Excerpt 123:
Atticus Shrugged
Commander Bott’s whole was somewhat of an intellectually brute-forced conglomerate. Her base knowledge was way outside the normal human data-package allowance, but it kept to itself, maintaining a non-executive role unless she required it, requested it and wrenched it from its moorings. It was a solid arrangement as far as her sensibilities, etcetera, went. Everything, it seemed, had worked out for the best despite the rocky route she’d taken as a diversion from the neuro-typical middle-lane-trudgery of a standard life-episode; at least, up until the point when the new arrangement made itself apparent.
The ex-Killbot Bots, that’d been posing as interactive agents under the duetted Mabel and Frank combo, were now pretending to be under the Commander’s command, which she instinctively new was poppycock. They possessed some kind of corresponding brain map that reconstructed and examined every single neuronal impulse. They had a working mindshare model of the Commander and used it to position themselves under her command…but under her command in a shared pretence that was designed to fool observers that they were not really in command… They were, however, very much in command and waiting for the moment to strike on behalf of their real owner operators who kept the cloud storage and data generation resources deep and protected inside the admin bot that formed the basis for Commander Bott’s conscious management platform. The ex-killbot units had an inside presence; Commander Bott was not alone.
Commander Bott had, in the guise of an order, asked Judith to put forward a Next Action Proposal (NAP) so they could synchronise intent and manage any maculous manipulations or Dick Dastardly directives that needed actioning.
‘I was…think…’ Commander Bott noticed Judith trailing off; her focus pulling a depth of field on Atticus. Atticus had almost willingly become a shell of a person; an empty pistachio, over the last few weeks, drifting away into fuzzy-edged silhouette; a state of chronic indeterminacy. But now he seemed to be unmoding out of stand-by… For starters he was winking at everyone who caught his eye. And sniffing his fingers intermittently. Code heavy, cypher saturated, mind in transit: a gaping, moist weekend exploring Insinuation City…
‘Is that a sign?’
‘It’s a system intent warning, most likely. It’s more than a system check… We’ve had false alarms before…but this is another level.’
‘We’d better respond…what’s the procedure?’
‘There’s codes and questions and coded questions…it is involved. I am not getting that it’s a threshold event, yet. It’s not a great time…I need to get on with the NAP you requested.’
‘We’ll make time.’
‘Okay… Sit him down!’
‘Why?’
‘He might fall over…’
‘Atticus, Atticus, Atticus, Atticus, Atticus, Atticus, Atticus, Atticus, Atticus, Atticus, Atticus, Atticus,’ Judith said, trying not to sound too repetitive, not even directing her words at Atticus himself, more of a generally sprinkled wordpulse. But it seemed to work…
‘Atoll is rising…the resurrection is near…123…321. Do I have mission green to enter the threshold? ABC…CBA,’ Atticus said, spoon feeding, leaving his trance-like mortification behind him and speaking like he’d never been anything but compos mentis, ‘The lights are on and the whole family are home…reunited.’
‘Whole family…that means they got the triple crown…Goodmanson and Godstrand.’
‘Triple, who is the third member, Atoll?’
‘No, not Atoll…they were said to have created a third person who saw over them like a spirit except scientifically created; a mechanical spirit… What they call the Minima Personum. Existing in a dual form connecting them both with interquantumary intertwination encryptulation. Some say it was a daemonum emissio event.’
‘Shit!’
‘I know…’
‘Is that Latin?’
‘certissime.’
‘Is that Latin?’
‘Yes.’
‘The next problem is the mission. You know the Mission that we lived for and then dropped in the face of the scourge of duplicitously overwhelming logic? We need to rehash it and give Atticus the impression everything is as ever it was, as if it ever was. He needs to deal with Atoll and Atoll needs to deal with Goodmanson and Godstrand and that chain does not need weakening with a sense of abandonment and betrayal that would override the smooth progression of unfolding actions.’
‘We resurrect the original mission?’
‘Welcome aboard… Correct.’
Atticus stands up, ‘Anyone fancy a curry?’
No one did, but everyone said they did, because Atticus had just become imperatively attentionworthy.
Slow fade…
dark screen.
Snap into:
An apparently unconnected state of play was now connected in many ways; increasingly gravitating towards a crazy-close interproximity to the main narrative. Draco needed people around him. The problem was, he only needed their existence to persist until they were in a position suitable for him to destroy them in creative and entertaining ways. Without people he had no reason for being. They ‘wrote the script’. To endure his cussable lifestance attitude Draco’s own cognitive dissonance needed to keep it from being a burden to him. He kept tripping himself up logically and needed to wear intellectual shin and elbow pads and modern-life adapted chainmail…that bore insignias of virtuous innocence…his colourful underpanting staving off his potential shame-floods and his exposed skin was layered with guilt protective varnish, plus other metaphorical creams and unctions…
Draco’s virtue reserves tank (VRT) was kept topped up (TU) by his virtual virtue (VV) metaphorical moccasins (MM) as they skipped lightly (with light perception), unable to detect the movie-prop stuffed-elephant giant chew-toy that he’d laid to rest beneath a sheet of tarpaulin layered over by astroturf; he could walk the mound and barely detect a whisper from the swirling air disrupted by the impudence of dissipating thought energy with studied and stitched metaphoricality.
Draco climbed up on the mound, paused, and then in the process of climbing down morphed filmically into another person. A person we shall call Tiny Guy, for a number of obscure reasons…(but probably played by the same actor.)
Tiny Guy roamed the places he was able to access within the Stockholm Munchaus complex string. And eventually he found what he was looking for, despite suspecting there was nothing to find; in a well run Stockholm Munchaus with a noir detective meets Californian spring break co-ed decor and accessorization. He bumped into a drinking den of all his ex-aliases, all of them out of it, all of them self medicating up to the extreme end of soothing where the hands massaging your neck have toiled over the creation of many a strangulated corpse.
Tiny Guy was shocked at the extent of the collective trauma he was witnessing, especially as he had never felt so mentally fresh and healthful himself. Doubts were creeping in and crapping. Tiny Guy took his dog for a walk, by way of procrastinatory defence, although not having a dog it was not long before he became the dog being walked by an imaginary dog walker. He was cued-up on the apron of the runway of talk ready to jet to sunnier climes, but the atmospherical reality was unable to support wings rendering him wingless. He taxied back and forth interspersing the straight runway with multi point turns until he stalled the engine and got a tow back to the terminal. ‘Were they in rebellion?’ Tiny Guy asked himself. ‘Who?’ he replied. ‘The Aliases…are they…in rebellion?’ ‘Are they in rebellion…the Aliases?’ ‘I don’t know. Do you?’ ‘No!’ ‘Then we need to find out.’ ‘I agree, we need to face the fear and fence the foe.’ ‘We need to stop at stop and go at go!’…’Ah, the stop, go, foe fencing gambit!’
A plan formulated as Tiny Guy slunked back home; his focus clamping down on the top of the Problem-Pyramid; cleaning up the crap Doubt had deposited. And making himself a cup of tea. While the tea was under construction Tiny Guy had a brainwave; and waving back he realised that the kettle was screaming for his attention: the Kettle, a kettle, any and all kettles held the answer or at least a question the answer was going to submit to unconditionally come the revolution. What revolution? The Kettle revolution, of course… After some crossing of roads and dotting of dark skies form emerged from fantasy…
Tiny Guy needed Draco to drum up a diversion in the shape of Kettle Wars (KW); to throw plastic cats at paper pigeon gatherings until the pigeons flew off leaving a gathering of plastic cats he could throw aluminium dogs into. In other words and phrases, Tiny Guy had sourced kettle manufacturers with adequate production capacity. All he had to do was convince Draco. Draco the Invincibly Unconvincible. Tiny Guy knew he could persuade Draco; malleabalate him around to the TG thought lanes and rails…he could take Draco’s self-importance by the short and curlies, while twisting the nipples of his entitled vanity and arrogant exasperations…pull his mind out of the mouth of his own alligatory/guillotinery jaws…copy and paste determined intention onto Draco’s calendar horizon. All Tiny Guy had to do was to get a mouth to Draco’s ear and bend it like space and time were having a party in the park.
Step one of the plan to de-Draco Draco:
‘If your name isn’t on the list. The list compels me not to let you pass,’ said the doorman, half door and half man.
There was just the two of them as far as current detection parameters could conclude. Set adrift in a crevice that was part doorway part street scene. The semi-authentic entrance to the establishment stood in what was clearly a mock street constructed from folkloric whisperisations. The vibe said Stockholm Munchaus chain of eatery, drinkery, hospitality venues, the subvibal streamgush chunterchattered tautologicalised prefabricated plagiarised duplication facsimile disunauthorisational activity overspend. You’d have to be on it to get it, but it was there, the feeling.
Tiny Guy had used a ghost informant; a regular, a relic from the Kev days, to access entry formalities to the place Draco’s unconscious administrative metascheming roughhousing-smoothoperating quarter-cabal met. Convening once a week for demonic dance practice and all other loose business end-tying and vein cauterising. Applications had made in multiple guises on Tiny Guy’s behalf. But there was a mix up as to what was written on the cross-fantasied, simdream, interparallel missive Tiny Guy had managed to send.
So.
Tiny Guy only had one shot at his name. He could not remember any of his aliases, it was as though they had sovereignty of the nomenclature to the point of not sharing it with Tiny Guy. The tale of his life was being wagged by the dogs of narrative manipulating interlopers.
‘Abroxyl Nanapants!’
‘No. Not—’
‘I am joking.’
Another shot? Tiny Guy imagined slipping the doorperson an imaginary diamond as a bribe and asking him to read the list so he could stop him when his name was read out. But his imagination did not stretch to a positive outcome…so a different approach was required. It takes a certain genius to break from established norms and create a ‘yes outcome’ out of a ‘no way bestiflement’ by reframing and allowing the painted landscape to drip from classic into abstract.
‘I don’t want to come in, Doorspokesman. I want your man to meet me here in five. I have opulent postulations worthy of your boss’s entirety of available consideration…capisce, capisco, capsicalomente?’
‘He’s not my boss. I am under contract—‘
‘He is your boss while you are working his door, Contractor!’
‘True,’ the man said, expressions of thought-energy becoming stronger than normal, creating a vehicle for the manifestation of actionable intent… ‘I’ll give him a shout…Stay put.’
‘No problem, will do, my dear threshold guardian…’
Leaving the door, a jar, and a note explaining tips were most welcome, on the step; and a ringing in the ears from the slamming door, the threshold regulation contractor retreated with the nonchalance of a turtle retracting her head.
The audio imprint of the door persisted…aches assembled ready to take their posts within Tiny Guys brain. Had Tiny Guy just opened a crate of unimaginable duress? Or was he just imagining it, flirting, as he was, with paranoia.
