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