Excerpt Seventy-Nine:
Achoiring Information
Sybil and Una cannot be subject to hyper-cessation (suspended animation) in a vacuum of aspic…can they? Well, yes, they can so there is nothing to see here. Later, after private investigations by Tiny Guy, these two co-spines of the greater narrative will be unleashed to enact their fate-ordained roles. For now the drums are rolling, building to their climactic, unexpected, yet inevitable, re-entry into the system.
Tiny Guy, as mentioned, had been investigating the under-happenings surrounding the aftermath of the massive over-bombing of the Japanese island mainland during the historical continuation of Narcissistic Alpha-Male Induced War.
In the beginning he knew nothing, next to nothing’s cousin and nothing with-a-hat-and-sunglasses-on, of the diabolical atomic lunacy; he’d assumed Kokura had been hit, given the evidence streaming out of his snooping nose regarding reactions intent on exacting vengeance, but as his learning files grew, the picture de-pixellated into full-focus.
He’d unearthed the remnantal ‘Choir’ members with the use of a Living Historical Remodel (LHR) that enabled Unrestricted Construction of Reconstruction (UCR) utilising Close History Evolution Reenactment (CHER) gameplay, (although this was far, far, from being a mere game).
As decrepit as the remaining choirees were they wanted history to tell their story from the side of victims seeking due vengeance and not a bunch of old cunts killing and bringing about the non-existentiality of humanity for perverted arsekicks, (their words)…
Tiny’s modelling pinpointed one lingering question from the past that sat plumply on a ride in a fair with no fun, going round and round so interminably that everything stood still. They had to find out for themselves: had their past actions been motivated by a constructive need to rebuild through the demolition of the perpetrators of their need to rebuild? Or put with populist simplicity: were they justified?
They didn’t, necessarily, consciously know these internally branching questions were being posed, (imposed upon themselves by themselves), but nonetheless that was the scenario reached by the Factright Truthroughline Sub-Narrative Explanation (FTSNE) App that presented its findings after stout Post-Triple-Checked Sense-Oriented Rectitudinal Conclusionary Endpoint Truthware (PTSRCET) processing.
On contact, Tiny Guy had initially met a resistance that registered quite highly on a resistancometer chart. This Introductory Initiation Orientation Sequence (IIOS) weakened to a ‘moodful reluctance’ before rallying and strengthening to a cooperative trusting and sanguine relationship status, luckily.
Ripple cut to faux, mock, moot-modelled 1950’s Japan. In an illegal sushi den in old town Kokura. The place had not been bombed, only because firstly, Hiroshima took the hit and, secondly, because Nagasaki took the hit; both taking the fallout that Kokura was free from… But Kokura was full of guilt-fuelled resentment and a chilling howl for vengeance.
Tiny Guy’s Museum of Imperfect Exact Events (MIEE) detailed great horror and desperate sadness; and like a Pandora’s storage vessel let out some serious shit and only really had some bruised and blinkered hope-dregs for the future left at the very bottom. Scraping the bottom of Pandora’s barrel. Pandora’s barrel’s bottom.
A window of seeing out into the Inhumanitysphere induced executive causality…
Straight to the bone and into the marrow, Tiny Guy, posing as Tony Guyson, rented a shed on the roof of a row of Chinese laundries in Kokura Chinatown and went about the city pretending to be a private investigator from the UK who wore Communist ties and red-flagged the shit out of wherever he went, being careful to fly the flag at half-mast and tread with respectful caution while giving an equal and opposite impression for people to dislike and make them feel uncomfortable with themselves for reaching a conclusion on face value before getting to know the real Tony Guyson. That was the side-show the side-hustle. TG had depth and breadth and he didn’t care who knew it, as long as they knew it.
He presented an obvious portable facade that was Anti-bomb, Anti-American and mad about fatmen wrestling. Although he was insouciant regarding all three. And worryingly yearned to witness fatwomen wrestling in top level competition far too much to admit to anyone.
Tony Guyson had arranged to meet several members of the ‘choir’. They’d not even met each other for decades and Tony did not expect any close-harmony, flashmob style ambushwacking prior to the meet-up. He arrived several hours earlier to imbibe the local vibe… He sat outside a cafe on a cobbled square, at the narrow side of its triangularity. Tony had been ordering and re-ordering the house specialty hot wine with spiced liquorice sticks and was nasty, mean and raving drunk by the time the first of the choir remnants appeared exhibiting personality level paranoia and mistrust. Luckily the nasty, mean and raving drunkenness was metaphorical enough to over write and shake off in time for the introductory salutations. You’ve gotta live…aintcha!
‘You Tony san?’ Said the man with a certitude bordering on aggression that gave away the man’s underling anxiety…
‘Pleased to meet you and thank for coming,’ Tony replied awkwardly through an English to Japanese translation app box.
‘We alone?’
‘The others are due. You are the firstcomer.’
‘Figures. I was always the first in everything.’
‘You are early.’
‘I was born prematurely.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I was always intermittently told and spoke of as being ahead of my time. You know, getting books out of the library after it was shut and that kind of stuff.’
Tony wasn’t sure whether the unexpectedly tall, and yet average height, Japanese man was aiming and falling short of humour or whether he was stifling his own small talk with sentences that translated badly. He plumped for a translation glitch or anomaly because the Japanese man before him was so twisted with misfortune and bent to avoid the harshness of partially forgotten blows that humour would’ve made him a little more cheerily resistant to psychological his current dungeon. He would’ve stood taller, head higher, but still of average height.
If the others were as cheerless, Tony was doomed…he’d be dragged out into the courtyard of the Good Mood Palace and set about by storm clouds of defeat and self-pity.
But when the others turned up, after indifference that hid a restrained excitement, excitement, slowly but surely, grabbed everyone’s head by the heart; and hearts and heads mingled and the mood rose up to the lip of the half filled glass and spilled over until it became half empty again.
Tony was the conductor of a barbershop sextet who were too busy cutting hair to sing. From the top: a number three and two on the sides.
They all liked a drink, and they all partook of drink. Propitiously, the poison did Tony’s investigations the world of good.
