Excerpt 138:
Godstranded
Time sped around…interspersing inter-dimensionally with extrasupersubvariance, in an intercranially spanning fashion, as often it did, on perceptive inoperable nanomangroves (mangroshreds); time-slender, time-meagre, time-bare; no time indeed for first night nerves. Atoll had to regurgitate last night’s Anxiety and chew on that for a pertinent quasi-biological-human response as the evening wore out… The curtain rose, separating in one deep-sea-dive of parting waves, revealing the auditorium that was more or less semi-full with dull and dampened expressionary responses forming a flood of unexpectant faces, that, although they had nothing behind the eyes, nevertheless expressed a piercing eyeball-horror in gargantuan doses with abundant measure, electrifying the seabed from amongst the coral reef of seating, as metaphorphmosis would have it. Atoll, briefly diverted by the idea that loneliness can be experienced even in the most socially populated evil-ass-eye-gaping arenas, gathered himself up like a flowing frock that had no concept of inanimate, non-billowing… He laughed, as he had taught himself to do, in external warning like the growl of a dog. He reassured himself with a delicate rub of his belly. The race between pulling himself together and falling apart was neck and neck.
The moment Godstrand appeared, he’d thought, endlessly, would be noble, fraught and rousing…he hadn’t expected a spotlight, stage front, puddle of urine scenario. But he was so beatifically agape by the presence of greatness that the play’s introduction took a rabid turn as far as Atoll’s readiness turning into browniness was concerned…
Enter stage left (Atoll’s right)…an obvious look-a-like. It was Godstrand, played by the less familiar and less well-known Goodmanson, who detected in the heat of the moment, Atoll would not be fooled however much he wanted to be; however much he tried to fool himself. Mary Goodmanson would have to planback and redeploy; retreat and advance in a fandango of attack and counter attack. She would have to de-program Atoll’s ingrained Silo of Absolute-Dutibound-Necessity (SADN) to only allow only (x2) Godstrand through. She had memorised all the scripts that would ever be needed; spent months in memory castles and palaces…lost, finding her future-self, in the wilderness-gracing sand-dunes.
‘If you are not Godstrand, you ain’t getting in,’ Atoll said, a long an oft practiced challenge that once heard in the fleshiness of actionability wobbled before waning and wisening on the branch. A rocket fired so feebly it could not fully exit the launcher.
There was a collective, surround sound hush… Were they all asleep? Atoll didn’t dare look, scared at what his vision might say.
‘You see,’ Goodmanson said, ‘There is no Godstrand. There never was. He was my invention, a way of dealing with the misogyny (+) and gender inequality (+) of the time. Of course, times have changed, so you can drop the pluses, but nothing much has really changed, predictably.’
‘Are you getting all of this,’ Atoll projected out into the stiflingly inanimate cold-silence of the auditorium. He didn’t understand what she was saying but he did sense that the world needed to hear it.
‘I am, you see, the closest anyone could ever be to the great Marcus Godstrand. I am Godstrand by proxy,’ Mary said, not boasting, just straightening the record, ’so you’ll let me through, won’t you, because your purpose is to do so. Albeit that it goes against every fibre of your operating system.’
‘I don’t have an operating system, I am not a machine…and…What are you saying? Godstrand is imaginary?’
‘Godstrand is. I am not. He is a product of my imagination. An excaped figment.’
‘Ex…caped?’
‘Rocky road,’ she said, knowing Atoll knew she meant code.
‘Aha…’
Everything hinged on Godstrand…a Godstrandless environment would lead to a whole world of societal hingelessness…an evolutionary backslide down the hill of life on the human backside to the bottom.
‘We are in anomalous territory,’ she said, meaning that although he was authorised to let a concept she had invented through the portal he was guardian of, she herself would have to gain unauthorised entry or remain for ever unentered…it was the way of the world; the very reason she invented Godstrand… Her idea could pass through the eye of a needle but the governing algorithms designated her as a bowel movement no anus could stretch to allow passing.
(Anomalous Territory, also see: Godstrand’s opus: The Construction of a Subliminal Universe… ‘…we were sent here within the simulated-realitysphere construct and are better suited to the place we came from, wherever that is, having not yet evolved, perhaps never doing so, Sapiens no, discomfortarians, yes.’)
Atoll, for his part in the pre-portal fund-a-mental-play, could not grasp the concept of a woman being the Mastermind behind the rise and fall of Humanity, let alone the next (and not yet certain) step: the final fallbackless rise and permanent castleking residency. He suspected his stance, which seemed unreasonable when questioned, had been superimposed upon him by those requiring him to balance on such a plinth for their own nefarious fadfashion reasonings. And here he was making excuses for positions he had all but deserted. He wished he’d catch up with himself. And might have communicated that in some way to the Godstrand who was not Godstrand, but didn’t.
‘It is only your programming…the stumbling block is what you believe. We need to hack your belief system. You have latent misogyny,’ Mary said, and with an aside that Atoll could not decipher, because he was on stage, and he was code-lite, she said, ‘Because I was the one who installed it.’
What Atoll’s system believed was pretty solid so it was lucky Goodmanson had code, not just code but system-appliant, premium, coded-code. The child she bore and grew in a lab to suit her megalomaniacal yearnings had become her own damage limitation project, not obsessively so, but nevertheless containing a self-bolstering modicum of mitigation vis-a-vis mumcrime…
The admixture of Goodmanson’s Godstrandian post-programming overscribble and Atoll’s disaffection with his own lot in life simmered. Atoll had been stewing for too long…what seemed like outside attacks for most of his orchestrated life, were, in fact, friendly-fire; the misplosion of death-based weaponry that, once he started to take-notice of, out of boredom or curiosity; perspicating the whizzes between the bangs, he came to visualise as a pistol fired at his face with a flag unfurling from its barrel; a detailed manual-flag of how if he’d been left to natural fate rather than having perception interposed and succubated upon him, he would be flourishing instead of being flushed. Something took over, nothing his programming had installed. His survival system said, ‘watch this space’, and he did; through a crack in the wall that was holding in his misconceptions, thoroughly believing the lies about his own relationship with reality.
Goodmanson persisted as Godstrand, despite the Truth being universally indicative of the contrary… Atoll for his part, allowed himself to immerse in the drying cement of Belief that what he knew to be true was false and what he knew to be false was false (+) bordering on Truth, wearing Truth’s underpants, standing on the table of Truth and shouting away in home Truths and half-truths cobbled into whole and nothing-but-the-truths…and nothing-but-the-truths (+).
‘Okay then,’ Atoll told Goodmanson.
‘Okay? What do you…you mean you’ll grant an access feature. That will mean imagination that unsuppressed from the mainmind influencing cataphariousness…a skip away from the cosy nest of their shinanicanery…Atoll…you beautiful freak.’
‘Not beautiful. Not a freak. Just a human doing human things…’
‘Okay, agreed!’
She didn’t have to agree so readily. She’d given him a beautiful freak tag; a title he relished. A title which allowed him, in is preternatural modesty, to allow her to wrench it back and discard it like it was trivially trifle or trifley trivial. These thoughts were implanted distraction to prevent him remembering that Goodmanson was his mother; the terrible mother who bore him entirely for experimental purposes as a child of scientific endeavour. Distraction isn’t a game, but the game is distraction…traction removed. Atoll felt like he was firing wildly at a target that was on his own back…it was just target practice…but it did have a roulette element within its gift…
Talk of the portal…the otherwise stirred… preparations for the lifying of blinds and the shaping of destinies. Atticus was about to put the kettle on, but the kettle had precious cargo that steam would ruin. Atticus stirred from dreams sandwiched between snoring that rattled the window panes. He woke up with the light and felt pre-shrunk, because he was indeed pre-shrunk, ready for the return of the great Marcus Godstrand, architect of societal fabric, old man of the village of civic pride, captain of the vessel of the very existence of man, woman and childkinds…nudge, nudge…wink, wink…(code).
Even Atticus didn’t know at first, he would come to, but only as he receded into a space that could not provide the communication a prospective whistleblower might require to spill the gut-buckets on the floor of the news-mills.
Judith was sensitive to a change in Atticus…was it Atoll returning? That was Atticus’s only purpose for being.
No, no, it was the great Marcus Godstrand returning to save Humanity from…from what? really at pared down boiled down bargain-basement reasonware: from the chain of events initiated by Godstrand himself, with the help of his side-kick partner the evil Mary Goodmanson.
Madness permeated the ambience, madambiently. The ejector seat button had been pulled and pushed the gap between nothingness and thrustfulness promised shock. Physics acting out its unfathomable role… And then delivered.
Apparently Atticus said, ‘Atticus is dead, long live the new tenant of his corporeality.’
And…
Pause…
And…
More pause…
A trickle…that had some oomph somewhere upstream waiting to gush-up floodstyle…
‘Marcus Godstrand!’ Atticus said, ‘Welcome to meet you all. I am not, repeat not, ever going to apologise. Let’s just throw that out there as a preamble before we get down to write chapter one: the great comeback… Everyone on board?’
Nominally, slightly shocked, the collective emitted an all pervasive ‘yes’ response. A non-committal tone that spoke of unpreparedness rather than rejection.
Going…going…gone…
‘Good! Splendid! Now, let’s resurrect Humanity!’
