Excerpt 127:
Will The Real Tiny Guy Please Come Up!
Despite the fact that no one upon no one, upon no thing, wanted such outcomery, Judith was getting the hang of how it all operated. And by ‘it all’ we mean herself and all who sailed in her…
Anyone could see, who had sight of standard baselines of Normality, that along with ‘Normal’s’ auxiliary co-working collective, Normality was being twisted, bent and bemuckswankered; Judith had to adapt to shapes she’d never before considered. Her mind was occupied by forces that determined her as second class physiological software despite her being the Actual Base Host (ABH). But those forces could not penetrate the cellular protection of the tale of reality put forward by Nature itself. Being born into the contested brain gave Judith a fraction more control than the parasites who had just invaded it. From the parasites’ perspectives, of course, they were not parasites and were doing the right thing for the Whole of Greater Good (WGG) and viewed individual will as a Fuddlefancy of Smirchfullised Impertinence (FSI) and a narcisstraneous Animonstrocity (NA); a lesserness, as it were, (also see: Great Steaming Lesserness…if you’ve a mind.).
Being the first conscious entity of the host brain allowed Judith first executive thought upgranulisation emeryboarding, and premier-dibsmistress claims on the Imaginational Correlative Metanimation Command Chain Pyramid (ICMCCP). And as long as her initial thought expressions took the lead without looking back too much, and there were no constitutional objections in principle, the thoughts, imaginings, whatever they were, could pass, sometimes pending appeal, sometimes with accusations of unfairness and pleas of restraint. She took it easy, step by step. ‘Order’ being a thing her brain had not possessed (as a fully functional property) until her brain was possessed (by outside admin and augmentational integrations). Without the resources deposited by the incoming Invasive Drenched-Install (ID-I) parasites she would not have had the tools to keep the parasites in their place.
Judith spent resources on the defensive protectionism of her shared Cerebral Real Estate. She embarked doggedly on a process of blank-canvass-thinking that soon launched into spilling, spotting, splashing and spurtejections, which manifested blankety swathes of oily colour into and out of the starting blocks of potential; nurturing dribbles, smearing gobs, chasing rainbows of unrainbowlike colour with muddy streaks of terminal admixture, in zesty curves that pursued the endeavour of universal creationocity, losing and finding, throwing and catching, breathing and suffocating in the self-made maelstrom of her clinically forged rite of passage party, to which no one else was invited.
Uninvited poopaire de partay, as the French would say, rocked up with an irresistible festering ooze, parasite written all over them; diplomacy would have to hang around and see it through; take the edge of the invasiveness and soften the handcuffs.
She found herself in a bold, new, multidimensional infinite, with reservations, canvas. She ordered, through Image Ordering, and received, an earnestly real tower block, not too ostentatious but with the rolled-up-sleeves of tempered temerity.
She placed herself eponymously in the Judith Suite, a mere floor below the roof where the Operations Room and Flying Club (ORFC) of the shift-working chopper-pilots had their nest from which they maintained a constant roof-top emergency escape option for Judith alone (plus as many pilots as could be accommodated). Standing to attention in almost total readiness. Bending over only to tie their bootstraps; remedying the long hours of boredom by doing nothing more than twiddling their moustachios with fiendish dexterity. And mad-eyed listening for the signal to evacuate the gun-controlled starting blocks of rapid reaction.
Experimental electro-chemical Muzak mistified the unfittingly large foyer, which was the sole ingress to the seat of power high up in the tower. The area was Ultra Security Caged (USC); App-bound, with Algothwarting-SirVaylance Dogjaw-Legbyte Perimeter Detection/Obliteration and Techjacking-Mindshaft Alliance Procurment Readisteadiness (ASDLPDOTMAPR). The others, and when we say others we mean all others, had been assigned offices within the building by means of Stretched Credibility Administration Curveball Black-Eye Nod/Wink Facilitation Service (SCACBENWFS).
The system went underneath Judith by accommodating the parasites but then climbed up and on top of priorities Judith found herself in requirement of.
These ‘offices’ were constructed to ‘see through’ and ‘hear all’ and as compromising as that was, those trying to take control had to play the game if they wanted to feature in the Onboard Magazine as opposed to the Overboard Newsletter. Everything about the ‘office space’ provided for them was calculated, and added up to an overwhelming advantage to Judith. Judith made herself believe wholly and fully that she was the boss, with daily, sometimes hourly, meditations and affirmations, and as long has she held on to that belief she would remain in control. A defensive Her told herself that she had not got a prayer while an offensive Her prayed! If her glass was half full and she didn’t want to spill any, but if her glass was half empty, spilling emptiness everywhere would be a sign of confidence in her own belief…
A Godstrandian devotee and guru once said that, as Otherness approaches it begins to look the same; prick it and it will bleed. Stamp its foreign passport and matter-of-factness dribbles out its very human poo hole… And yet, its property of alienness persists, as a handle by which to pick it up and throw it out over to the ‘Otherness’ side of one’s harm-barrier.
As the transitional briefings led them from Parasite to Peer by brutesynchforcing itself and the others into parallel parking, hit and run, pitstop, assimilification; in the Otherworld; in the grog of meanwhilesque occurrences…
The ambitions of Una to rise and take control were driven by her need to connect to Jeff and the revivalist movement. While Sybil’s drive to rise to the top; to take the buttons and levers and switch them all off; retire them for good in the off position, was to destroy everything…Why?…Because it was the right thing to do…through her cracked and frosted glasses of perception, she had no argument against the world that agreed fully with her outlook. But everyone else was fair game.
Judith had no face-to-face with the Sybil entity or the Una outfit, but their proxies pushed their way into a thirst quenching-cum-ambush moment at the central water cooler where they pleaded with an unprepared and scriptless Judith for some control of their own so they could sort out the mess in the basement. Judith stopped short of saying, ‘What Basement!?’ But she came close.
Una and Sybil (in proxy) explained that a botinfestation had taken full control downstairs and locked out any interference-friendly-pushback. They had the run of the seven below ground floors and were, by all accounts and rumours, and made up stories, running amok among the shadows of the depths.
‘At least go down there, Judith, and investigate, will you, please?’ said Una’s rep, overactingly. ‘Will you, at least send someone with the resources to retake the grassy knoll before the flaring sparks of the underfloors reaches up and echoes its hellish madness?’
‘The actions of the killbots below will be a powder keg with enough oomph to launch this edifice to its graveyard on the moon.’
Had she swallowed the trap?
On pondering this Judith incidentally conceptualised a Grave Moon, or Moongrave, an Earth satellite half moon size (but not shape) where the dead of Earth are buried…facilitating many eagerly humane requirements. Her meanderful pondering grew into insistent narrative fulfilment, wasting a lot neural space and energy… Making Judith realise she was being wrong-footed; on her on her back foot just when she needed to put her best foot forward ASAP, but undecided between her two perambulatory stalwarts she did a sliding tackle…which landed in the splits. Which metaphor invited and encouraged the metaphorical conclusion she’d shot herself in the crotch…missing her feet completely.
‘I will…no, I will,’ she proclaimed, stop-gapping, slowboating, with a thinly veiled lie that once lubricated by the viscosity of examination would develop into a full blown procrasterash of finger-pointy, eye-rolly blowbacking. Why is the Truth so elusive when it could manifest the heaviest burden of apt solutions?
Flatten the lie-crinkles with an iron of Truth.
Why Una and Sybil and why now?
Was it because of the basement situation Una and Sybil had joined forces and created a Board of Intimidation (BI) to snipe at Judith, on the very floor, one storey down from Judith’s very floor? Maybe the two of them had invented the underground scenario as a rabbit hole for Judith to expand into. Created it as a driver for their power-grab alliance?
Who knew? Yes…who did know? If anyone knew, we all know who knew…
Judith needed help. She waved, strandedly, at passing vessels. She fired flares that fizzed unseen, and put messages, lyrically, in bottles. But nothing….
Then, in the distance, something… She couldn’t make it out at first, but then she felt the wind direction coming from a different temperature zone; thawing darkness into light. A way forward gaped invitingly, a riptide thrashing its foamy way towards an ass-kicking trade-wind; an Ocean Drive freeway away from the hum-drum conundrum of the doldrums… Was That…? Is that? It looks like a…she made out, with her eyes, a ’T’ and what looked like a ‘G’…
It can’t be and yet it must be…even if it can’t, it must…even if it mustn’t it must!
Tiny Guy appeared…in silhouette, at first, and then as he hove in and bore aside, upping the stern, the silhouette frustratingly prevailed and Judith realised the cavalry were not autonomous. It was a two-way rescue, they needed colouring in as much as any colouring book.
Unsilhouetting Tiny Guy became her priority. Dragging the silhouette aboard decrying its persistence in cardboard form. Judith meditated; self-affirmated…strove to cure and mend, but all she drew from her tank of knowledge was a blank; a thankless bank of unhelpfulness…the Helpful one needed help to help her. Judith screamed for help. Help was blind to her screams…
Ideas gathered, brought forth from the forest by alarmed hollering and yodelhowls of assistance-yearning. Ideas slapped and swung at the air; they’d genius in their disturbance of their surroundings that collected in pockets of suggestivity…but no more.
Interrupting her meditation on one level, Judith entered a meditation on another level and indulged in some Stockholm Munchausing…As a ploy, she mooched, feigning disinterest…along the streets and up and across the alleyways of Munchausville… Words and phrases conducted in the air by leaky communications; quanta-enveloped pigeonparcels, painted a tapestry of graffiti on the walls and hoardings of the multi Stockholm Munchaus domain. There’d been talk, too, of an agent of the Stockholm Munchaus Franchise Chain Authority (SMFCA) doing the rounds. The way the talk expressed the concept of ‘doing the rounds’ had ‘Tiny Guy’ written all over it… So all she had to do was wait for a faux-official visit from the Man. Then…The Tiny guy incident…
and then…
The invitation to come parlay with Judith in her inner sanctum and central business district, was written on a coaster for the Inspector to read, in the hope the missive would penetrate into the conscious decision making realm of Tiny Guy and his organisation.
Tiny Guy needed access to the world of Nether Russet via the nuclear protection cavern and Judith needed Tiny Guy’s expertise and guidance on how to remain in charge of her own commercially operated social cerebral real estate braingovernment. She also needed an ending that was as good as it could get for as many as possible, even if at the end a sequel was needed to elaborate on what had gone down. She believed that leaving this world a better place would lead to another world that didn’t need to be left in a better place.
Judith was infected by confused thinking. Too many choices vied for her attention. Tiny Guy had the stout guruness to gingerly wind her stepping stones away from the fanciful avenues and redundant alleyways flooded with misfiring thoughts.
Tiny Guy’s silhouette was a dead-end with a secret passage that begged to be located; not by anyone, by Judith. Tiny Guy put all his baskets in Judith’s online basket shop. While Judith, without having to speak, leaked the address of her canvass. She buried the silhouette at sea and rang down to the receptioneer security den and asked them to allow Tiny Guy through…
‘Can I confirm: We should let Tiny Guy in?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let him up?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Okay, will do…and what if it is one of his aliases?’
‘Only the genuine original.’
The receptioneer imagined Tiny Guy going through a repertoire of dodgy aliases before settling on his one true identity. But when Tiny Guy rolled past he did it with dignity and fortitude as the one and only, and an inspiration to all.
Judith’s face and Tiny Guy’s face met for the first time. They had an age-old and futures past recognition prolambulation exfinement episode. And it was with a shared ‘what-the-fuckness’ that they sucked on each others peace vape, sitting crosslegged like Turks, knowing they were in for a satisfyingly smooth ride all the way to the baggage claim carousel.
