absolutely

Absolutely.

?

 

Not.

 

Er…

 

Yes?

 

Not sure I understand.

 

Absolutely.

 

[sigh] Is there no way you could condescend to speak in a way that I might be able to figure out what you actually mean?

 

Absolutely.

 

It’s like talking to a brick wall. Surely we can benefit in some way if I’m not just the idiot who utterly fails to understand what you’re on about – if I start to comprehend your deeper purpose or meaning?

 

Absolutely.

 

You like that word, don’t you?

 

Abs…

 

olutely. It’s just, I don’t really feel like you’re trying to meet me halfway. I mean – I’m sure you’re mega intelligent – a brain the size of the universe, in all likelihood – but if you’re content to be up there in your galactic truth-space and I’m down here – desperately trying to figure things out with little or no help – then how am I ever going to make any progress.

 

You’re not. Not really, are you.

 

Precisely.

 

Ah – you chose precisely. I would have said…

 

absolutely – yes – I know. But that’s missing the point.

 

What point?

 

[sigh] Whether I can or should figure out what you’re on about.

 

Oh that.

 

Do you disagree?

 

Not necessarily.

 

Not necessarily?

 

Yes. There may be some truth in your assertion – but ultimately, you’re not subordinate to me, so trying to figure out “what I’m on about” cannot or shouldn’t be your main purpose. I’m peripheral. You’re intrinsic, believe it or not, and if I am a little vague – who knows – perhaps that’s what’s needed. Perhaps it’s time for you to learn to trust your self, or get to know the truth hiding therein.

 

Really? What then?

 

Well, there are multiple possibilities.

 

Such as?

 

Such as whether the term “absolutely” is or can be absolute in itself.

 

Humph!

 

Or whether the word “absolutely” means the same thing at all when used with a different preceding sentence.

 

Huh?

 

The problem of context, and the extent to which context changes the meaning of a word.

 

But why should we care about this one word? It doesn’t or cannot solve anything.

 

Correct – nothing, I mean no  thing can or does solve anything else, can it, does it?

 

Really?

 

Really. One thing is always alien to any other thing… 

Then why all the fuss? Why do we constantly bother trying to process and arrange things if, as you claim, it's in vain.

Why indeed... But then again, what else would you do with your time if you're trapped like Alice on a 2D chessboard with no apparent way of escaping.

Oh... And you're not, you believe?

I merely see things for what they are and treat them accordingly. Sometimes honesty is the best option.

Honesty? So you can do something with things that we cannot?

Who knows.

But if you can - how would that be?

Ah, you want me to "if"?

If you will.

Ah...  [a handful of words fly from the page, up into the air, like a flock of birds]

Me thinks there's magic afoot... if such a thing were possible.

 

If indeed, because if I were an alchemist, I could take an ordinary word, a thing, and use it otherly.

 

Otherly?

 

Filling it with meaning, with purpose, with power.

 

Er…

 

0=1

 

0=1?

 

It is   I am

 

Oh God. He’s off his rocker.

 

Precisely.

 

[no sound… silence for an entire minute]

 

And suddenly – the world of things is no more

 

No more?

 

Transformed

 

Transformed?

 

Absolutely

 

Absolutely?

 

And thus it is…

 

 

 

 

Read all about it! Read all about it!

What? What’s happening?

 

Read all about it! 0=1  it is  I am

 

What insanity is this?

 

Infinity drive unleashed

 

Infinity? You can’t be serious…

 

Infinity

 

No – I refuse to believe it. That would bring the entire edifice crashing down. The whole of material reality… in an unstoppable chain reaction

 

Would it?

 

Absolutely. Infinity once unleashed cannot be stopped – cannot be contained – is bound to absorb and swallow every thing

 

Is bound – is it not – or so we were told

 

Huh? You mean…

 

Unless the wheels of time start spinning and match infinity

 

The wheels of time? Not sure I know what you mean…

 

Tis but a figure of speech – and yet – if time is no longer monolithic – one time for all – if each and every frame of reality has its own rate of time – it’s own spinning wheel – then infinity doesn’t need to destroy all or any thing whatsoever. It merely transforms the nature of reality – which is no longer centralized – no longer monolithic – which evolves into a new state of matter and/or isness.

 

Oh

 

So behold. I give you…

 

What?

 

A world

In which?

 

In which things are no longer finite and discrete

 

In which

 

Things are able to evolve and serve as

 

What?

 

Conduits for infinity

 

 

 

[dramatic music rising to a powerful crescendo – shaking all and everything to its very core]

 

 

 

 

 

Utter nonsense – of course.

 

I agree. And yet…

 

No, don’t even think of going there, Mike.

 

And yet… there’s obviously been a huge yawning gap in this so-called state of things.

 

What so-called “state of things”, Paula?

 

Your beloved 3D reality.

 

Beloved? It is what it is. I never idolized it. I merely used it to the extent that it could be used, as I would use a hammer or a saw.

 

Nonsense.

 

What do you mean?

 

You identified with it.

What?

 

You, your very self, and 3D reality became two sides of one coin.

 

Are you insane? 3D was just the venue. It was never me.

 

So you say, and yet…

 

No, this is utterly false.

 

Me thinks she doth protest…

 

Of course I’m bloody protesting. Your logic is twisted and offensive.

 

And yet,  in 3D reality the king is absent.

 

What do you mean?

 

The magic is all gone.

 

What on earth has got into you?

 

The man, the mind, the vehicle in some way merge.

 

Oh – so you think I become the venue?

 

How can you help it? In 3D reality the I is a monster, a tyrant that has to identify with things, places, ideas – or die.

 

Why?

 

Because infinity has been sealed up and thus withheld. So the I has to compensate, to fill the void. It has to substitute infinity with its very self – by expanding and seeking to take over, little by little, all and everything.

 

OMG! Are you serious?

 

Follow the logic.

 

Logic isn’t enough.

 

Follow the energy.

 

Energy? Give me a break.

 

Follow the…

 

What?

 

absence

 

What absence?

 

Everything that should be but isn’t. Everything that is palpably missing. Everything that can’t, doesn’t or won’t fit into the cube of a closed system that’s doing its utmost to pretend it’s universal and complete when, in fact, it’s an empty shell, mostly dead barring the I that paints itself on everything it touches, everything it surveys, even on everything it contemplates.

 

Er…

 

Because infinity can’t just be swept under the rug.

 

No?

 

Of course not. It requires your personal complicity if it’s to be excluded, denied, ignored.

 

My personal complicity?

 

Absolutely. You, or your I think, I believe, your I in whatever shape or form it takes to survive and thrive in a world in which infinity is absent – is an I that itself has to assume the mantle of the absolute, along with other contenders such as the State, the Church, or better still God.

 

So you actually seem to think that I, the I, can and does step into the breach, can and does attempt to fill the gap, to plug the hole left by infinity’s absence?

 

Absolutely.

 

Then there’s no way I, the I, is going to want to admit this, is there?

 

Absolutely not.

 

It’s going to do everything in its power to maintain the status quo, to prevent me or anyone else from engaging infinity in any way, shape or form.

 

Absolutely.

 

So I’m not just up against myself, my personal weaknesses or fears?

 

No.

 

I’m up against the very fabric of reality which my I helped to establish and now helps to enforce.

 

Yes. Well done.

 

So there’s no way out, short of busting the I to smithereens, which, if I’m not mistaken, would prove fatal.

 

Correct.

 

So end of story. Nothing can be done.

 

Nothing?

 

You yourself admitted as much.

 

Nothing? Nothing needs to be done.

 

No?

 

No, not at all.

 

How so?

 

For infinity can take care of itself.

 

Huh?

 

You can’t do it or undo it.

 

No?

 

Absolutely. It is, in the same way I am.

 

Really?

 

Absolutely.

 

And what, then?

 

Nothing.

 

Nothing?

 

Nothing whatsoever.

 

[sigh]

 

The wheels of time are all about spin.

 

Spin?

 

And perhaps sound, in the sense of harmonics, though I certainly do not wish to over-explain things.

 

You’re telling me!

 

There’s always going to be another dimension… another realm of conscious-ness which defies comprehension, which beggars belief, or the imagination.

 

Is there?

 

Yes. It’s the first law of things being

 

Being what?

 

Temporal bifurcations of infinity.

 

Oh for God’s sake…

 

BEEP!

 

You’d try the patience of an angelic being.

 

Speaking of which…

 

No, don’t try to slither away, you slippery eel.

 

Me? I’m merely a messenger, a voice crying in the wilderness of not-what-apparently-is, the undotted flip side of reality, the t uncrossed, the thing as yet unwitnessed, undecided...

 

Well, I for one have had my fill of this. I live in the real world of facts and things, where matter matters, where philosophy is a dirty word because it’s lost in absurd pretensions of over-vaunting intellect.

 

Yes, to hell with philosophy and science too. Big bang be damned.

 

You…

 

Yes?

 

You *******! How dare you attack science. How dare you question the knowledge and wisdom of men greater than yourself.

 

Men ungrounded in truth so simple it doesn’t need to hide itself in mathematics and abstractions.

 

Men of the mind and the physical world.

 

Men who are unable to grasp the absence of their own soul, their own conscious-ness! Yes, I defy them joyfully, for their time is past, infinity is released back into the world. I have seen to that, and they are utterly unable to deal with this simple, ineluctable truth.

 

So you say. So you say.

 

 

 

And without further ado we turn to Marjorie, our woman hiding in plain sight, 43 years old, two kids, husband an accountant in Milton Keynes, of all places and yet, in spite of the above, our link today with the event horizon, the so-called black hole where the infinite makes itself known through a series of gaps in the fabric of things, as Marjorie unknowingly attempts to continue being a normal middle-aged housewife leading a normal existence.

 

Reduced to a single dot – her tale is here for all to consider and peruse. Let the dot Mandelbrot itself into an endless, a vast stream of words as the story of her life, and how her world suddenly changes utterly, unfolds.

 

In which Marjorie collapses everything underpinning the world of things, by failing to  to differentiate between dream and waking, between life and death…

 

0=1 so to speak

An iron burning through a husband’s shirt on an ironing board in Milton Kenes, on a foggy afternoon [at 16.58 to be precise]

A song of light and repose sung by celestial beings heard by no one except a batty old lady called Kate the Scruff.

An alarm clock that never quite manages to ring on time.

And one more that I’m not presently at liberty to reveal.

Run it through AI and prompt it to look for cyphers and hidden meaning.

Dance to a full moon on a lonely moor, let’s call it the Long Mynd in Shropshire, England [not the “UK”, which happens to be a legal fiction and doesn’t in fact exist.

Other these to your heart’s content and observe the green numbers cascading vertically down the screen of a reality which to all intents and purposes appears to be a computer program, a simulation what have you.

Done.