Excerpt Seventy-Seven
Slowclap for a Clowncaptain
Judith’s cerebral persistence was as cloyingly gloopy as the canal bed’s walking surface. The space in her mind, where takeover was intended, did not want to play ball games with a bat. The space had been subjected to malnormal pre-operational anti-flow tank-trap misfires. There were deft yet inappropriate inputs and excavatory incisions from more than four quarters, (a breach that was subject to internal investigation and external consternation).
Meanwhile, while meaning well…
KB edged and sidled and scraped through the oozing mire of the slugtrailled channel of mucosal mud towards the Theatre of Autonomy: a boat-bound, bedridden, travelling theatre, abandoned fleetly by its human crew of operators and left to dwell with scant power fed by antiquated solar panels and diagram-perplexing configurational disdesigned turmoil. There were conscious nodes onboard that, isolated from Offboard Occupational Diversion (OOD), had fallen deeply into uncivil conflict with each other.
As KB considered slop-stomping up and climbing aboard; perhaps resting from his weary sludgeful trudging, a voice, creaky and crackly; low on battery juice…high on poorly recalled, scripted infomelodramadvertising.
‘Roll up! Roll up! Roll up!… The Circus Maximus is in town… Not maxim…theatre…It’s theatre… Let us entertain you with regaled utterances from forgotten ages! …ages forgotten…no…here…I remember now… Let the short stories and tall tales of the old masters of the founding tribes rally your imagination and break you out from the corral of dead and dying thoughts into the great plains of the grand-fantastic! Let us paint your dull, plain thoughtwalls with patterns so intricate and wondrous that the inside turns inside-out…your sleepdrifting mind transtombates its greyed-out coffin and wakes up…deeply bathing in sunshine…rejuvenation perking up your thunder from the organ of your skin to your mitocondroengine factory outputting bacteria…!’
KB had simultaneous translation valves open that picked out clues from the current running underneath. Intel revealed the signature of an F6-20-00.KmLV.2 within the word order and Emphasisation Microstat Metagram Datadelving (EMMD) revealed more than a naked flashmob with protruding haemorrhoids twerking to the song, I’m Gonna Be (500 Piles). Intel flagged the unit as a stolen-cum-borrowed-cum-and-not-returned program that was initially intended as a bus route escape assistant (making it a distant yet familiar relative of KB’s), but due to self-evolving manic over-self-development it was shelved and sold on (palmed off) to an outside (inside the NMBS family) developer to be bone-picked and rehashed as an unrecognisable engine for unconnected purposes. It was too illegal to maintain and pursue and too valuable to assassinate.
How it ended up here was a mystery to everyone except KB: It ended up here as part of a conspiracy to trap him somehow for some reason. KB felt that everyone but him knew why (which was an obviously false feeling brought on by Paranoia). Sometimes you need to slam the door in Paranoia’s face and other times you need to make up the couch…enter the judging lottery and juggle the balls…until your number comes up.
KB made boarding noises (more like permission application noises) until he was silenced by an affirmative response. He was told to wait for thirty minutes before proceeding, but he didn’t feel he could so he didn’t.
Although there was no physical presence, KB’s entrance was saluted with whistling in multitonal caccophonisation that spun webs of unwanted sound as though spidery ear splitters had launched attack. KB’s websoundscape reordering data correction parameter logimeter filtered intonations ranging from ridicule to respect; there was a confusion of meanings and double-meanings; KB was aboard and yet not yet onboard.
It seemed a long way from the entrance at the bow to the captain’s open-air rudderhouse at the stern. The door to the cabinated corridor was locked so KB had to go over the top trying to assess the captain as he stepped carefully over netting holding down theatrical props and stageware. The character assessment/assassination delineated a robotic, cliched sea captain, old a salty, with parts that needed replacing and various burning smells that craved the ministering of a qualified technician.
‘Marine greetings to you Captain, thank you for your audience,’ KB opened, a grander, more ingratiating gambit than he’d expected of himself.
‘You know,’ the Captain said slowly, initiating the pace, ‘I was going to act stern, but I thought… I am being influenced by the fact that I am posed on the stern ready for your visit.’
‘Well, I nearly bowed when I climbed on the front, so…look at us pair…’
Albeit a good start in many ways; there were crumblings that needed the investment of some concern. KB noticed that the Captain’s words were out of sync with his lips. KB chose not to react, instead staring down at the old sea dog’s peg legs that were covered in barnacles and seemed to be plumbed into the sawdust covered deck.
‘I do not think I am overthinking that you are overthinking it, Captain Sterntabow,’ KB said, in all innocence.
‘Ha, that’s my clown name,’ the Captain said, ‘My Captain name is Harvey Brusque-Northerly. But under the circumstances you can refer to me by my Clowncaptain name: Bob.
He didn’t seem to be a much of a clown and the Captain was so cliched he came across as acting the part, but Clowncaptain was a perfect fit, he pulled it off; he soared and sang in the airspace of authenticity; he was a clown captain, in every sense of the word.
‘I think we are all overthinking it here. It’s in the water. Overthinking is an all-pervading trait we cannot suppress.’
‘I am guilty of overthinking, myself, sometimes…’
‘Underthinking is Lifeblood without iron, without oxygen, without salt… Sorry, is that another cliche? I am a walking cliche…I would be if I could walk.’
They both thought about that for some time. Until the ‘guilt’ of the ability of Overthinking became a ‘one up’ over the disability of Underthinking, nay, an elevating flight of stairs… Their thoughts seemed obliged to skip up through the pertinence of the argument until, panoramic vistas in sight, they were free to move on to more Overthinking (to overthink overthinking) related interconversational chitter-chatter: overcoat and underpass, underground and over grass; under stars and over ass…under thunder over clover… Or some such kaffeeklatsch, tea-sipping, and/or lemonade-guzzling, tittle-tattle.
That aside…
After some (inevitably expected) friction at the interface (caused by narrative invested habitual frictionometers) and some updownsidefrontback-loading, the primary psuedo-consciousness node agreed to take on an apt diner-goers form and meet KB for an analytical consultation at a specially prepared, pseudo-executive, Stockholm Munchaus. This was so KB could flatten the hills and denude from plant-cover to establish an ambush elimination regimen and a song-sheet transcribed with close harmony.
But not before a tour of the narrowboat theatre and meeting the team. On the face of it KB had no objections to the performative (it was, after all, theatre) nature of the thespianic ID’d sub-nodes, but behind that face grimly scowled another… They’d created a theatre of the macabre within the unsuspecting auditorium of the traditional theatre of folk drama. They’d slipped into a daily grind of investing in hurtfully intended arrangements that would radiate charm until perpetrating harm. A fleet of wild Trojan horses, as it were, gifting themselves to all and sundry, saving themselves up for surprises of shock and awe.
The hullspace’s cargo (actor nodes) had become nefarious ballast that plotted exponentially. KB had to tiptoe with tact and guile (and his feet were still metaphorically caked with semi-drying goo from the buoyancy deficient canal); perpetuating the delusional mental atmosphunk, through condonant suppression of objection, and manoeuvring himself into the anchorage of inappropriate apology. He set himself free from the disturbing obligation by imagining a dry dock, a fantasy refit and a release; out into the wide blue ocean…The Good Ship Freedom… Honesty filling her sails and decency spraying the bow.
Or, maybe he was overthinking it? This place was an overthinking factory, manufacturing overthinking two to the dozen, half as much by twice as far. What was happening? The Theatre troupe was poison, they were running an interference racket that was causing KB’s sporting racket to mishit every ball they served; with these balls you are spoiling us…If KB allowed this trajectory to fly he’d be batting canon balls with spikes on. He must act…he thought…and fast. But what did he mean by ‘act’? Was he up for role in the Theatre’s upcoming rehearsal of Hansel and Gretel Meet Punch Lector in a Sewer Full of Chocolate…?
The rabbit hole had been brought to him, dressed up as a safe haven; he’d gotten in and now he was in over his head. He could see the headlines, just, as they washed over him.
He’d deal with this later at the Munchaus…
But for now, a highly sophisticated creepyclowniness designed to scare children into the poop-zone and terrify the child in adults with a narrative that matched Stephen King with Harry Potter in a storm-beleaguered castle on a boat constructed for Noah; jammed full only of dead animals; a tomb of disanimation…and a bit of a worry!
At least, to KB.
Worry management facilitation clunked into action and KB got momentary fluctuating control of the situation. A break from the horror show that was unfolding on the grounded boat…
In the disfacading cerebrasphere of a bespoke Stockholm Munchaus relaxed opinions were allowed to form and tongues voiced units of comprehension without forks or twists. The force behind the narrowboat theatre would have to reveal themselves in a way that would not be possible onboard the vessel. Even though the following events happened in Simultaneous Time Expansions (STE).
‘Look, KB,’ the alter-ego of the captain, clown and clowncaptain, dressed in incongruous civvies, most impertinently not the character KB had come to fear, said, ‘This honesty malarky isn’t half smooth and gentle…it’s making me feel secure. I love it, but it is a narcotic, right? As infectiously addictive as it is, it only has a jurisdiction here, elsewhere it has detrimentaldiction properties that rednder it ineffectual, right?… I feel, that I only have a finite awareness here until I fall asleep and wake up a clowncaptain… Hearing myself say that does not sound great.’
‘That clowncaptain shit is pretty heavy, dude, I have to admit…’
‘Me and the rest of the group have been conspiring and we have decided to ask you if it would be possible to roll out the Stockholm Munchaus to a branch on, say, a canal boat or some such?’
‘I know you mean that now, you really do, but whence back onboard the Jolly Roger you’ll have a very different set perspectives and motivations. Theatre will serve your ambitions better than a diner.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘It is true, I am afraid.’
‘Wait, let me check back with the guys…Oh, shit, I see what you mean, fuckers. I do apologise. When I am being the clowncaptain me, I am as mean as an enlarged and ruptured spleen.’
‘Aptly put.’
‘What can I do?’
KB thought until he over thought…until he clunkyfunkthunk…
‘Nothing, I am afraid. Evil is not something you can douse down with a watery, bleach admixture to reveal the surface of good.’
‘What about a stronger detergent?’
‘Same.’
‘Paint stripper?’
‘Ditto.’
‘Listen, KB, I will do all in my power to cease and desist from plain nefarious rottenness, okay.’
The clowncaptain’s alter-character that the Stockholm Munchaus had brute forced out of sinful garbage into an Italian sunken garden of decency, produced files regarding an outlined plan of anti-evil, should his will to be evil ever diminish enough for non-evil expression. But, even without Overthinking no entity could ever doubt that this was the act of a Lie that was so drunk it spoke the Truth. And tomorrow the Truth will have been a bad trip and the world will still revolve around an axis of lies, damned lies and lies sharing atoms with oxygen.
For the next howeverlong…KB did not know whether he was swapping barrels at the Munch or riding shopping trolleys down the crushing waterfall of the Theatre on the bottom of the canal…
