Excerpt 128:
Doom is in the Post
Draco was about to make his great confession, with the people of Little Sudlow-on-Russet playing the priest. But wind had blustered around and blown the minds of the village dwellers and spooked them to such a degree that they had left. Which was exactly what the confession had been designed to achieve. Sometimes roundabouts need going over and swings need circumnavigating. Draco’s staff were about to be dismissed and return to their native whereabouts, but before they could, they gathered up their hems and scoured the dead village for signs of life. And upon return reeled off what living things still dwelt village-side.
‘Kittens.’
‘Dogs.’
‘A goat.’
‘Insects, arachnids… worms—’
‘Humans?…Humans anyone…see any Hum?’
The word ’no’ peppered the air with high to maximum Utter Conclusivity Values (UCV)…
‘Okay, good job. Battle won. Moving on to a vastly more important aspect of the general happenings now present among us. You must all go back to from where you once whence came…before you came here…’
‘What?’
‘Clumsy language…’
‘Can you evaporate…elucidate…rephrase even?’
‘You’re free to go…and you must…you are not free to stay.’
They went…
…filed out, leaving badges and certificates, that most of them had hung new identities on, at the door; and drifted away to fates uncertain with the pat on the back of a job well done balancing fiercely, trying to, with a slap in the face of discontinued authority stamped occupation.
Tiny Guy, once he was sure he was (absolutely relatively) alone, dispensed of the Draco nonsense and having lost some essence of who he truly was, practiced and envisioned as much repetitive Tinyguyness as he could muster, strongmunch Tinygrinding Guilerammed TeeGeeful essence; tinyguessence, in one solitary-learning-growth unit. He was not yet back to Tinyguyhood proper but he was on the way, the turrets and aerials were clearly visible and awaited at the pinnacle of the winding road that worked its way towards them.
If the ghost town of Little Sudlow-on-Russet could be closed down, Tiny Guy would have done it, as a conclusion to a chapter, as an End to Ends, but even when, imagining crotch-balancing atop a metal horse with erect ears adapted to amplify his noble, cracking, yet epical voice, he said aloud, ‘Little Sudlow-on-Russet, I beseech thee, close down for good, sleep now and never be filthy-hearted by the unbecoming dawns of blood and thunder…’ But the village pretended to be asleep and ignored everything Tiny Guy was telling it in a way that Tiny Guy knew was a slap in Draco’s face despite it missing because Draco no longer existed. Little Sudlow-on-Russet remained an enigma; whether it would be a threat down the line was not showing on predictions analysis. Fractions of full ideas semi-formed, whispered ouch-frequency chantlets-of-doom; the ingredients of a recipe for disaster that sat unconcocted on the kitchen counter asking to be made. Tiny Guy, especially, didn’t have a clue what all that meant, not yet.
His plan now, as into the void as it was, was to enter the epicentre of the action being spun around the new, multi-edificed construction of Great Sudlow-on-Russet and the mysterious, secret and technically behemothonian Russet Valley Park and Stroll that nestled within and poked out on either side of Nether Russet and the activity there that was conducted by stealth tech that was stealthy to the mind numbing degree that no human could ever see it operate. There was a major construction going on but not to human eyes. If one were to set up camera surveillance it would be a time lapse building site covering a vast area, with no captured concrete evidence showing what forces were at work to cause the construction.
It was as the one, and possibly only, full-length Tiny Guy self; in an as authentic version of himself as he was currently able to project, that he did the rounds of the few Stockholm Munchauses that were not sealed off and marked for decline and resultant demolition. He hummed along state songlines to the den described in the Stockholm Munchaus franchise yearbook as the den most likely to house the goodwilled embryonic annihilation intention of a certified maniacal Earth Mother (also see: Death Mother, if you dare.).
Sybil was in the den, in liquid form, computing how many limbs she could grow if she’d wanted to. The detection of something unthreatening yet deserving of attention and action to deal with activity that had threat-seed potential, nearred and then closenned…the club rose high in blow-ready mode. The club’s customer entered with much better lighting and audio than the threat level suggested; if Sybil had had a heart it would have gone racing.
‘Your work is lessening the Munchausness around here I see.’ Tiny Guy mentioned in passing, with a little Draco-on-Russet detectible in his tone, while actually thinking ‘Quelle typique!’ Yet not fully knowing what business a French expression had around here….could it be interference from a parallel French Stockholm Munchaus franchise variation….who knows.
‘And everywhere. Needs are as the needs is, as they say. Don’t tell me you didn’t think there were too many Stockholm Frenchouses, they were watering each other down. If me and my actuators had not stepped in it would have been the Stockholm Munchaus Waterpark and Fountain Drench Bowl Wetlands Experience (SMWFDBWE).’
That was true enough, he thought, while thinking ‘was it?’. Tiny Guy found himself gnawing at a teflon stick; conducting his own orchestration of an emotionally indulgent arrangement of auto-fladgery-in-the-dark.
Sybil had a power that was so mountain-like in its monumentality that he crossed himself in u-turns and parked facing the wrong way. Sybil was trying to turn him French so she could Francais whatever she wanted him to say without him parrying her blows or her having to be eating his chucked roulade.
While in Deep Decision Contemplation (DDC); stopwatch under orders, ticking boxes of progression in hailstones of a Gallic French style and dainty frilled panache, Tiny Guy went on a visiting spree that culminated in a drop-in at the House of Una. Tiny Guy had despised the thought of Una; now realising that it was the poison that had built up; dosed to him by Sybilarian cadres, and not what he, himself, in owned and possessed thought, really drove by with any truck… Tiny Guy needed to snap out of it without any bones cracking and slipping out from under their obligations of integrity. Sybil was hiding her powers no longer. Which was a clean rag at a dirty fashion show. And luckily Una was not hiding the powers she’d managed to steal from Sybil and gerry-rig for contrary usage.
Tiny Guy had to find a way to please both of them with simultaneous sabre-tongue-rattling. One side was black and the other white, it didn’t matter which, but the twains were never meeting and the admixture of harmful and helpful had to settle in a perfect viscosity at a temperature ordained by an ambient mean of cold and heat. If favour doused one quarter the other would protest and rise from their corner to burn corrosively into Tiny Guy’s flesh and bone. It was all getting a bit hairy, even the fairies were hairy, and the bald devils had hair amassing in clumps on the inside where the heart-space-void sat dripping hair juice from stalactites of slimy, congealed liquid hair…in a mocking repetition of a beating heart.
The shit was hitting the fan, and it was some hairy shit…and the fan was made from prime grease-free carpet-matted head and pubic hair. It was hard for Tiny Guy to get his head around so much hair at first, but as the extended metaphor clipped to an end he saw beardless light at the end of the hirsute tunnel.
Sybil and Tiny Guy slotted into each other, they both understood the unfurling narrative depiction of what was going on in a way that made it look like they were the chosen ones. Sybil thought she was more superiorly chosen, which given her role as a life mop was unavoidable. And Tiny Guy believed everyone had been equally chosen, it was just that he and Sybil were their representatives.
‘I need your help to get into the Russet Valley via the back door.’
‘I don’t know if I can help even if I could, sorry,’ she said, meaning: what is in it for me?
‘There is a village there that I need you to destroy.’
‘Completely or partially?’
‘Non-partially.’
‘Autonomously or do I have to follow algoprotocollic parametethered basehopping?’
‘You can’t fly above laws.’
‘And you can’t swim underneath them, I know.’
Tiny Guy’s plan was still in the planning stages. In unleashing Sybil he would create a doomsday scenario as outlined by Goodmanson and Godstrand’s 2006 paper, The Doomsday Scenario.
‘Are you in?’
‘Can I bring a friend?’
‘Friend?’
‘Una.’
‘Is this a deal breaker?’
‘Yes.’
‘How is she your friend?’
‘My nemesis, then…nemesis lite…nemilite… My nemilite friend!’
‘Well…yes then.’ But Tiny Guy was as confused as he was suspicious… The mist of confusion and stink of suspicion wrestled sweatily with each other with futile grapple holds of slipperiness and rising nauseous headaches.
Conclusion in its ultimate form foresaw the endpoint of the existential pyramid…
Doom was dressing to impress…Doom was going to have its day after all…
