Excerpt 139:
Crater Fate
‘We are all going to Middle Russet…’
A mean kind of madness permeated the atmosphere and bled behind the eyes of those within earshot initially, then it auditorially sound-waltzed into the audio-reception of others with the utilisation of catch-up memorandums that followed in the conundrum-roll of the communication-wake-wash-ripples (CWWR).
‘…and from there… [pause redacted] to the mythical land of Nether Russet,’ Tiny Guy continued, in a very much, ‘there, said it!’ way. Instructionally the seeds were now sprinkled along the dirt path that wound and wended around ceilings and walls on its way back to its own inception. At first he thought he was thinking within the protective confines of his own head, but data leaked into the public domain, so the practical instruction, out-there-edit version, came as just as much of a shock to himself; the concept sledgehammered chocks from the slipway of the launching vessel, as it were. His idea had to float or everything was sunk. The route needed etching into a copper-plated map; stained into the glass-windows of yore and yawp. Ancient up-to-datedness coming home, popping in, as though time-travelling. ‘You were always going to Nether Russet, Jack.’
Broken down into its constituent parts the fundamental reality was that Middle Russet was a ginormous hole in the ground that was getting bigger by the hour, crater-like, tree-rimmed…worked and wormed by automated machinery: Specials that had not been produced for general release; (generality deemed unworthy), a village of untested machines testing themselves, and each other, jostling boundaries, licking envelopes, sending-it like electropop-disco-night-owls. Out of control by human standards; only just getting going using the Machine Adjustment Filtration Ethos Translator (MAFET). Their grandparent algorithms having long lost the command chain that dangled over the edge like feet with no toes or ankles.
Nether Russet was growing into a greater and greater existential placeholder. Its self importance maturing to a state that public release dates were sending out invitations to. It was Impossibility itself cutting through improbability and creating its own oasis of plausibility. Still, nobody knew where Nether Russet was. It was beneath Middle Russet as everyone was going to soon find out. It was being created within the village hole settlement of Middle Russet. But what we need to grasp here is that Middle Russet was a collective delusion; a shared-fantasy, Solo-Illusion Virtuactual Neural Imposition Suck-it-up (SIVNIS), only existing to lure the unwary and the wary into the funnel area that led to the extermination zone in which Nether Russet sat like a kitten that was time-lapse hyper-growing into a tigerlion hybrid teeth/flesh interface that was passionately hungry, spurred on by multicoloured anger pangs…
How all this was going to pan out was anyone’s guess. Tiny Guy and the team had to be there to find out. Rumour was that the Farm was playing some kind of role, so there was a reunion with possible initial mission objectives. Commander Bott seemed otherwise obsessed and comme ci comme ca missionwise.
And back in the heart of Little-Sudlow-On-Russet, oblivious to tectonic plate shift towards Middle Russet, Carla turned up the recording of an album from a bygone era: Silence and the Absence of Sounds inBetween, by Cantobocca inSilencio. As if it would make a difference. A murmur from the mist. Memories filed past like mourners at a funeral for a beloved dead person. Her memory worked overtime, double-shifting…top gear, demented screaming, drowning out the melodic silence. Her sojourn in Little Sudlow-On-Russet was being curtailed by a call to visit Middle Russet; a fate that had already swallowed her and was beginning the digestion phase. Sybil erected posters of the coming performances by Phraedo and left Carla for the irresistible pull of Middle Russet. Nether Russet was Sybil’s kind of place. She didn’t know where it was, but she did know that Middle Russet was the transit hub that would take her there. Maybe she’d get the chance to manoeuvre herself into a position to impose total destruction on everything, after all.
And everyone else was like…so we need to head for Middle Russet and breach the lip of the crater and everything will fall…into place.
And…
Where is Middle Russet? It is not on the map.
And…
We know where Little Sudlow-On-Russet is and likewise we can locate Great Sudlow-On-Russet, although they seem to be shifting location, but Middle Russet?
It’s an anomanathema…
Judith spoke to those with the proximity values to hear. ‘At least now we are all on the same page. I have spoken to Commander Bott, and she has come to terms with the non-biological elements she shares her mind with and is onboard for the final sinking of the Titanic, as she so humourlessly put it, but this time the boat ain’t gonna sink, as she so optimistically concluded, anyway, she’s magnetically attracted and hyperglued to our coordinated forward pointing momentum.’
‘We are all going to Middle Russet,’ resonated, ear-worming its way frontal and central, foreheading; knocking on the access vault of the collective pineal gland’s lair. Gravity, it seemed, had a distant relative whose conspicuousness was choosing alternate expression-ways. We all think we know Gravity; we are all patients to its doctoring; we all senselessly feel it’s integrative interactions, even though it clasps deep secrets within its dark clutch… the work of presumed simulatorfiers. Everyone was ignoro-conversant with classic, universally accepted Gravity, but there was a newly released gravityesqueness in town, salted with gravitas and peppered with a pushy and all-perplexing purpose. This Gravity, this novel co-Gravity, had dimensional reach that the old standard Gravity’s Weak Force (GWF) could only ever dream of.
Judith felt herself drifting sideways. Kirk would have noticed, but Kirk was now James, a Tiny Guy Productions operation that alternated between spying on and supplying information to the spied upon that was tantamount to counter-spying. Next, everyone was concurring with Judith; there was slippage, a slanted not-quite-sideways gravitation style, not usual, accepted Gravity, that was acting upon all movement and apparent stationariness.
Adaptation appeared to be the key to the lock of Life. This state of affairs normalised before the alarms had triggered flight or fight melodrama in everyone, and life as it was continued, just on a bit of a slant. No one mentioned it, and if they had it would not have made any difference. Great Sudlow-On-Russet and her bigger sister Little-Sudlow-On-Russet were gravitating towards the middle, while engaging in a millimetre-inching of orbital-spiralling. Everybody, ready or not, was heading for the crater town of Middle Russet, even if they intended to arrive elsewhere. They were heading for the mock Tudor slopes and precipices of Middle Russet that paved the vertiginous terraces to their final destination: the evil twin town of Nether Russet. If Middle Russet was Purgatory, Nether Russet was heaven for Beelzebub.
Part of the acquiescent deal Commander Bott had built with Judith necessitated getting her troops in line and ready with the attention to pep up their at-easiness. But there was a little problem that was turning in to a Vast and Hearty Problematical Landscape (VHPL). The ex-killerbots had teamed up and paired off with the ex-thug gentlemengals from the private school-cum-terrorist training camp and the teaming and pairing was mutually instigated and tied together with unbounded pledges and do-or-die obsessive enthusiasms…They all saw themselves charging the fantastic light-brigade; death or glory their bedfellows. Bott’s job was to manage the troops, her safe-colonel role worshipped by the cannon fodder…
But…
She could not help seeing them as a problem child…then she remembered a quote: All problem children start with problem parents and as she ruminated on that proposition it slowly dawned on her that she was the problem and her shame grew and grew until it burst: the problem that was her was a product of the problem that was her parents…following it up with backstrapolation retro-meme familial dialysis she posited that it was the first person who ever gave birth who was to blame…at which point everything fell apart before taxiing to the end of the runway for take-off.
‘You must authorise the App that orders the bots to stop the impossible slide into Middle Russet.’
Commander Bott pulled up the App and tapped the necessary buttons but subterfuge had crept into the crypt and intention misfired and stubbed its toe on its own nose.
Commander Bott chewed on a dandelion flower and stem. She had options; none of them had a particularly joculopreferable mood-endpoint, but she was determined to endure her last moments of inwardly targeted abusiveness despite the mechanical protective systems that were being breached and unindependenced. She was, in effect, attacking her-own-self, invidiously eating her insides into oblivion.
All those lucky enough to still be alive to be unlucky in the pervading narrative fate was working on had in their vision the increasingly large tree-line that graced the lip of the giant crater of Middle Russet like a big bushy green moustache. What had appeared to be a tree-line became a much thicker arboreal affair once reached. They brushed through its leafy curtains past centurion trunks. It was in effect a heavily automated natural border crossing, and spelt out the very letter of stringent laws regarding what could pass through its treetrunky sphincter-valve-like orifice. All mechanical entities had to be stored in the trunk safes, vaults and boxes. Auto intelligence could be taken into Middle Russet, but only in no-use, access-tricky-if-not-impossible storage form, on drives, cards, sticks and dongle-sheaths. In this case the storage receptacle was a highly modified kettle. Not like the one K. and Botface’s Torso were being held captive in: it was the exact one.
The collective Botface main-C&C-ware and auxiliary command support structures and complexes had debated the ‘jump-ship’ scenario endlessly, so no resistance was forthcoming from them. They were all transferred to a greatest-hits-album Hyperhard Wikidrive Botuniverse Perceptostate Population Scenario Ingratiator Mimic Cell (HWBPPSIMC) and lived happily ever after.
The ex-killbots were not so organised and undecided, crossed over into storage with resentment and confusion that led to many bothours of turmoil and infighting, which is what they were designed for…to be fair.
Once on the shale and flint slopes of Middle Russet everything changed. Gravity went back to a less perverted guiding pressure and there was an overturing rumble of contentedness that invited everyone to stay and get comfy. Outside Middle Russet everything that was, up till then, wasn’t anymore. Middle Russet was all there was left. Ambition had hit the buffers…unless a recklessly adventurous soul needed the buffer-busting thrill of advancing to Nether Russet and circumclimbing over barriers plastered with ‘certain death’ signs. There would be a ‘chosen’ one…of that, later…
The behaviour of all Middle Russet activity was in the mind of the beholder, collective mindthink ran the operation. Individuals became dividuals.
Middle Russet was a place, made apparent on being there, that was famed for its writing of obituaries and biographies; documenting those who’d had a brush with Life and ended up in the dustpan.
Plus, interesting fact number twelve: rivulets of plant gravy ran down the hillsides. They were called Marmite streams because some hated them and others loved them. And they consisted of malted yeast.
Once Russet-side…
Initially they’d camped outside the camping store. The manager, related to an alias of Tiny Guy’s, apparently, (and could have been an actual alias), allowed them to accommodate themselves respectfully in the display tents that were set up with accompanied accoutrements that spoke of ‘camping adventures of the soul’ and ‘fun times had by all’, but without the stains.
As the darkness they call night fell it was past the hour they needed to be in to regroup. Regrouping would give them many upper hands, some back hands and some underhanded ammunition in reserve.
But hands would have to wait until the morning light; the mind’s footrace on thought scree; sleeplessness would rule the roost; cock’s crowing and crows cawing and parrots chattering away in mocking-mimicry.
They’d made it to Middle Russet; the destination from where no one ever returned.
