Chapter 9 - in which King Canute rewrites his-story

The g-nome portal chat rooms are open, the upper reading room is humming with expectation, the main lecture theatre is full to capacity – even I’m surprised by the excitement that is building in anticipation of the release of Chapter 9. But then again, when you consider we’ve been working towards this moment for the best part of a thousand years now – it’s hardly surprising that the sense of something big and beautiful being about to break is building to fever pitch.

At the stroke of 9 the chapter is distributed to all and sundry... with silence as eyes scan the first page. There are some murmurs and mutterings – “impending tide? Whatever’s that meant to mean?”

“impending tide? No respect for the English language!”

“impending tide? Damn foolish if you ask me!”

Really, there’s no pleasing some folk! G-nome portal’s language committee looked at the matter in great detail and, like most committees, failed to come to a clear consensus. Personally, I happen to like the idea of an “impending” tide. I’m prepared to admit they don’t usually hang overhead like a sword about to fall on you, but the word “impending” is so much more mellifluous than “incoming”, and is thick with doom and gloom, so this sort-of-solecism should, I feel, be excused. I need the drama of the word. Other concerns are secondary.

Questions are appearing in the chat room, even before readers have got to the end of the first page. Honestly, it would make life a lot simpler if people would read the entire text before commenting. The chances are you’ll find the answer on page three or four, if you can just hang on that long. For example, the question: “Why Canute? What’s that gotta do with Josh’s failure to return to normal reality.”

As questions go it isn’t a bad one – so I’m not really complaining. The answer should be obvious to the more poetically minded among you – “holding back the tide” – “holding back the inevitable” – “the impossibility of stopping nature having its way” – or for the more mathematically minded among you “mean reversion” - that kind of thing. The mind can always find associations if it tries. Or maybe Canute is just a pleasant digression into a intriguing area of English history – intriguing because it so obviously doesn’t quite add up. Speaking of which, I recall a lecture I attended many years ago on King Canute by Rudford Spoon. Fascinating stuff – but none of it true.

I adjust my glasses, clear my throat, take a sip from the glass of water on the dais and proceed evenly:

King Canute is, of course, famous for demonstrating to his courtiers the limitations of absolute monarchy. What better way to do so than by commanding the incoming tide to forebear from advancing to where he stands defiantly before it. It’s lonely at the top and Canute must have been quietly amused by this theatrical demonstration of regal impotence, not to mention the consternation of his sycophantic court. His words at the time were carefully recorded: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws,” and thus Cnut, as we should rightly call him, earns the reputation of being a pious and devout ruler. Or that, at least, is the official version, but was this, I ask you, one of history’s great Ozymandias moments, or a carefully staged event with a hidden agenda? Those in the Ozymandias camp see Cnut as a ruler who, like the hero in Shelley’s poem, could not but appear feeble and inconsequential before the irresistible duo of time and nature. My apologies for this foray into what may seem like needless erudition, but the poem was compulsory reading at school and must have made a lasting impression...

But seriously, if you believe that a man of Canute’s power, political savvy and ambitions was stupid enough to have a confrontation with the sea, merely in order to persuade the general populace that he was humble, pious and devout – think again. You don’t get as far as Canute had with a North Sea empire comprising England, Denmark and Norway, by staging “humble and holy” PR events. On the contrary, you’d tend to do as Queen Elizabeth when attacked by the Spanish Armada, and claim the storms that routed the Spanish fleet were sent by God to protect you and your dominions, thus proving you to be the rightful ruler. No... Cnut evidently had a different reason for his highly ambiguous and somewhat disturbing “life’s a beach” PR stunt. He must have known something that we don’t, and felt confident that he had nothing to lose and everything to gain – if only we knew what...

The lights dim and the speaker now proceeds in barely a whisper, taking the auditorium into a trance-like state:

King Cnut, like many a great ruler, was first and foremost storymaster. He knew intuitively how to write story code, how to shape and affect reality at a quantum level. In normal parlance you would refer to him as a “wizard”, but this word sounds ridiculous so I’d prefer you didn’t. As storymaster it was Cnut’s job to shift the storyline into whatever trajectory best suited his needs and those of...er... story. To do so he applied Shakespeare’s “all the world’s a stage” methodology. Using high theatre and the unfamiliar setting of a beach, he delivered a psychological blow to the assembled courtiers who saw, not only their king in dire straits before the advancing tide, ho hum, but couldn’t help but picture themselves in his place. In the words of Professor Jubblethwaite Nobble [1702] “‘Twas an act of inspired genius, a master-stroke of sorcery by a consummate storymaster.”

“But how?” I hear you cry. “What did this achieve?” Well put yourself in the minds of his entourage for whom Cnut was all powerful Sovereign. It was a shock to the system to see their Lord and King going to such lengths to expose himself to ridicule, as if the Emperor himself had chosen to reveal the fact that he was wearing no clothes at the most embarrassing, inopportune moment. His courtiers were suddenly infected with a deep-seated fear of losing face, of appearing ridiculous in the eyes of their fellow men, and a disturbing awareness of human vulnerability. This was exactly the state Cnut needed them to be in if he was to administer new story code to replace the old. And that’s precisely what he did.

It isn’t really possible to explain in layman’s terms how story code is inserted – suffice it to say that everyone on the beach that day knew exactly what had to be done in order to avoid the abyss of fear and uncertainty that had opened up within them. There was no alternative. They had to focus wholly on material reality, and stand with whatever power and authority the king and church represented. They knew they had to close down Faery by reactivating P-42. Anything less would place them at the mercy of the impending tide which had entered their minds like a snarling wolf. Of this they had not the slightest doubt, and each of them proceeded accordingly.

“So, what exactly is P-42?” you’re asking.

It’s a short sequence of code that disrupts our Faery connection. Prior to Cnut’s rewrite of reality, almost everyone lived in a binary state with both Faery and a limited version of 3D “I-mind: what-matters” functioning in tandem. We were all able to see and experience other realities, other dimensions, but this caused difficulties when growing up, hence the need for P-42. It was used by children to block Faery while they were learning to speak and establish the rational platform “I-mind: what-matters”. Without P-42 it was almost impossible to get the hang of this back-to-front material reality, and very few succeeded. With Faery temporarily hidden from sight, the rational mind assumes this reality is all there is, and therefore makes a concerted effort to settle in and assimilate. However, once the rational mind has taken root we would remove and delete P-42, reopening our connection with Faery in order to enjoy the best of both worlds until, that is, Cnut sees fit to change the storyline, just under 1000 years ago, causing us to permanently reactivate P-42.

It’s like a chain reaction that starts with his courtiers on the beach and they, of course, are a powerful and influential bunch. One by one the entire populace succumbs to this new Faery-less modus operandi. Religion, politics and public opinion all play their part making it all but impossible for people to resist the relentless advance of the modern age of pure reason. It becomes socially and politically unacceptable to deactivate P-42 – you’d be branded a witch, a wizard, a nutcase or a freak – you’d be hounded from society, persecuted, lynched... so we the people wisely bow to the inevitable and choose the path of least resistance, preferring to make a virtue of necessity. We discover, however, that although now permanently disconnected from Faery, it is not completely gone. Although the rational mind rejects and denies it, Faery still permeates the membrane of mind through nature and the creative arts, all of which are inspired by Faery and transcend 3D reality, thereby helping to transmit Faery’s pirate signal and disseminate its delightfully subversive message. Were it not for this, humanity would have suffocated long ago, destroyed by abject boredom and despair.

Obviously, the trillion dollar question is why Canute as story master par excellence decided to do this in the first place – effectively turning reality into a wasteland... what did he hope to gain by shutting off Faery? This is a subject that has been written about extensively by g-nomers throughout the ensuing period. What we can say with absolute certainty is had he not done so, with Faery even partially online, most people would never have taken their kings and rulers seriously. It’s hard to believe priests and politicians who seek to impose their version of reality, their truth, when you can hear trees, spiders, birds and gnomiki, all of whom are telling a quite different tale that intuitively makes a lot more sense, based as it is on harmony, creativity and isness.

So, for whatever reason, Cnut acts out his part in story. In an inspired moment of high drama he gives us the first lines of the new chapter which has been playing out ever since as “the modern age”, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Speaking of which, it’s time we returned to Josh the not so Jubilant who, as yet, knows nothing of King Cnut and the role he played in the ebb and flow of Faery.