Chapter Thirty-One

Ooooh Aaaarh, Jim Lad!

It was good to be back; to marvel at the amount of snow Central Park could accommodate; to alternate between that and viewing the clearing smog revealing the tall pines and classic LA skyline; waiting for the smog to return on repeat and so on.

An attempt was being made to keep everything the same, most likely because everything had changed.

The Voice had been replaced by a voice that vainly engineered scant pretence that it was the Voice; lowly self-awareness…credence capital account emptied.

‘We’ve had to bring in some close monitoring.’

‘Am I being close monitored now?’

‘You are being paranoid. Many conspiracy theories abound. You’re getting a deep health check as part of the insurance specs…there have been peripheral signs of outside interventions. No actual hard hacking, but soft hacking, shadow hacking, ghost hacking and mirror hacking, miscellaneous hacking events and all that adds up….not to actual hard hacking but a cohesive high-hack with hard hack potential. And there has been rogue actions by the entity we are sure you are familiar with even if just from training, the Super Smart Shutdown System…’

Did they suspect he had contracted an Ethical infection? The mortal morality consequences of which could jeopardise future programming arcs and tea-party side-pagodas. They would have extracted him already…they knew nothing of it….of him sharing it with his new friend, their deadly nemesis: Sybil.

They’d not picked up on his affections for Sybil let alone her communications…were they worm aware? If they were they were being creepy about it instead of just extracting him and being done with it.

Atoll sensed he had inherited a new super power of undetected emotional response that managed to evade functional detection systems analysis.

The Voice had been jokey, passive aggressive, but this voice spoke with a riptide of underlying brutality, queued below the surface diplomacy.

‘It is okay to be on the run that’s on brand per se…But it’s also about where to as well. You figuring all that out is the essence of what we are all trying to achieve. Could you tell me…do you know…what is making you run in this instance?’

Trick? Trap? Codesnag, cipherfumble?

He felt like saying ‘you’, but needed to keep his honesty at a minimum. The guillotine of self-sabotage was his sword of Damocles… His lies were the visa that was required to access the land of disbelief.

‘Vigour…lust for life….the rush of the run… I’m fed up chasing my own tail. I need to chase white-knuckled fun rides.’

Atoll was issuing word strings designed to convince himself of his own veracity…

‘As your perspective allowance becomes more sophisticated we must ascertain whether any counter ideologies are being enabled…Straying too far will bring with it automatic initiations, so…’

‘Initiations?’

‘Of extraction.’

‘I’ll keep an eye on my perceptions and relay to you any apparent contradictions,’ Atoll said, which fell out of his cranial base as if re-cementing a standing contractual agreement.

‘Outside influences could lead to extraction…’

This voice was an extractophile driven by obsession. Atoll wanted to know what post-extraction would look like for him, but could not find an angle from which to execute that line of inquiry. But his assumption was that it meant death.

‘Incoming Test Message!’

A worm revealed a test message, testing to see if it was being detected… ‘This is a test message,’ it stated, remaining undetected…

The voice continued, ’you’ve come into contact with malicious untraceable bugware and appeared conspicuous to the integral universal shutdown system. Despite this everything seems okay. But predictive models show the potential emergence of odd-shaped infractions. We need to de-amorphise and retain shapely onward configuration.’

The undetected test message boosted Atoll’s confidence.

‘How is my mind doing?’

But there was no answer and Atoll was put back in an ongoing scenario. He reminded himself that pretence was key…he was on the run for sheer heck of running…albeit within narrative constraints.

The canal was waterless due to overdredging by silt-treasure channel-combers…that, and the

removal of flotsam, jetsam, bicycle parts and wholes, bottles, parts of skeletal remains and full work-a-day skeletons. They had all been subjected to an aggressive removal process, and so, as a by-product, had the water. Water was not easy to come by unless you knew a water company shareholder with a bulging portfolio, so the Canal Trust was looking at the viability of alternative liquids.

Atoll edged and sidled and slipslopped through the oozing mire of the slugtrailled channel of mucosal mud towards the Lady of Trent. She was abandoned using any metric, but haunted by old sauced sea dogs; left to dwell with scant power fed by antiquated solar panels and diagram-perplexing configurational electrics.

Atoll reached a climax of slop-stomping and slithered up the rope ladder, clambering aboard; respite from the sludgeful trudging, puffing and panting awhile… A voice, creaky and crackly; battery eking, said, ‘Welcome aboard,’ with an incongruous lack of welcome.

A carved Victorian sea captain with a seething airleak of understirring pirate-ship-personhood and an air of: ‘decoratively-made-up-to-be-a-clown-as-if-for-a-childrens’-party-where-the-adults-were-not-above-terror-reigning-down-hard-on-the-little-nippers’. Whether clown or captain, he’d had his turn-of-the-century insides gouged out and replaced with state of the art robotics back when robotics was still in its infancy.

The boat’s skipper shook off his inanimacy as Atoll climbed over the top of the narrowboat after finding the cabin through route locked with a rusty chain.

Atoll had adapted to tolerate killbot behaviour; their antics had hardened his façade and solidified internal processes to cope, so this was no more than a funfair of horror emitting a seaspray of onboard oneupmanship.

‘You know,’ the Captain said slowly, initiating the pace, ‘I was going to act stern, but I thought… I am being influenced by the fact that I reside upon the stern.’ At which point, if he’d had a lit pipe, he would’ve taken a suck on it.

‘Well, I nearly bowed when I climbed on the front, so…look at us pair…’ Atoll added by way of synchronising.

‘Yes two peas…’ he said, as if he would never be able to mean it, ’it has been a while…my cobwebs are past it. I need some new ones,’ which he meant full-heartedly.

Atoll wasn’t sure whether it was a joke, code, or what, but he rode his false laughter to a post-laughter reunion, albeit through a hollow swampland.

A solid start was overshadowed by crumbs of concern. Atoll noticed that the Captain’s words were out of sync with his lips. Atoll passed the junction of the mention option and instead took the fork heading for a series of glancing side-stares down at the old sea dog’s peg legs that were chipped and knotted and seemed to be plumbed into the sawdust covered deck. It shouldn’t have, but it led to downgrading of available respect…

‘What do they call you?’

‘Don’t call me Ishmael,’ he said, as though he was joking; meddling with high level humour…either delivery let him down, or it just wasn’t that funny, or it was too steep a climb for acquaintance level dialogue… 

‘Oh clever,’ Atoll said as a reaction, but thought further and then reconsidered it as clever cliché and filed it as such. He was dealing with a clever cliché, and he knew it.

He seemed to realise that Atoll’s assessment was taking a nosedive, ‘The clown crew call me Cap’n Sterntabow… To the navy-larkers my name is Captain Harvey Brusque-Northerly, or just Captain Harvey or just Captain, or just Harvey, Harve, Harbru, Brubro, etcetera…’

‘Nomenclature aside—‘ Atoll began saying, but was cut in two by the flash of a cutlass tongue.’

‘And…the clowncaptain…gang-plankers…they refer to me as Bob, Bobo, Bobbins, etcetera… Take your pick.’

‘I’ll go for “Bob” initially and see how it pans out.’

‘They’ve jammed your worms.’

‘Beg pardon?’

‘You’re wading in a world of worm jam…I can read them…read one…as they deliver… Would you like me to…read another…tell you what that one said?’

This was dodgy ground…if the worms were not connecting with Atoll but were with an outside agent; it opened up avenues of compromisation, it changed the coordinational dynamics in a disconcerting way that went way beyond mere disconcertion…

‘Go on…’

He was a clown and a captain but mainly a clowncaptain…the worm data was informing Atoll or confusing him further; thems were the only pockets within arm’s reach.

‘I tell you what…I’ll read them and interpret some sort of summation and you can filter them through whatever perspectival prism you’re stranded behind…ready? There is no room for you to leave a ghost horde, however the collapsibility of a simulated ghost horde means you can leave your burden here…they will eventually cure you of your illness so you will have to return and collect your goods….good news for me because when you do you can bring me some fresh cobwebs…remuneration so to speak…and we’ll all be happy…’

‘Happy?’

Atoll almost imagined the seaswaying skipper slotting in a few ooh-arrs and the odd ‘Jimlad’ even if only for the sake of traditional expectation, but clever-cliché usage thwarted Atoll’s clichometer…his own regurgitative output stuck in the back of his throat. A quest for originality had always driven his behaviour but it had been lessening and needed a reinstall…note to self…self take note…war on cliché.

A parrot flew in and landed on the clowncaptain’s shoulder…it was code with a bit of a joke entangled within its vibrational logic. Atoll’s estimation of the post-modernist clowncaptain shot right up into the crow’s nest. The salted patina from under which the clowncaptain operated was mixed with a particulate dust of sophistication, obviously. Unless it was just a cliché…

‘I can’t give you directions…I once set my old eyes on an ancient map, but it was long ago and old memory clings to uncertain veracity with blind certainty… aside from that…follow the canal bed until you come to a Parisian walkway…. you’ll know it when you see it…although you’ll wonder why it’s called that after a few hundred yards, they say it is of Austrian manufacture… After that…you are on your own, or someone else, but certainly not me. I wish you well and await you silky return. May the pointers point and the code makers sell you their wares at discount prices…

Shiver me timbers, Atoll thought…again, placing a pirate cliché lens over the clowncaptain, capturing a spurious  angle of incidence that reflected back chinks in Atoll’s armour of originality. The clowncaptain steered away from the rocks of cliché…and in an admirable way, a way that Atoll knew he could learn from…the clowncaptain took on the flashguiding role of a lighthouse in the shrouding murk of fog…

‘I have been chosen as a guardian of Viral Morality,’ the clowncaptain stated, ‘and will guard and protect it in due virtue until your return…I have been programmed for this very task, I know I have. The ethical framework has been pre-erected, I know it has. I am superexcited about this venture.’

The ex-clowncaptain was now representationally, at least, a security guard…police style uniform with military style accessories…up on the stern, up for the job, up for up… All for Morality.

‘I see myself now as the father of murdered innocence.’

‘Way to go, Bob.’

‘The people of the security community call me, Derek.’

‘That was quick.’

‘What was?’

‘How fast you assimilated into the new community.’

‘I’ve been subscribed to their newsletter for years…’

‘Alright, okay,’ Atoll said, moves aching to be made but simultaneously baulking. Knots tied and hawsers taught… A favourable wind, a slipped anchor…

‘You’ll follow the channel…take a right and a left, not at the same time, joke, and not necessarily in that order, you’ll need your own internal input on that one. Then you will hit the bicycle rank, which should be obvious. A bicycle has been sequestered for your use…that’s what the worm said..

That’s what the clowncaptain said the worm said…and the worm said what Sybil had told it… Atoll crossed his fingers and hoped he was not getting his wrists burned by Chinese whispers.

‘I am being pre-scanned, scan-prepped….handy because I know a scan is coming…I will have to shut off for the duration or they’ll rumble us… You must seek refuge in there,’ Bob said, producing a remote control unit and pointing at the cabin, which unlocked itself; clicking open the doors. Atoll entered the Bobvylan Cage.

‘Shut the door,’ came several familiar voices. Atoll looked up and down, trying to rectify the unexpected sight; belief spluttering in the face of bending reality. The cabin was brimming with actualified versions of real people in ‘imaginary friend form’ (Imaginaries).

‘You must, ‘said Jeff…’ followed by silence… ‘take the designated route…’ Una added, ‘leaving infections of the the,’ Viktor continued, ‘moral virus,’ completed Dave, with an air of pre-refurbishment kirklessness.

The assembled crew closed there eyes and sat quietly as a recorded message played: ‘You’re not actually on the run…that is the pretence you need to preserve…you are using that as an excuse to visit strategic places to insert your weapons for the coming revolt.

‘Weapons? Revolt?’

‘The virus…must be spread to the main thinking calibration system so everyone knows and cares. No one can say they are unaware…’

‘I’m not sure I…can you explain…’ Atoll asked the recording with a feckless lack of awareness.

‘… The virus secretion areas will be made obvious by your own internal quest for justice. The existence of the virus creates the meaning we all crave even before our basic needs are being met. The coming system is removing all empathy and shame, which we need. And you are helping to put it back,’ The recording stated, answering all Atoll’s immediate questions sufficiently.

It seemed odd that the Imaginaries present all had the virus until he caught up with the actuality that they were all him so of course they did. They were not the worm messengers, but information he was hiding from himself to prevent it falling into the wrong heads. There was worm stuff mixed in as it took cover by piggy-backing the Imaginaries.

Time was not going to produce an hourglass and tick-tock down to a starting gun…Atoll needed to mesh his teeth into the great clock’s cogs and whirr away…

After informal and unnecessary farewells, Atoll let go of the social/personal seduction of addiction to the protection provided by the Imaginaries. He respected the viral infection he was leaving and offered a minutes silence to the remains of iniquitous extermination. ‘Blessed is the rising of the blood red Sun…’ he said. And let himself down the side into the gloop of the dirty bottom, grunting goodbyes to the head of boat security…

‘No pun intended! …’ the security guard shouted as a last gasp attempt at code dispensation, but Atoll did not take it in as he was struggling to make light of the heavy going, willing himself to remain upright, keep moving forward, and avoid becoming just another Slapstickarian…

His focus beyond the mire; his near future objective was to locate the bicycle rank and the bicycle sequestered for him, which he sort of didn’t want to do for reasons that activated trigger responses, but did want to aim for for various reasons, the most immediate being if he stopped and the dryness ramped up he could become an integral part of the canal bed, turned to stone.

A left turn.

A right turn.

A dock with laddering to the sanctuary of terra firma.

And…there he was…in the falling dark…

LOST!

Not a bicycle rank or Austrian made Parisian walkway in sight…