Excerpt 118:
The Great Little Middle
Godstrand told us that the world had already ended; that consciousness’s role in managing life had turned to collating past events and assembling a post event narrative for the explanatory documenting of what coinciding off-chances had occurred…the why was going to be worked out, crafted, manipulated and prettied at some later time by specialists in the field.
But Godstrand said a lot of things.
Leopold the leopard of Naples; hostholder of Viktor and Peter; Mayor Draco of Little Sudlow-On-Russet, Supreme Person and General of the Russet Valley Military Junket, read the manual, (Godstrand’s Companion to the Automatic Destruction of Entirety), eschewing the offered white gloves and monocle that one of his twelve close attendants had offered. He’d had sections read for him but no minionette could know, would know, should know all that the tome revealed; the revelations were Leo’s alone; the hyperlomaniac’s burden. The only human capable and needy enough to require full Godstranding up was Draco…the world belonged to Draco, but first his stumbling gait had to traverse the rocky lip of the mayoralship (read: mayoraldinghy) of a minuscule and increasingly tense village…
The whole top floor of the Ball and Socket had been commandeered as the mayoral chambers. Leo’s favourite spot was the chaise longe in the honeymoon suite, but all the doors of the other rooms had been removed and the stairs cordoned off with baby gates, to give the floor a ‘feel’.
‘You have to think of the optics, General.’
‘Think, you mean see.’
‘Think of the optics so others can see what you wish them to see.’
‘I see. I think, therefore they see. I like it….magic it is…six extra points for you boo boo. And anyone providing myself with bespoke black magic, dark art magic, you know, the alternative magic stuff and shenanigans, will get bonus points up to zillion type levels, or more realistic levels probably, to be just.’
‘I think we should concentrate on the palpable, discernible and tacit…’
‘Do you, why?’
‘Compatibilty, concision, aptitude.’
‘Okay…for now. But I need you to know that just uttering a string of words that seem to have relevance under audio-squinting will not always manage to curry favour…’
‘No, your highness.’
‘Wait!’
‘What is it?’
‘Anyone for food? I am famished. Heathcliffe? Where the fuck’s Cliff-face…Heathy, there you are. Get down to the Indian in the high street and that Chinese take away by the memorial and order lunch. And…?’
‘And?’
‘What do we say?’
‘Don’t hold back on the popadoms…I’ve got it.’
‘Take security, as much as you need. There’s been rumours of rebellion…Jump the queue if you have to.’
‘That was the recording of someone talking in their sleep…the vicar, I believe. Rumour is too strong an assumption.’
‘Never truer words spoken than those of unconscious intent. Write that down…And despite the vicar’s denial I suspect him of belonging to an ancient order of knights Jesuit.’
‘There is no evidence…’
‘Suspicion, paranoia, instinct, nefarious creativity are all evidential…there, you are not the only one able to string words together to force an audio-squint.’
‘Everyone and everything is pretty well monitored. We’ve doubled up monitoring since the sleep talking.’
‘Can you get working on a triple up? If rebellion juice boils to the surface I want us to be waiting with both barrels.’
‘Once the electronic cell incarceration wall-jacket is functional, rebellion will be pointless.’
‘What’s the ETA for jacket delivery?’
‘Days, mein fuhrer, a week and a half tops.’
‘Good, good, good…’
The realness of Little was superparalleled by the irrealistic of Great. Both Sudlows nestled in the Russet Valley. The very epicentre of world events. The weight and pressure of them both in geo static orbit with each other created a balancing mass that expanded until inevitably forming a state that could only be called Middle…
Meanwhile in Great Sudlow-On-Russet…
Things were moving along devilishly fast and those with control credentials slowed themselves and dragged gravity behind them with semi-omnipotent metaphorical defiance. O. had a top level meeting with Commander Bott, just the two of them, which was odd, Kirk waited outside with the bot that, unbeknown to humanity, had trained in Refurbishment Neutralising Techniques (RNT). Kirk looked on with an astonishment obscured by nonchalance as the bot carried out a yoga routine, fruitless for its own mechanics, but enough of a diversion to allow it to internally go over old training ground and brush up on refurbishment obnoxification drills, stress-permeable and strike trajectory deflection assessment.
‘I am the Commander,’ Bott said, knowing O’d freak out…they had had ‘previous’ and once faced-back their previosity would have to subside into the periphery or become a warty issue.
‘Yes, Commander…Pleased to meet you.’
‘THE Commander?’
‘Commander, yes, welcome Commander…As you know, I am O.’
‘Mallory is—‘
‘Oh!’
‘Yes!’
‘That Commander. Let me reframe existence momentarily.’
‘Take your time.’
‘Is Mallory…?’
‘I am afraid not…’
‘Oh! I see, well…’
Awkwardness’s tide ripped out and left a dry foreshore upwards of a tenshore; tide pools, rock protuberances, a deep dark sandiness of reminiscence drowned in trying to forget; needing to forget…
Kirk amused himself by letting in the Professor who had been knocking on a patio door with the persistence of a barking dog with an anus up its rectum. Although the Professor was never purely or merely amusing; his input always carried conditional imperatives and in this case in those moments the Prof-show was one of aggro-amusement
‘Why,’ the Professor pontificated, ‘was a nameless bot doing yoga and trying to syncfiltrate Kirk’s boundaries, borders and barricades?’
“I see…I wasn’t sure, Professor, thanks for the Heads up.’
Meanwhile:
‘The truth is, O., the bots are pretending to be under my command, and to a degree they need the discipline and direction, but they have hearts and minds heavy with outside-in programming-out…making them watch, wait while preparing for that moment they’re going to stick out an explosive foot and trip me up so I go down and only get back up in a million pieces…’
‘How do you know all this…for certain?’
‘Simple Godstrandian equations laced with Godstrand’s future present extrapolation module charts, among other input.’
O. experienced stuff coming out of storage…fileware placed carefully in plain sight hiding under the bushes in the lank, torn twilight of late evening with too many moons casting unverifiable and inappropriate shadows… She managed: ‘The boat train has to leave the harbour and the station at the same time…’ she said, believing it to be the best response, intuitively. She had flitting part-visions of enveloping airbags from the interminable stint as a passenger in Mallory; back in the days when Mallory meant Mallory.
‘The shred of evidence in dark marmalade brings a tinkle to the eye…’ countered, Sybil…
Code, obviously…impenetrable, predictably…
And the both of them were preoccupied by thoughts of Sybil and her potential actions that remained impossible to shake off or wash off completely, ever.
