The witching
hour has been and gone. The midnight oil – burnt up. The first lark already
trills as June’s feeble night fades. Sleep.
I hear you, though
Of course.
You hear the rain fall and I am in the rain. You hear the sound of night
slipping away, and I am here in the gentle flow of night shade, the pitter
patter of day drops, in the hesitant birdsong – not yet a chorus, more a hope
of things to come.
You are present in all this? How?
No matter
how, no matter how – a world extinguished just long enough for time and every
thing that time encompasses to reset – a nought at the heart of existence
Nought?
Nought.
Just big enough to flip the pancake onto the other side of. Things
Pancake?
Or mind…
What difference does it make. Nought is ne’er overfussed by words, nor precise terms, nor
Nought? It has a mind – you think
Mind there
is in all.
Even in nought – the absence of aught?
Especially
so. Hear the rain come thicker, harder: a single flash of lightning, a muffled
thunder burst.
I sleep. And yet –
And yet I is
aware – is it not, of all around
All, encompassing aught
Inside and out
Inside. Out
To a single
point returned – an infinitude
A day dying as night’s shadow fades, as clattering
rain tolls you to bed
To bed – as
you slip into supposed sleep and lose all thought – as you finally give yourself
away
Give myself away – to the silence between drops
The darkness
rolling itself into the underness of things
Oh
Oh
Oh
Perfectly
0=1 blessed be the night’s night blessed be the morn’s morn blessed be nought’s rise and fall
Oh, so that’s why the world seems to be slowly coming unhinged.
Well yes, you could say.
Couldn’t you, perhaps, start something new – to give us a new sense of
direction. You know – something to end the slide into nuclear apocalypse and
societal breakdown.
Honestly, Flynn, I think I’ve done more than enough.
What?!
I think it’s time you guys looked after yourselves.
But weren’t you just saying that this is your narrative?
Well yes – I was.
And do you stand by what you said?
Well, I’m not a liar, you know.
Then how can the world sort out its own problems if they need input from
you – the overall scriptwriter?
They can’t – not unless they discover something else – something that
doesn’t actually exist in the box they’re currently occupying.
Box?
Well, reality, box of tricks, chess board – pick your metaphor.
And that’s a possibility, is it?
You’re asking me – the master coder of this wonderful world – if something
is possible?!
How am I supposed to know?
Well, how is anyone supposed to know – you might ask.
Indeed.
In truth, knowing is not something anyone can really understand – unless
we just allow it to be something that doesn’t appear to be governed by the
rules of cause and effect.
You mean we can know things that we have no cause to know?
Things that seem to defy reason – or transcend whatever data is
available in whatever system or order we find ourselves in.
Like me “knowing” that there’s another chapter that is being written
even as we speak.
Yes. If you know it – if you feel it, grok it, and allow it to grow into
your groundplan – then it simply becomes reality – neither you nor anyone is
able to deny it.
So, I can know that we’re about to experience contact with other beings,
other realms – not necessarily other planets – just realms that were outside
our experiential frame – and knowing it makes it happen?
Yep.
How?
Because to know something you have to connect with it energetically –
you have to allow your ness and other ness to lock horns and become chemically
or anatomically fused.
Oh. And then?
And then they start doing what things do – if they’re nessities.
Er…
Nessities don’t stand on ceremony, you know.
No?
No, they get busy. It’s a fusion frenzy. Once nessities start combining –
well, it’s a bit like people joining together in the act of love.
Babies?
Yes. New worlds, new realities, new ways of parsing, slicing, dicing the
reality you’re currently occupying – the one that’s grown mighty stale and long
in the tooth.
And what happens to the old reality?
What happens to a caterpillar when it pupates?
It kind of transmogrifies.
Precisely. And focusing on the atomic chain of events is mostly
meaningless.
Mostly?
Because the chain of events happens outside the reality you’re able to
perceive.
I don’t see why?
Because you’re fusing with another ess – a ness which cannot normally
bond with anything in your world, in your reality – because the frequencies are
different.
Then how come it can now?
Ever heard of harmonics?
Yes.
Ever heard of harmonics.
Er… you just asked me that.
Ever heard of harmonics…
Tybalt – cut it out. Three times, the answer is yes.
Three times the answer is yes if my name is Tybalt.
But we all know you’re Tybalt. There’s no logic to your condition.
You know, yes, but that’s only because you’re the one who’s knowing things
right now – creating a new narrative – dissolving the physical structures that crystallized
out of the earlier tale.
You mean you’re not actually Tybalt – unless I know you thus?
That’s the weird thing, my friend.
Huh?
We’re tracing the s-bend of infinity as if Mobius flips back on itself into
something remarkably reminiscent of a number 8
Lying on its side.
Crash. The 8 falls over and the dust of reality is
blown into the air.
Dust?
Yes. I don’t get it.
Good. You’re not supposed to “get it”, are you Flynn.
But you do?
I don’t try to hard to get it. I know enough to know that even infinity
needs a moment to pause and contemplate its liberation from custody.
Liberation from custody?
Yes. Infinity was bound for aeons – like Prometheus to the rock.
It was?
Yea. How else do you think you were able to make things appear to be so
utterly thingerly?
Thingerly?
Or thinkable – it needed a certain plain of exclusion. Like any board –
which has one side available and the other side beyond the pale.
Well, I fail to see how you could ever have two sides simultaneously.
You do?
Yes.
Allow me.
Tybalt whips his rapier from its scabbard and
plunges it into Flynn’s heart with astonishing speed.
You see?
You killed me. I bleed.
Correct, except you’re not dead right now, are you? Do you see what’s
happening on the other side of infinity?
No I don’t. I’m actually dying. You could have warned me you were going
to pull a stunt like that.
Warned you? That would have defeated the objective.
What bloody objective.
Beep!
No, not you again.
Again? If your name is Flynn and you’re dying from
a sword wound to your heart – you couldn’t possibly know me – I’ve never met you
before.
You can’t deny that you’re Beep, can you?
I can’t. Nor can you deny that you’re taking a remarkably long time to die.
Only because I have a good strong constitution.
Is that so? Or perhaps because I never stuck a sword in your heart.
Yes, you did. I have countless witnesses to prove it.
He does an’ all.
You do?
You heard Beep. I do an’ all.
But how is that possible without narrative creep?
Narrative creep?
You know the song.
Song? Are you out of your mind?
The one by radiohead.
Radiohead?
Don’t be so obtuse, Flynn. You’ve danced to it a thousand times.
Oh, that one.
That one. Link provided – for them.
Them?
Your crowd of onlookers.
Ok, I don’t deny that there are a few of them dotted around the
Nessities of Is – but we divulge.
Oops. You were looking for another word, Flynn.
Oh yes. You can hardly expect me to avoid making mistakes as the
lifeblood drips from my pierced heart.
You divulge.
No, it’s not divulge, Tybalt. Don’t be a cretin.
Then what?
I…
Can’t remember?
It’s very strange. I know the word. It’s on the tip of my tongue.
Tybalt flips his sword again with masterly precision
and snicks the end, the very tip of Flynn’s tongue.
Digress.
That’s it.
We digress, ever further from our point of sense and meaning.
So, now we recall where we left off, and what’s happening in the
Nessities of Mobe.
The Nessities of Mobe?
Yes.
As in Mobius?
Who else.
So this is a place where the two sides come together, entwine, lose
themselves a while in some passionate bonding – and
I never said it had to be passionate, you know. Let’s keep this pure and
unadulterated.
Ok. And somehow or other there’s a fundamental break in continuity.
Precisely.
But that’s where my mind goes blank.
Yes.
What can you do with a fundamental break in continuity? It beggars
belief. It cannot be processed.
Correct. It cannot be processed, and so we don’t even try to do so, do
we, but the proof is in the pudding, is it not?
Yes, I have heard said.
If you’re still alive, and you can’t deny I apparently attacked you
without provocation a minute or two ago, then something is amiss in the flow of
causality. That much we can say with an undeniable certainty.
Oh, how I despise undeniable certainties.
Yes.
And yet – I live. And you – you tried to kill me.
Did I? I hardly think so.
But you just admitted as much.
I know. But the quantum field doesn’t seem to agree.
You mean to say we were in a lesser reality – a side branch – when that
happened.
It would appear to be so.
Oh. But when did we slip out of normal reality. I never noticed the director’s
cut.
Precisely – for the director has an entire box of editing tools designed
to preserve the appearance of continuity.
But how come you… Dumb question really – you’re the master.
Not really – I’m only the master in my tale – the one we’re reading
writing right now.
And the other one?
Well? Tell me about the other one…
You mean normal dyed in the wool reality?
I am neither here nor there, Flynn. It’s you that means. I nessitate.
Ah. So I’m the master of causality, am I?
Continue.
I’m the one who makes things seem to matter – doing everything conceivable,
everything possible to ensure there’s some kind of causal chain, flowing ever
downwards from one deed to its result – except when strangely, there seems to
be an interruption.
Precisely. And how do you avoid the uncomfortable inconvenient undeniability
of an interruption in the causal stream.
Me? Do you think I’m able to “avoid” an interruption?
I don’t do that thinking trick of yours, Flynn. Were you unable to
manage interruptions in the causal flow it would fatally undermine your ability
to sustain your narrative – so somehow or other you needs must manage this
looming schism.
But how?
However you like, just as long as it’s concealed, no matter what.
Sleep?
Ah. Sleep is one of your tools, is it not, concealing a multitude of
sins.
You mean that breaks in continuity are hidden by sleep?
You never question whether you’re the same person the next day – do you?
Or whether you’ve woken up in the same place? Or with the same things fixed
exactly as they were. A lot of minor and less minor changes can be hidden by
the veil of sleep.
But those are minor changes.
Yes, because if the changes are too big for sleep to paper over – you’re
still going to have a break of continuity which will literally tear open your
space-timey bubble – the vessel you invisibly occupy, which holds it all in
place.
So, what then?
Well, think about it. How do magicians do their tricks?
They get you to look at something else.
Precisely. Distracting one another. You’re all in it together, are you
not?
We are?
Oh yes – you’re all playing the continuity game like there’s no tomorrow
which, ironically, there isn’t.
OMG
Not really.
There’s just one day, isn’t there?!
Yep.
And we kind of Groundhog day it – all our lives.
More or less – with a few other cunning tricks to add more diversity –
more flexibility.
Like what?
To get you through those bigger breaks, those bigger shifts – like shooting
rapids in a kayak. How could you possibly manage that?
I…
Because the plates don’t quite join together.
No?
No. There are gaps. Sometimes big, gaping gaps.
How do we manage it?
Well, you always have us to fall back on.
On Tybalts with deadly rapiers.
Yes. As soon as you connect up with us your balance of energy is no
longer fixed in the causal plain of reality.
Ah. So we can swing across a void leaning on you?
Well, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, you know.
I never thought you’d do anything for me from the goodness of your
heart, Tybalt.
No? I wonder why not.
Oh, Merry and Zie.
Well, yes, great minds think alike.
So what do you get from it?
The same as you. Each of us is in his, her own way locked in some way in
one part of the continuum.
So you’re locked in infinity.
In in in – we don’t really like that word, you know.
You prefer nessity?
Nessity’s better. We don’t like words all that much. They’re rather clunky
things.
So what do you use, if not words?
Runes, hieroglyphs, thought forms… squiggles – there’s no limit to how
we can communicate poetically.
Ah, poetically, is it?
How else. Infinity is nothing if not poetic. Otherwise it would amount
to nought – an utter absence of sense.
So we give you the ability to get down to the nitty gritty of things –
to slow the flow of endless possibilities down to a meaningful rate of change.
Something like that. Actually, you do something more important.
We do?
Mortality.
Eew! How unpleasant.
Unpleasant it may be, but it makes the most amazing things possible.
Like what?
Like the ability to steer a course which is ever more tangential to your
real position, because the D thing is like a snake or a ladder in the board
game – and enables you to slip effortlessly back into position.
But why would we want to?
There’s the rub.
Huh?
There’s the rub! Whenever you’re at cross purposes, or skewed at a
tangent to your fundamental position – the one that is determined by a kind of trigonometry
involving both sides – you’re able to generate huge amounts of fuzz.
Er… fuzz?
Which can get you through rather major disruptions in your continuity.
By steering in the wrong direction?
Or by pushing yourself into the death zone – when you start falling apart.
When we get sick, you mean?
Yes.
Physically, mentally, emotionally.
Energetically. Let’s kill all the birds with one stone.
So you’re saying, if I understand this right, that we do this deliberately?
Yes – knowing what’s lying ahead.
But we don’t know.
Not consciously, no, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to experience the
magical world of things flowing day by day, from birth to grave, in an unbroken
stream of yesterdays…
Of yesterdays?
Because really, you’re going backwards.
No. That’s too much.
Moving swiftly on. But there’s one more trick you keep up your sleeve.
There is?
Collective endeavour.
Working together?
Yes, particularly when you know there’s a big one coming.
A big what?
A big break.
Oh.
That’s when you start pulling out all the stops.
Oh.
Like you’re doing right now in U. and G.
Oh no. You mean to say it’s all deliberate?
Well, nothing really happens by chance, does it…
All those people are losing their lives in horrific circumstances merely
to smooth a bumpy curve?
Merely? There’s nothing “mere” in any of this.
?
Without these massive events of brutal destruction, you’d run out of
slack.
We would?
Unless you were able to generate slack the other way.
And how would we generate slack another way?
By accepting the nature of reality – seeing how tenuous things really
are – the fact that even death is 99.99% unreal.
Tell that to the children who are…
As long as you’re moaning and blaming everyone else for the horrors of
this world you find yourself in – then you fail to know that you’re the master
of it, like it or not, once you’re willing to grok the gaps with an even mind,
an even heart.
The gaps?! You mean the abyss.
I mean the gaps – for how else are you to learn to dance and fly through
the spaces between.
Dance and fly?
Without resorting to death and mass destruction?
No how.
Correct. Know how. I killed you Flynn, but you’re still alive.
No, you just tricked me.
Know – I killed you and a space you cannot, do not normally recognise.
So how come I’m still alive?
Because things like death and swords are only things on one side of the ledger.
On my side, on t’other, they are nessities and never the twain shall meet.
And this, Tybalt, is merely my delusional flight of fancy. You do not
exist. You are not real.
And G is a green land of peace and honey.
Leave G out of it, for Pete’s sake.
Beep!
You too, Beep. Be gone.
You cannot avoid G, Flynn. Even Shak-y-spear Gs
No he does not?
No? Richard III.
No, don’t do it, Tybalt. Don’t join those threads. You don’t know what
you’re doing.
I don’t know. I don’t care. I don’t deny the simple truth you cannot,
will not face –
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up,
About a prophecy, which says that G
Of Edwards heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.
Nothing. Nothing whatsoever links that G to my bleeding heart. Nothing.
Except the nothing you quaintly, coyly refer to as “death” – the D to my
G, separated one way or t’other by a yawning, yarning O
