Tiffle and Speck

 

So have you actually seen any of these gnomiki, James?

 

Of course, I see them all the time.

 

In flowers? – asked Alyona.

 

In flowers, yes, trees, with small children… Actually, there’s one, no, two of them right beside you now.

 

Alyona gave a start.

 

Next to me? Where – I can’t say anything.

 

That’s not surprising.

 

Why’s that?

 

Because you need to know how. It’s like reading, isn’t it. When you were little you could look at a page in a book but it was meaningless – you weren’t able to read. It’s the same with gnomiki.

 

But they’re real creatures if I understand you rightly, not symbols or letters that I need to learn.

 

Yes, they’re real creatures all right – but you can’t see them the normal way.

 

Whyever not?

 

Because you’re using the wrong eyes.

 

The wrong eyes?

 

Or the right eyes but the wrong part of your brain.

 

But I can see everything else, so why not gnomiki?

 

Everything else?! You’re joking, Alyona, aren’t you?

 

No, why do you say that?

 

Because you can only see things in what I call the cube.

 

Huh?

 

The cube is where all regular things are arranged in a particular order – a bit like alphabetical or chronological order.

 

But I can see everything there is to see – unless it’s too small or too far away.

 

No, Alyona, my dear. You only see what you know how to see. In this case you only see things that are divisible by one, though sometimes you can feel other things.

 

Divisible by one? Everything’s divisible by one, isn’t it.

 

You’re right – everything you can see is divisible by one – and anything else that isn’t you can’t. Capiche?

 

Er… I think you’re pulling my leg.

 

I could be, but the thing is Alyona, what if I’m not.

 

Huh?

 

What if I’m actually telling the truth?

 

Fat chance of that.

 

What if there are millions of things that you’ve never learnt to see, either because you didn’t know, or perhaps because you were too lazy.

 

Hey – I’m not lazy. Don’t be mean.

 

Ok – then let’s see if you can spot Tiffle and Speck.

 

Tiffle and Speck?

 

The gnomiki that are with you right now.

 

But there’s no one here.

 

You see – you just said no “one” and I already told you there are other creatures or things which are perfectly real, it’s just they’re not divisible by one.

 

Then what am I supposed to do?

 

Well, first of all, try being a little less sure that you have all the answers. Try and question your assumption that you’re fully aware of who or what is in your vicinity.

 

Ok. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt – though I’m sure you’re winding me up.

 

There you go again – doubting everything. Still, I can’t blame you – I was the same.

 

You were?

 

Yes, in my past life.

 

Your what?!

 

When I used to live in England.

 

Oh, that past life.

 

Precisely.

 

Ok – I’m not going to be a spoilsport. I really do accept there might be things, or even creatures, nearby which I can’t see.

 

Like angels?

 

Yes, like angels.

 

Or demons.

 

Yikes – let’s not think about that.

 

Ok.

 

But I still can’t see anything more than I did a moment ago.

 

Impatient, aren’t you?

 

Yes, a little bit, but really – what do you expect?

 

Ok – now your eyes have become a little softer, a little more receptive, but still that isn’t enough.

 

What more is needed?

 

You need to condescend, to make contact. To come down from your pedestal and talk to ‘em.

 

Now you’re really having me on.

 

No, not at all.

 

What am I supposed to do – talk to the air?

 

Not the air – you need to talk to them. I even told you their names.

 

So you did – but how did you get their names?

 

Oh, that’s easy – the same way they got mine.

 

Well?

 

As soon as you can see gnomiki you can hear them and likewise, they can hear you.

 

But why couldn’t I hear them if they were talking to you?

 

Because you weren’t seeing them. Isn’t it obvious?

 

Er… Not sure I understand.

 

Well, seeing them you’ve activated a different part of your brain – and that part of the brain is rather special.

 

Yes? In what way?

 

It can see creatures or things not divisible by one, outside the cube.

 

Not divisible by one... But divisible by what?

 

By nought.

 

By what?

 

By nought.

 

But nothing is divisible by nought.

 

Correct. Nothing in the cube is divisible by nought.

 

No, James, not just inside the cube – it’s mathematically impossible. Nothing whatsoever is divisible by nought.

 

Funny that.

 

Funny?

 

Yes, very funny.

 

What?

 

I thought we agreed that you weren’t going to be so dogmatic.

 

Dogmatic? Me?

 

That you would agree to suspend your disbelief – to play along in order to see if you could see ‘em.

 

I did – but playing along is one thing, while suspending my reason and swallowing crazy mathematics is another thing entirely.

 

Ah – but there’s nothing crazy about my mathematics.

 

James – trust me – we can go to the Russian academy of sciences and ask them if there are any numbers divisible by nought and you know perfectly well what the answer will be.

 

Yes, Alyona, I know what the answer will be – but only if the mathematician is able to switch on the part of his brain which is able to see gnomiki. As soon as he does that he’ll accept that he’s now able to see things that are not divisible by one – which are divisible by nought – but it won’t seem so strange to him.

 

No? Why not?

 

Because seeing is believing. Once he’s able to see gnomiki, and hear ‘em too – he’ll no longer think as most people do, that nought is just nought.

 

Oh.

 

Precisely. “Oh!” He’ll realise that nought is the zero point through which we access Oh – the other side of our mind – the side of our mind that can take us into Narnia, or anywhere else we might need to go.

 

So…

 

Yes.

 

But I didn’t say anything.

 

I know – but in Oh – on the other side of your mind – you did – you were already thinking along the right lines.

 

Was I? What are the right lines?

 

Now you’re trying too hard to understand – to get back into your comfortable cube.

 

You mean to say we climb out of the cube without even being aware of it?

 

Yes, all the time.

 

When?

 

When you’re happy and humming a song like Winnie the Pooh does, or suddenly have a daydream, or remember someone out of the blue, or when you see something like just now.

 

Huh? What did I see just now? I didn’t see a thing.

 

Yes, you did.

 

Did I? What?

 

You saw Tiffle and Speck.

 

What?! You must be mistaken.

 

Impossible. You looked straight at them and for a second you connected with them.

 

But I’d know if I saw them. I’d remember.

 

Not yet, you wouldn’t.

 

Why not?

 

Because you immediately forget what just happened, the same way people often forget a dream or anything outside the cube that they experience in daily life.

 

So I saw them, you’re saying – but I’m still none the wiser?

 

Correct – except you’ve made a step forward because they gave you a gift and you accepted it.

 

What?!!! Are you serious?

 

Yep.

 

But I don’t have a gift. There’s nothing here.

 

Correct. Nothing. But that is merely because it isn’t divisible by one.

 

Oh come on, James, don’t be ridiculous. If a gift is divisible by nought then it’s nothing at all.

 

Absolutely, until you allow yourself to see it.

 

And what? It’ll still be nothing.

 

Really? You’re very sure of yourself, young lady, are you not?

 

I…

 

I thought we agreed to suspend judgement for a minute or two. After all, Tiffle and Speck were kind enough to give you a wonderful gift. It’s the very least you could do.

 

Oh, I apologise Tiffle. And Speck, I apologise. Do excuse me for being so thoughtless.

 

Think nothing of it.

 

Think nothing of it, at all.

 

Did you say something, James?

 

Nothing whatsoever – James looks surprised.

 

Just I thought I heard… I must be imagining things.

 

Imagining things? Poppycock.

 

Imagining things? What a lark.

 

A lark? Well, I suppose it might be a lark, as long as it didn’t go too far.

 

Or get out of hand.

 

Precisely. There’s no knowing what might happen.

 

But on the other hand…

 

On the other hand – yes – I see what you mean.

 

Do you?

 

Does she?

 

Yes, nothing ventured, nothing gained – Alyona sighs, wistfully, as she realizes how much has been blocked and curtailed.

 

I beg your pardon, Alyona? Is everything alright?

 

Oh, yes, I suppose so. But about that gift…

 

Take it if you want it.

 

James said I already did.

 

Of course you did – but you don’t remember, do you?

 

No, I don’t seem to remember. I remember nothing at all though, wait a minute, I can remember a tinkling bell, which is strange, or was that a tickly feeling somewhere at the back of my mind which I then mistook for a bell?

 

In fact, you don’t even remember seeing me, Alyona…

 

Or me, Alyona, do you?

 

No… You know I feel terribly bad about it. It seems dreadfully rude not to remember seeing someone I’ve just seen.

 

Someone?

 

I mean two of you, of course. Excuse me, Tiffle, if you will.

 

I might do. If you’d have the courtesy to open your eyes.

 

But my eyes – I thought they were open already.

 

You thought?

 

She thought? Honestly, thinking things is rather problematic at times, is it not?

 

Yes Speck, you’re right.

 

On the count of three then… One

 

Two

 

Three.

 

Alyona’s eyes suddenly open in a way they never have before – like a door in the other side of her mind.

 

There, that wasn’t so bad.

There, that wasn’t so bad  – in unison – was it?

 

Not at all. Not at all. I can see you both though truth be told –

 

You were seeing us all along

 

Without realizing it, weren’t you?

 

Feeding it all to the voracious cube.

 

Making the cube master of all.

 

Tinkle tinkle – a bell rings at the back of her mind and Alyona sees the gift she’s been holding all this time.

 

Oh wow! Thank you Tiffle, thank you Speck – what a wonderful pair of slippers.

 

You’re welcome Alyona. They’re for dancing.

 

Dancing? But I don’t really dance. I mean – they’re very nice. I love them.

 

Why don’t you try them on?

 

Oh – yes, I think I will – she does – oh, they fit perfectly!

 

They should do. We made them specially.

 

But how do you know my size?

 

How do we know?

How do we know?

 

Oh – silly question, really. Yes. Funny how I’m still thinking that way even though I can see you both.

 

Funny.

Funny, isn’t it?

 

Why don’t you try them out?

Take them for a whirl?

 

You mean have a dance?

 

Yes.

Yes.

 

I’d love to, but…

 

You’d love to?

 

What’s stopping you?

 

Alyona was going to say “there’s no music” but realizes she doesn’t need to.

 

The music is waiting for you

 

but you need to take the initiative, do you not?

 

Oh, I see.

 

Alyona starts dancing – or perhaps the slippers start dancing and she allows them to lead her feet – and no sooner does she start than the music fills her soul with light and something indescribable – something unforgettable – something which normally, in the cube, would be nothing at all, more’s the pity, something complete and o’erflowing.

 

I say, Alyona.

 

Oh, there you are James. I must have… she was about to say fallen asleep – but something pops in her head and she knows that would be completely untrue – remembering everything that just happened outside the cube with a squeal of delight.

 

I danced. It was wonderful. Tiffle and Speck gave me the most amazing slippers. I never knew it was possible to dance like that.

 

You’re welcome Alyona.

Alyona, you’re welcome.

 

And for a noughtieth of a second both sides are brought together – and the rational mind realizes that things are merely things, and nothing will ever be the same again, thankfully.

 

 

0=1

the endieth end

or so it would seem

if things were so

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