Excerpt Fifteen:

Sybiline’s Anachronistic Programming

Sybil had always thought of herself as a concept; an idea waiting to be discovered by some great, all encompassing master concept or idea she was yet to discover. The path ahead, to Sybil, seemed to wend its way up into the mountains. She was a gargling stream, flowing uphill, needing to find a form with which to jump up and surprise nature. 

At the summit (though no proof outside myth existed), sat Justice herself, waiting on a visit from those who needed her most, to assist them lightly back to the place where their journey began. Justice, sighing, wished that she lodged in a more convenient place: a tree house, or some man made, purpose-built edifice with easy access. But who is there to grant the wishes of Justice?

Sybil was short tempered for those who bloodily wounded the flesh of Justice. She became a protector of the path taken by those seeking Justice, and a builder of cairns over the carcasses of those seeking to destroy her. 

Sybil’s being beat wholly, like a heart in love.

Life, up to this recently passing moment, had been dictated by simplicity. It wasn’t even actually ‘life’ in many ways; just a coping way of avoiding complications: a weak force, pinning back the barbs of complication by abstinence. 

But in life, sometimes, with delight, leaden hooves become mercurial twinkle-toes; there are dances to be danced out there in the dark-mattered firmament, sky-skipping, galaxy cavorting. Sybil’s heart emerged with burgeoning beauty from its chrysalis.

A wall of denial crumbled and fell; she accepted readily her transfusion of the blood of new life; inflation up to operational pressure. Juices began to flow and electro-chemically mirrored interactions mingled and coalesced.

And in an ante-room below the auditorium that houses the recently brooding Atoll, in a place he could not fathom, let alone access, she met her teachers: she was ready as their student and as willing as a puppykitten.

She steps up for introduction, slotting into an obvious chute of fate. She concentrated on focussing until she was basking in the light of the committee…

The Nagasaki Blood Cancer Choir & True Justice Assembly was in session. The identities of the sit-ees were secrets. The juryesque panel; a truly democratic executive quorum, were represented visually by goblin-like avatars, wearing ribbons and medals designating them all as equals. A certain dreamlike quality held Sybil gluily rapt. She was addressed by the revolving head of the chair of the committee, who were sitting at a long table constructed from a living tree. 

They bestowed upon her the power to bend the wind and to condense odours, to squeeze colours and scratch under the surface of people’s minds and juggle space-time; not juggle space-time, but the others…

The ‘game’ she’d been selected to play was no game, but it had to be played like a game because that was the only language of engagement with which both sides could interface. The revolving head of the chair of the committee informed her of the other world, beshaking her with regaliums of a world that was similar in every way and different in many more; that constituted a mother world to this one; a mother world that had fallen on suicidally, self-destructive times and needed saving by it’s own child…

…This took a while to process…she had to leave…before she returned, all processed up, ready and steady. It all went predictable after logic had entered and plumped up the cushions; it all made such succulent, effervescent sense. It paved the road ahead and the freeway did not stop at the summit. 

She became able to wear a dress; so she changed her dress and took time with newly arising wardrobe necessities, listening to the revolving chair of the head of the committee as she did so. Was all this in her imagination? 

Yes… 

…but her imagination had been commandeered by storymaking-programming that was so designed as to create of her a superhero to take on the unnatural forces that were zoning in on extinguishing life; the execution of Mother Nature: machinery, killing off the biology that created it to secure a mechanical future universe. She was distracted, momentarily, by a sensual pair of vegan faux baby toddler skin shoes…she experiences something like an electrocuted-vomitting, which distracts her even further, but makes her stop and make a mental note not to be distracted ever again, not from committee business…

And it turned out that…

…after a jump of sorts…

…she was in close proximity to Atoll; trying to build a rapport: for one reason: he was the enemy. 

It was not clear yet how he qualified as an enemy, but that would sweat out of his pores as his tale unfolded. Atoll, aside, she felt equipped, resourced, primed…

Before another moment had passed she was alone, with a succinct, unfolding understanding, in her new office…the tail end of an executive ‘zap’ whizzing away; she could smell the freshly dried paint, hear the faux crackle of the faux leather as she adjusted her position to view all that surrounded her. It was, as far as her new eyes spoke to her, an LA noir detective agency office. Her name was on a sign on the desk, and if it was not her name she would make it so. 

If this mission ends in success, she assumed without basis, her prize would be to drink an experience in the Mother World, before it went off the radar for good, taking the radar with it, (unless, her and her puppeteers could save the world…).

And she dreamed…but when she came to, still subverted in presumptuous reverie, there visited a knock…and…another…and then another…silence…and then a barrage of knocks, saturated with potential meaning that flew around but had nowhere to affix. Through the frosted glass she pictured the lying Atoll and behind him the empty auditorium, the play had begun in earnest…had it?

But when she opened the door by shouting ‘come in’ or ‘enter’ or whatever, it was someone else, and left behind in what had been the stage area, was a convincing corridor. The handsome lead strutted in…suave, projecting, enunciating…

‘Hello, Monica Bane, hyper-detective! My name is Kirk James. I am working out of an office down or up the corridor down there. I was wondering whether I could hire you, your services, if you’re available?’

And so the Tango of negotiation begins…both of them aware of the underlying game, but unwilling to admit it to the other until their castles’ drawbridges lower. 

The coming exchange will make no overt sense, but covert intimations will emit a smitchen of truth; enough to nurse and cultivate. Laying bare the clothes-horse and watching it munch grass, in the wild, in a world that no longer has space for such immaculate wonderments.

‘Tell me what you need me to do and I will tell you if I am available.’

‘I need some advice, consultation, counsel, guidance perhaps, help, enlightenment. The rest I’m sure I can manage.’

‘Manage?’

‘I have, at some previous point, been entirely refurbished.’

There is a silence of sorts with beeps and buzzes of warning and cooking times.

‘What, Mr Kirk, is a Flying Lizard without wings?’

‘Flying Lizards don’t have wings. “Mr James”, but call me Kirk.’

‘Bad example. What is a Flying Squirrel without nuts?’

‘I came here for sound advice not silent comedy.’

‘That is bold statement for a man who finds himself in your position.’

‘How can you know what position I find myself in?’

‘Quantum analysis, Mr James.’

‘“Kirk”, please! Quantum analysis?’

‘Yes, quantum analysis.’

‘What is quantum analysis?’

‘Nobody knows, Mr. Kirk.’

‘I am sceptical…and…please, it’s just “Kirk”.’

‘Your unfounded scepticism is entirely predictable using quantum analysis. May I ask, how is Dave?’

‘What, who, which Dave? I probably know ten or more Dave’s.’

‘Okay, without thinking, name two of them!’

‘Okay…”Dave”…’

‘You don’t know any Daves, do you, James?’

‘No, I don’t, I was lying, sorry. I know no Dave. Call me “Kirk”.’ 

Then, swift as a flash, she said:

‘Who is Dave?’

‘He’s an ex-marine…Damn!’

Kirk had been compromised…

‘The problem is,’ Sybil said, ‘…and let’s face it, what are we without a big fat punnet of problems, …is, the virus in the system that’s preventing the DRD launch.’

‘But the launch will lead to a total lack of a human presence on Earth within months,’ Kirk burst forth with verbal vigour. he’d been got again; two-nil down…

‘Now, you’re talking; you are remembering. What else can you remember? Think, man. It is vital we get our own stories right before we go out into the blessed jungle to correct the cheating stories of our victims, or interviewees.’ Sybil was assisting Kirk, which was all he really wanted from her. He wasn’t picking up on that, though. He was just blanketted haziness; glimpses of clarity shouting incoherent half sentences…

‘It’s all coming back to me,’ he half-lied; jammed up by a yearning to understand.

‘Go away and cognitively masticate until your mind aches like a cunt.’

‘I need me time. Please excuse me, Miss Monica.’

‘And don’t forget, the meter’s running,’ Sybil, playing Monica, shouts after Kirk as he turns right and then corrects himself on to the left route down the corridor, until the corridor rang with post-activity emptiness. He did realise this was just a game didn’t he? Well, not a game, but sort of like a game…

Kirk, back in his room formulating a question for the Professor: how do you pay people for services in this godforsaken parallel world was the gist, but the grist, that was harder to find, it would need more time to formulate, perhaps forever.

And Sybil, for her part, ambled through fields of whimsical, shoulder length crops and considered, in the spirit of a freelancing dick-4-hire, whether she was to be a local Californian girl, or a First Nation person. In any event she needed to hide the fact she was an invading English woman, poshly thrashed and educated, related to some lord and lady who’s fortune generation is a bloody stain emanating from Victorian nefarity.

‘Membranes, wings? Either way, Kirk James, we’ve hired each other.’