introducing Marvin the droid

 

Things...

 

No, for crying out loud Merry. Not “things”. You've been banging on about things till we’re blue in the face.

I have?

 

Is my face blue?

 

Strangely enough, yes, it is rather blue. How odd. Can I get you an aspirin?

 

An aspirin? Do you think that'll help?

 

Not really.

 

Then why do you offer?

 

It's a thing, isn't it? I know how you find things strangely reassuring. A placenta, isn't that what you call it?

 

Placenta? I think you mean placebo.

 

Yes, that's it. A placenta.

 

Placebo.

 

Placenta. It's just a word but it's still an important thing, isn't it?

 

Didn't we agree that you weren't going to mention things at all.

 

Oh, well now that you mention it I expect you’re right, but actually I just wanted to tell you that I've solved the problem.

 

You have? What problem?

 

Oh you know, regarding those tricky little th----  er... that I'm not going to mention.

 

What problem?

 

You know Zie, for a chap with inter-galactic security clearance and a brain at least as powerful as Marvin the miserable droid’s, you can, at times, be remarkably dense.

 

Ouch.

 

Don't worry though, now that I've solved the problem nothing’s gonna hold you or anyone back any more.

 

Nothing?

 

Affirmative! Nothing whatsoever.

 

Not even stupidity.

 

Especially not even stupidity!

 

However not?

 

Because I've managed to fix things.

 

But there was never anything wrong with things per se, was there?

 

Not at the micro level.

 

At the macro?

 

Not at the macro either.

 

So what on earth are you on about Merry?

 

Things always involved a tiny, barely noticeable yet highly significant time-lag.

 

A time-lag?

 

Yep. Everything had to be fixed somewhere, sometime, even if only for a nanosecond.

 

And?

 

And it was all stop-go.

 

It was?

 

Not really. I mean, not noticeably.

 

Then what?

 

I'm not doing a good job explaining this, am I?

 

Not really.

 

Because that involves locking things in place for a tiny tiny moment, and I'm loath to do that. Wanna keep them birds in motion.

 

Then that's that.

 

Ah, but I've introduced a wiggle.

 

A what?

 

A wiggle.

 

And er... what exactly are you on about?

 

Well, it’s a remarkable substitute for the thing protocol.

 

The thing protocol?

 

Precisely.

 

How so?

 

Because it isn't stop-go.

 

No?

 

Nope. It’s like a quick scan as you go. Utterly anonymous. No more data harvesting.

 

Oh. And that improves things, does it?

 

Not really.

 

?

 

It circumvents things. It's the ultimate thing hack. It effectively renders the thing protocol obsolete.

 

Obsolete?

 

Utterly.

 

Like redundant?

 

Yep. Fantastic, isn't it!

 

I don't know. Is it?

 

Well yes, it has to be, doesn't it, if we no longer need to line up and bottleneck our way through the turnstile of timestamping and identifying things.

 

But no one ever noticed the delay.

 

The devil wasn’t in the delay.

 

No?

 

Of course not.

 

Then what?

 

The thing protocol flattened or rather pinched reality into distinctive time bands, or so-called "moments". 

 

It did?

 

Absolutely.

 

And that was bad?

 

Well what do you think Marvin, if you apply your galactic computing power.

 

I don't know.

 

Precisely. Galactic computing power runs on the thing protocol, so no matter how hard you think or how vast your processing capacity may be, you’ll only ever be able to compute a finite set of outcomes, none of which lie outside... um

 

Outside what?

 

Merry does a somewhat bizarre wiggle, like a duck shaking a tail feather, both absurd yet earnest: earnest yet utterly unreadable.

 

Zie is about to say “I don't get it” but to his utter astonishment suddenly he does.

 

Bing. A lock opens. To his utter, utter astonishment Zie, who has now a striking resemblance to Marvin the droid, realises that he is in a completely different operating system, outside the insidious thing protocol, in which the separation between matter and me mind is now no longer applicable.

 

Wow!

 

Good, innit?

 

Good? It’s whoopeeeee.

 

For the first time in his current conscious experience dataset Marvin the droid and likewise Xie, oddly enough spelt with an "x", are able to run computations at the speed of creation itself, and thus scan anything and everything simultaneously, in real-time, if time were real, in other words, they're able to log into the universal “no idea what's going on, but surfing the cosmic wave of knowingness sure is fun so what the heck, let’s give creativity a run for its money and see what the universe is really up to” kind of thing.

 

Might sound like a recipe for disaster, but no, apparently not. The universe, it transpires, is an interactive experience and once time n'matter have been put back in their rightful place as supporting actors, then the universal mind is more than happy to take up the slack, balancing the equation ineffably.

 

You see what I mean?

 

See what you mean? What took so long Merry? How come we were stuck with the thing protocol for such a dreadfully long time?

 

Er... You still are. Look over there.

 

Marvin Xie observes things continuing unabated in that part of reality where things truly and utterly seem to matter. Where matter is an utterly serious state of affairs.

 

Wow! So what gives?

 

Well you get to decide, don't you, which set of protocols you prefer to operate under.

 

I do?

 

Obviously. Otherwise you’d be trapped in a slave system.

 

Now that you mention it that’s exactly what I seem to be trapped in.

 

Yep.

 

But I never knew any better?

 

Really?

 

Come to think of it, if you’ve only just invented your wiggle...

 

Ah, yes, that’s where things get a little confusing, isn't it?

 

Confusing? Downright contradictory.

 

No Zie, merely paradoxical. Any thing works both ways, backwards and forwards through so called time, like a traffic jam.

 

A what?

 

You heard.

 

A traffic jam? What's that got to do with time?

 

In the same way pinch points create bottlenecks that can block up the entire transport network, likewise a new form or expression of infinite connectivity can, does and will induce similar or equal innovations upstream, ie earlier in time.

 

Wowsers!

 

Amazing, isn't it, so you’ll never really know who or what originated anything in particular, though you'll swear till you’re blue in the face that you do, can or did.

 

Blue in the face

 

Marvin now Zie clicks back into the thing protocol time-y things matter experience and Merry starts playing a rather beautiful string instrument that looks like a cello but somehow fits under his chin.

 

Wait a second Merry. I’m back in the thick of things but...

 

But what?

 

I can still feel the other side.

 

What other side?

 

I don't know. I can't remember what it is, but it's there, it’s here I mean. I can feel it.

 

Awesome. So you can choose. You can spin both wheels if you like. Try a little tribal fusion. A syncopated beat, or else you're welcome to devise a wiggle all of your own... to call out time for the blatant fraud it's been perpetrating on humankind, trapping us in Marvin minds, utterly incapable of seeing the wood from the trees, utterly incapable of laughing at the patent absurdity of our self-imposed Marvinesque predicament -- the spell -- binding things of no intrinsic consequence in a cunningly compelling compounding sequence, an x-y-z raising things every higher, a Babylonian tower, likewise the stakes staked, as we play with our very lives, a waltz that captivated the mind, still does in fact, but an utter con nonetheless, devoid of beauty, devoid of magic, devoiding all... a cult of nought, masquerading as many, unless...

Unexpectedly, even to the point of wrong-footing reality -- the least hint, the barest quiver -- and yet -- without a doubt, a wiggle -- a wiggle no less... as things come unstuck and protocols of weight and moment implode silently to unmake all that was being made to matter, without a care in the world, insouciantly.

Oh.

 

Oh, is what Marvin Xie says, so innocently, little suspecting that reality is never going to be the same again. But that, dear readers, is another story for another day, is it not? Huh?

0=1
unequivocally