Chapter Twenty-Six

Arrested Development

Atoll needed help to enter the Vistamatic Trudisplay to extract Jeff and return him via the Botface Franchise system, to be briefed at UKGBHQ, and then planted at the retail unit topside, ready for the release of Sybil and her re-quarantining. On the face of it it seemed simple, but behind the face, complexities played chess with Rubik’s cubes in a village hall on a paste-table that had no gravity…

Requiring sagacity only the elderwise could provide, Atoll had gravitated towards Tiny Guy’s lair, not knowing what to expect. Tiny Guy had left the lair with a giant’s bold ambition, but returned as a meagre-fleshed skin-sack of bones and bio-incredulous visceralia and other gooey stuff that defied labelling.

It couldn’t be…and yet it was. The rejuvenation of Tiny Guy’s physicality was step-back impressive; basking in great light and only maybe holding hands with a hint of dark suspicion. Atoll knew better than to invest too much in dwelling on the facts, so inwardly scribbled in his mental notepad for future subsequence: dark suspicion hint flavours, drum-rolling-cyber-coaster, symbolic-cypher-ash, cymbal-tish. Tishety, tish, tish, tishety. Whose profundity when read at a distance would dismiss itself as tosh.

‘You’re back,’ Atoll said, finally, to Tiny Guy, who was cased in faux perspex, mystic, wonderful…juggling facades to match any potential threat or creep towards threat-like behaviour.

‘Indeed I am…Atoll…I grew…expanded…I see further and wider than… Like I now know we are elements of the same act…we dwell in a non actual actuality. I uncovered who we really are…albeit a way away from who we really, really might be… and outside our understanding of the really, really, really, us that I believe is out there strutting about with high carriage and sure feet… The very nature of our quasi-existence is dam-looped…I had some metaphor about spatulas, but lost it in a flurry of something else. I had to accept…enacting training sets in program malls and damning algorithmicalisation is our lot…hard work rewarded by hard luck. The truth and meaning we consume is plasticated pararepresentation…a mere look-a-like… They are funnelling us into a tunnel, along the programpath toward luxlinked fate-written illumination… Alas, there is only dark at the end of our tunnel… The monsters lurking have gone ahead to await your arrival…

‘Puhfhfh,’ Atoll said, an emission that even he needed to examine. From insult acorns come oak tree assaults. 

‘As the scattered puzzle pieces are slotted in and the picture emerges, the outcome…which is not great…is….that you…your role… I am just…it’s no good, Atoll, I am sorry… You are Botface’s Head…’

Atoll slammed the door to the Darkroom and sat down in the necessarily sturdy chair; anger poise lamp focussed; the business end of incoming unpalatables surging through every gap in his resistance… Viktor had told him to avoid and repel the most evil player in this universe: Botface the Terrible… Viktor had told him, with rare intensity, to do everything he possibly could to prevent the marriage of Botface’s Head to Botface’s Torso; the creation of a biomechanical super lunatic earth-stalking murdergod, an omniexistential menace of peril…

Realisation cartwheeled over the barricades and slapped Atoll upside the disturbing presence of Botface’s Head: a newcomer to the Atoll scene-field, brimming with unsavoury ambition. Terrible superpower had switched a lever somewhere inside Atoll; deep hatred of the coming of self-motivated evil clashed with the chemicals of delight and egomaniacal delusions of superiority…he could be great one day, really great, ‘Great’ great…as long has he could shoehorn out ridiculous accusations (however valid) of nastiness…filter out swarms of objections…syphon off the canker; dress the bedevilment in frills and laces, dab its furrowed brow with a spittle-moistened handkerchief…or loiter in blind alleys turning blind eyes; first, see no harm…register no evil…feel no shame…

Atoll’s whole world had just turned on Botface’s Head. Had he somehow become part of the operational mechanics and logistical global positioning of next-gen-tech’s best impersonation of an auto-satan?… He imagined his clocks zeroing and his own personal time being restarted…at everyone else’s expense.

‘I don’t know where to begin entering the Vistamatic world of Trudisplay dynamics…can you—’

‘You cannot avoid your fate…you might qualify for mitigation. But don’t ask me for specifics on that…it’s too long-shotty…’

Was he to go through the motions of the set narrative and wait for it to change? He felt like sitting down, clasping his head in his hands and waiting for Death to come and give birth to the Mr. Armageddon version of himself.

‘Can you help me?’

‘What, no, what with? Evolving into a figure eviler than imaginable…or entering the Trudisplay to act out a narrative that is fizzling out anyway?’

‘Both?’

‘I’ll do my best, but you have to realise that I am just as much of a hopeless victim as you are…’

There was also this pool of thought that reflected the concept that the coming monster was the Devil Atoll knew but could not place from where. A vague background feeling seemed to suggest that even manufactured justification can be thrown into the blender to create a mixed up Truth that could fit all scenarios however misshapen.

But Atoll was well-seasoned at being made to see the world through spectacles of delusion…his mind had been sat on and spat out with irresistible coercion from many a quarter (not just four) and he could intuit incoming adverse conditions.

He was pedalling fullsteamatsea, banging his cranial casing on the loop of illusion…what was following from the steps ahead would never ever possibly be an elaborate trap to lure him into proximity with the torso and meld head to body, now could it?

‘Go through the motions…let the impetus of evil catch up with you and explain itself from its perspective not from the historical judgment of surface logic, before you conclude the worst.’

‘You mean…there could be a place for good evil in the world?’

It mast have been a stupid question because Atoll’s appreciation of awareness waned into scant acknowledgment of pervading happenstance: he fainted.

The blank space he woke facing slowly filled with the County Court steps; Dave, and half a dozen made up people seeking tailored measurement from the scales of justice, all waiting Kafkaesquely for the court to open. Dave was talking to the refurbished part of himself that consisted of Kirk, when the corner of one of his eyes latched on to a personification of familiarity; a person of excitable interest. Dave pretended he was talking to Una, but Kirk wanted to make himself known to Atoll and Atoll felt compelled to acknowledge a long lost friend from back in the Munchaus days.

‘Silence is golden…’

‘Gold is heavy and shiny…’

‘Shine on, you diamond set in crazy gold plunder…’

Dave was confused, but it was an old routine, utilising tonal expression from an Asiatic tongue to impart coded information (for translated interpretations see: Cypher Cracks and Crevices and How Not to Blunder into Fissures in the Universal Code Crevasse, published by, Operationally Dormant & Down the Pub Press.)

‘Code buffer?’

‘Code buffer at the Cypher Station…’

Then silence followed and Dave assumed they were decoding and up-cyphering…creating their own dual para-Munchausian faux-hinterworld…and let them get on with it. Then there was a grumbling exchange of fart noises that stank of nothing but code…

And, as things is…things does…within the Usuality Fate-Quotient Allowance Sphere (UFQAS)…

Time swept up the steps and began unbolting the Greco-Roman doors, a ceremony that took a full ten minutes; signalled by a ‘Thousand Trumpets’ played by four trumpeteers and a ghetto blaster style cassette player.

There was a deadlull that Atoll filled, metaphorically, by laying a blanket on the ground and reminiscing about the halcyon days of picnicking, and the stoicism of picnicking in adversity, that he’d collected from various TV and movie depictions… A perfect spot in space and time offered itself up for Atoll to snatch an ad hoc stroll around the alfresco Park of Remembrance. A snatched coffee pot at the Speakeasy of forgotten whispers that appeared by the boating lake during certain light fall. Atoll found himself in varying degrees of meditation around every bush and fence…he dissolved slowly into the appearance of a dark room, that morphed into the Darkroom, accompanied by gathering units of salving neuro-nutrition. Atoll saw behind the edited recollections, in which some force, it couldn’t be Tiny Guy, had left blank the elucidation of a series of experiential happenings; an elaborately constructed lack of memory… Then Truth of the recent occurrences, overtly slipping off the covert, took the stand; delineating acts of behaviour and sketching scenes and scenarios that proved Atoll had led the posse surrounding Butch Cassidy and David Cassidy (no relation). A spaghetti-like linear Western filmic trope trail, dug from the shallow sod of buried memory…telling how Atoll had travelled through a whole world of ass-pain to get to that point: saddle-induced haemorrhoids, saddle-induced sores…saddle-induced crotch-rot, saddle-inflammation-disorder, shakey-butt-saddle syndrome…he never wanted anything to do with bicycles again…

Atoll was on the hailer screaming at the pair, but David had abandoned himself to song…rolling one tune into another (covers and all); showcasing, throatboating, maybe even recording an album… Atoll’d called for a louder hailer. There was a stand-off, but as there was a ‘no weapons of violence’ rule, an amicable conclusion eventually ensued. They all left the vista tech movie play world of Vistamatic Trudisplay and assembled on the courthouse steps.

The courthouse, a front for the Botface’s Torso’s portal-cum-jail, had a Wait-for-Ages policy. There was time for self-examination and developing a rugged sense of purpose that could take a primed Atoll through Botface’s Torso’s confinement bars of perception back into the subterranean UKGBHQ and some solid mission progression.

Self-examination went a little too far and conjured up some latent Darkroom micro-assessment of cerebro-dynamics. These cerebro-dynamics contained theoretical conclusions detailing predicted usurping integration by Viktor within Tiny Guy. All of which meant, if true: Tiny Viktor Guy was the new Tiny Guy in town.

Tiny Guy, now probably Tiny Viktor Guy, had supplied Atoll with authorisation by means of a Front-of-all-Queues pass in exchange for leaving Dave so Viktor could examine Kirk’s workings.

As Atoll passed the queueing Dave he heard Kirk say: ‘Kelvin reports low in Iowa this eve…’ 

As Atoll pass-showed his way to next in line he was burdened by the indecipherable words: ‘Iowa’…’Kelvin’…’Eve’. Once directed into the law enforcement section, he filled in a chit by way of application into a ballot seeking access to the attention of the chief executive duty sheriff. Luck always had a part to play.

Kirk’s wordcode-chain persisted under a tarp of mystified distraction: ‘Eve’…’Iowa’…’Kelvin’… He entered the cell complex and requested the release of Jeff into his custody. Then Atoll used mind-divining techniques to establish the best area to increase the chance of portalisation traction into the adjoining mindsphere. 

The third, fourth, and fifth deputy sheriffs up the chain were all confused, but maintained even keels, convincing themselves that directional procedure was being observed; the manual was being swallowed line by line and ultimately the grooves between the ridges of the game of fate were being slotted into stylusly.

Jeff seemed surprised to see Atoll, kept asking after Botface’s Torso and Dave (out of regard to Una)… 

Jeff was tired after his over-exertion as Butch Cassidy, which now formed an approaching weather front of regret, but news of Una gave him a caffeine like buzz and skip to bounce off walls.

‘I can take you to Una. Trust me, Jeff, and we’ll be crypto.’

Atoll’s what three words were burrowing into the flesh of his mind: ‘kelvin’…’eve’…’Iowa’. 

The sheriff’s ninth deputy opened Jeff’s cell and ushered Atoll in. Jeff was going for the door but Atoll interjected a block to his trajectory….and asked the deputy to lock the door and go back swatting up for his ambitious escape into a TV quiz career.

‘You need to keep it together and know if you stick with me a reunion with Una will be a reality.

Atoll’s kitten-purring-code-processing abruptly yielded ground to the ‘big cat from nowhere’ who’s job it was to pounce on the twiglets of cypher reassembly and fashion results into something presentable: ‘kelvin reports low in Iowa this eve,’ meant: it is a trap! What was a trap eluded Atoll through big cat and kitten purr. Added data on the conundrum came after transferral to UKGBHQ. The Commander, bypassing salutations, asserted herself, ‘Atoll Goodmanson, you are under arrest…for the aggravated non-return of government property…abandoning materiel in enemy territory, knowingly, with super-aggravated malice-most-likely,’ the Commander said, zip-tying Atoll’s wrists, ‘treason,’ she added, but it seemed more out of raging pique than legal authenticity.

‘I need to get Jeff to the golf shop…it is Viktor’s plan,’ Atoll, objected…panic pressing down hard on the brake and accelerator at the same time…before composure waved them into a lay-by.

‘Viktor is updating the mission contingency alternatives…he is busy and must not be disturbed,’ she said, relating to the synthetic Viktor look-a-like dummy, sans beak, perched at the table, as though it was the real Viktor. Fooling no one on the surface, but deep in their psychology, plenty of fooling was going on.

The Commander scanned Atoll for signs of guilt, or any other incriminating emotional overspill; to her this was her story and Atoll was a bit-part player, and one who was causing her low patience to breed blemishes of high-frantics…but as Atoll steered his facial expressions and bodily tensions through the straits of Scylla and Charybdis with minimal tells, she had to make some shit up…or risk admitting some form of pre-arrest over-enthusiasm that wouldn’t look good on paper…

The Commander had been under great pressure of late, forcing her descent into full submariner, periscope up, navy gravy stains on her dress uniform. She was operating in a world of God-willed-fate that had imposed abandonment upon her. She was lodged somewhere in the tubes of a disorientation chamber. Lost in layers of frustration. Pumping energy out into a void made infinite and vindictive by paranoia and its secret society of insidious agents. She adopted a position of gratitude and thankfulness that seemed to adequately mask all meaningful negativity.

The Tannoy broadcast audio-looped scenarios from a, never to be publicly broadcast, AI documentary about life inside a nuclear submarine during live-round-dead-seamen manoeuvres in the North Atlantic. The Commander imparted frequent orders to her imaginary crew. To all present it was a given that she had succumbed to a dose of the Queegs.

‘You are going nowhere, son,’ the Commander crankily barked at Atoll, ‘Jeff can handle what’s coming to him,’ she said, unable to refrain from sounding unnecessarily sinister.

Atoll thought differently, he would need to be there to steer Jeff and Una so they could dock with each other and form the basis for a deception that was strong enough to misdirect Sybil and her attendant systems.

The Commander covered Atoll with her hand-held mind-retardant gun so he could not remember anything, not even who he was, or what he was doing there…all thought formed enough to know it had no purchase and went no further…he felt frustration like it was a riptide far out to sea with grave watery intentions… The Commander suspected his outward expression of silent frustration was evidence of large scale wrong doing and proof of her righteousness within the scheme of her wildly out-of-control reconstruction of reality.

Jeff arrived after his fast-breaking with minimal portions of naval sustenance. ‘Jeff,’ said the Commander, ‘we are surfacing off the coast of the Olde Golfe Shoppe, as was, and you must be ready to alight and seek contact with our agents to complete your mission.’

Jeff was beckoned by the onward journey’s promise; he was already shipping scenarios of reunion with Una to a depot in his Theatre of Outcome. The Commander’s orders  played superfluously over the top.

A beeping beeped with familiarity and he looked up through reverse Stockholm syndrome spectacles: it was his ex-kidnapee, Botface’s Torso…Jeff was not fluent in full beeping language but he could convert primary modules of semi-beep speak. Botface’s Torso made it known to Jeff that he wanted to exit UKGBHQ because, in his own semibeeps, she’d, meaning the Commander’d, lost it…her marbles, among other things.

Jeff was an old hand at next-gen-tech torso theft and was judging all potentialities, ‘if I am going it alone, I want the Borface’s Torso with me.’

‘Botface’s Torso is not leaving this room,’ the Commander insisted. And physically she got what she wanted, but Jeff still had a dormant copy of Botface’s Torso, so all Botface’s Torso had to do was shutdown in the Torso and reopen in Jeff’s consciousness… Jeff marvelled at his own brilliance in the imaginary meeting with Una where she asks him with rising panic where Botface’s Torso was and he answers in the voice of Botface’s Torso himself.

The Commander turned to Jeff, ‘Jeffery, relax, recuperate…we’ll debrief thoroughly before the thorough final departing brief and you’ll be on your way…I admire your enthusiasm against the odds, my child… Have you tried the refectory yet? I’ve heard the hardtack described in terms of Michelin quality…’