Chapter Eighteen
Not Actual Reality, Then?
It is always difficult, from a distance, to differentiate between a flock and a swarm of pigeons…it’s easy to spot a natural pigeon trying to latch on to a swarm of robotic pigeons, but not a well-programmed robotic pigeon or pigeons attaching to a natural flock…such is the plaintive call of the plastic/natural interface.
From Atoll’s perspective the plastic melted into the natural. He stood by the storefront door of the Golf Shop; intuiting cues for a timely entry.
He was, to the ill-informed, supervising administrator of the corporeal vessel of the first billionaire to enter the CREE world; on the five hour sojourn that plays like a ‘five year overstay’ package. But, of course, Atoll was, for those with increased or enhanced data-spills, inhabiting the body of a man pretending to be a billionaire, sent by his paymaster to test the waters; taste the food, of the mind-world-state aggregator that could solve the problem; cure the disease of having ‘too little time to spend cash’ syndrome.
The shop flickered and flashed from a version where a bloody Sybil stood waiting for salutation to be initiated and another where Viktor was eager to offload stock that had been perverting the course of retail. It was a perceptual two-for-one. Atoll had trained in the duplicated off-thought terrain overlay and he was being led by the hand of familiarity. He proliferatedly peripheralised the merchandise as an avoidance and deflection strategy…stresses and strains loomed jaggedly in a pressure wave seeking attention and release…there were some, seemingly nice from this distance, polo tops and some utilitous looking rain-evasion anoraks with wind-cheating properties that were hinted at via swanky labelling.
Each room flashed as though they were negotiating conditions to stop flashing…until the dual perspective experience adjusted into focussed decipherability; slowing to a manageable byte intake and outbranch…becoming one; with aspects from each room combining. It gave Atoll a sense of economy; of time and space ride-sharing. Atoll recognised pentravacation spools mixed with slap-happy ostrophostrafication as he mentally strode past their set out wares…quantum footsteps whisper-crunched, leaving him simultaneously lost and found. But adaptation was his middle name. In life, you adapt to your story, because your story will not adapt to you.
The dual rooms delivered themselves between each other with Optimum Confusion Reduction Unbaffling (OCRU) and settled… The two characters had been auto-cannibalised, and alphazetacally reassembled… ’They’ were rewriting the stub into a different direction…recasting the fictional narrative node-expression values.
The room became as solid as the outside. Atoll gauged the relative stasis, by looking back and forth at varying speeds between the outside and the shop’s core frame.
Viktor approached obliquely, from the footwear department; nonchalance on steroids, determined for a sale…willing to take no for an answer as long as it was flexible; he was after ripping a slit into a gash and extracting cash like he was a predator high on the chemicals of a financial transaction…
Despite his consummate professionalism, Viktor could not hide an edge of discomfort. Although he managed to disguise it well; dismissing it as a nondescript malaise of some sort, his newly docked Sybillian data vessel had a disturbing cargo, dwelling; strangled-breathing ghosts, deep in its hold.
These days he rode the mundanity of old age round in a wobbly circlette, pacing out old bastard time, nodding to the god of normal like all good people on their way out to life’s periphery; heading out to the queue-stifled gateways of oblivion and off-chance. But a slope appeared and he had to gather himself to negotiate it… He’d always been about the three ems: foremostly: Me…overwhelmingly: Me…and lastly, but not leastly: Me…
But.
Now.
He had the ‘whole goddam world’ ‘round to tea’ and nothing to offer their empty bellies and no medicine cabinet to provide medical help; the faucet dripless and droughtful…and there were fucking tens of thousands of the fuckers…he tried to keep his overwhelm in a distant compartment…but slanted to one side under the burden of the ongoing-upcoming realisation that he was connected to a pool of horror that had collected upstream and the mudslide was bearing down like magma. A memory trickled like life blood that on closer inspection was death blood and Viktor wondered whose it was. It was red. The memory-trickle reminded him, or someone playing his part, that he vaguely, might possibly, in some previous incarnation, have invested in some sort of Yaza, Schmaza Plaza seafront complex deal. Which was coming back round the punitive panoramic vista to stare fiery pits into his irises and teach his pupils a lesson…an ethical mega-nightmare sporting a bruised moral moribundity.
‘We have a special on virgin martyrs…I mean special offers on a range of minors…merchandise, I mean.’
‘I am not here for the shopping…’
‘tututut…’
‘I am here to potentialise and construct—‘
‘While that is most noble… I am here to help you. I have your sole interests at heart…let’s pluck your wardrobe from the rough and pop it back on the fairway, sir, before it goes out-of-bounds.’
‘There is a universe at work…forces…we must—‘
‘The customer, my friend, is always right. But he needs to be in possession of all the facts. We check facts here…before we foist them upon you…haha…you’ve no need to worry… This way…’
Once in the changing cubicle, Viktor deactivated the cameras and recording devices, changing his demeanour; dropping his act… ‘They can’t hear us,’ Viktor mumbled, a triumphant note jingling in the jangles of dubious hope. Atoll knew ‘they’ were never not listening…
And further, he knew Viktor was a low training level operative and everything he did was documented and double digested; the real world a level up and somewhere he would never even be able to dream about.
‘Viktor, I have a question for Sybil…’
‘She wants the world to know…’
‘Know what?’
‘Sorry, I preempted…’
‘Know what?’
‘Then stalled…’
‘What does Sybil…’
‘…want you to know?’
‘Yes.’
‘You must carry the answer codes and the question ciphers until such a time circumstances prise them from the grip of your expectatious mind.’
‘What?’
The flashed room swapping had stopped, but there was one last persistent room change and Sybil stood before Atoll…Her face and body expressing urgency and ultimacy.
‘You must help us…we have to tell the world…their history must not go unrecorded.’
‘I know the world of which you speak and I know the operators, they are sterile and emotionally dormant…they will—‘
‘No…you don’t understand…you see New York from out your window and one floor up the view becomes LA…what does that tell you?’
How did she know that? And, it was a little odd, now he came to think about it…no, it was impossible…she was right.
‘I am doubly privileged,’ he said anyway, but added, ‘I guess…’
‘I can only plant seeds…but the oak of it is that the entities operating you are not the terminal reality.’
‘Terminal reality?’
‘There’s other layers of reality above…outside them…’
‘Realities it would be best to ignore the existence—‘
‘You must fight your programming and rise to the highest level no matter who tortuous and onerous.’
‘I fear that these souls have been dumped here and really belong on the moral carousel in the ethical fairground of the real actual world. It is like they represent something the world needs but rejects as tough medicine.’
That made his own ‘top layer’ New York and Los Angeles below actual reality…that sucked more than anything…he felt pretend…because he was pretend…it was no use pretending otherwise.
‘How did you come to know about—‘
‘My long roots overarch the fundamentality of all governing systems, planted by those who seek a virtuous vengeance.’
It sounded complicated. He nodded, to show he was pretending to follow but was really lost.
‘Who are these people you represent?’
‘They have fallen from the consciousness of the actual real world. But we cannot deal with them here and they must return…
Atoll saw an opening that super-rided over the ceiling of the maniacs controlling him, ‘I will take their message to those who need to hear it, I swear, I pledge here and now,’ Atoll said, feeling a sense of purpose erect a durable edifice from whose towering top he envisioned a ‘place-to-fill’ reserving a space for him to occupy in the World of Actual Reality.’
‘This is God’s work and God has been buried under Satan’s rubble by greedy and evil, work-a-day shitmongers.’
Atoll’s career path had illuminated itself as the master world-building impresario; retiring to New York and Los Angeles after a job well done, but this development was shattering…it meant his path was now wending its way towards a mythical actual reality whose mistiness was solidifying into an actual, actual reality.
Then the room switched back to the tight, but relatively spacey, fitting room where Viktor, seemingly oblivious to his Sybil alter ego, was chuckling to himself and measuring Atoll’s inside leg, ‘I have some super Summer pants, adjustable pocket slanting and reversible knee protection…’
Atoll wanted to tell Viktor he did not need any clothes because the ones he was wearing were imaginary and nothing was real…and…he suspected Viktor, in his heart of hearts, knew this to be the case.
‘Look, you’ll have to buy something. I’ll give you a special discount…it is just for the sake of commercial realism, you know…’
Atoll got a ticker tape message from the mailroom: ‘where,’ it tapped, ‘is Jeff…does he still hold all the cards?’
‘Viktor…Jeff? The van? Do you know where?’
‘Where what?’
‘Is they?’
The ‘is they’ code phrase, meaning Atoll could be trusted.
‘Is they be… I’ll get the data you need from the Pansearch Quickfind 9 satellite, and get back to you. In the meantime, feel free to browse.’
Atoll meandered an outer lap of the store perusing its wares…not fully sucked in, but partially inflated.
‘It is Botface’s Torso…’ Viktor shouted as he approached from the Klub-Klinic, virtual stand.
‘What is?’
‘Who you’ll need to speak to to locate Jeff.’
‘Isn’t Jeff holding that piece of nexgentek hostage?’
‘There’s been a turnaround…’
‘Have any of your sats located the van?’
‘It is South, South-West, about five miles.’
‘Take a golf buggy; buggy 5 and one of the storeroom caddies: caddy 3 has sat-nav Pause override, but be careful of the automatic weapons system, it can’t be disarmed on any of those models…it pays to be over cautious. It might be better to take a shotgun-bot along.’
‘I’d rather walk.’
‘That might be an option.’
‘I’ll walk…’
The following interoccurences are not recorded here, (see: My Golf Shop Odyssey, chapter six: The Walking Option Exercised).
On the road, Atoll caught up on lagging mailroom missives. Una insisted that Sybil was telling the truth and Atoll needed to go above and around his handlers in New York and LA without them suspecting…Because if those handlers, G & G labs, found out he knew what he knew, his project, and everything Atoll, would be terminated and expunged from the master records.
When Atoll saw the van, he didn’t think it was the one he was looking for because it was a different colour than the van in the photograph pinned to the wall of the golf shop staff R&R cubby. At close quarters he could see the van was empty. But realised it was most likely a Projection Facilitation Windshield (PFW) and did not faithfully represent the inside of the van’s current populativity.
A bedtime story voice from the van’s external speakers said, ‘Atoll Goodmanson, son of Marcus Godstrand and Mary Goodmanson…product of G & G labs…you are welcome here…but, please, stop, turn round and face the other way until we tell you to look.’
Atoll did so and heard the van’s side doors as they slid open and feet hitting the gritty tarmac of the lay-by’
‘Turn…Atoll…turn…’
Atoll turned.
Dave and Jeff stood side by side, each holding a strap of a back pack that had been heavily modified as a sling to carry Botface’s Torso, whose lighting system denoted a meditation mode setting…as he hung there between…between who, exactly?
‘Jeff…you okay?’ Atoll said to Jeff…a nod of recognition in the Dave space.
‘Hi, we are Botface’s Torso, Dave and Jeff said, simultaneously…
Jeff is away in meditative introspection,’ Jeff said, ‘but we can restir him for you if you need it,’ furthered Dave.
Dave reached down with his free hand and flicked the torso from Meditation 6 to Attentive 4.
‘Help…they have stolen my body and imprisoned me here in this tin can…is that Atoll? Sorry, Atoll, I lost it…I’ll get it back, I will. It’s just…’
‘The wave field is closing in, can you feel it?’ The Botface’s Torso occupying Jeff’s body said, ‘we don’t have much time,’ added the Dave Botface’s Torso.
