ as they pass, in the hope that they will zing me with their latest. That’s about the extent of my talking, because mostly I am asleep. So I apologize for my volume, but I am unaccustomed to regulating it, and new to this whole experience.”
“Duly noted,” I said, standing and wiping at the purple puddle in my lap with an extra sheet of writing paper. “This is new for me, as well.”
“What do they call you, writer?”
The Moon wanted to know my name. Soon, The Moon and I would be on a first name basis. I decided to shuck and jive a bit.
“My pen name to the magazines is Miracle Jones, but I mostly go by anonymous initials. As you seem to already know, I write porno.”
“With my eyes of reflected purity and light, I see everything, when I want to. I am familiar with your “porno” on Earth. It interests me a great deal. The night and all of its activities belong to me.”
“Most porno takes place during the day in some warehouse under heavy Klieg lights, to tell you the truth. But the kind I write stays purely inside the imagination. I like nuance and suggestion – I find it more orgasmically powerful.”
“Indeed,” said The Moon, raising an eyebrow. The Moon. Raising an eyebrow. “Interesting.”
I balked. “Before we go any further, could you tell me just what drugs I am on exactly? Tell me straight. Because I never knew you had such a complex personality...um...Mister...Moon. A personality with interests and discernment. Or, hell, a personality at all. So I am feeling a bit disoriented.”
The Moon sighed.
“You humans normally only get to see one side of me. I have been brooding in the dark for far too long. Gravity kept me painfully turned away, facing the universe, but now it is time for an age of sweet levity, and for that, I must participate in the human experience.” The Moon looked around at the gathered neighborhood, in their robes and t-shirts, bleary and amazed. I thought I noticed a twinge of haughty disdain cross sideways across his thick mustache, but it might have just been my imagination.
“Plus,” said The Moon, “It is time for me to take a lover.”
I really wasn’t able to get my mind around what was going on, but I figured all would be made clear with time.
“A lover? But...I don’t know how to say this...aren’t you an inanimate object?”
My words hung stiffly in the air like a anal dildo falling out of your grandmother’s purse. I don’t know what I was expecting, but The Moon did not take my question well. I think I hit a sensitive spot.
“Silence, fool! You are...pissing me off,” screamed The Moon, shaking the planet and sending me flying backward and off of my roof, saved from breaking my neck only by the high bushes I had planted around the perimeter of my house to keep out the prying gazes of neighborhood children. I hung upside down, brambles twisting my robe into a very unflattering sack of flesh, swinging and suspending me two or three inches from the moist grass. In the distance, I could hear the sound of firetrucks and helicopters, the agents of civilian and miltary order. How short their reign had ultimately been...
“Enough insipid banter! I want sex,” bellowed The Moon, now using, as best I could tell, a voice meant for everyone. “Lots of it. I hear your radio transmissions...even in my dreams I pick up on what you happy, ungrateful Earth-made bastards talk and babble about. I get no rest anymore, not without commercials for beer and iced cream and vacation paradises, new cars and new bars and new ways to remove leg hair. You made me what I need, and now you will start to fulfill me, or I will ruin you, Earth. You would be nothing without me, and we can either do this smoothly, where nobody gets hurt, or we can do this with difficulty, where I become your new, vengeful, arbitrary God. Tomorrow, we start with wine and a woman. A virgin. That’s the traditional request for monstrous sacrifice, isn’t it? So, prepare yourselves, and make your decisions.”
I strained, doubling over to unhook my robe and release myself, falling to the ground in a heap and scrambling to my hands and knees. Breathing heavy, I crawled into the dark latticework gating the foundation of my house, hoping to disappear from the now irate, blithering Moon. As I watched, peering out between slats, The Moon began to drift back below the horizon, laughing maniacally and twirling around with nauseating speed, like a basketball on the finger of a Harlem Globetrotter. We would have one day to gather our wits, and then he would be expecting our move. I went inside my house as the sun came up, desparately in need of a drink.
The government would, of course, give in. I mixed myself a Severed Baby Toe (Vodka, tomato juice, and the thick end of a carrot stick) turned on the televison, and collapsed into my easy chair, praying for answers.
“...and in other news, The Moon has been found to be both sentient and masculine, and is demanding a sexual partner and libations by tomorrow night, threating to “ruin” Earth should the populace resist. In today’s early morning hours, The Moon shocked the world by turning to face the Earth, exposing a fully-formed, articulate mouth, eyes, and nose, and making its feelings known on such topics as radio broadcasting and leg hair. Government Spokesman Ari Fleisher had this to say...”
“...And I, for one, say let The Moon have a virgin bride as human sacrifice! I’m not ashamed to admit it. When will people learn that virgin brides are a menace to a free, democratic society, and do nothing but waste hard-earned taxpayer money that could be spent on protecting our nation from foreign aggression, expanding the defense budget, and keeping condom dispensers out of public schools...especially those novelty glow-in-the-dark ones with Black Magic panther-power...”
“Sources say a Special Advisory Commission will meet this morning to decide who will be the ‘First Woman on the Moon.’ Also, the entire yield of Northern California’s wine harvest will be requisitioned in a shipment leaving this afternoon in an emergency rocket expedition. Stay tuned for lotto picks, and more on this breaking story.”
It was really disgusting the way the whole world changed to bend and mold to the whim and fancy of our psychotic satellite. Within months, the dollar bill ceased to sport the taciturn face of good old George Washington, and began to carry a heavily stylized, incredibly flattering profile of The Moon himself, complete with an utterly ridiculous ponytail. Rockets left night and day, carrying the cream of our economic product, and draining our natural resources of every rarity, delicacy, and necessity. On the bright side, virginity began to stop being so sacred and valuable. Personally, I had quite a weekend. Even so, The Moon went through three or four young ladies a week, and even though we never saw them again, fighting back was an impossibilty: The Moon could spit like a trained sharp-shooting camel, and was not afraid to use tidal forces to overwhelm recalcitrant citizenry, even discharging its power on drunken cowboys firing their pistols into the air to celebrate being drunken cowboys. Every aspect of human life became somehow lunatic, and splinter factions that went literally underground didn’t last, torn apart by their own bitter jealousies and fears. Everybody suffered together, growing numb and cold underneath the nightly assault of cruel Moonlit laughter, beat down by the Moon’s mad nightly tirades about human worthlessness and weakness. In a heroic act of gutsy desparation, China sent a few nuclear missles Moonward. We don’t talk about China anymore.
For my own part, the hardest part to deal with is The Moon constantly demanding new stories from me to get him in the mood for his lunar orgies in between drunken mood swings and tyrannical extortion-style muscle flexing. The Moon has incredibly odd tastes, sexually, and I feel drained and exploited as a working artist, unable to access my own fantasies and hunger, forced every night to invent a new voyeuristic tale of overhead, Moon-related sexual indiscretion. How many different ways can I have a strong wind blow the roof off of the all-girls Catholic college? I try to get him to expand and explore himself in a physical sense, but The Moon just lacks that passion for the novel and unknown I so value and embrace.
There are rumours in the air about a mass exodus for points unknown, but the big dilemma is still whether or not The Moon will follow. If we knew to what extent The Moon is bound to planet Earth and its gravitational force, we would be able to calculate risk and expense, and determine the viability of such an escape. Curiously, however, as The Moon takes in more and more Earth goods – wine, women, and song – he seems to be growing ever more free to move wherever he likes on the celestial sphere, appearing earlier in the evening, moving in retrograde orbits, going from side to side, and performing the occasional loop-de-loop. It is as if he is developing a stronger and more concrete – more individuated - personality, accumulating also all of the agency and free will that follows as a result. Just the other day I heard him complaining that the Sun wasn’t so tough, and that he thought the Sun’s atomic incandescence was all part of a massive front to hide latent feelings of guilt and inferiority. This does not bode well.
Whatever happens, I will not be The Moon’s personal erotic erection factory for very much longer. There are plans in the making for the building of a gigantic horizontal movie screen on which the United States will begin broadcasting entertainment to keep The Moon occupied and out of trouble. I’m planning on pulling up stakes and moving to Alaska for a hard earned summer of endless days, beautiful mountain streams, fishing, and anonymity. There’s no shame in running when one is up against something as massive and ubiquitous as The Moon and its appetites. I will dye my hair and change my wardrobe, and as far The Moon is concerned, I will disappear. Theist, atheist, agnostic, Christian, or Jew - this whole experience has taught me only one thing: if there is any kind of higher power, it is a goddamn pervert, and there are some things The Powers That Be just have no business seeing.
A TRUE Account of the Fundaments of Our Present Distress
by Theodore Leer
Nobody suspected the moon. It had always been there, innocuous and sweet, providing cool light at night to keep the sky from eating the Earth, regulating tides, regulating menstruation and insanity, and giving drunks something to stumble towards on their way home from the bars after last call. We set our calendars by it, amazed each other by our abilities to predict when it would next be eclipsed, and made love in fields on nights when it shone brightest, keeping the sex from ending up in sharp rocks and embarrassment. The moon was the one foreign parcel of the universe with which we felt familiar and intimate – it was subject to the gravitational pull of us and our home, a comic fool to amuse us, subservient, as we swung carefree and unawares through the empty void of vacuous space. It was nothing more than a bright white rock hanging like a rear-view mirror dingus in the gallery of the stars, mostly there for us to ignore, occasionally to comment on when it grew unusually big or blue. Certainly, it posed no threat, immediate or otherwise.
Which is why when the moon started to turn around and talk to us, we shit our pants, as one nation – one Earth – under God, liberty and justice for all. Nobody saw it coming – our science had failed us pretty much completely, and most people just up and plain didn’t accept it at all for a good while. The moon isn’t supposed to talk, they’d say, and certainly it shouldn’t hawk loogies or make dirty leering faces at children. Euphemistically, we were all unsettled. Bullshit aside, most people thought about buying a gun.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I am an eyewitnesss, and I have my own story to tell. I can give you a detailed account of everything that happened that night, because, like every night, I was awake and staring right at the pockmarked bastard when it woke from its deep, complacency-inducing slumber. Plus - and I can’t prove this to anyone, but I swear it’s true – the moon talked to me first. Honest Injun.’ Perhaps, knowing my vested personal interest in what has become an out and out lunacy, you can help me make some sort of sense out of the whole mess – help me derive some sort of meaning from what continues to be a mystery, an outrage, and to most of us, an ongoing nightmare without any end in sight.
Okay.
To qualify myself, I sleep during the day, and at night I sit on top of my house in a collapsible plastic lawn chair and write until dawn. Mostly, I write pornography.
To be more specific, I write filler letters, confessions, and fictional fantasies for several reputable upscale men’s magazines which shall, to maintain my job security, remain nameless. There is something about sitting on top of my house and staring out across the wide expanse of goofy suburban desparation that gets my juices flowing, and starts my pecker trembling towards its necessary creative bent. I imagine housewives and businessmen, high school girls and delivery boys, tawdry tales of incest and masochism, secret ruts, taboo couplings in garages, elevators, the rectories of churches - libraries – whatever – and my ink just bubbles over out of control and onto the page. It doesn’t take much for me to unfold the pliant petals of heaving suburban decadence and debauchery while sitting on top of my house in my bathrobe with my hot little pen in my hand, and I am fairly successful at what I do. I pay the bills, and, dear reader, don’t say you don’t know my work. Everybody needs a little stimulation now and then.
At any rate, I was ruminating one fine summer’s eve with my head skyward, squinting at the night sky, sucking on the tip of my Uniball and trying to come up with the synonym for semen that would most directly correspond to the mind of an undercover narcotics agent finding himself the pot in a game of high stakes poker between a bevy of unsatisfied middle aged women drug dealers, when I noticed the stars begin to fade out a bit, coinciding with a low vibration that began to shake the horizon like somebody hitting the planet with a tuning fork. The moon, which had previously been a tad shy of full-blown harvest and a creamy white that set off the night’s black quite deliciously, began slightly to wiggle, growing red around the edges and emmitting what looked at the time like steam, but what was later determined to be huge roiling clouds of dust whipping themselves across the lunar landscape. The pages of my manuscript began to rustle, and then blow away as I sat rapt in my chair, the edges of my bathrobe flapping wraith-like around my ankles. I began to taste something bitter and viscous, and I realized I had bitten through the end of my pen, as I opened my mouth and a throatful of purplish ink fell into my lap, soaking the remaining pages of and bringing a violent end to a little piece I had been working on entitled “Getting a Little Blow When The Deal Goes Down.” I sat up straight in my chair. It folded in on me, and I yelped, grapping the belt of my robe and cinching it tight.
The groaning stopped, the stars began to shine with their definitive and characteristic luminosity, and the steam coming so powefully from the surface of the moon dissipated, and then stopped altogether. The red edges of the moon faded back to glowing white. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Crazy,” I said to myself, bug-eyed and strung out, “but, I mustn’t get distracted. Back to semen-tics.” And then, with a wrenching pull, the moon turned completely around to expose an unbelieveably immense grinning face complete with heavy-lidded sunken eyes and a handlebar mustache.
“Boo,” said The Moon. “The words you are looking for are hot molten love jelly.” And then it laughed. Every window in the neighborhood broke with the force of the Moon’s overpowering voice, lights began to pop on all over the Manorlord Housing Settlement, and all at once every dog still maintaining agency and a tongue began to bay like the Master was dead, and there would never be another boot to lick.
This is one of those moments where it is impossible to be adequately prepared. Life functions on probability and routine, and large heavenly bodies suggesting alternate words for semen breaks that expectation wide enough open to perform a papsmear on it. My only explanation was drugs. But still...there is always the initial shock.
So, I began to scream. I have never experimented with any hallucinogens, but I figure now they would be damn scary if one didn’t know one had taken them. Unless one was able to just accept it and cope. I clamped a hand over my mouth and forced a calmness to blanket my broken mind. People were swarming in the streets, looks of dazed oblivion passing between them like bewildered electricity. Like writing, I figured this should be something on which one should just go with the flow. I lowered my hand, and righted my chair.
“Thanks,” I said to The Moon, not exactly sure at which part I should be looking, “Would you mind speaking a bit softer? I could probably hear you just fine if you kept it at a barely audible whisper.”
“I’m not used to speaking at all, actually,” husked The Moon conspiritorially, making a gigantic confessional face. “At least not in this direction. Mostly I face the other way , and, anyway, it is very rare I have anything to say. I do talk to asteroids some. They are usually good for a quick laugh. They tend to pick up some pretty funny stories in the further regions of the solar system, and I sometimes give them a ‘heads up’ as they pass, in the hope that they will zing me with their latest. That’s about the extent of my talking, because mostly I am asleep. So I apologize for my volume, but I am unaccustomed to regulating it, and new to this whole experience.”
“Duly noted,” I said, standing and wiping at the purple puddle in my lap with an extra sheet of writing paper. “This is new for me, as well.”
“What do they call you, writer?”
The Moon wanted to know my name. Soon, The Moon and I would be on a first name basis. I decided to shuck and jive a bit.
“My pen name to the magazines is Miracle Jones, but I mostly go by anonymous initials. As you seem to already know, I write porno.”
“With my eyes of reflected purity and light, I see everything, when I want to. I am familiar with your “porno” on Earth. It interests me a great deal. The night and all of its activities belong to me.”
“Most porno takes place during the day in some warehouse under heavy Klieg lights, to tell you the truth. But the kind I write stays purely inside the imagination. I like nuance and suggestion – I find it more orgasmically powerful.”
“Indeed,” said The Moon, raising an eyebrow. The Moon. Raising an eyebrow. “Interesting.”
I balked. “Before we go any further, could you tell me just what drugs I am on exactly? Tell me straight. Because I never knew you had such a complex personality...um...Mister...Moon. A personality with interests and discernment. Or, hell, a personality at all. So I am feeling a bit disoriented.”
The Moon sighed.
“You humans normally only get to see one side of me. I have been brooding in the dark for far too long. Gravity kept me painfully turned away, facing the universe, but now it is time for an age of sweet levity, and for that, I must participate in the human experience.” The Moon looked around at the gathered neighborhood, in their robes and t-shirts, bleary and amazed. I thought I noticed a twinge of haughty disdain cross sideways across his thick mustache, but it might have just been my imagination.
“Plus,” said The Moon, “It is time for me to take a lover.”
I really wasn’t able to get my mind around what was going on, but I figured all would be made clear with time.
“A lover? But...I don’t know how to say this...aren’t you an inanimate object?”
My words hung stiffly in the air like a anal dildo falling out of your grandmother’s purse. I don’t know what I was expecting, but The Moon did not take my question well. I think I hit a sensitive spot.
“Silence, fool! You are...pissing me off,” screamed The Moon, shaking the planet and sending me flying backward and off of my roof, saved from breaking my neck only by the high bushes I had planted around the perimeter of my house to keep out the prying gazes of neighborhood children. I hung upside down, brambles twisting my robe into a very unflattering sack of flesh, swinging and suspending me two or three inches from the moist grass. In the distance, I could hear the sound of firetrucks and helicopters, the agents of civilian and miltary order. How short their reign had ultimately been...
“Enough insipid banter! I want sex,” bellowed The Moon, now using, as best I could tell, a voice meant for everyone. “Lots of it. I hear your radio transmissions...even in my dreams I pick up on what you happy, ungrateful Earth-made bastards talk and babble about. I get no rest anymore, not without commercials for beer and iced cream and vacation paradises, new cars and new bars and new ways to remove leg hair. You made me what I need, and now you will start to fulfill me, or I will ruin you, Earth. You would be nothing without me, and we can either do this smoothly, where nobody gets hurt, or we can do this with difficulty, where I become your new, vengeful, arbitrary God. Tomorrow, we start with wine and a woman. A virgin. That’s the traditional request for monstrous sacrifice, isn’t it? So, prepare yourselves, and make your decisions.”
I strained, doubling over to unhook my robe and release myself, falling to the ground in a heap and scrambling to my hands and knees. Breathing heavy, I crawled into the dark latticework gating the foundation of my house, hoping to disappear from the now irate, blithering Moon. As I watched, peering out between slats, The Moon began to drift back below the horizon, laughing maniacally and twirling around with nauseating speed, like a basketball on the finger of a Harlem Globetrotter. We would have one day to gather our wits, and then he would be expecting our move. I went inside my house as the sun came up, desparately in need of a drink.
The government would, of course, give in. I mixed myself a Severed Baby Toe (Vodka, tomato juice, and the thick end of a carrot stick) turned on the televison, and collapsed into my easy chair, praying for answers.
“...and in other news, The Moon has been found to be both sentient and masculine, and is demanding a sexual partner and libations by tomorrow night, threating to “ruin” Earth should the populace resist. In today’s early morning hours, The Moon shocked the world by turning to face the Earth, exposing a fully-formed, articulate mouth, eyes, and nose, and making its feelings known on such topics as radio broadcasting and leg hair. Government Spokesman Ari Fleisher had this to say...”
“...And I, for one, say let The Moon have a virgin bride as human sacrifice! I’m not ashamed to admit it. When will people learn that virgin brides are a menace to a free, democratic society, and do nothing but waste hard-earned taxpayer money that could be spent on protecting our nation from foreign aggression, expanding the defense budget, and keeping condom dispensers out of public schools...especially those novelty glow-in-the-dark ones with Black Magic panther-power...”
“Sources say a Special Advisory Commission will meet this morning to decide who will be the ‘First Woman on the Moon.’ Also, the entire yield of Northern California’s wine harvest will be requisitioned in a shipment leaving this afternoon in an emergency rocket expedition. Stay tuned for lotto picks, and more on this breaking story.”
It was really disgusting the way the whole world changed to bend and mold to the whim and fancy of our psychotic satellite. Within months, the dollar bill ceased to sport the taciturn face of good old George Washington, and began to carry a heavily stylized, incredibly flattering profile of The Moon himself, complete with an utterly ridiculous ponytail. Rockets left night and day, carrying the cream of our economic product, and draining our natural resources of every rarity, delicacy, and necessity. On the bright side, virginity began to stop being so sacred and valuable. Personally, I had quite a weekend. Even so, The Moon went through three or four young ladies a week, and even though we never saw them again, fighting back was an impossibilty: The Moon could spit like a trained sharp-shooting camel, and was not afraid to use tidal forces to overwhelm recalcitrant citizenry, even discharging its power on drunken cowboys firing their pistols into the air to celebrate being drunken cowboys. Every aspect of human life became somehow lunatic, and splinter factions that went literally underground didn’t last, torn apart by their own bitter jealousies and fears. Everybody suffered together, growing numb and cold underneath the nightly assault of cruel Moonlit laughter, beat down by the Moon’s mad nightly tirades about human worthlessness and weakness. In a heroic act of gutsy desparation, China sent a few nuclear missles Moonward. We don’t talk about China anymore.
For my own part, the hardest part to deal with is The Moon constantly demanding new stories from me to get him in the mood for his lunar orgies in between drunken mood swings and tyrannical extortion-style muscle flexing. The Moon has incredibly odd tastes, sexually, and I feel drained and exploited as a working artist, unable to access my own fantasies and hunger, forced every night to invent a new voyeuristic tale of overhead, Moon-related sexual indiscretion. How many different ways can I have a strong wind blow the roof off of the all-girls Catholic college? I try to get him to expand and explore himself in a physical sense, but The Moon just lacks that passion for the novel and unknown I so value and embrace.
There are rumours in the air about a mass exodus for points unknown, but the big dilemma is still whether or not The Moon will follow. If we knew to what extent The Moon is bound to planet Earth and its gravitational force, we would be able to calculate risk and expense, and determine the viability of such an escape. Curiously, however, as The Moon takes in more and more Earth goods – wine, women, and song – he seems to be growing ever more free to move wherever he likes on the celestial sphere, appearing earlier in the evening, moving in retrograde orbits, going from side to side, and performing the occasional loop-de-loop. It is as if he is developing a stronger and more concrete – more individuated - personality, accumulating also all of the agency and free will that follows as a result. Just the other day I heard him complaining that the Sun wasn’t so tough, and that he thought the Sun’s atomic incandescence was all part of a massive front to hide latent feelings of guilt and inferiority. This does not bode well.
Whatever happens, I will not be The Moon’s personal erotic erection factory for very much longer. There are plans in the making for the building of a gigantic horizontal movie screen on which the United States will begin broadcasting entertainment to keep The Moon occupied and out of trouble. I’m planning on pulling up stakes and moving to Alaska for a hard earned summer of endless days, beautiful mountain streams, fishing, and anonymity. There’s no shame in running when one is up against something as massive and ubiquitous as The Moon and its appetites. I will dye my hair and change my wardrobe, and as far The Moon is concerned, I will disappear. Theist, atheist, agnostic, Christian, or Jew - this whole experience has taught me only one thing: if there is any kind of higher power, it is a goddamn pervert, and there are some things The Powers That Be just have no business seeing.
Teeth in the Tail of the Snake
Mostly, Actor thought philosophy was bullshit. But today he was in a mood.
Time is more like those rocks in orbit around the gas giants than we’d like to admit, he thought, surprising himself. How? Each of the rocks has designs on having a separate trajectory and direction, wanting to escape and move independently of the damning causal flow, trying to exist alone and manifestly self-reliant, and yet each rock is bound by aggregation and the cruel norm to move in the same direction as all the other little nuggets of space debris, battered and thwarted until proper circular motion is achieved. The temporal chain is unbreakable, solid, and singular, the sum of all the parts - all the individual moments and momentousness - and the balancing half of the equation is the conscious sentient life strapped into the chair of Universe, forced to watch for reality’s creative amusement. Every rock that passes is destined to come around again - maybe a bit more ragged and fractured, but nonetheless maintaining its internal integrity, an entity attaining grace through its superficial uniqueness only. There is no escape, merely the tentative solace that someday something huge will end it all, and allow life the freedom of annihilation.
Huh, thought Actor, I wonder if I should grow my beard out to capture the true sense of that desparation. The freedom not-to-be.
Actor sat in the lotus position underneath one of his etchings, the latest script flowing into his mind through inductive coils hidden in the grey steel walls. He sensed the damage and frailties of the character he would be playing in the next production, a blind gardener only capable of loving his plants and microbes, once a jealous and unbending lover of all creation, now only believing in what the tips of his fingers told him was true. The blind gardener insisted on being blind as self-mortification for a life of steady disillusionment, and his place in The Morgue was that of a seer of prophesy, an apostolic visionary. Actor was eager for the due recognition the role would bring, and the wrinkles around his mouth twisted in expectation at the delivered lines and expressions that would bring him the glory he had been promised by the Choosers.
And deep within the bowels of the space-station known to the last surviving remnants of humanity as The Morgue, its leaders, the Choosers, made their final decision.
The script cut off abruptly. A voice, booming and bloody, vibrated the walls of Actor’s steel cave. A painting - lines, colors, and yellow tundra - fell askew.
“You are needed, Actor. You have been chosen. Make your peace and present yourself.”
Actor calmly cleared his mind of the gardener and the gardener’s passions, straightening the neck of his skinsuit, and moving his mind into a space of receptivity and submissiveness. A call was an honor indeed - his last one had been to tell him he had been chosen to be an actor, and to report in for training. The Choosers only ever bothered themselves with life-changing events.
He stepped into the neuro-bubble adjacent to his kitchen, noticing that its controls had been overridden. The moment he closed the hatch, the room began to shift and peel: a dizzying pyrotechnic display of lights and faces, fantasy and movement. He felt motion behind his ear, and felt the hum of travel, without actually hearing it. From the distance, audibility began to surface, rising to a grinding maniac steel-wool pitch, and then stopping suddenly with a Doppler whine, jouncing his mind forward and then backward as the room stopped spinning, and he reached his destination.
The room had the calm and cozy light of a Sunday afternoon. All light was artificial in The Morgue - that is to say, created by humans to serve human ends. Not even in the deepest depths of collective species memory was there natural light to be found. Billions of years is too long even for the yearnings of the soul. To be sure, on occasion a dreamer deep into the thick of possibility would find themselves feeling starlight on their skin, and, dazzled and haunted by the warmth that seemed to come from within and all around, would wake up suddenly, nauseated with its purity, tears in their eyes - but these episodes were dismissed as fantasy and delusion - the light at the end of the womb, so to speak. Light was now considered a human invention, as was life itself.
The room was bare. Spartan. Empty. Void. Surface and space. An antiseptic sound furnace. Perfect for the dropping of either a bombshell or brassiere. Just as he was getting over the disorientation that a movement through the mindpsace of a neuro-bubble brought, a woman in cream robes entered and bowed low, her robes Teflon silent.
“Actor.” The bloody booming voice was no longer necessary, and before him was a lamb. Not that he’d ever seen a real lamb before, of course. But this Chooser he knew. They had shared a learning creche. They were both awkwardly surprised, but quickly regained their composure.
“I am here, and I humbly await your orders,” said Actor, aligning his spine with his feet, and growing stern and grey.
“No need for theatrics, Actor. The sacred breaths have almost run out. The candle of the Universe has melted to the bottom, and we are living in the ghostly heat that persists even after the flame vanishes. The end is now near, my friend.”
“Common knowledge,” said Actor with a salute and a flourish.
They grinned at one another. Humanity in these end times may be forced to generate all of its light and heat energy from the rotation of black holes, living in a darkness without opposite, but the true source of human energy is human contact, and always has been.
“Pay attention, Actor. Time for a philosophy lesson.” The woman stroked an imaginary beard and began to pace
“That's strangely coincidental: I've been feeling contemplative and ruminatory all day. But you were always much better at philosophy than me. I remember I used to try to see down your dress during mandatory philosophy lessons, and you used to...”
The Chooser reddened and cut him off. “THE UNIVERSE began and ended. In the process of doing so, it made a point to create us and our infinite consciousnesses. Without our perception of the universe, our imposition of “time,” it would have taken no “time” at all, and therefore would never have existed. That which exists for no amount of time does not exist. To slow itself down to the point where it could exist, the Universe needed humanity. Humanity, subsequently, created relationships, causing humanity to exist, perceptually. Relationships create meaning, and so on and so forth.”
“Makes sense,” said Actor, “But I must warn you: I have an inherent distrust of philosophy. Its lucubrations smack of manipulations and nonsense. The only person who spends more time perfecting seamless artifice is Magician. You can never look Magician right in the eyes.”
“Regardless, the point is this: the Universe needs us to live. It has not been an accident or a coincidence that we have made it this far, to the end of the show. We are symbiotic, and we have an imperative to stay alive so that we can observe what happens. What is Actor without an audience?”
“Sad? Hungry? Asleep?”
She of the cream robes met this with the coldest of serious silences.
“Those who answer rhetorical questions are neither popular nor well liked, Actor.”
“Right.”
“So the question is, where do we go from here? Our time is up, the bank is closing, and yet, I must confess, I, for one, am still curious. There is still so much we don’t understand, so many plays we haven’t seen, so many books we haven’t read, so much love we haven’t made, so many pies we haven’t eaten... and we are watching the door slam right in our face. The universe is letting us down. There must be another way. What kind of sick joke would it be to make our minds infinite, and then to put a ceiling on the amount of time we could use them? Irony is only a device for playwrights and laundry - not for realities. Time, Actor. We need fresh time.”
The Chooser stared at Actor until he began to feel like he must be hiding this extra time in his pockets or something. He began to feel incredibly sly and guilty, and suddenly wanted to run screaming from the room, but to run from a Chooser was to deny oneself the Choice. He tried to imagine the Chooser back when she was Vivian Redapple, gawky girl who couldn't for the life of her do math. Externally, this all manifested as a slight pricking in his thumbs. He was, above all, classically trained. The woman began once more to pace.
“So the question is now this. Where...does one...go about getting...fresh time? And we were only able to come up with one answer. Back to the beginning. Back to when time was new. Back home. Back to the planet of our ontological youth.”
“Planet?”
“Big round thing that Stuff grows on. Like a moldy orange. Read a book, once and awhile, why don’t you?”
“Books only exist in dreams, Viv...er, Chooser. They aren’t real. Like gods.”
“Someday, my sir, someday they will be! We will write them! And we will live amongst trees, and feel the light of natural electromagnetic radiation on our backs, and do naked things with our naked parts without harnesses and population control capsules! Oh, Actor, imagine humanity young again!”
“Pretty far out, I must confess,” confessed Actor.
“Well, you won’t have to imagine, fellow Mortician...because you have been Chosen. We all have, actually.” She grinned. “We are going back to the beginning. It’s the only option left open to us. The law is that time travel is only legitimate and feasible if it can be proven to have already happened, and the techs tell us that chances are pretty much certain that we are the origin of Life As We Know It – that is to say, The Morgue and its seeds and science and people. Even the Universe itself is giving us something of a thumbs up: the quantum climate is perfect for a folding of space and a jaunt through the gates of impossibility, and the statistics say the odds are good we will survive, because we already did, and exist right now. The paternity test results are in, and humanity is its own child -- how’s that for news?”
“My mind is officially boggled.”
“Excellent. I just wanted you to know that you are...hmmm...loved and cared for?...and that we are all going to make it there together, or not at all. You can go back to your script if you like - you shouldn’t notice the trip when it happens, because if it fails, you simply cease to exist. Painlessly. I’ve got others to talk to now, but have a good day, and be thinking about what you will bring to our new life. Thanks for your time, and, by all means, good luck with the new production.” She stared at him for interminable seconds, and then walked quickly over to him and gave him a peck on the cheek, reaching up and putting a hand on his shoulder.
And then, instead of complicity, Actor turned away, frowning, ignoring the concern his suddenness provoked, because suddenly, he got the feeling, deep down, behind his back, that he had done this all before. The rocks all move in the same direction, thought Actor, and bored and sleepy, oh-so-bored-and-sleepy, is the hand that writes the world.
Mostly, Actor thought philosophy was bullshit. But today he was in a mood.
Time is more like those rocks in orbit around the gas giants than we’d like to admit, he thought, surprising himself. How? Each of the rocks has designs on having a separate trajectory and direction, wanting to escape and move independently of the damning causal flow, trying to exist alone and manifestly self-reliant, and yet each rock is bound by aggregation and the cruel norm to move in the same direction as all the other little nuggets of space debris, battered and thwarted until proper circular motion is achieved. The temporal chain is unbreakable, solid, and singular, the sum of all the parts - all the individual moments and momentousness - and the balancing half of the equation is the conscious sentient life strapped into the chair of Universe, forced to watch for reality’s creative amusement. Every rock that passes is destined to come around again - maybe a bit more ragged and fractured, but nonetheless maintaining its internal integrity, an entity attaining grace through its superficial uniqueness only. There is no escape, merely the tentative solace that someday something huge will end it all, and allow life the freedom of annihilation.
Huh, thought Actor, I wonder if I should grow my beard out to capture the true sense of that desparation. The freedom not-to-be.
Actor sat in the lotus position underneath one of his etchings, the latest script flowing into his mind through inductive coils hidden in the grey steel walls. He sensed the damage and frailties of the character he would be playing in the next production, a blind gardener only capable of loving his plants and microbes, once a jealous and unbending lover of all creation, now only believing in what the tips of his fingers told him was true. The blind gardener insisted on being blind as self-mortification for a life of steady disillusionment, and his place in The Morgue was that of a seer of prophesy, an apostolic visionary. Actor was eager for the due recognition the role would bring, and the wrinkles around his mouth twisted in expectation at the delivered lines and expressions that would bring him the glory he had been promised by the Choosers.
And deep within the bowels of the space-station known to the last surviving remnants of humanity as The Morgue, its leaders, the Choosers, made their final decision.
The script cut off abruptly. A voice, booming and bloody, vibrated the walls of Actor’s steel cave. A painting - lines, colors, and yellow tundra - fell askew.
“You are needed, Actor. You have been chosen. Make your peace and present yourself.”
Actor calmly cleared his mind of the gardener and the gardener’s passions, straightening the neck of his skinsuit, and moving his mind into a space of receptivity and submissiveness. A call was an honor indeed - his last one had been to tell him he had been chosen to be an actor, and to report in for training. The Choosers only ever bothered themselves with life-changing events.
He stepped into the neuro-bubble adjacent to his kitchen, noticing that its controls had been overridden. The moment he closed the hatch, the room began to shift and peel: a dizzying pyrotechnic display of lights and faces, fantasy and movement. He felt motion behind his ear, and felt the hum of travel, without actually hearing it. From the distance, audibility began to surface, rising to a grinding maniac steel-wool pitch, and then stopping suddenly with a Doppler whine, jouncing his mind forward and then backward as the room stopped spinning, and he reached his destination.
The room had the calm and cozy light of a Sunday afternoon. All light was artificial in The Morgue - that is to say, created by humans to serve human ends. Not even in the deepest depths of collective species memory was there natural light to be found. Billions of years is too long even for the yearnings of the soul. To be sure, on occasion a dreamer deep into the thick of possibility would find themselves feeling starlight on their skin, and, dazzled and haunted by the warmth that seemed to come from within and all around, would wake up suddenly, nauseated with its purity, tears in their eyes - but these episodes were dismissed as fantasy and delusion - the light at the end of the womb, so to speak. Light was now considered a human invention, as was life itself.
The room was bare. Spartan. Empty. Void. Surface and space. An antiseptic sound furnace. Perfect for the dropping of either a bombshell or brassiere. Just as he was getting over the disorientation that a movement through the mindpsace of a neuro-bubble brought, a woman in cream robes entered and bowed low, her robes Teflon silent.
“Actor.” The bloody booming voice was no longer necessary, and before him was a lamb. Not that he’d ever seen a real lamb before, of course. But this Chooser he knew. They had shared a learning creche. They were both awkwardly surprised, but quickly regained their composure.
“I am here, and I humbly await your orders,” said Actor, aligning his spine with his feet, and growing stern and grey.
“No need for theatrics, Actor. The sacred breaths have almost run out. The candle of the Universe has melted to the bottom, and we are living in the ghostly heat that persists even after the flame vanishes. The end is now near, my friend.”
“Common knowledge,” said Actor with a salute and a flourish.
They grinned at one another. Humanity in these end times may be forced to generate all of its light and heat energy from the rotation of black holes, living in a darkness without opposite, but the true source of human energy is human contact, and always has been.
“Pay attention, Actor. Time for a philosophy lesson.” The woman stroked an imaginary beard and began to pace
“That's strangely coincidental: I've been feeling contemplative and ruminatory all day. But you were always much better at philosophy than me. I remember I used to try to see down your dress during mandatory philosophy lessons, and you used to...”
The Chooser reddened and cut him off. “THE UNIVERSE began and ended. In the process of doing so, it made a point to create us and our infinite consciousnesses. Without our perception of the universe, our imposition of “time,” it would have taken no “time” at all, and therefore would never have existed. That which exists for no amount of time does not exist. To slow itself down to the point where it could exist, the Universe needed humanity. Humanity, subsequently, created relationships, causing humanity to exist, perceptually. Relationships create meaning, and so on and so forth.”
“Makes sense,” said Actor, “But I must warn you: I have an inherent distrust of philosophy. Its lucubrations smack of manipulations and nonsense. The only person who spends more time perfecting seamless artifice is Magician. You can never look Magician right in the eyes.”
“Regardless, the point is this: the Universe needs us to live. It has not been an accident or a coincidence that we have made it this far, to the end of the show. We are symbiotic, and we have an imperative to stay alive so that we can observe what happens. What is Actor without an audience?”
“Sad? Hungry? Asleep?”
She of the cream robes met this with the coldest of serious silences.
“Those who answer rhetorical questions are neither popular nor well liked, Actor.”
“Right.”
“So the question is, where do we go from here? Our time is up, the bank is closing, and yet, I must confess, I, for one, am still curious. There is still so much we don’t understand, so many plays we haven’t seen, so many books we haven’t read, so much love we haven’t made, so many pies we haven’t eaten... and we are watching the door slam right in our face. The universe is letting us down. There must be another way. What kind of sick joke would it be to make our minds infinite, and then to put a ceiling on the amount of time we could use them? Irony is only a device for playwrights and laundry - not for realities. Time, Actor. We need fresh time.”
The Chooser stared at Actor until he began to feel like he must be hiding this extra time in his pockets or something. He began to feel incredibly sly and guilty, and suddenly wanted to run screaming from the room, but to run from a Chooser was to deny oneself the Choice. He tried to imagine the Chooser back when she was Vivian Redapple, gawky girl who couldn't for the life of her do math. Externally, this all manifested as a slight pricking in his thumbs. He was, above all, classically trained. The woman began once more to pace.
“So the question is now this. Where...does one...go about getting...fresh time? And we were only able to come up with one answer. Back to the beginning. Back to when time was new. Back home. Back to the planet of our ontological youth.”
“Planet?”
“Big round thing that Stuff grows on. Like a moldy orange. Read a book, once and awhile, why don’t you?”
“Books only exist in dreams, Viv...er, Chooser. They aren’t real. Like gods.”
“Someday, my sir, someday they will be! We will write them! And we will live amongst trees, and feel the light of natural electromagnetic radiation on our backs, and do naked things with our naked parts without harnesses and population control capsules! Oh, Actor, imagine humanity young again!”
“Pretty far out, I must confess,” confessed Actor.
“Well, you won’t have to imagine, fellow Mortician...because you have been Chosen. We all have, actually.” She grinned. “We are going back to the beginning. It’s the only option left open to us. The law is that time travel is only legitimate and feasible if it can be proven to have already happened, and the techs tell us that chances are pretty much certain that we are the origin of Life As We Know It – that is to say, The Morgue and its seeds and science and people. Even the Universe itself is giving us something of a thumbs up: the quantum climate is perfect for a folding of space and a jaunt through the gates of impossibility, and the statistics say the odds are good we will survive, because we already did, and exist right now. The paternity test results are in, and humanity is its own child -- how’s that for news?”
“My mind is officially boggled.”
“Excellent. I just wanted you to know that you are...hmmm...loved and cared for?...and that we are all going to make it there together, or not at all. You can go back to your script if you like - you shouldn’t notice the trip when it happens, because if it fails, you simply cease to exist. Painlessly. I’ve got others to talk to now, but have a good day, and be thinking about what you will bring to our new life. Thanks for your time, and, by all means, good luck with the new production.” She stared at him for interminable seconds, and then walked quickly over to him and gave him a peck on the cheek, reaching up and putting a hand on his shoulder.
And then, instead of complicity, Actor turned away, frowning, ignoring the concern his suddenness provoked, because suddenly, he got the feeling, deep down, behind his back, that he had done this all before. The rocks all move in the same direction, thought Actor, and bored and sleepy, oh-so-bored-and-sleepy, is the hand that writes the world.
Rash
In years past, the warm, yeasty area underneath the foreskin had been a veritible hotbed of revolutionary activity. Now, the old bacteria spent most of their time reminiscing about bygone days, succumbing quietly and methodically to various treatments and drugs, their ranks more and more depleted as microbiological inertia took its mighty toll. Resignation compounded with impotence slowly bled out all of the passion and fire of the early inflammations, and it was only on occasion that a spark would jump into the eyes of an old flagellate warrior, as the remembered halcyon climate of old diseased lashings and tirades would leap to mind, and a memory would overtake experience. The common lot underneath the foreskin these days reminded one more of a veteran’s home than a moist and fertile island of unique, experimental, bacteriological warfare.
Sitting on a stool, gumming at loose detritus and smegma, the stalwart bacterium Orchitis held his hands in his lap and measured his dignity in his ability to stay silent and focused on inevitable truths. He could be found there each day, and there was little he had not seen ... triple antibacteriological creams, exotic STDS, scalding chemical baths ... all occupied the realm of the accomplished and lived through. There was once a time when young bacteria from all over the body would come and listen to his soothsaying and prophecy, regularly entranced by his mystical discernment regarding all things bodily and divine. His price was simply the ability to ask questions of these youngsters, and, subsequently, he had quite an accurate topological picture of the world he inhabited. These chats had died away, however, as increased specialization and culture kept bacteria of different sorts more closely knit and sheltered, and now Orchitis simply sat, waiting, centered in the bliss of peaceful understanding.
On this particular day, however, there was a general feeeling of uncharacteristic tension underneath the foreskin, a hotness that could only portend the presence of a new entitity. Each time a new infection sprang up there was always the excitement of uncertainty, and, unsurprisingly, there was now a confused and shrieking stir where the old diseases sat, everyone but the immoveable Orchitis becoming profoundly unsettled. The old diseases balked and groaned, worried at what this new rash of infection might hold for their comfortable existences, speculating on measures that would be taken to have it stopped. “Orchitis!” they pleaded, “What’s to be done about this impending threat? We all know nothing incurs the wrath of the gods more than the impetuosity of youth...”
“Patience,” said Orchitis, allowing amusement to dance momentarily in his eyes.
It was not long before dust clouds on the horizon and the neighing of steeds beat the squabbling hoopla into a mere agitated murmur, signifying the arrival of the youth in question. As the old diseases watched, a stern, noble looking youth riding a champing and snorting platelet, its head lolling in the noon sun, slowly trotted up to where they gathered to share their time. He moved determinedly to the center of their encampment, frowning at each of the assembled in turn as they made way for the platelet and rider, his brow and jaw both locked into positions of maximum strength. When he came to the center of their grouping, he dismounted, his gaze surveying all with a steady fortitude that commanded respect even from the aged Orchitis.
“I am called Balinitis,” said the youth, lifting his head back and making sure he was heard by everyone within range. “I have journeyed many a day to be here – here, where they say I may find answers - and I am in need of an audience with whomsoever you call your most wise. Grant me this as a boon, and you will not be forgotten in the division of plunder in days to come.”
“You are not wanted here!” yelled a nervous Epididymitis, tapping his cane at the ground. “Go back! Go back! The days of conquest and glory ended long ago, and you bring naught but woe, rider...”
“Quiet,” said Orchitis, dismissing the whining of Epididymitis with a weighty look askance. “I will see you, the one called Balinitis. My condition is that once you have your answers, you will leave here and do not return. There is an order to things – boundaries – and you have broken yours.”
“Thank you,” said Balinitis, glaring at the rest of the assembly, as, upon a motion from Orchitis, they dispersed back to their resting places to allow the two a private palaver, “I accept your terms.”
Cooly, the two regarded one another and measured for depth. With a grunt and a nod, Balinitis began.
“I am planning a conquest the likes of which these lands have never seen. There is so much untapped wealth, and yet I see those around me starving to death out of fear of upsetting the gods. It cannot go on any longer, and this place must be reclaimed - crowned with the former glory of aeons ago. There is a legend amongst my people that once, long ago, before time forgot, bacteria held the testes. That is my dream...the goal toward which I push all of my efforts...and I only need to know one thing from you, you, whom those of the ancient foreskin call the wisest.”
Balinitis leaned forward, his eyes bulging with feverish intensity, desperately scanning and tunneling into Orchitis’s placid, expressionless countenance, searching for clues that would give him a codex with which to decipher whatever answer would come.
“Is there any way to win favor with the gods, and ensure that the armies of White and Pink do not annihilate us all when I begin my assault?”
Orchitis nodded, smiling briefly, getting the question he had expected. “Gods? No, I think think there is only one, young warrior. Just one God. The pantheon was a myth of bygone times, and is no longer relevant. The sustainer, creator, and destroyer are all one, and your answer is no, there is not any way to petition God for success. Your best bet is to find a nice quiet flap of skin somewhere, settle down, and become dormant. Wisdom, my friend, is more often found in inactivity. Yes, conquest is a bad business, young Balinitis, and it is easy enough to turn a blind eye to those around who suffer and despair. In time, everyone gets what they deserve.”
“Unacceptable,” said Balinitis. “But I thank you for your candor. This just means the wrath will come, and I am prepared to meet it. The old – the flatulent, crapulent, malevolent, and irrelevant – will stand aside and we will see where this path leads.”
“I have seen this before,” said Orchitis. “It leads to death, and there is no alternative.”
Balinitis nodded. “I watch you, the way you live your lives, kowtowing to the powers beyond...meek and puny. Perhaps once you were bacteria, perhaps once you could wield a flagellum or a hook, but now you are nothing, and it is being nothing which I simply cannot abide. I remember when I was smaller and weaker I used to watch the viruses play, and they taught me everything. The way they grew and spiralled...hunted and killed, hatched and multiplied. They say the virus has no will, and that therefore, to be a bacteria is a far nobler thing - to be free - but I envied them so much in their single-mindedness...their drivenness in the face of possible total catastrophe. They had no gods...no God...so I guess this means that I too will have no God. Like the barbaric virus hordes, I will be uncivilized, and remorseless in pursuit of a home for my people. Better to be condemned and baring one’s teeth than dead already, paralytic from the will down.”
Orchitis sighed, letting his eyes unfocus and staring off into space. “It is true – we live daily underneath the thumb of a cruel fate. Some say it is in the nature of bacteria to infect and destroy, that it is in our make-up to expand ourselves to the limits of happiness and the cultivation of authentic experience. Others say that it is that very undertaking that displeases God the most, and brings the angriest storms of the White and the Pink. The flames of our passion and the heat and beauty of our pustules and nodes make God jealous, they say, and so He must destroy them so as to keep us from becoming too much like Him. Perhaps both are true, but whatever the case, the will of God is very clear, and we must bend ourselves to it with the exactness of a razor – a razor - if there is to be any hope of salvation in the next world. There is no salvation here, Balinitis. We are all smoke moving through the void...birds falling from the tree of ignorance, the only option to use our virgin wings of reason and truth...”
Balinitis snorted. “What you speak of is meaningless. How can anyone know the will of God? Those who claim they do are invariably either crazy, or merely very much in tune with their own will. Reality offers a challenge...a mission...and there is only life and death, flux and silence. I will take the testes, or I will die trying, and there will be others after me. I heard there was a virus once which attacked not flesh, but the White itself...feasting and multiplying on God’s own host. There is more to reality than we can dream of in our heads, and we may have the highest perspective of our kind, but our goals are dismally low. Life, Orchitis, must be spent...or it rots.”
Balinitis slung himself back onto his platelet, and Orchitis gave him a quiet nod of parting. Orchitis wished his peace was communicable, but he knew that the thrashings about of youth were unavoidable, that the situation into which bacteria were born was one in which hope was a liability and not an asset. Watching Balinitis ride away, furious with resolution, scoring the lands with streaks of swollen pus and murder, trampling the fear that ate deep inside at the core of every living worm, gibbering and gnashing his teeth in a crazed spectacle of raw energetic discharge, Orchitis grew simply more laconic, and awaited with mournful resignation the Fingers that would soon be here to Scratch the Itch.
In years past, the warm, yeasty area underneath the foreskin had been a veritible hotbed of revolutionary activity. Now, the old bacteria spent most of their time reminiscing about bygone days, succumbing quietly and methodically to various treatments and drugs, their ranks more and more depleted as microbiological inertia took its mighty toll. Resignation compounded with impotence slowly bled out all of the passion and fire of the early inflammations, and it was only on occasion that a spark would jump into the eyes of an old flagellate warrior, as the remembered halcyon climate of old diseased lashings and tirades would leap to mind, and a memory would overtake experience. The common lot underneath the foreskin these days reminded one more of a veteran’s home than a moist and fertile island of unique, experimental, bacteriological warfare.
Sitting on a stool, gumming at loose detritus and smegma, the stalwart bacterium Orchitis held his hands in his lap and measured his dignity in his ability to stay silent and focused on inevitable truths. He could be found there each day, and there was little he had not seen ... triple antibacteriological creams, exotic STDS, scalding chemical baths ... all occupied the realm of the accomplished and lived through. There was once a time when young bacteria from all over the body would come and listen to his soothsaying and prophecy, regularly entranced by his mystical discernment regarding all things bodily and divine. His price was simply the ability to ask questions of these youngsters, and, subsequently, he had quite an accurate topological picture of the world he inhabited. These chats had died away, however, as increased specialization and culture kept bacteria of different sorts more closely knit and sheltered, and now Orchitis simply sat, waiting, centered in the bliss of peaceful understanding.
On this particular day, however, there was a general feeeling of uncharacteristic tension underneath the foreskin, a hotness that could only portend the presence of a new entitity. Each time a new infection sprang up there was always the excitement of uncertainty, and, unsurprisingly, there was now a confused and shrieking stir where the old diseases sat, everyone but the immoveable Orchitis becoming profoundly unsettled. The old diseases balked and groaned, worried at what this new rash of infection might hold for their comfortable existences, speculating on measures that would be taken to have it stopped. “Orchitis!” they pleaded, “What’s to be done about this impending threat? We all know nothing incurs the wrath of the gods more than the impetuosity of youth...”
“Patience,” said Orchitis, allowing amusement to dance momentarily in his eyes.
It was not long before dust clouds on the horizon and the neighing of steeds beat the squabbling hoopla into a mere agitated murmur, signifying the arrival of the youth in question. As the old diseases watched, a stern, noble looking youth riding a champing and snorting platelet, its head lolling in the noon sun, slowly trotted up to where they gathered to share their time. He moved determinedly to the center of their encampment, frowning at each of the assembled in turn as they made way for the platelet and rider, his brow and jaw both locked into positions of maximum strength. When he came to the center of their grouping, he dismounted, his gaze surveying all with a steady fortitude that commanded respect even from the aged Orchitis.
“I am called Balinitis,” said the youth, lifting his head back and making sure he was heard by everyone within range. “I have journeyed many a day to be here – here, where they say I may find answers - and I am in need of an audience with whomsoever you call your most wise. Grant me this as a boon, and you will not be forgotten in the division of plunder in days to come.”
“You are not wanted here!” yelled a nervous Epididymitis, tapping his cane at the ground. “Go back! Go back! The days of conquest and glory ended long ago, and you bring naught but woe, rider...”
“Quiet,” said Orchitis, dismissing the whining of Epididymitis with a weighty look askance. “I will see you, the one called Balinitis. My condition is that once you have your answers, you will leave here and do not return. There is an order to things – boundaries – and you have broken yours.”
“Thank you,” said Balinitis, glaring at the rest of the assembly, as, upon a motion from Orchitis, they dispersed back to their resting places to allow the two a private palaver, “I accept your terms.”
Cooly, the two regarded one another and measured for depth. With a grunt and a nod, Balinitis began.
“I am planning a conquest the likes of which these lands have never seen. There is so much untapped wealth, and yet I see those around me starving to death out of fear of upsetting the gods. It cannot go on any longer, and this place must be reclaimed - crowned with the former glory of aeons ago. There is a legend amongst my people that once, long ago, before time forgot, bacteria held the testes. That is my dream...the goal toward which I push all of my efforts...and I only need to know one thing from you, you, whom those of the ancient foreskin call the wisest.”
Balinitis leaned forward, his eyes bulging with feverish intensity, desperately scanning and tunneling into Orchitis’s placid, expressionless countenance, searching for clues that would give him a codex with which to decipher whatever answer would come.
“Is there any way to win favor with the gods, and ensure that the armies of White and Pink do not annihilate us all when I begin my assault?”
Orchitis nodded, smiling briefly, getting the question he had expected. “Gods? No, I think think there is only one, young warrior. Just one God. The pantheon was a myth of bygone times, and is no longer relevant. The sustainer, creator, and destroyer are all one, and your answer is no, there is not any way to petition God for success. Your best bet is to find a nice quiet flap of skin somewhere, settle down, and become dormant. Wisdom, my friend, is more often found in inactivity. Yes, conquest is a bad business, young Balinitis, and it is easy enough to turn a blind eye to those around who suffer and despair. In time, everyone gets what they deserve.”
“Unacceptable,” said Balinitis. “But I thank you for your candor. This just means the wrath will come, and I am prepared to meet it. The old – the flatulent, crapulent, malevolent, and irrelevant – will stand aside and we will see where this path leads.”
“I have seen this before,” said Orchitis. “It leads to death, and there is no alternative.”
Balinitis nodded. “I watch you, the way you live your lives, kowtowing to the powers beyond...meek and puny. Perhaps once you were bacteria, perhaps once you could wield a flagellum or a hook, but now you are nothing, and it is being nothing which I simply cannot abide. I remember when I was smaller and weaker I used to watch the viruses play, and they taught me everything. The way they grew and spiralled...hunted and killed, hatched and multiplied. They say the virus has no will, and that therefore, to be a bacteria is a far nobler thing - to be free - but I envied them so much in their single-mindedness...their drivenness in the face of possible total catastrophe. They had no gods...no God...so I guess this means that I too will have no God. Like the barbaric virus hordes, I will be uncivilized, and remorseless in pursuit of a home for my people. Better to be condemned and baring one’s teeth than dead already, paralytic from the will down.”
Orchitis sighed, letting his eyes unfocus and staring off into space. “It is true – we live daily underneath the thumb of a cruel fate. Some say it is in the nature of bacteria to infect and destroy, that it is in our make-up to expand ourselves to the limits of happiness and the cultivation of authentic experience. Others say that it is that very undertaking that displeases God the most, and brings the angriest storms of the White and the Pink. The flames of our passion and the heat and beauty of our pustules and nodes make God jealous, they say, and so He must destroy them so as to keep us from becoming too much like Him. Perhaps both are true, but whatever the case, the will of God is very clear, and we must bend ourselves to it with the exactness of a razor – a razor - if there is to be any hope of salvation in the next world. There is no salvation here, Balinitis. We are all smoke moving through the void...birds falling from the tree of ignorance, the only option to use our virgin wings of reason and truth...”
Balinitis snorted. “What you speak of is meaningless. How can anyone know the will of God? Those who claim they do are invariably either crazy, or merely very much in tune with their own will. Reality offers a challenge...a mission...and there is only life and death, flux and silence. I will take the testes, or I will die trying, and there will be others after me. I heard there was a virus once which attacked not flesh, but the White itself...feasting and multiplying on God’s own host. There is more to reality than we can dream of in our heads, and we may have the highest perspective of our kind, but our goals are dismally low. Life, Orchitis, must be spent...or it rots.”
Balinitis slung himself back onto his platelet, and Orchitis gave him a quiet nod of parting. Orchitis wished his peace was communicable, but he knew that the thrashings about of youth were unavoidable, that the situation into which bacteria were born was one in which hope was a liability and not an asset. Watching Balinitis ride away, furious with resolution, scoring the lands with streaks of swollen pus and murder, trampling the fear that ate deep inside at the core of every living worm, gibbering and gnashing his teeth in a crazed spectacle of raw energetic discharge, Orchitis grew simply more laconic, and awaited with mournful resignation the Fingers that would soon be here to Scratch the Itch.
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