Chapter Thirty-Seven

The Perspicacity of An Old Adage

The team arrived at zerodark o’clock, at the imprecise juncture between PM and AM when even the screeching owls and haunted howls had shut up noise for the night. The moonlessness stilled itself as if in preparation, watching, waiting… Atoll was stirred first by his recent past freight-training by: the boarded-up Inn…way too obvious, placed him in a zone of ripe-to-pluck insecurity. Self-flagellating his foolishness, naivety and wanton thought-slouchery, he kicked himself, stubbing his toe. The gap to climb through was little more than a gaping invitation to be hung out to dry; the scantly boarded, broken windows and loose latches literally acted as prompts that fed him through the trap’s door and into a silken web: where the ambushing arachnoid, Tiny Viktor Guy Inc., led Atoll to make his own bed and lie in it.

They were acting under strict orders, the team of four specialists from TVG Nefarious Enterprises…they were there to support Atoll, but not to give without taking; every transaction was conditionally coordinated…every push shoved, every rush-hour roundabout circumnavigated in both directions.

Town Cryer input on the situation made it perfectly clear that Atoll was in the in-tray waiting to be processed into the out tray which either led to the waste disposal or to another in-tray in the eternal auto-production of in-trays…

The doctor approached first, doctoral ministering never far from the dual occularity of his black pooled eyes.

‘Atoll,’ the doctor said, ‘this is just a check up. I am surprised at your feverish wellbeing… Is there nothing worth noting? What are you not telling me…my dear boy?’

The doctor’s mastery of the art of the bedside manner had a beguiling functionality to it that left Atoll’s defences with telltale dents and squeak easy leaks where the unruly secret misspokenly speaks (old adage).

It wasn’t his physical perfection that was up for examination, the feebly constructed thought jumbled memory basket within his cardboard tower of storage, teetered and tottered as a medically professional wolf huffed and puffed.

‘I do have a concern…’

‘Go on…’

‘Well…I seem unable to…to…contract a certain…virus.’

‘What virus?’

‘No… I’ve said too much…’

‘No, no, go on… What virus are you wanting to contract?’

Atoll managed to keep tight-lipped as the physician’s silvery-snaked tongue did its casual unassuming work, licking wounds, opening fissures, all delivered with a bedside manner bordering on illicit entertainment… Inevitably the dam burst; spilling data the good doctor lapped up, all about his previous interactions with the virus. He began remembering stuff he’d buried and stuff that had been buried for him… He appreciated the doctor’s ability to open him up for his own sadly lacking documentation of the past…but the damageometer was needling the limiter and pushing it further with every revelation, until revelations became confessions… Atoll entered the fray of a rope-making cottage industry, with only one end use for both ends of the rope.

There was no reaction from the team when Atoll mentioned Tiny Viktor Guy, they probably didn’t even know who sat at the cistern end of their chain of command. Maybe they were alternate level sub-contractors. In any event they were working hand in hand with the Town Cryer messengering service.

‘Due to security concerns our men on the ground will let you know what is going on… Ask the doctor to open envelope A.,’ the Town Cryer barked.

‘Doctor, I have just got a message to ask you to open envelope A. ?’ Atoll suggested, apologetically.

Silently, one of the others, dressed in black, camouflaged vaguely in plain sight, handed the doctor an envelope, which he opened and read to himself before clicking his fingers, signalling the obvious fourth man in the team, a trainee or at least a less experienced operative, to step forward, take the piece of paper and place it in a shredding pouch that dissolved the contents in chemicals.

It was a jumbled and coded message that would make no sense until envelopes B. and C. were digested and processed after statutory co-intramingling. The procedure took some time and Atoll managed to take a quick nap, expecting not to see them when he woke up.

‘Atoll, good. There is something you need to know.’

Atoll didn’t deem it possible that there was anything he actually ‘needed’ to know but kept an open mind.

‘You must locate Botface’s Torso. If the device falls into the wrong hands it could become an existential threat.’

‘To whom?’

‘Life.’

‘Specifically?’

‘All life…Life itself..existence,’

‘Okay. Is that bad?’

The doctor ignored him, which was good for Atoll because he’d looped into contrary dead-end looping trajectory.

When the time was right the, up till then, mysterious third man stepped forward and took off his balaclava, unrecognisable to Atoll, and a complete shock to the team, he had to introduce himself, ‘Atoll… Guys… It is me, Tiny Viktor Guy…!’ The two others were slow to get it, but the doctor did a brief: ‘been gothcha’d’ reaction, signifying his deep understanding of the situation. And then sat by his own metaphorical bedside soothing and placating like a pro as a recovery strategy.

There was an extended silence that obviously irritated Tiny Viktor Guy intensely, but he managed to control himself. Because, he believed, control of others begins at home…

‘Clear the room and douse recording snooper-hack invader-taps,’ Tiny Viktor Guy ordered the team. ‘I want to talk to you about the golf stub,’ he said, as the team filed out.

The only way to gain access to the golf stub, as far as Atoll could see, was through the stadium. The stadium was concealing the portal and was doing the haunted house act to divert and confuse. Atoll had gone off into a personal wandering of local byways regarding the Camel statue in the run up to the stadium…it could easily be a secret way into the stadium…he played with varying scenarios lightly, with deft angling, before Tiny Viktor Guy imposed his austere dominance. ‘You must, Tiny Viktor Guy said, ‘find Botface’s Torso to access the golf stub because the devious runts have parallel stubs that look and sound the same…there are false entrances everywhere but the only safe bet on a true reality stub is through the Botface’s Torso route via the sunken submarine and that incredulous excuse for a commander.

‘I have been sending in teams and squads, but the best they can do is walk in cloud juice and pull the legs off vapour…stub simulations, replicas and doppelgängers. We are running our heads round in laundromat mode, whereas….you… You know the shutdown system intimately.’

‘I wouldn’t say that.’

‘There is an unauthorised character operating in the actual true golf stub, pretending to be Viktor Flabikov, causing, authentically enough, the kind of havoc he would have caused, but it’s not nice when it’s somebody else’s havoc; investors are demanding an end to it.’

Atoll felt as though Tiny Viktor Guy was digging the earth out from beneath his feet, giving him nowhere else to go.

‘Technically my shadow and umbrella corporations own everything in this existential plain so I can direct you to the target as far as out intel will allow. You can access the sunken sub via Botface’s Torso’s jail complex, which is a copy and not the real Botface’s Torso. Once in the sub you’ll either locate the real Botface’s Torso and enter the real stub or you’ll enter the false stub and find the hidden Botface’s Torso that will take you to the real stub… Most likely Jeff still has the hardware…he is getting into the management side of the golf and sundries shop, he’s pretty junior but learning daily…

Botface’s Torso was not a place Atoll wanted to be…although, he thought, suspecting the thoughts were being irresistibly imposed, reacquaintance with the shop would be a blast from the past with a groove and a vibe. No one says ‘groove and a vibe’ without imposition…so he knew where he stood imposition wise.

‘You see my predicament, Atoll… Atoll… and why I am personally here to implore you to accept our threats. And top priority, find out who my doppelgänger is without alerting him and report back…’

Why would I do that? Atoll thought, registering mindcreep from Tiny Viktor Guy, via the Town Cryer access point, and had to blank it out.

‘Before we release Sybil from the Super Smart Shutdown System Termination App we are developing and hope to have operational sometime in the prontosphere, you must marry Botface’s Torso…’

‘Now just wait a goddam damn god…’

‘The one thing you have to remember is that Botface’s Torso is a thing, a machine and the whole Botface is a hybrid thing…both useless without the literal crowning glory, a biological management system and machine authorisation executive that will represent the most powerful global AI algorithm authorisation command unit in existence.

‘It is real, this is not play, and yet it is a race, so qualifies in the game category: there are other heads, some created by those who really know how to dish out Evil big D style. We are in a race to enable you, and fix you, as number one head. You be my head, stay loyal, and I’ll make sure your Wanton Massacre Deployment systems are switched off and only absolutely critical villainy addressed by your judge, jury, execution operating system..that way you can keep your precious morals unblemished and keep to a strict code of ethics.’

Atoll didn’t like the way Tiny Viktor Guy said the word ‘code’.

‘Nicey, nicey had its day then pain and sorrow came to play, is one of your code program streams…all we need to do is change it to: Nicey, nicey had its day and nice nicely game to play…that’d do it….that simple, my technicians tell me. Or do you think they are patronising me?’

Atoll said nothing because he felt nothing…he been stunned.

‘You work for me, in your ultimate Botface configuration, and I will assure you your worst fears will not come to fruition.’

‘My worst fears?’ Atoll asked, genuinely stuck for memory.

‘You become a real monster… The monster that you are being designed into by the very process of the unfolding of everything you do and/or is done to you,’ which sounded complex, but wasn’t, as it hit home like a large bat fired from a bat canon.

Atoll could see that the Town Cryer messaging system was installing decipheratory diagnosticals; thought expounding surveillance evasion circumhappenstancing generators that laid Atoll’s secrets bare, ripping off the clothes of the dummy in the boutique window.

Having met Viktor and known Tiny Guy it was distressing confusion to meet them both, as one person…but they, he, represented progress and Atoll was nothing if not a passenger to progress. Tiny Viktor Guy had jumped several levels of sophistication, of course it wasn’t the real Tiny Viktor Guy, the risks of coming out would have been impossible, but although he was really there in many perspectives, all false, he was a cloned copy. The cloned copy clicked its fingers… Missive D. was drawn out of its envelope and he read, ‘Doing good by us, you are good to go; fuck us over and you die real slow (old adage).’

Old adage, old adage, old adage….it was code for something, Atoll could just not find reference to it in the Deciphering Palace floor plan in his mind’s eye.

‘I’ll leave the doctor with you to explain in detail the mission we have assigned to you.’

A. B. C. had coalesced and become a cocktail of information once elements from D. had been added. The doctor was now conversant with the scenario and could answer Atoll’s questions as if he’d stepped off a paddle steamer straight on to a speed boat. His bedside manner being repositioned as a Mission Briefing Officer, his bearing evermore clinical in nature…with edges and the texture of rough sandpaper.

‘A side note,’ the Mission Briefing Officer said, ‘we will be evading control mechanisms from outside, keeping it stealthy. Our angle of approach taken from the code cypher, decode, encipher entry point of the etymology half-creedence overbowling, “old adage’’ abbreviation and fundamental repositioning accessibility apparatus…’

Atoll was lost, utterly lost, and relying on the perspicacity of those around him to nurture him and thread him through the narrative turbulence meander that seemed to be developing… He fell asleep and woke up staring at the Camel statue on the run in to the stadium…he was both perplexed and fascinated, but he had to get on.

He was sure that somewhere within the stadium there was a portal. And he was sure he thought that because that’s what they wanted them to think he was thinking.