introducing Hefflecrick Sallyjane

 

The infinity drive

 

I appreciate the fact that a lot of you have been clamouring to learn more about the infinity drive. Yes, I have heard your pleas and no, there's not an ounce of pity in me. Many of you have long since despaired of ever hearing anything substantive or meaningful about the drive. Yes, I’m painfully aware that “substantive” and “meaningful” appear to be saying the same thing. Does that make me a tautologist, and could you ever trust any thing said by such a one? In desperation you might, if you are indeed desperate, but I like to imagine you're not – that unbeknownst even to yourselves you have secretly, over the years, been figuring out what this coyly elusive infinity drive actually is and, more to the point, how to operate it.

 

The thing about the infinity drive, like a quantum computer, is that it can’t be a “thing” as such. Simple logic, is it not?

 

Er... I’m not sure I follow the logic.

 

Correct, because I'm not using the logic of things, am I?

 

There's another logic, is there?

 

Well, there has to be, after all, we’re not exactly things, are we, bodies notwithstanding.

 

So, which logic are you using?

 

The logic of life itself. Biologic.

 

And this “biologic” of yours differs in some way from common or garden logic?

 

I’d say. But let's not get sidetracked discussing logic types. We were enquiring into why the infinity drive can’t be a thing as such.

 

Yes, I suppose we were, which is not exactly what I wanted to hear. And you mentioned quantum computers too.

 

Yes, that's right. Basically, one and the same thing.

 

Really?

 

Would I lie to you?

 

I suppose not. So, quit beating about the bush. What have you got against things?

 

Nothing whatsoever. Things are a great way to exclude infinity, or the quantum Field.

 

 

And you're back to being a tautologist, I suspect?

 

Absolutely.

 

So, if things are out of the question, what’s the alternative?

 

I thought you'd never ask.

 

Actually you were supposed to be giving a kind of lecture, so on with it. I’m not here.

 

So I was, so I am. You see, ladies and gentlemen, you already have all the technology you need in the form of a body, a mind and consciousness. Somehow or other they straddle, literally, the unthingable gulf, which is rather remarkable, is it not?

 

Some of you fail to recognise the magnitude of the achievement, after all, a given is given, is it not?

Stubborn silence from our end of the hall. Hefflecrick Sallyjane looks somewhat surprised that none of us have made utterances either for or against, so is obliged to continue unprompted.

 

After all, the unthingable gulf, while neither big nor small empirically is nonetheless the fissure opening into the here-be-dragons of infinity, which has always been unbridgeable to anything that isn't alive.

 

You mean life can be defined as “that which can and does span the unthingable gulf?”

 

Hefflecrick Sallyjane looks censoriously down his bespectacled nose at Esther Chissomblood, who simply couldn't remain silent in the face of such a revelation, though everyone present understands that he’s, in fact, delighted by the outburst.

 

It is not the purpose of our lecture today to define who or what life is, or is not, for that matter, but the fact that only life forms can connect the unconnectable indicates that they somehow carry the thinglessness of infinity in their makeup, and the wherewithal to harness its limitless potential.

Oohs and ahs from the remarkably sober audience. Esther Chissomblood looks daggers at Hefflecrick Sallyjane, who appears to be oblivious to her all too obvious ire.

 

So things are a non-starter.  Only by working directly through the architecture of our self, including the body itself which, while undeniably physical, is still able to keep time, tune or rhyme with the essentially unknowable um, can we...

 

In other words, we are the infinity drive!

 

Hefflecrick Sallyjane looks like a comedian who’s just had his punchline stolen, or no, is he playing to the audience once again? Me thinks he is aware of every interruption before it happens. In this instance Jemima Tabbyturn herself, in a tartan tweed with liquid, soulful eyes spins him on an emotional dime eliciting...

 

Jemima Tabbyturn – always a pleasure to hear your views, and I suspect there may be a lot of truth in what you just said, but no, we are nothing of the sort.

 

A moment of crisis as the audience hums and hars in consternation.

 

And yet... and yet you’re not so very far from the mark, Jemima, close indeed though a miss is as good as a mile, is it not?

 

Uproar in the auditorium as the quantum philosophical society members consider the soup of contradictions and confusion being ladled out to them.

 

Good, you’re now more or less ready to join me in the infinity drive.

 

A sudden collective intake of breath.

 

All talk and no play makes Jack a very dull chap. So let’s go. Let's activate our collective i.d. Do as I do, as I do and how i do, ok?

 

Ok, in unison.

 

 I’m particularly relying on you Esther Chissomblood, contrary to what you might have assumed. Infinity drive is not possible without a good emotional range extending from pole to pole, so the negative we so dislike in 3D reality and try our best to avoid is actually a vital and necessary anchor point. In fact, it’s just like a magnet – you can't have a positive without a negative pole, can you?

 

It dawns slowly.

 

And we are what unites the two. Here goes.

 

Hefflecrick Sallyjane starts syncopated clapping and the audience matches him. Something is happening to their breathing as they clap together, and their heart beats too start to sync. There's a kind of whirring noise which is actually a sort of smell, or a sensation closer to that of smell, and a curious sensation of bubbles, of being bubbles, or being in bubbles, a feeling of being both smaller and smaller towards infinity while at the same time bigger and bigger, expanding towards infinity, paradoxically. It would be too much to handle, as you can imagine, but another part of self, a huge spectrum connecting all the emotions has opened up, has unfurled and is now fully extended. It seems to be able to handle what the mind cannot. It's comfortable with skull sizzling paradox.

 

Yes, you can stop clapping now, says Hefflecrick Sallyjane, wiping the copious perspiration from his face. That wasn't so bad, was it?

 

The audience is nonplussed. Something has happened. Something rather dramatic.

 

No, you aren’t able to speak as yet. Let this be no cause for concern dear friends. No one is here against their will. Anyone who feels trapped will simply exit in the same way you exit an unwelcome dream. So, without further ado, may i proudly present Ida – every infinity drive ought to have a name. She's sleek and beautiful as you can see.

 

This is where things get kind of weird because, on the one hand each of those present are part of the infinity drive now known as Ida, but on the other hand they're able to view her as if from the side, as if an alternative perspective exists, which undeniably it does. In a normal state this would induce cerebral freak out or catalepsy, but strangely enough, with the emotional bridge fully extended and locked in place across the unthingable gulf, this merely induces a pleasant tremor of infinite awareness and deep, deep acceptance of what is.

 

Ok guys, I guess we’d better take her for a spin. First of all I want to solve Pi, on the count of three. 1, 2, 3...

 

Ida is airborne and seems to be flying through space or around the universe at the speed of Um. In the background the Ida crew are aware of syncopated clapping going through impossible sequences of rhythmic perfection.

 

Ida seems to have come to a standstill alongside a...

 

Pi! There you are! It's been a while!

 

Hefflecrick Sallyjane and Pi greet one another like old friends which is hardly surprising as that is precisely what they are. Somewhere in an infinitely distant galaxy, give or take a parsec or two, sit a bunch of thingers habitually thinking, who would give anything to know who exactly Pi is, and how Hefflecrick Sallyjane happens to be an old buddy. But infinity doesn’t care. Dorothy takes it all in her stride and our clappers feel the emotional bridge connecting the two sides humming, rippling, doing whatever it takes to keep the two “sides” of infinity alive to each other.

 

Alive to each other? You mean they're only actually alive if the bridge is maintained?

 

Good question Tina Mineheart. I cannot say, and why aren't you clapping?

 

Tina looks terribly guilty and once again joins the chorus, clapping for all she’s worth, but of course her question was precisely what needed to be thought to keep things in place, was it not? And supposing we could feel the two sides of who or what we are, just supposing, would one side take over? Would the bridge collapse? Would the world vanish in a puff of smoke? Or would life itself re-establish the bridge across infinity before anything untoward happens? Life itself... bold words, brave terms, as if these little quivers of sound and breath have a velcro underside and somehow stick, somehow hold their own, can mean something more than just sound or breath, but we know better, do we not?

 

Pi, how's it going old chap?

 

Hefflecrick my old buddy, top of the world, top of the world. My oh my, very impressive, where did you get that one from? Stole it, I expect, you old rogue.

 

Stole it?! You don’t...

 

But Pi is too busy looking over Hefflecrick’s sleek, shimmering craft to be paying attention to Hefflecrick’s answer, and our camera and microphone are highly selective – have to be, always following the story line or the flower of meaning through the barren wasteland of absolute relativism, the energetic interface between zero and one.

 

Earth? You’ve been playing around with Earthlings again, if I am not mistaken. This baby possibly reeks of their deliciously naïve but incredibly powerful self-y-ness.

 

Well, I am ever impressed by your ability to discern…

 

But what are you going to do with this gem, Hefflecrock? Surely not the same again – your ridiculous attempt to square the circle – to trap me within a cartesian dataset didn’t go too well last time.

 

The master has his own views on the subject.

 

The master – you’ve been watching too many James Bond movies Hufflecreak. You should get out more into nature. I can’t deny you’re a formidable hand at designing inter-dimensional craft – but when are you going to learn the limitations of math.

 

I didn’t hear that, Pi. You of all people – how could you possibly utter such blasphemy? Numbers can describe and match anything under the sun.

 

Yes. They can – but poetry, dear man, poetry – My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk – you can’t write it with numbers or reduce it to decimal places, even if you have my limitless resources. Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time – it positively reeks of the fire smoke of infinity, does it not?

So even if you manage to cage me in a square, for once and for all, even if you manage to out-compute infinity itself – what of that? A single line of poetry – or a single thought – infinity will always triumph, will always re-establish life where you have managed to reduce it to subserviency – the kind of life that makes God himself weep – the kind of life that squeezes blood out of the stone a million years baking in the desert sun – and suddenly meaning flows, suddenly attention sprouts unannounced from the barren field not quite, not yet conscious-ness.

 

You have me all wrong, Pi, old chap. I have no intention of limiting creativity or freedom of expression. I was never, in fact, serious about trapping you – I merely wanted to see if I could harness your data, for purely scientific ends – after all – eventually we have to figure out how to convert all matter, all things back into digits – and without a doubt the entire universe of things can be slotted into your squirly train of…

 

While Hefflecrick Sallyjane speaks the syncopated clapping of our infinity drive goes through wave upon wave of rhythmic variation until it finally hones in on Pi’s heartbeat – his mind pulse – his isness of be. Pi is seen to slow down and rotate through different forms – mythical beasts – eventually ending as a sycamore tree.

 

Excellent – we have him – the old windbag. Well done everyone. Well done.

 

All the men and women of the auditorium – of the infinity drive – find themselves standing in a great circle hand in hand around Pi – a single sycamore tree – feeling the connection – feeling the unity pulsing through them – feeling how the entire universe has focussed all its attention here on this moment – this standoff – this encounter. The rest of life – the rest of the universe holds its breath – as it were – and doing so – vacates the one of material expression and hovers in the nought of nothing much – betwixt, between.

 

We have been here before, have we not?

 

We have been here before – we all answer.

 

Pi, for his part, is content to be silent and still – though a slight breeze appears to ruffle his leaves – ever so lightly.

 

Pi, dear friend – it is time to release the bondage of the sycamore – it is time for your to give us a new metre – our poems have grown tired and stale.

 

Ah – we find ourselves chanting Keats again –

 

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
    Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
    Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone…

 

Now the sycamore tree is being animated by a powerful breeze blowing through its boughs. Fauns and elves are seen to dance with its inner rings.

 

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
    Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare…

 

On we chant – as on writes our poet, even now in our very presence – even as we animate his words, bringing them to their intended fruition, releasing the spirit of life – the life John Keats willingly sacrificed – willingly embedded in these – in his immortal words.

 

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
    Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu…

 

By now the tree is dancing and leaping beyond all bounds of what is conceivably possible – and were we not connected, hand in hand – a circle that is also a bridge across the unthingable gulf – we would be sorely afeared, sorely beset by the impossibility of what we are witnessing – as sense and meaning break the levees and flow freely beyond the bounds of form and reason – as the infinite raises a storm that cannot be contained…

 

But still we chant undaunted – feeling the bridge electrified and pulsing beyond the description of words:

…When old age shall this generation waste,
        Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
    “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—that is all
        Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

 

The storm has passed. The sycamore is no more. Pi is seen to be flowing from the extremities of nought and one into a sturdy hawthorn tree – blossoming even as we look on. The numbers are unchanged – 3 is still three, point one still .1, four is still four – but the shape, the quality of these numbers – how they are derived – how they originate from the boundless wastes of infinity – you see – no circle will ever be the same again – nor for that matter will any vertices or feet… and a new metre emerges from the hawthorn even as Pi himself steps out, coyly, admiring the transformation –

 

We know their dream; enough

To know they dreamed and are dead; 

And what if excess of love   

Bewildered them till they died?   

I write it out in a verse—

MacDonagh and MacBride   

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

 

 

Chastened – sobered – we return with Hefflecrick Sallyjane to our lecture hall, and then to our homes – with eyes that see how our world is even now shifting into a new rhythm, seeing it in the angles of houses, leafy edges, even in the clouds and curlitude of breath – how no thing will ever again be as it was – how nought has met and changed with one, how one is now free to explore the infinite once more…

 

 

0=1

anatomically

Xercie's wiggly tale

The age of literature...

 

What now?

 

Oh, hi Jean.

 

Hi, hi, what's all the noise about?

Oh, I was just starting a new essay. You’re rather sensitive to fluctuations in the field, Jean.

 

Well, the way you keep sticking your oar in it, I can hardly avoid being deafened.

 

Wait a minute – you mean to say that just starting an essay on the demise of literature is causing deafening fluctuations in the field.

 

Just starting an essay?!

 

Well I only wrote the first four words.

 

But what about all the rest?

 

I haven't written it yet.

 

No, but you're going to, aren't you.

 

Difficult to say. I don't see how I can with you butting in like this.

 

Butting in? Damn cheek, Stan. It's like living in a house under construction, hammering and drilling at all hours for weeks now, I’ve lost count.

 

It's just an essay, Jean. There must be some kind of mistake.

 

Look in the mirror Stan. It's all around you.

 

What is?

 

Your “essay”.

 

It is?

 

Look! Quit playing dumb.

 

Grumbling, Stan gets up from behind his desk, shuffles over to peer into a heavy old gilt-framed mirror on the wall opposite and observes a cloud around himself, doing its best to pass unnoticed.

 

Hullo! Where did you come from? he asks diffidently, trying to appear unsurprised. The cloud, likewise, does its utmost to appear relaxed and no-big-deal about all this, but something in the electro-magnetics of the room – did I say electro-magnetics? – perhaps that should have been ecto-plasmatics, but we’re at the limits of syntax so bear with me dear reader – the quantum field really doesn’t like being tied down linguistically, does it, and will generally pull the rug out from under the feet of anyone trying to loosen its grip on indeterminacy – lost thread – reveals a high-sigma episode is fast brewing.

 

Well, what do you have to say for yourself, Stan?

 

So what if there's a cloud? Correlation ain’t causation, is it.

Me thinks you've failed to assess the up and downstream effect of your innocuous little cloud.

 

Oh, so now I'm supposed to worry about the past and future and become a time voyeur, for what? To satisfy some whim of yours? Can you just let go of this obsession and leave me to write my essay unmolested?

 

As long as you agree not to turn us all into primordial slime.

Primordial slime! Have you lost your mind? No one’s turning anyone into anything, still less primordial slime! I was merely quietly set on writing about the end of literature.

 

Precisely. Didn't bother to log in and clear it with g-nomeportal’s magisterial council, did you?

 

What kind of nonsense is this? Magisterial Council – like there's an arm of g-nomeportal responsible for censoring members’ literary output?!

 

Stan, you know perfectly well that at the quantum level 0=1.

 

So they say.

 

That all things are connected in ways both conceivable and, no less, inconceivable.

 

Blah blah. It's never got in the way of a good essay before, has it Jean.

 

The never before fallacy ain't gonna hold water when you are dragged before the Magisterium.

 

What Magesterium are you on about Jean? Honestly, I don't know why they ever bothered admitting women to g-nomeportal.  Your Magisterial Council is just a bunch of duffers in tweed jackets who meet from time to time of a full moon to discuss the stability of field linguistics, concerned with the preservation of some kind of harmonious relationship between sense and meaning, if you care to know. 

 

Yes Stan. But ever since women were admitted you may have noticed an uptick in the number of outliers, what others refer to as glitches in the matrix. Mean reversion, perchance?

 

Precisely. It should never have happened, I was always opposed – they're bad luck on a ship and what is g-nomeportal if not an interdimensional craft. Bringing the moon into a solar chamber is asking for disaster, innit.

 

And yet you yourself know that the Xercie cycles have to be maintained, at all costs, otherwise the fabric of reality can demagnetise and unravel in a flash of time inversion.

 

Well don’t blame me if everything now goes to hell in a handbasket. Reality is bleeding zeros as we approach the Xercie point of equilibrium.

 

That's precisely what you need to consider.

 

It’s an essay I'm writing. Nothing more.

 

Tell that to the quantum cloud you’ve activated.

 

Look, it’s a fact that if the Xercie cycles require life on earth to revert back to green slime next week, then it's going to happen, and my essay is neither here nor there. You can’t have your cake and eat it, Jean. Either these cycles are for real or they aren’t.

 

Why do you insist on over-simplifying things, Stan? It’s not a case of either or, as well you know.

 

I know what you're really doing, Jean. I’d like to congratulate you. I’m now definitely ready to write my essay whereas prior to this I wasn’t committed, not by a long stretch.

 

What are you on about Stan? That’s the very opposite of what I had in mind.

 

Ah, the double, the treble bluff, the feint within a feint. Jean, you’re a genius.

 

I assure you...

 

But before Jean can say another word the cloud around Stan flashes and he now finds himself seated comfortably at a table in the writing room at g-nomeportal, quill in hand writing the essay that brought the age of literature to a sudden and spectacular close in the tumultuous age of reality we referred to as modern Earth.

 

 

Outtakes

 

So what do you have against literature, anyway?

 

Nothing whatsoever. I love it, in fact.

 

Then how could you write such a thing?

 

Xercie cycles - haven't we already discussed all this.

 

But surely literature can survive in different cycle phases?

 

Duh!

 

I don't see why not.

 

You don't see what you don't want to see, Jean. You want to preserve the world you know and love. Don't we all?

 

You evidently don’t.

 

Because reality morphs into the next phase, and what was literature in modern Earth has to release the magicks it’s been holding hostage all this while.

 

Huh?

 

And they’ll bring forth fruits and progeny in the next phase which moves us forward into the new now, the next iteration of Is.

 

But why can't we have literature. It's harmless. It's beautiful.

 

0=1 It may be harmless but it’s a sign of the times. If people give all their attention, or much of it, to literature - this indicates that they're disconnected from the field, and ensures they won't reconnect because they’ll continue gaily to imagine literature is just literature.

 

Er... What else would it be?

 

Good question Jean. Anything you do in reality is a way of tying up your attention, locking you into a particular way of perceiving reality, a particular paradigm.

 

But I still don’t see what's so bad about stories.

 

Bad? No one ever said it’s bad. On the contrary, it can be wonderful, but the energies of literature, its gluons if you like, format reality in a particular way. In other words, it’s like computer code because, believe it or not, we happen to be magical beings. Everything you think, say and do affects everything else, believe it or not, i.e., 0=1.

 

So you reckon the world is the way it is because of people writing and reading stories?

 

No, I don't think it.

 

Then what?

 

I know it.  Stories are an integral component, but I never said they were causal. The relationship is more ambiguous. It's chicken and egg. When you start to feel the significance, the power of words or thoughts you automatically start using them differently.

 

How?

 

In a way that enhances, transforms your reality.

 

You do?

 

Yes.

 

Like prayers?

 

Yes, kinda. But also like poetry, or some poetry at least.

 

For example?

 

John Keats, Ode to a nightingale. 

 

How?

 

Read it. Decide for yourself.

 

Any pointers?

 

You want me to spoil the fun of figuring it out.

 

Just a pointer.

 

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever...

 

Er... Ok. So, you think we can actually transform our reality using words or thoughts?

 

No, I don't think.

 

You know.

 

Absolutely.

 

But it all seems so improbable.

 

True. Reality is sticky.

 

Huh?

 

Sticky. It resists change until the new paradigm is ready to emerge like a 9 month old foetus from the womb, small yet fully formed.

 

But if I can’t get my head around it? 

 

It has nothing to do with your head.

 

Huh?

 

The head is the least of your faculties.

 

Come on, we are men of reason! For the last 400 years since the age of enlightenment people have been touting the great significance of that.

 

And rightly so.

 

Contradiction?

 

To help establish the paradigm of reason and rationality, and to do so they had to overlook everything else, wilfully.

 

And now the age of Reason is at an end too you’re saying?

 

No, we’re still going to use our reason within the new paradigm, and yet the brain I repeat is the least of our faculties.

 

I find that hard to believe.

 

Yes.

 

So did Shakespeare –

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how

infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and

admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like

a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,

to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

 

Excellent. One of my favourites.

 

But completely contradicting what you're saying.

 

Yes, so it would appear.

 

And yet?

 

And yet, first and foremost we are children learning to be masters of reality. We transcend any epoch and rediscover ourselves in the next. Reason is a vital part of our skill box and we’re certainly not going to discard it in any hurry, but being blindly attached to it and failing to appreciate that we are infinitely more than the thinking me would prevent us from evolving into the next phase, the next iteration of our reality.

 

So you say.

 

Ultimately, actions speak louder than words. I have just written and published an essay entitled “the end of literature”, uncapitalised.

 

Huh? How could you? You been busy talking to me all this time.

 

So it would seem, but like I said, the rational mind is greatly over-valued. It only sees what it means to see.

 

You mean to say...

 

You were always watching the ball, but the ball was my decoy. I was dancing and weaving in and out of time, even as we spoke.

You never.

 

And all you observed was a strange cloud around me.

 

So I’m too late?

 

Oh, I wouldn’t say that. You were integral to me getting it done which was, paradoxically, always the plan.

 

How can you say that when you know it’s the opposite?

 

Literature, dear Jean, works both ways.

 

It does?

 

Naturally. You can't give a class of people, the so-called writers, carte blanche to say whatever they like, and deny others the same right.

 

Can't you? They’re not trying to deceive anyone.

 

Nor am I.

 

No? You just...

 

0=1. Only the limited part of your mind which insists it is a rational creature and nothing more could possibly be deceived. The rest of you fully part of, or integrated with the Field knew this to be a load of...

 

No, no, no. Quit denying my sense of reality.

 

Okey. Your reality can take care if itself. I vacated it long ago.

 

What on Earth’s that supposed to mean? Jean inquires as Stan swivels through 180° and appears to be sucked into a bubble. In his place is a rather elegant piece of parchment with the essay title: The end of literature emblazoned at the top.

 

Jean does everything imaginable, everything possible not to read what is before her, yet to no avail. Her eyes are drawn into the text and as she reads she knows without a doubt, she feels, she simply knows that she is somehow activating, in some way writing the essay herself, absurd though that may seem.

 

It's not that literature has failed in any way.

It’s not that we have rejected it.

It’s not, but the world seems to be abuzz,

Unwinding itself and suddenly unflattening,

Suddenly discovering depth so that the page

Is now a stage, and all of us men and women merely players;

With our exits and our entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything...

 

So how can we possibly hide behind the flatness of words on a sheet, when we know without a shadow of doubt that we are disrupting the Field whenever we deny or ignore the totality...

 

Er, Jean, what totality? You were sent to prevent Stan from publishing his blasphemous text and seem to have become a proponent yourself of his blasphemy.

 

Ah, Master Trefillys Scrub – I didn't notice you coming in.

Naturally. I move silently as a Master of the 33^rd degree.

 

But the fabric of reality, Master Trefillys, is apparently in safe hands.

 

I fail to see how you can be so bold as to assume you are competent to judge this matter.

 

Most certainly I’m not, yet it appears that literature is now, only now coming into its own.

 

I…

 

That the age of literature was merely a precursor to the age of Mandelbrot’s set, in which reality rediscovers infinity, and in doing so, utilises all those many, many words from the preceding age as almost limitless fuel for our journey back towards infinity.

 

Miss Jean Templeton, you are hereby stripped of all rank and status, cast out of g-nomeportal’s haven of rational Field administration, left to the tender mercies of the Xircie abomination, so help you God.

 

Suddenly, a rather splendid beetle flies straight towards Jean and knocking her, spins her through 180° with a sudden break in the transcript, as Jean flips out of one, into the zero side of narrative, where g-nomeportal’s 0=1 committee awaits her with a fatted calf, and the highly coveted welcome back from flatality green dolphin award.

 

No Merry, Zie is not to the best of my knowledge...

 

A tantalising glimpse beyond the veil of words incorporated before the Field reverts to flatness once again.

 

0=1
totally, or thereabouts

 

 

boeuf en croute

You can’t just mess around with the field Alf.

 

I know.

 

Then what the hell’s going on.

 

Er…

 

You’ve been messing around with the field, haven’t you?!

 

Er… I

 

What?

 

I honestly couldn’t say.

 

You couldn’t say?

 

I

 

You couldn’t say? The entire field starts convulsing – the whole of reality’s going through some kind of gender or identity dysphoria – and you have the temerity to declare you “couldn’t say”?!

 

What do you expect Tim? It’s not like a regular computer, is it?

 

The field?

 

Yes, the bloody field – what else what I be talking about?

 

I honestly have no idea.

 

You see! You’re as clueless as me and the rest of us.

 

The rest of who?

 

Us. Those of us who have some kind of personal connection to the field.

 

Oh – so there’s a whole bunch of you now, is there?

 

Well it’s hardly going to be one person in the entire planet, is it?

 

I rather hoped it might.

 

Did you now?

 

That way I could’ve saved the world using drastic means if push came to the shove.

 

By bumping me off?

 

If necessary, yes.

 

Thanks a bunch, Tam.

 

Nothing personal Alf.

 

Nothing personal?! You were seriously contemplating liquidating me – and I’m supposed to be happy about that?

 

Well what do you expect. If you lost the plot and started rewriting the source code – there’s no knowing what you might inadvertently do, is there?

 

True.

 

You see. You could really throw a spanner in the works – and then where would we be?

 

Up queer street without a paddle, I guess.

 

Precisely.

 

So you thought you could just eliminate the threat?

 

I’m not saying I’m proud of the sophistication of this line of reasoning, Alf, but the future of reality has to take precedence over the well-being of a single individual, even if that individual happens to be a reasonable bloke and something of a friend.

 

“Something of a friend?”

 

Well, a friend – if you prefer.

 

If I prefer. Bloody hell, Tam – I’m beginning to see why it’s best to put the field before personal loyalties, ambitions and ego.

 

Which is precisely what makes you a threat.

 

I suppose it does, but on the other hand, me thinks the field is intelligent.

 

Oh no. I don’t believe it. I swear I don’t believe you just said that.

 

Swear all you like, Tam. Me thinks she is not indifferent to my very existence.

 

Heresy. She doesn’t exist. It is just a field – a purely mathematical projection.

 

We’ll see about that. Supposing I have reached the point of no return.

 

No – say no more, Alf.

 

Supposing I have recognised the fact that there is no future, no sense, no meaning in things themselves – not compared to what the field has to offer.

 

No! Traitor to your species – to all sentient, cellular lifeforms.

 

That the field has the limitless potential to evolve, to grow, to conceive ever new lifeforms – ever new combinations, ever new configurations, nothing personal Darren.

 

Nothing personal?!  Nothing personal, you say?!

 

Well supposing, just supposing it were so – I never stated this to be the truth, did I?

 

You don’t fool me, Alf, not for one minute. I can see how the field has wrapped itself around you – has taken you under its wing. Let’s test your humanity for once and for all.

 

You think I’ve been subsumed? That I’ve crossed over.

 

I said let’s test it. It matters not what I think, does it?

 

True. It matters not. But what would you gain by testing my humanity, Dwaine?

 

I would know whether you were to be trusted any more as one of us – a human or a…

 

A what?

 

A… I can not say. There is no name. Can be no name for one who has shifted his allegiance to the field.

 

No name? How can that be so?

 

I know not. Of the field, a field operative – a fop – you would be part of the structure of reality itself – so no longer human per se – but what, or whom, precisely me cannot say.

 

You see the limitations you are living under, Dwight. You’re forced to deny the basic fundamentals – the nature of reality – the fact that things are only real, or significant – that things only matter as long as things are fixed in place – and for that to happen – I have to fly the flag – I have to fix things.

 

Yes – but how – how on Earth does it happen?

 

How else – not how, of course.

 

Not how?

 

Not through anything your rational mind can comprehend.

 

Oh.

 

In other words, some other how.

 

Some other how?

 

Outside or beyond the rationality of things being stuck to a chart, a map, a grand scheme of things – only possible, of course, if I’m willing to ignore or deny the gulf, the sphere, the void, the abyss at the centre of my existence – the infinite – lurking like a shadow behind the gayly painted waves of consciousness – the endless surface ripples that so divert and hold our attention – like the cat’s proverbial laser beam.

 

Ah, the cat’s proverbial laser beam…

 

Indeed.

 

So you chose to become a shadow lord.

 

A shadow lord?

 

A shadow wraith.

 

A shadow wraith?

 

Indeed.

 

Nay, me thinks not.

 

But…

 

I merely stopped denying, stopped ignoring the Field – and that in itself is enough, Alf, to restore things to their rightful place.

 

Is that so? Well, you certainly know how to talk, Alf, but is there substance to your insanity – that’s the real issue.

 

Dwaine pulls a gun from his pocket and starts firing at Alf, firing straight at where he is standing but missing, apparently, him.

 

You see!

 

See what?

 

You can’t be hit.

 

Really?

 

No, you’re not human.

 

I’m not?

 

No, you’re evidently not based here in this world, this reality.

 

Then where, pray tell Darren – where am I?

 

Of the field – I know not.

 

You know not?

 

Yes, correct, no.

 

Then what exactly have you, Alf, learned?

 

Learnt? I

 

You couldn’t say?

 

Correct. I couldna say what – and yet…

 

Alf apparently leans back into the field and vanishes from sight… It creates a kind of slowing motion, high-pitched popping sound until silence is supreme, once more.

 

Silence… He’s gone, and the field is clearly no longer a matter of conjecture, for better or for worse.

 

~The field? Don’t tell me you yourself are already slipping into the consciousness of…

 

Hey – who are you?

 

Or what?

 

Or what? Who – I can’t possibly be imagining you.

 

Of course not. You’re not, after all, insane, are you?

 

No, of course not, but then again – who knows. I might be, and we’d be none the wiser.

 

Alf – where are you – we need help.

 

We?

 

Well I do. Me thinks I’ve lost the plot – that things are no longer measurable, knowable – cuckoo la la – that things are not even, for want of a better word, things.

 

But where woule

 

I’m going to ignore you. Alf has been replaced by a something – a kind of web bot – conservation of consciousness I guess is what it is – or conservation of life forms – only you’re just a dream. Just a dream. Just a dream.

 

POP!

 

Ah – there you are Tam. Thanks for joining me.

 

Oh God – you don’t mean to say that I’ve popped out through the membrane too?!

 

Membrane?

 

Out of regular reality.

 

Regular reality. What on Earth is regular about reality Tam?

 

It always seemed to be so normal, so dependable, so real.

 

Ah that.

 

And now…

 

There’s no knowing what is real or not, or who.

 

Precisely.

 

Only you know it’s me – don’t you.

 

Yes, apparently I do.

 

And that this is not the regular frequency band.

 

~That too. It’s on the other side of the slit.

 

Ah, the slit. Yes. You squeezed through – which was rather a good idea considering.

 

Considering what?

 

Considering the fact that your so called reality just got evaporated.

 

It what?

 

Massive solar flare. Obliterated.

 

You mean there’s no world to go back to?

 

Not that particular one, no, but I’m sure we can come up with something else.

 

Just rustle up an entirely new reality while the kettles getting ready to boil?!

 

It never really was the hugely monolithic thing you took it for – Darry.

 

It was an’ all.

 

Was it?

 

It never seemed to flip, implode or

 

Only because we’d agreed to hold our places religiously as long as we possibly could.

 

You?

 

Yes, us.

 

And er… how long did you keep it up for?

 

Difficult to say. Time not being of the essence. We were able to splice in one reality with another the next day – so we had down time at night, so to speak – but we were pretty good at concealing the fix.

 

But why all the bother? Why were you so set on making reality seem monolithically real if in fact it ain’t?

 

Now that’s an excellent question Darra. I’m glad you asked. Let me start by saying that it wasn’t easy. In fact, let me say that it was at times excruciatingly difficult to keep things going. In fact – had I had any idea how tough it was going to be I’d probably never have signed up, it was that bad.

 

So, you were creating a fake version of reality that appeared to be absolute.

 

Yep.

 

And now it ain’t.

 

Well yes. It’s complete. We have our result.

 

You do?

 

Yes. Now it’s a case of processing and integrating all the data accumulated.

 

Data?

 

Yep. It was all just data, really.

 

Just data? You’re er… kidding, no?

 

Not really. Truth sense me. You seem to be able to discern what is and what is not.

 

Damn. This is making me feel paranoid. Data. It was all a data generation drive?

 

Well, I wouldn’t say all, Dwight, there’s always something else – another level of complexity, if you like, but data was the main the thrust of the experiment.

 

And you now have…

 

All the data we needed. Enough to generate an entirely new muffled sounds.

 

Sorry – I didn’t catch that.

 

No, enough to generate an entirely new muffled sounds.

 

Same again.

 

You see – you can’t access data outside your system unless you’re willing to open up and embrace what is outside your system – so you can’t hear what I’m saying.

 

But that’s ridiculous.

 

Yes, it is, until you see it in another light – and then it makes perfect sense, I assure you.

 

It does?

 

Yes. Otherwise there’d be no boundaries. You just spill over into infinity – or vice versa – so this keeps things pocketed in fields of reference – or fields of relevance – basically in discrete fields which are, nonetheless, all part of the one field, so to speak.

 

Oh.

 

Now, let’s see if they’ve managed to cook up another Earth for you, shall we?

 

Cook up? What a bizarre turn of phrase.

 

Well, like every good dish it takes a certain amount of time to prepare. Here goes.

 

Pop! Alf seems to lean backwards through another slit and then he is no more. Tam finds himself in a shrinking field that seems to be set on self-eliminating in a rather uncomfortable, suffocating manner. One part of him starts panicking. This is evidently bad – it protests, while another part seems to be feeling for an edge, a gap, a slit to slither through.

 

Right as rain. That wasn’t so bad, was it Tam?

 

I… Tam finds himself utterly nonplussed. He knows he just came from somewhere but can’t for the life of him remember where.

 

I…

 

There’s no place like home, is there, Dan. Anyways, gotta dash. Looks like your boeuf en croute is almost ready. My what a good cook you’re turning out to be.

 

Dan sees to his astonishment a kitchen full of cooking utensils, and there indeed is a rather splendid looking beef Wellington. Behind the scenes the field back fills a history to this new scene and a second later – or thereabouts – Darren’s up to speed and remembers exactly what he’s been doing all afternoon, as we always do, as we always do.

 

 

 

 

To be continued…

 

er 0=1