Excerpt 125:
We Suck! So, Suck It Up!
You can be sitting in a judiciously darkened room, not too doggedly dark the nothingness hunts in packs, jaws snapping brutally at the ankles of the standing; not too light that the clarity clanks and visibly clunks, overilluminated by its own headachy farfetchedness. You can be so even, so well weighted, so ready…and yet unreadiness could be around the very next corner, waiting just for you, arbiters of the finest chaos, welcoming you, slipping wreaths of anxiety mixed with garlands of panic and strands of threats so dire and wanton, over your head and under your radar. Giving you an unadvisable dose of the Ethelreds; an inexorable millstone neckerchief of fossilised regret.
A standard mode on everyone’s dial is to take the incoming and outgoing chronic quotidian event occurrences written in to our workaday ledgers for granted. But Life Itself (LI) and its practical activity arm, or, in some cases, wing: Living (L), are the results of giving; gifting gifts bestowed upon us by the Coincidental Metaphorical Entities (CME) of Circumchance and Happenfate. Life’s ill-humoured double-act.
Deals had happened deep in the forest of algorithms. The algorithm wars had taken place seamlessly culminating in logic and logic-adjacent jetsam rising to the top of the cloudy lake, dredging up a scummy, flotsamic surface that ultimately ceilinged clear waters.
What are we talking?
It would take too long and the ascent up rock faces of explanation traversing ravines of exposition would, in all arduousness prevent Sustainers of Sanity (SOS) from raiding asylums; breaking out the neuro-abnormal, who, if typically-tailored, would fly so they no longer had to burrow. But if we are brash enough to tell a mole to fly; rudely grant it the gaslight to soar, all we get is an airstrip runway with too many bumps to take off without smoothing things over…with steam-rollering apologies.
Upshots of these states were clipped and bagged and sorted into Executively Controllable Slices (ECS) so that all parties, from the lowest common denominators to outlier psycho-pioneers could fairly and egalitarianly wash in each others mindbaths; cross-checking ill-fitting tenets and overarching ethos-umbrellas.
Narratively speaking…
Whatever background, base, core rivalries and coups were occurring the focus of everyknownthing interacting within the arena, Tiny Guy was spooning out the plans of a necessarily ad hoc performance from his spool of projected film stock; this was the finale; it was to be a climax, of sorts, crescendoing up there on the summit’s bald head before being nodded off in an avalanche of coming down to Earth with an ending… The burying of scattered ashes.
At this point much had been identified by disregarding stuff and nonsense that had shown its hand and got the boot. The natural order, the physical laws conspired to lead all the players, so called, so shakesperianly, shakespearesquely…into a funnel, of sorts, where the remaining narratives were directed to coalesce and tot up, to arrive at the sum of what Story needed to say, needs to say; always needs to say; the same old story…
In a meeting in the foyer, so under-formal that lounging reached epidemia about half way through. The chitter chatter that peppersauced the break did not instantaneously cease once the meeting was reconvened, that’s how informal it was; to the point of being messed up. Was it Draco, or someone who looked like Draco without the fizz, buzz or insistent peacocking; devoid of manic-panic threat-button, push-control neon-gaslighting.
Everybody knew it, nobody said it. Everybody felt it coming to the surface at a place feasible to climb out and dry off on the jetty…but those present were too adrift. Telegraphed bubbles rang everyone’s number but no one was picking up.
‘I have had an epiphany,’ Draco announced, as though it were the result of a course he’d attended, ‘The world has shifted, but I am on top of it. We are not under attack as once thought, we are, thanks to intelligence now gathered, under a defence system that is readied…’ Draco felt the need to resort to breathing techniques in a moment where appropriateness and inappropriateness played football with each other, on a dedicated pitch in a clearing in a busy supermarket.
Readied….people thought…in the pause of a feline nature…readied for what?
‘…Ready to operate as planned…’
‘Planned, what plan? What do you mean?’
‘The intent of the site that has been constructed in Nether Russet with the industry of the manpower here, homegrown in the Little-Sudlow-On-Russet Saviour Belt, is to utilise the giant cavern, dug out by the tenacious and reliable folks of this great walloping world-beating podunk, to suck in, it’s more technical than that, the invidious missiles of human implosion, however smart and cockshaped…to dispose of them using the latest Underground Burst Reverberation Deterrent Insplosiveoutburstive Positive Negative Outcome (UBRDIPNO) technology.’
Silence came all over the stunned facial facades. Then the popcorn started popping with questions unanswered lotteryballing their way from deep thought containers to pop out into the group snackfest of questioneering, so to speak…
And voice of the puppet on ‘Draco’s’ Right hand spoketh:
‘And the death of all Sudlowonrussetanians…’ seething with erroneous righteousness, ‘That, I see is now off the butcher’s table?’
‘Yes, certainly. Why ask, Demitri?’
‘Damn it, I’d had unequivocal messages, you know, metaphorical programming instructions…you know? From the froth of murk!’
‘No, I don’t know, Dimitri. Does anyone?’ Throwing it open…
‘No!’ came back.
‘Nope!’ also, and there was at least one:
‘Not a-cat-in-a-dogsuit-on-a-hot-tin-horse’s hope in hell.’
‘Fuck the lot of yous, I was born in the wrong armageddon…I blame the parents,’ Dimitri, dashed out, erroneous indignation clouding around him like a festival of electric smoke…
‘Charming, see ya!’
A group, ‘Ciao!’ resonated with mixed blessings and assorted indifference.
‘There’ll be no parent blaming around this parish, no, sir!Any other ques—‘
‘What nuclear missiles?’
‘What conflict is there, capable of culminating in the delivery of such destructive missilania?’
‘Good question. It is all being orchestrated as we speak and beyond. Power itself, as an entity, I suppose, that is doing our bidding as we can’t come to our own safe conclusions vis-a-vis the ship Armageddon and all who sail in her, is doing all the arrangements, squabbling interstatedly, manufacturing coup de grace hardware, and generally taking care of the logistics…leaving Survival, in all its guises, up to us…it is what the human does best…we are survivors…and soon we will get a chance to eat the pudding to see if there is any proof in it; write poems and songs and sonnets. The plan, however, if actuated correctly, should see all known nuclear and similar headed bomb and missiles programmed to use the QASAI death-to-all-in-loving-mutuality completion systems, destroyed… And the systems, the mass-death industry, as it were, closed off to use by apes or systems programmed, fettered, hacked or inspired by apes.’
‘Do you mean Apps?’
‘No, I mean apes.’
‘Okay.’
‘So, Apps are fine?’
‘If the Apps have no ape origination or interference.’
‘Is there such a thing?’
‘I don’t…I’m sure we’d know about it if there were.’
‘Is that what you really think?’
‘No, I think there are things, by things I mean stuff and that, that are redacted, so to speak, from our ken,’ Ken looked like he was about to say something, so Draco added, ‘and when I say “ken” I mean “our understanding”. Probably to protect us…keep us…’
‘From what?’
‘Ourselves, most likely. We seem like the most dangerous elements. Unnecessarily so, stupidly so, as far as I can see it.’
‘What’s the worst we can do, left you our own devices?’
‘All out nuclear destruction?’
‘Good point.’
The whole plan to suck in missiles en route, and ruin their day without ruining anyone else’s, was too ambitious and outrageous to be human. There must have been off-planet help…but thoughts regarding aliens, alien AI and such, were off limits.
Draco uncharacteristically stood down as mayor; the formality of the act enshrined in a group carrot cake toast, and the staff and auxiliary hangers-on and there nepotistic entourages were all disemployed and it was with a great sense of freedom that the collective spirit, bottled in Little Sudlow-On-Russet, nudged away the raft of authoritarianism and clung to the life raft of egalitarian intercooperation as it slipped into the fanciful tide of Luckpromise and Hopeharbour; Life’s double act that ranked top in an ‘upcoming talent’ chart…
‘Everyone must be told. Little Sudlow-On-Russet will open its civic arms to accommodate all those who are at risk by dwelling in the fringes of the Atomic Nullification Program (ANP). Get thee forth, or hence, or whatever, and spread thine, or thou’s word, or words…Be sure to first do no harm, and second facilitate, and three, host with hearts-a-bustin’; rag the wheels off the hostess trolly with your excesserbations… the fourth will be finalised in due process. Good luck my dapperworms and charmwarriors. I’ll see you all on the other side for biscuits.’
‘But, remember all…open arms yes… but, please…open legs, no thanks…please—‘
‘Shut up, Dimitri, I thought you’d left already…’
