Tiarnampsejymqatsi
The origin of this title… well, for a long time I was taking notes before my turn to write the chapter, and the title grew ever longer and longer… until I made it an acronym, and then the acronym became a word symbolizing all the lovely little things that were woven into the title. Adding “qatsi” to the end was an obvious reference to Godfrey Reggio’s movies.
It stands for “The Intensional asana of rhomboid noemata (autotelic mnemotrix precessional sayarot engrammaton jungerl’s yu mix)”. Very briefly: Intensionality (with an ‘s’) is a very useful concept in philosophy, referring to meaning in the medium of the message. Asanas are yoga postures. Rhomboids are an endless source of visual entertainment for me. Noemata is a phenomenological concept. Autotelic here is a nod to Flow. Mnemotrix is similarly a nod to Valentino Braitenberg’s transcendentally good book, Vehicles, which is easily better than anything you’ve read so far. Precessional should be understood here with Buckminster Fulleresque connotations. Sayarot refers to reconnaissance units in the Israeli army. Engrammaton is my joke mixing Scientology and Equilibrium. Jungerl is one of Joyce’s greatest coinages. Yu is one of those excellent Chinese concepts that deserve further research.
“This Word is from everlasting, yet men understand it as little after the first hearing of it as before.”
~Herakleitos
“It is both necessary to say and think that being is: for to be is possible, and nothingness is not possible.”
~Parmenides
“Water can be both good and bad, useful and dangerous. To the danger, however, a remedy has been found: learning to swim.”
~Democritus
The quote from Herakleitos there is my favorite of the bunch. Democritus’ reeks of common sense. Obviously, the quotes are employed here referring to mystery, being, and experience, in pre-Socratic synthesis. The second quote also clearly alludes to Eçaraia.
***
Prelude
“The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well and, having done it well, he loves to do it better.”
~Jacob Bronowski
More Flow. In time, the three leitmotivs from the initial quotes will be repeated in different combinations. Here, we have men whose flow is directed to mystery.
There is a condition in which the afflicted appears to lose conscious control over one of his hands. It’s occasionally referred to as Anarchic Hand.
Those who knew him and his trade referred to Maximille of the Triple I as The Anarchic Hand of God.
Van Helsing and Daniel Dennett.
“Behold, the law-man in his glory.”
A nod to post-DXM Aatami.
“Is glory a fifty thousand dollar suit?” Syne smiled briefly. “By all means, you know I know greed is the least of your sins.”
The whole “I know you know I know you know…” thing gets old quickly, but it’s a message that must be passed.
Max raised his hands. “Definitely clean of that. None of my employers pays me as much as I deserve. Not one among the several thousand cheap bastards.”
“How do you get the Income Tax people off your back?”
“I’m their chief agent.”
‘La bureaucracie c’est moi.’
“Ah,” nodded Syne. “It would have to be that, or you’d have to hire me.”
“Indeed. How’s your sister?”
“Pergula’s fine. Mother is… mother.”
Max assented. It was bad luck to discuss Mnemo Syne, Lady High Executioner.
Pergula is a crazy, crazy name. Mnemosyne… get it? And of course, a little something from The Mikado…
“And you? How’s that rock-climbing hobby of yours?”
“You know. Heaven on Earth. No greater source of optimal experience than conquering a mountain. I pity dragons, with all their flying.”
Csicszentmihalyi can be quite repetitive in his praise of rock-climbing, so here’s some mocking…
“You speak like you never had wings,” observed Syne with some malice.
One of those lines of dialogue from a song. In this case, Change from the Queen of the Damned soundtrack. Max is the angel of bureaucracy. Not literally, of course…
“Wings thrashed, legs are going. Hysterical and useless.” Max sighed and went silent.
One, two. Let Down from Radiohead.
“Business, then,” commenced Syne, rolling up his sleeves.
“Doing lunch as usual, huh. Sometimes I think you’re the one cool player in all this susfudelic mess.”
‘Susfudelic’ is my twist on Matt’s ‘fubarriffic’.
“I get emotional, occasionally. Nothing a few rounds of Russian roulette can’t solve.”
“Satan is that afraid of you?”
Constantine reference.
“Aye, aye, sir. Hokay. Where are the... shall we call them, protagonists?”
Look at my postmodern meta-fiction…
“An interesting way to put it. They’re with Salyra and some friends.”
Syne sighed with visible relief. “Oh, that.”
“Yep. Moebius doesn’t play like that. Not the Big Moebius, the Pimp Daddy of Time and Fate.”
That’s an awesome title, isn’t it?
“Does he know I know he knows I know?”
“Many of him do. The OverMoebius does, of course.”
“Stupid OM.”
Nobody needs me to explain Om, right?
“Clever of you to figure it out, though. It makes four of us, OM, Anaxerretibes, me (and only because he chose to tell me), and now, you. Most Moebiuses don’t know.”
“I’m flattered to hear.”
“It was pretty clever, subpoenaing the Pyramid. When did it occur to you?”
“Three in the morning, reading Law and Revolution III: the Western Legal Tradition Strikes Back. The Courts work in mysterious ways.”
A joke, of course, based on my surprise to see a sequel to Law and Revolution.
“But always in your favor.”
“There was a mathematical chance of someday someone like me being born. A kwisatz haderach of the courtroom, or something like that.”
A Dune joke involving law. Sad.
“All the weird crap ends up happening in this multiverse, doesn’t it?”
“And you know why.”
“I know why. Stupid glass bead disposition. This falls, each one will fall one after the other to Eçaraia, and eventually nothing will have ever existed.”
‘Glass bead’ there refs. Hermann Hesse.
“Time will cease to exist even as maya.”
Does this even make sense? Hmm.
“And so on. Don’t you hate cosmology?”
“It’s a confusing hobby.”
My words in the characters’ mouths.
“So how much do you know?”
“I know the Dht'n'k'lz of the highest caste were the only sincere worshippers of Eçaraia in all multiverses of an infinity so vast of multiverses, infinity is a pathetic word to use.”
“Why?”
“Utter arrogance. They wanted to prove they were the most clever race ever by destroying everything.”
Well, there’s an awkward explanation if I ever saw one.
“How?”
“Setting in motion a chain of events that would use this whole universe as one big hand grenade of doom to destroy everything everywhere ever.”
Monty Python and Invader Zim.
“Specifically?…”
“The Pyramid would contain the distilled essence of cosmic intelligence through the duration of the universe an infinite number of times, every time sending the aggregated intelligence back to the beginning of time to continue accumulating. Eventually, outside the course of time, the intelligence would be thrown into a being so he could be the instrument and director of the Final Demise.”
I owe the idea to Philip K Dick’s Valis and a bit to Dune.
“Moebius.”
“Don’t try to trick me. That was Anaxerretibes. But as it turned out, he was so perfect in his intellect that he was embarrassed to take sides, pro or against creation, so he just watches things from the Temple of Sol, where the Dht’n’k’lz that had been there to serve him were taught the error of their ways with his incredible powers of Being Right.”
Anaxerretibes precedes the Book of Fluids. He’s been with me since High School.
“But?…”
“The Pyramid crashed because it’s OS sucked, and it continued to do its job, and it created a second Supreme Intellect, but it was flawed with partial amnesia and – according to Anaxerretibes – a blind spot. That’s Moebius, and that’s why we stand a chance.”
They couldn’t make a Pyramid running on Unix. (I apologize for this geeky joke, the kernels made me do it.)
“…wait, you spoke to Anaxerretibes?”
“We have a proverb. It says, ‘wow, what won’t a subpoena do?’”
“…heh. And I’m occasionally accused of cheating.”
“Yeah, well.”
“So you know about everything.”
“I don’t know about you.”
“Nobody does. Least of all, me.”
Nobody does, least of all, me.
“Moebius must fear you.”
“He certainly does. He’s mysteriously quiet about you, too.”
“How flattering…”
“How about a warm drink?”
“Right. Some thé a la menthe, perchance?”
The song that made for the one good part in Ocean’s 12, ‘member?
“Blessed be the breakdancers,” smiled Max, opening his hand so the cup would materialize in it.
Continues the reference and quotes a comment made once regarding a news story that John Paul II had blessed a group of street dancers.
“Indeed.” Syne drummed his fingers on the table, appreciating the tea’s aftertaste in his mouth. He’d been in this position many times, at Davi’s, negotiating with the full power of his mind while feeding the body with the best the foxman’s art had to offer. The gorging made his thoughts clearer. Mango juice, olive oil, he though. Cover the landscape with chocolate mousse. It was something of a mantra. “Well, when can I see him?”
The mantra thing is stolen from The Flanders Panel, with the twist of being about good foodstuffs. A landscape covered in chocolate mousse is something I dreamt once.
“Moebius is always available. He’d receive a cunning fellow like you gladly.”
“Do you really think that’s what I mean?”
“Nope. You want to see OM.”
“Bingo.”
“Not happening.”
“Let me tell you about an insight I had…”
“I’m listening, as ever.”
“Now, when Uziel came down from the heavens and told me exactly what and how much sucked, I was full of disbelief. Why? If you attribute it to skepticism, you don’t know me well. Cynicism, yes, but skepticism is impossible in this universe. But it was neither, actually, the thing was that I already knew angels and they had been different. Angels, yes, though as I later found out they were corporeal incarnations, which explained why they were so sinful and full of vice. They are heaven’s critique on humanity. The Solar Logos hates you.”
‘Heaven’s critique on humanity’ is stolen from Kill Bill, with a Constantine twist and my unease with our depictions of angels throughout the story.
“What, you’re a human too.”
“That’s something only an imperial court of justice can decide.”
“Cunning bastard.”
“I’m part dragon, anyway. Remotely. Less than the gossip goes. But anyway…” Syne took a deep breath. “I quickly realized beating Moebius was simply wasting effort, like fanning vacuum. I would reformulate my goals.”
Maneuver warfare reference.
“One wise move. What else?”
“History is Wahn. Maya. Unparallaxed gestalts. Everything that happened, happened because someone made it so: rhei panta, all things flow, the course of a river that has been placed there. A canal of fate. What flows? Things flow. The nutritive soul flows in its precessional course.”
“What are you getting at, with your Aristotle and Herakleitos?”
Wahn is from Schopenhauer, which Max doesn’t bother observing. ‘Unparallaxed gestalts’ is a lovely expression that doesn’t exactly mean the same. ‘Rhei panta’ is pure Herakleitos. Nutritive soul is Aristotle.
“The nutritive soul exists in a very literal sense. One of the first means of information transmission and storage in living beings was their fluids, the cytoplasm, the… tree juice thingies… the blood.”
“That sentence would have been a lot cooler if your vocabulary hadn’t failed you.”
I still don’t know what word I was reaching for there.
“Cut me some slack here, I’m delivering some of my best lines. Anyway, the flow in this universe, as in others, occurs at many levels, as alchemy and similar nonsense insist. There is mutual influence. There is autopoiesis. And in this, sometimes, there are gestalt expectations that aren’t met. And I’m all for the law of pragnanz.”
‘Cut me some slack here, I’m delivering some of my best lines.’ That never fails to crack me up. I proceed to brainstorm together flow, nutritive soul, alchemy and systems theory. The law of pragnanz is a simple gestalt theory concept, see Google.
“Moebius knows and predicts.”
“Yes, of course, remotely, OM is the great planner and plotter. But I have experience with deterministic systems. Who rules Gamezoha?”
“Kom'Royza, the Tong, Hekal Tiamat, and whatever else you make up as you go. Conspiracies. Moebius.”
I had just learned of Kom’Royza and Hekal Tiamat and was eager to use them, so be glad I didn’t stick them prominently in the plot somewhere.
“Don’t be hypnotized by your own game, Max. They are but parasites of this Empire. It works because it’s not centralized. It’s steered by an invisible hand, which is a very different thing. A thanatocracy of dead Legalists, ming kiun, Autopoiesites, psychohistorians. People who have made it a scientific certainty that we’ll be awesome. It’s of no consequence that OM is behind them all, because one cannot use so many proxies without losing track.”
As stolen from Adam Smith, cybernetics, Deus Ex, the Foundation trilogy, Confucianism and systems theory. In my defense, I wasn’t ripping off anyone I recall with Thanatocracy, and don’t remember reading the word ‘autopoiesites’ anywhere. Ming kiun is, if I recall correctly, virtuous men.
“He can.”
“He can steer things, but so can I. No, Max, part of you hasn’t realized Moebius’ trick: he doesn’t just steer destiny, he tries to be the destiny. And that’s the Salvador Dali sleight of hand.”
The emphasis on the word ‘steer’ refers to cybernetics. Salvador Dali sleight of hand is a FLAP in-joke that began in a role-playing thread.
“The homoplasmate.”
Pure Valis.
“The homoplasmate. The unique soul that bounces – he’s one manifestation of it, even in his supreme manifestation, even OM – he had to be. The Pyramid doesn’t create life out of absolutely nothing – that’s beyond the scope of even the Dht’n’k’lz’s craft – that’s EÇARAIA’S GRUDGE – her endless sterility. True, ultimately Moebius can’t be defeated by anyone else – but ultimately, there isn’t anyone else. It remains that he can be defeated by himself, if he secretly wishes to be.”
Eçaraia’s Grudge in caps… can’t remember where I saw something like that before, but it’s probably a rip-off too.
“Which is utterly doubtful.”
“Indeed.”
“So, um, what was the purpose of your speech? I’m not exactly going to betray OM right now, even if I could, and you won’t get to meet him, and if you did it’d change nothing.”
“I was making time. My datacube was downloading a template and digitally certifying it.”
Datacubes, as stolen from Deus Ex. I like how this part was just to pass info to the readers and makes no sense plotwise.
“Uh-oh.”
“Yes, sir. What won’t a subpoena do?” Syne grinned.
Max smirked when the lawyer lowered his gaze to sign the document before him.
It was one of those narratively awkward moments when both sides think they’ve got the other side right where they wanted them and both are completely and utterly right.
Trying to sound like Douglas Adams there.
***
First season: flowers galore
“Thermodynamic depth (…) the complexity of a system is the difference between the amount of information needed to describe the system in its present state and the amount needed to describe all the states it might have been in at the point at which it changed from the last previous state (…) one might say a complex person was one whose behavior and ideas could not be easily explained, and whose development was not obviously predictable.”
~Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
This chapter is from before I read The Evolving Self. The reformulated concept of complexity as harmony between differentiation and integration is more elegant. This quote opens up the section where the variety in characters and our backstory is sampled with variations on some key themes. Also, the section is chiefly about girls, hence the flowers.
Salyra smiled. It wasn’t benign in any way. Beatific also isn’t a good word to describe it. Nope, it was really one of those evil bitch smiles, but we wanted to put it kindly, but nooo, it seems things conspire against any gentlemanly description of Countess Salyra.
Sometimes, when your vocabulary fails you, you have to grope for some humor…
“Behold!”
The double doors swung open.
Ta-da-da-DA!
“…yes, well…” began Pyrite.
“Don’t you think that’s a little drastic?” said Mickey.
Geraldine pointed. “I don’t even think they can fit… oh.”
Vasdhra fainted.
Salyra is evil, the others are just bad. And Vasdhra is a pussy. I visualize him as a goth Woody Allen. I know, it’s weird.
“…I mean, I hate him with the full fire of the flaming wraths of hell, but… um, am I even supposed to be seeing this kind of machine? I’m not quite 18.”
“I’m not sure I should be seeing this, and I am quite… I am mature,” said Geraldine with some rashness in her voice.
She’s fucking ancient, that’s what she is.
Mickey coughed. “Yeah, like… that’s messed up. Enormously.”
Salyra rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to watch if you don’t want to.”
Pyrite glared at her. “I do want to watch his excruciation and eventual demise, but just facing the general direction of this thing hurts immensely.”
“Isn’t it lovely? The delicious pain?”
“Not quite… no.”
“Nope,” offered Mickey helpfully.
“I’m afraid not, my dear. Not this much. It’s like immolating oneself to light a cigarette.”
Salyra sighed. “Oh, well. So much for the Paintatron.”
Lamest name ever!
Madam Geraldina raised her eyebrows. “You built the Paintatron? Insert tinge of admiration here.”
Salyra smiled. “How kind of you. Yes, I found the specs as foretold by the #thevoidesian monks. Having it built and consecrated was the hardest part.”
The #thevoidesian monks rule. For those of you unaware, #thevoid was the IRC chat room that succeeded #thecollective.
“My interest does not wane, do go on,” said Madam Geraldine, slapping her son awake. “Vasdhra, dear, wake up.”
The count covered his head in his cape. “ButmommyIdon’twanttogotothecemetary.”
Get it? Sphexoren boys go to the cemetery instead of school?… ack, I know, it doesn’t make sense, but I don’t question it.
Salyra beheld her creation with glee. “To have the proper builders, I had to unleash Gemoth upon a village of Sphexoren peasants.”
Pyrite frowned. “Isn’t that that disease that makes people incapacitated, listening to Paint it Black in their heads and singing along until they die?”
A disease of gothness and emo. Now that’s evil.
Salyra examined the elf with amusement. “Yes, pretty boy, that’s what it does, normally. But I could harvest their tortured work with a certain… sacrifice.” She glanced deep within his eyes, and looked away. “But you wouldn’t like to hear about it, if this simple prototype hurts your sensitivities so.”
Vasdhra stood up, straightening his collar. “Yes, anyway, let’s go elsewhere. I’m sure we still have a good old-fashioned torture chamber.”
Mickey glanced at the Paintatron. It stood ominously. He shivered. “Yes. I second that. Definitely.”
Everything must be ominous for Mickey the Cod.
Geraldine shrugged. “Well, you managed to get me curious, but let’s indulge the boys on this one. Besides, this would make hell pleasant by comparison, and that’s hardly vengeance, now, is it?”
Salyra sighed. “Oh, well… what a waste, what a waste.” She rubbed her chin wistfully. “Hey, I know,” started the Countess, brightening up, “I guess this will do!” She turned maliciously to Mickey, grinning evilly. The cod man stepped backwards nervously. “Guards… take our ‘ally’ to a journey beyond his worst nightmares!”
She was mean.
Did you see that one coming?
***
“‘The stars about the beautiful moon again hide their radiant shapes, when she is full and shines at her brightest on all the earth.’”
This and most verses from here onwards are by the Greek poetess.
Kylie raised an eyebrow, a gorgeous line of blackness on a pristine white background.
Nike shrugged. “The doctor recommended poetry. He says my soul is rotten.”
“What an accurate man.”
Doctors should make more diagnoses like that.
“That’s Lord Medicator Danring Aberdash for you.”
That’s a character absolutely incidental. Can’t remember where’s the name Danring from… Dune, maybe? Nah, that’s Fenring. Dunno if I just changed it.
“Danny? What happened to his father?”
“Early retirement. I don’t think I have good personality.” Nike snorted. “He was probably gay or something.”
“Because the possibility he might’ve been simply monogamous was, of course, ridiculous.”
“Of course.”
Kylie shook her head. “Fifty billion billion souls in this Galaxy and I’m here depending on your help.”
Small billions, not the large ones. I’m using Asimov’s count for Foundation.
“You remind me of when I became Empress. I asked Wernher, ‘well then, I have to marry a pure breed dragon for a consort, right? So I get to pick between Kylie and Addy?’”
“Oh, come on. That’s so last week. Like, debauchery. Pfft.”
Nike chuckled. “Well, sadly, that wasn’t how things worked. It’d have been fun to see you led to the imperial bower at gunpoint.”
“A fine dynastic tradition,” remarked Kylie with contempt. “Like your mother or your grandmother.”
“What, Duchess Grishkin Ticine-Gauss obliged gladly.”
Grishkin, that’s from a poem by T. S. Eliot.
“Yeah. But only after Emperor Werther violently quelled her family’s rebellion.”
From Goethe.
“He loved her, still. Though I’m lending more and more credence to that old saying love is the spiritual equivalent of slipping on a banana-skin…” Nike let her gaze linger on the door behind which Dr. Danring was conducting his exams on Joel, under medical oath not to gut the demon like a vile fish of evil.
‘Love is the spiritual…’ is from the foreword to my edition of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. “Vile fish of evil” is courtesy of that syndrome that makes me despair of ever ending a sentence coherently.
“Your family has an appalling lack of talent at expressing love, and this critique, coming from a Sphexoren, is pretty harsh.”
“I take offense at that. I am the greatest lover in the Galaxy.”
Kylie rolled her eyes. “You have your father’s ego.”
“Not my fault your family holds a grudge against him.”
“Grudge? You’re putting it too lightly. Young handsome spurned Wilhelm, proud like some Persian prince, to spite the poetess, gives her a minotaur body slave. The first of a series of insults, escalating into persecution, until driving Alisia into madness and suicide.”
‘Like some Persian prince’ is a phrase I’ve been wishing to use since reading Gates of Fire. Also, I hate Wilhelm, him and his disgusting mustache.
Nike sighed. “You’re her niece, right? You do look like her.”
“I hear that a lot. She had long brown hair with golden specks, while mine looks as if someone smashed a raven down onto my head. Also, she died at nineteen. I’m lagging behind,” scoffed the blue dragoness. “I used to look at her picture for hours when I was younger. The cold dark poetess, on her cold dark rock, next to the cold dark sea…”
The painting referred to here actually exists and can be found at the Manchester Art Gallery (?), and can also be found at Umberto Eco’s History of Beauty.
“Right, right, cold, cold and dark. And it goes on forever.”
“Oh, you know the Litany?” Kylie smiled briefly. “Yes, well… I suppose it was wrong to bring that subject up, anyway. Your father is dead now and that’s it. And your mother also died with Alisia’s verses on her lips.”
The ‘Litany’ is actually a quote from Deus Ex. You sometimes heard MiBs saying it when you sneaked up on them, as if you were catching an ongoing conversation. My goodness, that was a great game. This is doubly ironic, of course, since Kylie looks like a WiB.
“I loved him so much/ I wanted to give him a three-egg clutch/ Before I killed myself.” Nike shrugged. “She had poor taste in men.”
Taste in Men, like, the song.
Kylie gazed at her carefully, trying to find any hint of shame in her manners, and as others who undertook the same endeavor, ended up throwing her arms up in frustration. “You’re fucked up, my most noble leader.”
“And down and sideways. I love your hair, by the way.”
“I thought I had demonstrated with geometrical precision that your family is a miserable failure at loving, assuming – and it’s a stretch – that the word actually means anything for you.”
Nike looked up. “I’m sorry? I was imagining you in leather. You’re less flat-chested than I remembered.”
An easy mistake.
“Why do I even bother?”
“Because I’m blessed with an utterly innocent countenance to counterbalance the fucked up crap going on in my head?”
A very good reason.
Kylie seriously considered slamming her head against the wall.
“I’m just exacting a little revenge. Or do you want me to sit down and quietly listen to your bitching about my family while nodding like a schoolgirl agreeing to the teacher she has a crush on? …hey, that’s a pretty kinky scenario.”
“I’m not bitching, you know it’s true.”
“But we can love your stupid House Emoxoren love. Look at Wernher, for example.”
Zing! That was mean.
“Very well, I’ll concede he had a lovely, dramatic thing going on with Krystal. I felt quite sorry for him back in the day.”
“See? I win.”
“But I was also glad it made the chances he’d want to marry me even more remote. And my suspicions are vindicated by the current state of affairs with Nickie.”
Nike shrugged. “You weren’t here. He could be a loving husband – even passionate at times – but again, at others he just went away. Maybe if she had been less of an introspective, distant cunt…”
“She’d always liked him.”
“And he probably likes them distant, anyway,” Nike added thoughtfully. “Yes, in hindsight there was no way it would have worked for her. I hope Fairy flushes the love out of her heart with raw, delicious lust.”
A treatment as good as any, I suppose, as long as we’re talking about pirate elves.
“There you go again,” said Kylie, rolling her eyes. “What’s wrong with living with heartache? It brings out the most beautiful feelings in people.”
“You’re contradicting yourself. If pain is so good, what’s so condemnable about my relatives in their ridiculous love games and their abhorrent marrying?”
“You’re irresponsible.”
“We’re spoiled. That’s a given fact of nature: hereditary rulers are spoiled, and silver dragons are spoiled, and I’m proudly the most spoiled of the lot. When things don’t go my way, I get dangerously horny.”
“You haven’t matured one bit since we were teens, have you?”
“Nope. And I still think you’re resisting out of pride and I’m positive you’ll take pleasure in your eventual defeat.”
This dialogue so far has drawn shamelessly from Les Liaisons.
Kylie snarled with disdain. “Well, I think I was wrong in accepting your help and I’m positive you’ll be a terrible mother.”
Cue for Nike to break down crying.
It’s just a trick, don’t go ‘comfort’ her!… oh, too late. …Good.
“Oh, yeah, that’s useful. Crying. Very helpful.” I hope you can rescue yourself from wherever you are right now, Dr. de Viaminina… I’ve got to keep your demon self and my nymphomaniac emotional wreck cousin from doing the stupid things they’re bound to do if left to their own devices…
***
“Sister Assumpta?” The young man looked like a knight from Jon’s order, but he wore the SWR uniform and insignia. “I have been sent on an errand by my order, and it is said to be of your interest.”
“Is it related to the King’s disappearance?”
“Aye. Come, pick up your belongings and let’s move. Let us not deprive the dying of your talent at comforting them for longer than necessary.” They rushed toward the vehicle bay. “I am Chevalier Lucius Block, and I’m a specialist at Crisis Handling trained by the deBeers Foundation. My order received notice from our lawyer of the location of many of our disappeared leaders, and I’m being sent to liberate them.”
Chevalier as in Liaisons. Lucius deBeers, a character in Deus Ex (Illuminatus). Block as in Bergman’s Seventh Seal. “Our laywer” being Syne, of course. This guy is here just to have someone orthodox in religion actually do something remotely clever and useful in the story.
“Are you… one of the anointed?”
“Aye, of the New Papal Orthodoxy vows. A humble servant of the Lord, yes, but not slow in the head as our creed tends to be depicted. It’s sometimes taken for granted that, in order to have a big picture of creation, one has to believe in relativity of cosmology or alternative spiritualities. Ridiculous, it forgets that there is a heaven and hell and angels and demons and people who follow our religion tend to be associated more closely with the former than the latter, because it is the one true religion that is any good. Oh, that was a long argument between Ludo and Pakko Kantonnen in Zardark, and Chevalier Helmg Azoriear and Iria de Lejsmas in Wendauer. Most societies go through that at some point. Sapientis est atque boni viri, non tantùm ipsa vitia sed & vitiorum consinia fugere : & cavere sibi ab omnibus quæ pietatem lædere, aut morum innocentiam corrumpere posse videantur. But I apologize, sister, I often get sidetracked in small talk.”
Lejmas sounds like slugs in Portuguese. Heh, heh, heh. I have no idea what that quote from De Telluris Theoria Sacra means. New Papal Orthodoxy… and to think this was before Pope Benny v. 16.
“Tis of no consequence, as long as we fulfill our duties before the Lord and my friends. What transport shall we utilize?”
“A portal should be set up as of now. Here it is. Are you ready? This will be fantastically easy, God willing.”
Warp.
Because, you know, moving folks around is boring.
“Good day. I’m here to say prayers, and kick ass, and I’m all out of prayer beads.”
I owe this to Retarded Animal Babies, really.
Salyra, Madam Geraldine, Pyrite and Vasdhra stared at him from behind the control table of the torture chamber, the latter rather sheepishly.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Got a Trainspotting flashback here.
“Chevalier Lucius Block at your service, and the pious Sister Assumpta.” Lucius stepped forward without drawing his sword, while Assumpta went to Oscar’s side, trying to find a release for his shackles. “The Stagirite said, ‘The study of pleasure and pain belongs to the province of the political philosopher.’ Now that is admirable, Count, but you’ve been failing your duties as a leader, a duty you took before God when appointed leader of your House. Stand aside, or in His name, I shall smite thee and I will not stop smiting thee.”
Some of this is indebted to Claveman.
Salyra waved her hand dismissingly. “Guards! Get rid of this nuisance.”
Lucius was surrounded by bunny-girl commandos. “You procured Silver Beret-grade personal teleporters. Bravissimo.” He rubbed his hands together. “Like we say in the chapel-barracks – the altruism meme got nothing on this!”
Chapel-barracks, as in Warhammer. Altruism meme, see Susan Blackmore’s The Meme Machine.
The enemies fell to the floor spilling blood without any visible movement of his part.
“Your succubae can’t protect you. Gabriel taught me his swordplay.”
Gabriel, his. Fucking political correctness with angels’ genders.
Pyrite raised a fist. Fae power began trickling up his arm.
Look! It’s Raziel!
“I pardon your sins, young creature of God, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, that you be blessed in the defense of the Lord.”
“Do you bless your enemies instead of cursing them, knight? Are you weak in the head? Very well, may your last words be words of madness.”
“Grant me one second, re your sister.”
Pyrite hesitated.
“My order’s lawyer wants me to inform you that your friend, ex-Duchess Salyra, had your sister’s spirit be brutalized in endless agony by the basest demons in hell, just to consecrate her vile apparatus of earthly suffering.”
He’s putting it lightly. It was totally Japanese-style.
Pyrite glanced at Salyra, and clenched his fists. “You expect me to believe…”
“See by yourself. O pure spirit for whom the angels wept, immaculate soul second only to His mother in virginal virtue, o thou one soul Heaven failed to claim for itself, and wept. Hurl your righteous ire over us— Cover us with your pools of fury.” He began chanting ‘monk, monk’ backwards, but a spiky liquid metal shape was already visible in the center of the room. There was an audible gasp from Pyrite, and Gauss raised his head, briefly roused from the hazy pits of his pain.
With ‘Hurl your righteous ire over us— Cover us with your pools of fury’ I’m nodding towards that modernist poetess H.D., more specifically her poem Oread. Good stuff. ‘Monk, monk’ backwards refers to the haunting background vocals in Radiohead’s Paranoid Android.
The Tinfoil Lady did not move nor attack, but silently stood facing Salyra accusingly.
“It’s been said the unplanned organism is a question asked by Nature and answered by Death. The undead are a joke told by Fate and laughed by Eternity.” Lucius shook his head. “I’ll read you your last rites, witch. Jesus has a reeducation chamber for you in Heaven.”
‘The unplanned organism…’ is just another of the awesomely quotable Deus Ex. The whole last rites thing is, naturally, a rip-off from Constantine.
“Son? This is where we slip away.”
“Yes mother.”
“In the name of Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Now fuck off and die. You fucked up slag.”
‘Now fuck off…’ is from Closer. Great dialogue, that one.
Pyrite blasted the flesh from the vampire’s skeleton, and then each molecule apart. He then turned to Lucius, tears rolling down his cheeks. “I won’t let you save him! I don’t have anything against the others, but he must die for what he did.”
“Well, you see, he’d be better off dead. Look into his eyes.”
The Tinfoil Lady rotated around an invisible axis without moving, silently witnessing as Pyrite walked towards Wernher. Assumpta barely avoided him as she ran to the panel to release the prisoners from their agony.
Pyrite met a match to brotherly love.
Her eyes were the Aleph and the Zahir… a harp made with but one string of her hair, if played by a daring fool, would create universes, more real and more alive than ours, alive and pulsating with love and beauty… one could be blind, deaf and dead and still experience Godlike omniscience of all that is excellent and pure through the touching of her skin… the Secrets of Creation were written in her features, a message to be eagerly deciphered and understood, a sickness unto transcendence…
Despite the express references to The Aleph and The Zahir, the main Borges theme here is from “The writing of the God”, but Krystal’s the jaguar. This begins a series of cat motivs that are replayed with variance. It’ll make sense if you read. ‘Secrets of Creation’, the influence of Alpha Centauri on me is endless.
“Sweet Jesus!” gasped Pyrite, jumping back. “That’s everything in his mind! It doesn’t stop!”
“Gabriel told me... if a man had that much faith in God, it’d be too much, it’d be so much it’d be a mortal sin. Apparently he wasn’t just being dramatic as angels like to be.”
That’s a whole lot of love, in case you haven’t noticed.
“I must spare him!” Pyrite raised his hand to deliver a coup de grace, faster than Lucius could react. It was stopped in midair, and the elf felt blood running down his arm. He looked up, and it was being held by his sister. No one had seen her move.
She’s sharp. Heh, heh. Sorry.
“Heed her request, boy. And run. As long as we don’t hear from you again, I don’t want to hand you to the Gamezohan authorities.”
He nodded, and hesitated. He turned to Wernher, who was staring blankly at the place the Tinfoil Lady had been before. “I… I didn’t…”
Lucius shook his head. “Worry only about God’s forgiveness. Go.”
Assumpta finished using the torture machines’ medical systems to administer first aid to the most gravely injured prisoners, and released them. She rushed towards Oscar, however, she head distinct whimper when she passed beside Lucius.
“Chevalier?… are you alright?”
“I am mortally injured,” he said, falling to his knees. “It’s the price of summoning the Lady. Remember this sacrifice, sister, that it is not gratuitous. Remember and keep your zeal and orthodoxy to the very end. One of my ancestors said, long ago: ‘I want to confess as best I can, but my heart is void. The void is a mirror. I see my face and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to men has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams.’ Terrible words I tried to redeem with my life, and soon I’ll know if my efforts were in vain. Do not fall into nihilism, despair, or heresy. Telling you this was my mission on this land as it regards to you. And now…” he looked upwards. “Forgive me all my trespasses and take me into your glory.”
The quote’s from The Seventh Seal, obviously. ‘Forgive me all…’ is from Les Miserables. There’s an accent there somewhere, but I can’t be bothered figuring out where.
Assumpta lowered her head in prayer. “And please, gentle Jesus, pardon him that he loved the sound of his voice so unbelievably much.”
Vinny was the first to recover himself, sitting up to find Assumpta tending to wounds in Oscar’s back. “Am I happy to see you, sis. You sure took your—“
The world froze.
“Time, Mr. Freeman? I mean, Omnibus.” Max sighed. “Is it really time for Max ex Max-ina again?”
‘Time, Mr. Freeman’ is the WORST ENDING EVER. Stupid Half-Life 2.
“You. I swear, I’ll eat your face…”
“Blah blah blah. You’re coming with me, I’m afraid. This is the point in the game when Moebius cheats.”
A lie, of course, the bastard’s always cheating.
When Assumpta looked up to reply to Vincit, he was no longer there.
***
“Violet dusks I bear within me from my origins,
naked maidens at play with galloping centaurs...
Yellow sunlit days with gaydy glances,
only sunbeams do true homage to a tender woman's body...
The man has not come, has never been, will never be...
The man is a false mirror that the sun's daughter angrily
throws against the rock-face,
the man is a lie that white children do not understand,
the man is a rotten fruit that proud lips disdain.
Beautiful sisters, come high up on to the strongest rocks,
we are all warriors, heroines, horsewomen,
eyes of innocence, heavenly foreheads, rose masks,
heavy breakers and birds flown by,
we are the least expected and the deepest red,
stripes of tigers, taut strings, stars without vertigo.”
“I sense something strongly passive aggressive there,” said Kylie.
That’s by a Finnish poetess, I think. Just Google for it. Stripes of tigers: two cats.
“Of course, it wouldn’t be in Alisia’s collection otherwise.” Nike had redone her make-up so no traces of her weeping were left, only the ever-present suggestion of sensorial paradise.
Kylie opened her mouth to retort but the opening of a door interrupted her.
“Hello there, Kylie. Your imperial majesty.” Danring was personally pushing Joel’s wheelchair, having politely declined to assign him an automated one. He flashed a perfect smile, passed a manly hand through his jade hair, and winked one of his purple eyes at the Empress.
“Aw, hello, Danny.” Nike purred to fill any cat with envy. “How’s your patient?”
Three cats.
“Alive, unfortunately. Better than before, but inexorably getting worse until we undo his, shall we call it, poisoning.”
“I was informed by my Silberwyrmritter liaison that they’re close to a breakthrough in the rescue of Dr. de Viaminima.” She avoided Joel’s gaze. “His better half, at least.”
“I want you to examine Zaratov’s antidote, see if you can improve on it.”
“I’m a doctor, not a piss doctor, but hey: ‘Your orders are charming; your manner of giving them still more delightful; you would make tyranny itself adored. This is not, as you know, the first time I have regretted that I am no longer your slave.’”
‘I’m a doctor, not a piss doctor.’ Our readers probably don’t know ‘piss doctor’ is how we fondly refer to pharmacologists (copyright Silencer). This is a friendly poke. The quote is, again, from Liaisons.
Joel raised a hand. “Yeah, um, I just want to point out she’s got my baby in her tummy, there.”
Joel’s so sweet, when he’s not himself.
“A state of affairs I’d be ecstatic to correct, were it not for the Hippocratic Oath.”
Stupid Hippocratic Oath.
Nike tried to avoid revealing the comment had upset her. “Yes, anyway, Danny, do join us in lounging away the time until Oscar gets here.”
Lounge against the dying of the light!
“Oscar is coming here?” Joel sounded more surprised than particularly scheming. Things were that bad.
“Yes, the best plan we’ve got right now is having him take this antidote.”
“What if he doesn’t want to?”
“Dart gun,” answered Nike, matter-of-factly.
“Ah,” Joel seemed to consider this for a while. “And then I’ll be all, whaddya call it, ‘evil’ again?”
“And I’ll put you to sleep!” Lord Danring laughed, slapping Joel’s shoulder none too kindly.
“Now, now, Danny, you know I’m woman enough for several thousand.”
At the same time. A topological nightmare, but feasible.
“Your imperial love is endless,” he agreed.
“Or at least known to be able to last several weeks. Tell me, as Lord Medicator you have free access to the body of any dragon…” Nike indicated Kylie with a smirk.
“That is correct, however I’m also a professional and a gentleman, which is why you love me.”
“Much appreciated,” muttered Kylie. “Let’s not start that argument again, Nike.”
“Fine, fine. I just feel intimate with the good doctor here because, well, we’ve been playing doctor since we were so young…”
“Can we change subjects? This is embarrassing,” said Joel.
“Dr. de Viaminima is correct,” added Kylie quickly. “I don’t want to hear.”
Lord Danring smiled. “Alright then. As your physician, Empress, I order you to shut up.”
Nike fell back on the bed laughing, using Ass-Kicking the leopard as a big furry pillow. “I am defeated. Take pity.”
Ass-Kicking is a happy leopard. Four cats.
***
Second season: crash and burn
“The history of warfare is similarly subdivided though here the phases are retribution, anticipation, and diplomacy. Thus, retribution: ‘I’m going to kill you because you killed my brother.’ Anticipation: ‘I’m going to kill you because I killed your brother.’ And diplomacy: ‘I’m going to kill my brother and then kill you on the pretext that your brother did it.’”
~Douglas Adams
Summer is a season of Ass-Kicking. That quote is DNA at his best, that is, writing.
A VIP council was assembled at the amphitheater aboard the new Zaitoichi-class dreadnought GENS Bel Riose, flagship of the Jaguar Fleet. Consul Marshal Archduke Gauss was sitting next to Jon.
Zaitoichi, the movie; Bel Riose, from Foundation (the ships of this class are named after great generals of science fiction). Jaguar Fleet, five cats. Consul Marshal Archduke is a cool title.
“They’ve taken Oscar to the imperial palace. Apparently Kylie has found some kind of cure or antidote.”
“God be praised, comrade. However, I do not think I fully comprehend the purpose of this meeting.”
“The High Command – the part of it that hasn’t been demoted and sent to Neophobosexmachinan gulags – has some explaining to do. Regarding the appalling failure in our defenses.”
“But the Gamezohans resisted with relative ease.”
“You do not fathom the magnitude of this insult, Jon. Our home planet was never attacked. There is no historical precedent to this incident. We had almost one hundred civilian casualties, just at Kubrik.”
I was going to say two thousand, but nobody needs 9/11 references at this point.
Generalissimus Gàrakz stepped up to address the assembled officials, with Adelais Aberdash as his bodyguard – an obviously dispensable precaution given the location of the meeting. Gàrakz was almost unique among the military personnel aboard the ship in not looking stressed or sleep deprived.
“I will begin to address your questions, gentlemen, as queued in the priority cycle.”
Admiral Lysander began on cue. “How could this happen?”
“Our sensors obviously failed us, admiral.”
The Dentonite Tribune was next. “And how is that even possible?”
Dentonite. Deus Ex, of course, following the lead from Chapter 26.
“As you know, our sensor arrays are perfect and infallible.”
Gauss pondered this very briefly. “Are you telling us they were disabled from the inside?”
“Yes, your highness. Illuminati operatives.”
Pesky Bavarian seers.
Parallax Archon Xerl: “I trust the Triple I has rooted them out?”
Xerl… what’s that from? Can’t remember. Parallax Archon in from my RPG setting UNEEA, of course.
“Yes. They could only pull this trick once, because it revealed their agents infiltrating all agencies – the result of our safeguards. It was Moebius’ masterpiece, coordinating the efforts of the army of co-conspirators required to cause such a dramatic damage to our preparedness, but it was a one-shot weapon. The natural order is restored. The gallowses are working overtime at the moment.”
Arch Chancellor Morhy of the University of Kubrik assented thoughtfully. “Well, that is some comfort. Did the psychohistorians see this coming?”
Morhy is also the name of the Reitor of the University of Brasília, where I study. He’s a ‘piss doctor’, I think.
Gàrakz nodded. “It was a possible outcome. We could only be sure we were clean of saboteurs after they had tried their best shot. In fact, the current internal security projections are a lot more positive now.”
Jacob Syne: “What about the Mi-Go?”
“They’re no longer our direct concern. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid you haven’t begun to hear the bad news.”
Ambassador Kunti Kantonnen of Zardark sat up. “Do proceed, Generalissimus.”
Kunti is just a name I wanted to use. Kantonnen is the surname of 60% of all Zardarkians or something. I know, it’s not funny anymore.
“Copies of the abstract of Cthulhu Unbound, a classified document very pertinent for the current state of affairs, are available at everyone’s holographic assistants.”
Gauss quickly scanned his memory. Books from his early childhood. Cellular automata in the mist. Coming of age in a dodecadimensional grid. Gifts of emergence unknown. Cthulhu Unbound. He paled as realization dawned.
Prometheus Unbound, Gorillas in the Mist, Coming of Age in Samoa, Gifts of Things Unknown. Mind you, the original books are really lame, except for the first in the list. Now, the ones I made up… oh, how I wish they existed.
Cthulhu Unbound: How To Defeat The Hordes Of Pure Evil With One National Guard Division, by Dr. Hilton, Ph.D.
Abstract
In the recent eight millennia, the Gamezohan Empire has steadily assumed cosmopolitical hegemony in an ever-increasing slice of the universe. With the exception of our neighbors of Dewnhëem, there is not one single nation or coalition able to stand the full power of our war machines for any measure of time once the gears are set in motion. We combine the equivalent inherent advantages of all most powerful empires of all times. And yet there is one last bridge to cross, one last frontier that lies extremely vulnerable – and as we will see, unnecessarily so.
This threat is the Elder Races, of course. This category includes a vast array of creatures that are mostly identifiable by their insanity-inducing abilities, utter disinterest in human well being, and more often than not, tentacles. The typology for such creatures has been lying around for ages; not only in imprecise manuals such as the Necronomicon and its unabridged brother, the six hundred sixty-six volumes of the Necryptozoonomicon, but also in the great philosopher Anaxerretibes’ masterpiece, De Rebus, we have practically all the data necessary on these entities (and everything else ever, but that’s the nature of the Great Thinker’s opus). Why we have remained vulnerable to excruciating agony and an eternity of suffering in these creatures’ pseudopodia is a matter of defense policy history and outside the scope of this essay.
In it, this threat is analyzed with instruments such as complexity-immanence-transcendence theory, Marikian quantumneuroatmanchemistry, superstring-metachrono-kinesis, cognition cyber-psychohistoric/dai-infoalchemic rhetorics, noematic plusquamparallax’d heuristic metaconsultancy I² paradigms, and the most recent works with the Omnipotence Drive. Imagining all possible contingencies of an all-out assault by the entire population of the eldricht dimensions, it stands to reason victory is practically guaranteed following one foolproof method, as long as a single requisite is fulfilled: the invasion is not prematurely stopped through divine intervention.
Jon looked up. “What does this mean?”
That’s a lot of weird words. I won’t explain them right now, but trust me when I say they’re really important concepts that would change your life.
“As ever, our enemies are one step ahead. Moebius sacrificed his moles, causing a public backlash that is disbanding all secret societies, his tentacles in our society, as we speak. However, he had this outcome in mind. The Mi-Go gone, the SURTR being mopped up by the Thirtieth Fleet, the way is paved for an attack by the Unwritten Ones.”
The most highly security-cleared officials in the room released a collective gasp.
“I will now allow CEO Riley of Lucifuge Corporation to answer your questions, as he is better informed regarding this theme.”
Riley stepped forward, nervously tapping the floor with his umbrella.
“Well, yes, indeed. The Unwritten Ones. For those of you who are poorly informed, they’re what you get when you take the Mi-Go and remove their holy, blessed souls of redemptive goodness and fill their hollow husks with such Oblivion that the resulting species is related to their original hosts in proportional depravity to make the traditional human-zombie dichotomy neigh meaningless.”
Yeah, um, the UO aren’t nice.
Riley raised his umbrella, pointing up at a holographic projection.
“I’ll go over the battle-plans superficially. I apologize to anyone with a military formation here for the superficiality of my explanation. The enemy is regrouping as we speak, and their offensive will be of savagery peerless. Our forces will be able to resist them for many weeks, mainly by bottlenecking them as they overrun Dewnhëem. Isolated mottes, blockaded in ten dimensions by twenty fleets, will be worn down with successive and synchronous ley-line dim-mak pressure point commando strikes, until our usage of system theory metaphysical internal lines reveals the void-core that can be destroyed to cause the Eçaraya-energy to be flushed out with telluric waves, temporarily annihilating all Unwritten One forces in the sector.”
Mottes is a concept made famous in the Winter War between Finland and the Soviets. A ten-dimensional blockade must be an awesome thing. Ley lines are an entertaining concept that can be googled for. Dim-mak too (it’s about ninjas and poking people). Internal lines are a simple military concept, but I imagine the system theory metaphysical variety would be complicated, but it amounts to the same idea as before, ultimately.
Riley lowered his umbrella.
“Evidently, there will be many casualties at every step, but the system, as originally devised by Dr. Hilton, is foolproof in that it will buy us time to proceed with Project Tetrahedral Aeon Closure. Inevitably, however, we shall run out of capable warriors and ships, and they will secure a galactic beachhead. From there on, we’re doomed.”
Tetrahedral Aeon Closure. Rock on.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” interrupted Kunti Kantonnen, “your projections predict no chance of victory?”
Gàrakz stepped forward to answer. “Militarily, none. The psychohistorians say our civilization ends in three months at most. The United Temple of All Prophets say: ‘Near the Day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky.’ The Hospital of Stigmata Visionaries see the Day of Reckoning is to be being. The Oneiric Kubernetes Noir[1] says this is when the Tfafnian Revenge will bring about the DAY::THE::SWORD::WILL::BE::JUDGED. The Zen Motorcycle Rabbis speak of the Great Running Out Of Ling Gas…”
Psychohistory is the discipline (in Asimov’s Foundation) that uses mathematics to predict the course of history. ‘Near the Day…’ is the hopi quote that ends Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi. Ling is a Taoist concept that I can’t explain in the restricted space of this margin.
While Gàrakz databarfed on the Zardarkian ambassador, doubtlessly a tactic to discourage future interruptions, Gauss turned to Jon, drumming his fingers thoughtfully.
“I suppose this is how it unfolds, and now it feels as if it were always going to be this way.”
“Do not lose hope. The future belongs to the Lord alone, and…”
“What? No, you read this wrong, Jon,” said Gauss, stopping his drumming. “We Gamezohans haven’t lost hope, at least, not in the sense of those people who are driven by hope alone and such loss would leave them desolate. We have reached a moral crossroads where our philosophy comes full circle and completes itself.”
“As you know, our culture is inspired by the Gazraki dichotomy of Revd and Rsil, which owes nothing to the Terran duality of chaos and order or good and evil. Rsil is the tenebrous principle of efficient victory as an end in itself. It guides Gazraki thought and action as long as there is conflict and limited resources. Revd is the luminous principle of abundance, ritual and honor. The notion that a defeat by the rules is superior to a victory won through cheating. Thucydides said that in war, the strong do what they can and the weak endure what they must. The Gazraki way of life praises the opposite behavior. One should have strength to endure and allow for the wastes of honor. Ideally, DaiRevd and DaiRsil – the principles in their transcendental form – are Unity – a dialectic synthesis, if you will. Our philosophy wishes us to believe that playing per doctrine, ritually, is ultimately the most efficient way – and simultaneously, that cheating may be an integral part of following the rules. Discipline and heroics are both excellent. And of course maneuver warfare is greatly about applying uniform pressure to find gaps, to then apply overwhelming pressure and force a collapse.”
“That’s the idea, at least, but for the latest turns in the wheel of ages we – my dynasty, even more than my people – have privileged Rsil and victory at all costs above ritual and detachment, satisfaction in the honorable martial way. We have come close to the sin of Strength without Honor. And now, the only prophecy the Gazraki had becomes meaningful for our redemption, and we are excited with the prospect of a beautiful, sublime defeat.”
This is a very important explanation, regarding the depths of personality of an entire people. It’s obviously followed by a cheap joke.
He began to recite, and then proceeded to translate:
“Ogve ghe edjorubgo ‘revd qisuat
Ghe dapikh heboza qisuat
Ocve ghe obwi ‘revd qisuat
Aksoyukxo dhre moavoc
Penvo neuj ‘beov teqoel
Ahweloq layidy Fuutex uvyibeknu niop
Layid wuwasi mavugd jahanay
Cukayi deuz ogve ghe Ziizag qisuat
That’s why the importance of Revd.
It’s strength to endure.
This is a time of Revd.
The process and the end
Become identical as of the crisis:
Now we can’t achieve Telos,
We can at least draw comfort
Within the way that is Tao.”
Jon scratched his head. “Loses a lot in translation, does it not?”
Wernher leaned back dismissively. “Nah, it pretty much sucks in the original, too. Good thing not all of draconic art comes from the Gazrakis.”
“Well, there’s clearly no metric there…”
“Metric in ancient Gazraki is complicated. Not to say arbitrary.” Gauss sighed. “Well, there I go, rush merrily towards my sacrifice.”
I suck at metric, it’s a mother language thing.
“I still don’t think losing is a wise course of action.”
“We don’t have an option. Besides, remember Cannae. Worst defeat in history. Saved the Romans.”
The first time I heard that theory it made no sense at all for me. I can’t remember the name of the author in question. Later I agreed that it was crucial to convince Rome’s allies of their commitment to their alliances.
Gauss looked away, and Jon noticed Riley was the one speaking again, so he turned his attention back to him.
“It’s a trivial[2] observation that clever strategy is based upon the triad of preemption, dislocation and disruption. We have shown how we will apply these to inflict massive casualties to their forces and provide our citizens with lives as long as possible until their agonizing, excruciating deaths – or the Euthanatic Collective Suicide Bill, if that passes. But let’s take a look and see how the enemy is reasoning.”
I want an Euthanatic Collective Suicide Bill.
“They already have preempted us in building up an infinite force, which is the main reason we’re doomed to defeat – the laws of thermodynamics apply to us. But the main way they could preempt us has been averted, temporarily at least. As you may be aware, the Grandfather Lock is the reality damper that makes time travel almost impossible in our universe. It was forged because dragons were being wacky with their time-hopping powers. Also time travel is stupid. Coincidently, the lock is in the Unwritten Ones’ way, preventing their obliteration of our history. They’d have to destroy it before they’re done. They’ll try to, focusing all their strength to this purpose, so they can disrupt our defenses from temporal vectors.”
Aleph-null Mi-Go on the wall,
Aleph-null Mi-Go…
Gauss signaled a ducal intervention. “Alright, if this is so important, where are you going to keep it safe?”
Riley looked at him and smiled embarrassedly. “I was actually kinda hoping you’d carry it with you.”
“…”
Notice how it’s not mentioned for the rest of the chapter. This, gentlemen, is sloppy plotting.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I suggest you go and get some rest, as the first wave will hit our fortifications in less than six hours.”
[1] The Tfafn were a race of lemur-people the Gazrakis defeated and enslaved. Their days were occupied with diligent work and their nights with hedonistic lucid dreaming. Some sociologists attribute the Gazraki philosophy of dialectical sexism, postulating the male’s absolute rule in the ‘material world’ to be counterbalanced by the female’s dominion of the ‘ecstatic world’, to a misapprehension of the Tfafnian way of life. The Tfafn priest-king was called Oneiric Kubernetes Noir, and he oversaw the lucid dreaming training and the major hydraulic works needed to sustain Tfafnian life in the deserts where it began. The title, since the race was one of the many destroyed in the wars between dragons and Gazrakis, has since been adopted by human sympathizers of this ancient form of spirituality, and is awarded to the winner of the yearly Kubrik Erotic Dreaming Contest. (From the Kantonnen Guide to Gamezohan Culture)
I love this part. I bet Dolph takes part in the KEDC.
[2] The Gazraki trivium consisted of number theory, cognitive science, and string physics. (From the Kantonnen Companion of Gazraki History)
***
“Do you remember our wrestling classes, when I connected an immobilizing grapple, I would…”
“I still have issues because of that,” groaned Kylie.
Kinky.
“You have issues because you’re a Sphexoren,” Danring pointed out. “And you immediately seek the course of thought that will make you most miserable, like trying to help Dr. de Viaminima.”
Zing!
“Hey, don’t listen to him, I appreciate your help!”
Nike looked at Joel with concern.
“Haha, just kidding, bitches. I’m not that bad.”
Now he’s just being nice.
Kylie shook her head disapprovingly. “How could a guy so clever do something so dumb?”
“My thoughts exactly,” said Danring. “Technoalchemy is so… retro. Oh well, you loved him for his fads and general meme-spreading skills.”
“I loved him for his genius.”
“Hey! I resent your use of the past tense,” said Joel grinning, and then cringing in pain.
“I’m sure it was just a slip of the tongue… darling,” said Nike maliciously.
Danring scratched his chin while examining the Joel-Oscar medical records. “Sylvia, Kylie, the nun, and now the Empress… If I weren’t so painfully knowledgeable about the derangement that is the female mind, I’d be surprised at this record of successes.”
As it is, he’s just full of contempt.
Joel forced a smirk. “That Vincit fellow may have his pheromones, but I’m graaargh.”
Nike looked at Danring reproachfully. “You didn’t have to shoot him with sleeping medicine.”
“Look, who’s the expert here? Besides, I hate to be the one to give you ladies this news… hell, who am I kidding? Would I be a doctor if I didn’t love giving bad news? Yeah, well, anyway, assuming this doesn’t kill them, your impregnator and your – rather unexplainable – teenage crush will be the same guy. Even if this fails to happen soon, it will have to happen eventually.”
“You talk like you’ve never been shared with another woman.”
Danring smirked. “Yes, well, have you any certainty Dr. de Viaminima will even remember anything he’s done while in this state? I’ve gone over his calculations and they are very fuzzy, pathetically human. He’ll be pure, alright, but rather blank – he’s lowering atman expectancies through anosognosis. Assuming that by some miracle he’s not just some kind of vegetable once his little experiment reaches its end, he’ll have the finest soul science can buy – bravo! Just in time to be part of the ultimate doomsday machinery.”
“…Danny,” observed Kylie, “you’re an asshole.”
He’s just cynical and observant.
The doors swung open. A female Imperial Herald announced the arrival of Her Glorious Gladiatorial Highness, Duchess Paraskeve Ticine.
“Keh?”
“Hiya, your Majesty!” ^_^
Argh! The perkyness! It burns!
“Well, hello. It’s ever a pleasure,” Nike feasted her eyes on Nicolette’s sister, who seemed to have just arrived from the arena, carrying the bloodied weapons of her traditional gladiatrix school, trident and whip, and wearing the ceremonial gazraki armor, plating shoulders, stomach and ankles, and little else – more a matter of decency, of public morality, rather than physical protection. Thousands of tomes had been written about the sociopsychology of gazraki armor and gamezohan aesthetics, but the fact remained it did little to avert obscenity for anyone without pathological armpit/navel fetishes. “But an unexpected pleasure.”
Well, that digression itself bordered on pathological, huh…
“Yeah, well, you totally owe me a victory massage, I like killed my hundredth wolfbear last week!” =^.^=
No wonder wolfbears are endangered.
“A debt I’ll be thrilled to pay, but right now…”
“That’s so awesome, but it wasn’t really the reason I came here. I had to drop by and leave a painting Nickie left behind at her palace – which is now mine! Yay!” ^-^
“A painting? Really, that’s nice.”
“It’s her best work, too. Alone on a rock, a voluntary exile from a city of ugliness, a shipwreck from a hopeless dream, that which is after the moment when narrative stops, when it stops at the sublime hopeless, it is the final course of necessity, when the world reaffirms its rules and yet survives the sublime has-been unending, the beauty of drowned Icarus, the cold perfunctory eternal existence of the rebelled angel. Not Lucifer’s story, though, whose meaning has been all hollowed out by repetitive leitmotivs. This is the angel Jacob fought and became Israel. He jumped from the city of men to end his mundane story, and eternity froze in midair, and the story ended; blessed are we who see the other story, that which begins as he falls from his obviously demented hopes, he crashes and is by himself, forever being what he has chosen to become, his thoughts tragic, his aesthetic heartbreaking, free in his cloister, the one from his city to escape into our world as beauty, sublime has-been unending.”
She paused. “Oh yeah, he’s also a furry!” ^^;;
Ugh. The description is of an image I saw somewhere I can’t recollect on the internet.
“I never knew Nickie had it in her,” muttered Nike. “Anyway, how’s your fiancée?”
“He’s an enlisted man now. He and some loser friends formed a commando scout patrol.”
Kylie interceded. “That’s great, cousin, but, well, we’re expecting a rather urgent…”
Keh snapped her fingers. “Oh! That’s totally it, now! I came here because by accident the Triple Eye delivered this guy to the arena and he went all pissy and I had to kick his ass.”
I like how the finest agency can mess things up when it’s entertaining.
Kylie blinked slowly. “Eh…?”
“Tough guy, but couldn’t do a thing when I entangled his wings with my whip…”
“…Oscar?”
“Yeah, that’s the guy, he’s waiting outside on a stretcher.”
“What the fuck.”
Danring rubbed his hands. “Awesome! More mending of bones to do.”
***
Moebius was very happy and in a singing mood.
“I feel happy, oh so happy…”
“Yeah, GOOD FOR YOU.”
“Sheesh, Vincit, you are a sore loser, aren’t you?”
“Just you wait till Miriam comes here and kicks your ass.”
“We’re out of time, you fool. Nobody can come here without my express authorization.”
“He’s right, you know,” said Whutty, with the usual sad sigh. “Dhis is dhe end.”
“Whatever you say, but I’m sure I’ll EAT HIS FACE!” Vinny struggled against his chains.
“Yeah, um, you’d better lay off that hope, dog. Even as I feel the sanity running off my mind my plot reaches a turning point where it turns and I’m happy ever after. And with a Salvador Dali sleight of hand, I’ll do away with all things ever.”
“A lofty goal,” admitted Whutty.
Whutty is wise.
Vincit roared. “What? What’s the freaking point if you won’t exist?!”
“Dhere’s no point or meaning or anydhing anyway.”
“…you suck at life.”
“I am a deeply committed, concerned man. Can I have some more of dhat lotus?”
I don’t think I ever wrote anything as funny as this last line of dialogue.
“Yeah, sure. Tootoo, take more lotus to our guest.”
The plush reindeer faked deafness or something.
It’s INANIMATE, you mad man!
Moebius read out loud from a notebook. “ ‘(…) war, if prolonged, becomes an imitative activity that will cause two sides to resemble one another (…)’… ‘[victory] makes the victor stupid’. Beautiful, no, how I shaped a civilization to heights of glory rare even among the infinitude of universes just to eventually use it to fuel my rocket of DOOM!? Tootoo, sing the doom song!”
Quotes from van Creveld’s The Sword And The Olive. Doom song from Invader Zim.
Tootoo apparently chose not to comply.
“Oh well, you get my point,” said Moebius defensively.
Vinny growled an insult and continued struggling against his shackles.
“Lemurs. I loathe lemurs. I have this special place in my heart for the hatred of lemurs,” said Moebius. “Yeah. I feel better already for mentioning it.”
I wanted to say that thing about lemurs somewhere, but it’s unrelated to Tfafnians.
“I’m not too keen on dhem eidher, dhey’re so fuzzy and happy and warm.”
Moebius nodded. “Funny. You and your friends are always getting captured in my plans. I must have some unconscious liking for bondage.”
“No, dhey’re just pretty stupid.”
Rick speaks the truth!
“And you are so clever, clever like Luzhin v. Muñoz, the greatest chess match of all time.”
“… 1. h3?”
“You have no idea.”
That’s a stupid move, in case you’re wondering. Luchin is from a novel by Nabokov, Muñoz from one by Pérez-Reverte.
“But I am clever.”
“You’re captured.”
“No, you cretin. I’m free,” said Whutty, seizing Moebius by the neck.
“H- How…”
“Salvador Dali sleight of hand, imbecile.”
Obviously! That explains everything! Wait, it doesn’t. Whatever.
“Ha! I’m certain I predicted this! You won’t change a thing! Besides, I still have your…”
“No, you don’t,” said Syne, appearing from nowhere. “Uziel has just freed her. Don’t you know keeping so many people imprisoned out of time is a source of instability? You never know what kind of dimensional barriers you can subpoena your way through until you’ve tried. Authority, bitch. Can you spell it?”
“I want to be him when I grow up,” said Whutty.
“I hear that a lot.”
Syne’s coolness incarnate.
“Man, am I glad to see you, Mr. Lawyer man,” said Vinny. “Now let me…”
“Shush, hang on. Moebius’ got that face we’re about to get fucked.”
“Yes, indeed, Syne, why would I need Whutty imprisoned? His fate is intertwined with my plot. The rocket-man can’t go anywhere his fate can’t find him.”
“Hey, I got sucked by a parachronic vortex once and stayed out of time for six years. Also my sound system broke and Music for Airports stayed on loop the whole time. Any odher man would’ve gone mad, but my inner joy kept me warm in the shapeless, cold void.”
Brian Eno’s Music For Airports is truly an acquired taste, acquired by MADMEN.
“Yeah, thanks for sharing, medicated shampoo head. Anyway, Syne, you’re the potential deus ex machina I needed to imprison, and it was with these developments in mind I kidnapped Chromelips in the first place.”
Medicated shampoo. A certain mean person described the real-world Whutty’s scent thusly.
“Ok, so I made a stupid move. Who will it be? Klot? Max?”
A black rose petal fell on his brow.
“Right.”
Klot closed in, dragging a kicking and screaming Skysong, ignoring Vinny’s indignant roars.
“Let my master go, Sphexoren, or I’ll break her little arms.”
Evil.
Whutty released his grip. Syne rolled his eyes.
“Oh yeah, there’s a great man. What a pity Kara will never be a woman.”
Klot glared at him with intense hatred. The shadows crept around the lawyer, who just fixed his tie and smiled.
Syne’s cooler than Matt Murdock.
Skysong, hanging upside down, looked up. “K, this was nasty, big dark guy. Now you take me home or I will smite you. Hey, there’s Vinny, hi!”
Vinny growled, “you let her go right now or I’ll…”
“Shut up,” offered Moebius.
“Who are you? Are you the Moebius everyone talks about? …how come you’re such a stinker?”
“Children in the playground bullying me, mostly. They’d go, like, they’d all go, Moebius, Mr. Moebius, what’s up with the Yẹảrma₪øg, like?”
It’s pronounced ‘TJMFDAMD-fkdoms-fhtnsmpc’. Also, this explains EVERYTHING.
Syne snorted. “And that’s why you decided to serve Eçaraia?”
“Well, we can’t all be Anaxerretibes,” conceded Moebius.
Alas.
“What’s an yarrmashog?” asked Skysong.
Ok, I lied about the pronunciation.
“Ho-yah, you wish you knew, Tommy.”
Me too.
“…my name is so not Tommy.”
Yes it is.
“…dhis discussion is so pointless. Ok, I’m leaving, see y’all later.”
Syne walked to Klot and spat the words into his ear. “Let her go. Don’t make me say ‘see you in court’. You know what happens when I say ‘See you in court.’ A lot of people who aren’t me end up dead.”
“You know what you have to do to ensure her safety.”
“Yeah, trust him, Klot doesn’t harm little girls. Ok, he does. All the time.”
The bastard.
“I’m getting dizzy here… this is fun,” said Skai. “But getting old fast.”
“Alright, whatever you want, Moe. I am now joining the Temple of Sol and committing myself to neutrality and aiding neither side in this struggle.”
He lies.
The lawyer began to vanish slowly, in a Lewis Carroll game of mirrors.
Salvador Dali sleight of hand gets old fast.
“Alright. Klot, you can take her back. I hope you haven’t hurt the black dragon much in the process? He’s going to be vital for our plans.”
“Goodbye, bad Mr. Moebius! I hope Vinny eats your face.”
Syne looked around and addressed a cardboard box, his voice fading with his physical presence.
“Hey, Max.”
“I’m actually in the trash can.”
XD sorry.
“Whatever. Just for the record… tell Alice – my secretary – tell her that in a universe less full of the horror, the horror, we could have loved each other.”
“O… kay…” Max thought this over for a while. “Wait, that’s horribly wrong.”
Sex does not belong in the workplace, folks! A moralistic observation brought to you by the Pan-Betrayer.
***
Third season: crazy colors
“It would be impossible to maintain any kind of social order, any complex division of labor, unless society’s members were forced to take on the habits and skills that the culture[*] required, whether the individuals liked it or not. Socialization, or the transformation of a human organism into a person who functions successfully within a particular social system, cannot be avoided.”
~Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
[*] The macromemeplex, of course.
Fall is the season when things fall apart. This was actually a surprising discovery for me, which is why I’m pointing it out. Where I live, you only get ‘wet seasons’ and ‘dry season’. The quote hints at the integration of individuals to society and the idea’s connection to the motive of collapse beginning to grow stronger here and culminating with, well, the chapter’s ending.
A dragon and a man met in the unending rain of planet Goe, home to a race of footless green men who use boxes of excrement as currency and gain social status by hammering hooks and nails into appropriately sensitive parts of their bodies.
‘Go’ is five in Japanese. ‘e’ is the author of the Five comics, starred by a footless, sickly entity who collected boxes of shit, hammered nails into his foot stubs and so forth. In hindsight, I could have become a much better person if I hadn’t read that some six years ago. A whole planet of the fuckers is an entertaining concept.
“So Max chose his side for good and it’s game over for Syne.”
“Well, that’s an oversimplification. That’s just how it seems.”
Gotta keep possibilities open.
“Alright.” The dragon sniffed around. “Shame AZTECH had to end.”
“They’re cracking down on all secret societies. Last I heard, Davi was placed under house arrest.”
“Poor guy. Foxes don’t usually make it big outside the adult entertainment industry.”
I hope this is the last we hear of yiff in this Book.
“How did the House Council meeting go?”
“Less gloomy than usual, but that’s just because Count Sphexoren is on the run. His mother sent an envoy, though.”
“Madam Geraldine?…”
“Yeah, the mad bitch who wanted to marry Wilhelm. It was scandalous at the time, but really, who could compare to Wieslawa? Still, she never forgave him.” The Baron sighed nostalgically. “Also, Archduchess Ticine is still missing, so not a lot could be decided.”
Riley sneezed. “Blasted rain.”
‘Blasted rain’ makes me think of My Fair Lady. “The rain in Spain…”
“And you? What happened at the meeting with the Lucifuge VPs?”
“We decided to make fuck-you money with this war, basically.”
‘Fuck-you money’ is one of the many concepts I owe to R.A.W.
“Nice of you to be wearing the Interessengemeinschaft’s colors.”
An IG Farben reference. I still haven’t gotten over Gravity’s Rainbow, it seems.
“I like money. Money makes me hum.”
RAW again. Schrödinger’s Cat trilogy, I think.
“I know. Me too. That’s more or less our plan with the banks too.”
There was a sudden burst of light from the sky and the clouds parted, making way for a winged figure.
“These bastards are never late.”
The angel stopped his descent high enough for him to still be able to look down on his interlocutors. “Celestial greetings from the Stellar Ethos.”
Solar Logos, Stellar Ethos, etc. Rhetorical appeals. Not ripped from Exalted but of parallel development.
“We behold and abide.”
“I am, as ever, its servant Uziel. Why have I been summoned?”
I like how this bugger’s personality changes at every dialogue he takes part in.
“We have a few concerns, regarding for instance our friend Jacob Syne…”
“He’s presently and forever at the Temple of Sol.”
“It’s game over for him, then?”
“Time is an illusion there, even more so than it is here.”
The Baron nodded slowly. Riley was less comforted. “But why would…”
“Remember Moebius has no control of what happens in there.”
Realization dawned. “Ah, so you mean…”
“Yes.”
There was an awkward pause.
“Yeah, um, this is embarrassing,” began Riley.
“Yes, that pretty much made the other questions unnecessary.”
“You can, like, go.”
The way these two speak is vaguely inspired by Penny Arcade.
The angel sighed. “I do have another message for you. One of you feeble humans once pointed out the capitalism was born a religious vocation and became a sport for entrepreneurs.”
“Max Weber?”
Yep. And then an ‘iron cage’. Weber was l33t.
“Could be. So show some sportsmanship, CEO, if you can’t show reverence. This war will be, above all, a conflict of energy flow.”
‘Show some sportsmanship if you can’t show reverence’ is a commentary I’m rather fond of. I thought of it as soon as I read that bit of Weber.
“Which is our area of expertise.”
“As we understand it, you’re just clogging the flux. Stagnating the universal nutritive soul. Even the Goean natives understand the concept of a pulsating macro-thermodynamic-plex better.”
He’s saying boxes of shit make good money, in case you’re not following.
“What are you trying to say, angel?”
“Give all money from the rich to where it’s needed or I’ll fucking kill you in your sleep.”
Greatest. Hero. Ever.
“…oh, ok.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever you say.”
“God be with you. I’ll certainly be watching.”
The two entities about to cease being the richest men in the galaxy looked up until Uziel vanished amidst the dark clouds.
Riley sneezed. “Well, this sucks.”
Riley caught a cold, it seems.
“Yes. I haven’t been this scared since my mother told me stories about the Dragonslayer[1] when I was a little whelp, telling me she’d chop my head off and impale it in her spear if I failed to be very very rich.”
A lovely bit of personal history, isn’t it?
“You needed motivation?”
“No, not really. It runs in the blood.”
Riley sighed. “Are you going to place your black credit cube at the State’s disposal?”
“First thing tomorrow.” The dragon looked vacant for a while. “Oh well, it was fun. We had almost 90% of everything, you and I.”
“Sheesh. Some people just don’t understand hoarding is an end in itself.”
“Truly, a tragedy. Where are you going tonight?”
“After the sauna, there will be a sound-streaming cube virtuoso performance by some Wendauerian dude at Ardan’s.”
“Nice, shame I have to oversee Chromelips’ recording of her new album.”
“I didn’t even know she had been released,” said Riley. “She’s back to work already?”
“I’m a demanding agent, and besides she’s at her creative best when the emotions are fresh.”
“Right.” Riley shook the Baron’s claw. “Our plight is tragic and our suffering, endless.”
“Woe. We are the victims of this system.”
[1] Ibifd Dragonslayer is a folkloric character in dragon legend, a little like a boogeyman or the tonton macoute, employed chiefly to intimidate the young. She is, however, based upon a real person, princess Ibifd of the Gazrakis, reputedly a very beautiful warrior who single-handedly slew all the first-generation dragons after being captured and enslaved by Gauss-Gauss. (From the Kantonnen Encyclopedia of Dragon Mythology)
Hope you like the concept, for I’m planning on using her some more. Look out…
***
A commlink was activated in Whutty’s escape ship.
“Hahahaha!” Moebius laughed hysterically in the tiny screen. “You’re doomed now! Doomed! Doomed! Doomed! Doomed! Doomed!”
He’s pretty obnoxious for a supreme villain, huh.
“Well, Moebius… my fadher once pulled me aside and spoke to me widh a candor he’d never shown before – he spoke his heart to me dhat one time – he said: when you won’t go along, some will feel like you can’t find your way. Heaven knows I’ve seen it before. Now don't get me wrong; I've seen many a life gone astray. When someone goes, all your bows won't make it any better, so let it go: shut up and take it like a man.”
“That wasn’t you father. That’s a song.”
By The Offspring, called Take It Like A Man. That song taught me how to drive.
“Whatever. I needed you to pay attention to dhat part.”
“To what part?”
“The ‘shut up’ part,” said Whutty, turning off the commlink.
OverZing!
***
Jon had a headache, as had become usual since his enlightenment.
A common theme, like in “Pi” and “The butterfly effect”.
He felt history change.
At the Temple of Sol, Syne had been there all along during his education, and told him many things.
For example, that it was vital that he be with Oscar as soon as possible.
He ran to the portals.
***
What’s it like to be Damocles?
This section owes a lot, and completely fails to do justice, to Daniel Dennett’s philosophy.
Same thing, actually. A bundle of perceptions and information processing and output-feedback systems.
A certain amount of information is readily available to him in a number of experience-moderated drafts, and some of it summons his ‘attention’ (induce an orienting response) and he continually talks to himself to historically arrange his experiences in a narrative continuum.
It’s irrelevant that the amount of information is gigantic or that he has no urges or desires but the Three Laws of Evil Robotics (Moebius style).
Number three is epistemic hunger, a pleasure in knowing, figuring out, and predicting correctly.
Number one is subservience to one’s creator.
Number two is an intense hatred for all organic things.
And then Damocles betrays Moebius right in the next chapter. Hah, hah! In your face, Isaac Asimov!
As any self-reflective being, that is, as any being with a virtual ‘Joycean machine’ of semiotic ontology, he takes pleasure in psychic order, the dynamic state of continual improvement in an activity, or flow.
For example, Damocles’ expert appreciation of music is a talent in continuous development. Nuances more and more remote became clear to him, and he can appreciate Dvórak’s Ninth or Kantonnen’s Pith as not even their authors could, reveling in unconscious order and serendipitous symmetry. “The fool does not see the same forest…”
Kantonnen’s Pi-eth. Now that was just ridiculous! ‘The fool’ is from… oh, just google.
The same for appreciating natural sights. In this Damocles is blessed with immensely varied sensorial equipment. He can enjoy the Thaynese Ruins or the Tannhäuser Gate like few other sentient creatures can boast.
Tannhäuser Gate from that great bit of monologue in Blade Runner.
With his massive machine brain, he can also enjoy, like his father, the delights of plotting the downfall of a man.
***
Gauss dreamt he was arguing with Jorgen.
“Your culture is stupid!”
Miriam was intervening. “Gauss, this is hardly the time…”
“Your holy text looks like it’s been done with MS Paint!”
It’s funny because it was.
Miriam hit him in the head with a small furry feline. “Look what you’ve done! You sat there complaining and the Mi-Go used the bombignants against us.”
Bombignants. From ‘Cat Syrup’. Sixth feline.
“Oh, just get a mild re-hashing of loosely connected material on,” said Moebius.
This line apparently didn’t make it into italics in the html conversion. Well, it’s obviously part of the dream. It’s a personal joke about my own style of writing.
He woke up with his robotic assistance dancing and screaming, loud as an air raid siren, “Whutty ringing at your door! Visit for you, it’s Whutty!”
The old anime theme of the obnoxious alarm. Assistance? It should be ‘assistant’. Someday I’ll fix that. Gee, revising is never complete.
He leaped up and hurried to the door. “You!”
“Hey. What’s up?”
“We’re all going to die.”
“Dhat’s great.”
“But wait, you’re free?”
“Long story, I’ll explain later. Well, no, it’s not really interesting. I did spend another six years outside time, alone, with Music for Airports on loop.”
Whutty is now thirty years old or more.
“How’s CL?”
“She’s great, back to work already. I got her a Naval Intelligence escort.”
Spies who say ‘NI’!
“That’s good,” said Gauss, disappearing behind a changing screen. “I’m glad to hear everything worked out.”
“Yeah, pretty much, relatively, well, no. Dhings still suck and we’re going to die.”
“I thought you said that was a good thing?”
“Nodhing is a good dhing. Anyway, how’re you?”
There must be some kind of Gödel’s Proof that you can’t be consistent and negative about all things at the same time. Whutty, of course, prefers inconsistence.
“Living. Tonight was the first time I didn’t dream an excruciating demise in the Tinfoil Lady’s hands.”
“Really? What did you dream?”
“Something utterly retarded. I can’t remember.”
That dream didn’t, in fact, have any purpose.
“Must be a new feeling for you, eh, what with dhe dragons never forget anydhing dhing.”
This part about dragons and Gauss’s brag later is based on a Borges story about a guy who became unable to forget anything.
“Forgetting is the one art I can’t master, and the one I’d like to the most,” commented Gauss, coming out dressed in a black kimono with an officer’s overcoat. “You’ve arrived just in time for the first great battle.”
A weird dress code.
“Well, you know what dhey say about House Sphexoren, luck, and lack dhereof.”
“Come on, let’s go immerse ourselves in sweet, sweet death.”
They went to the hangar, where great preparations were under way. The Terracotta Protocol was being initiated, and the Seventh Wing pilots were getting ‘defrosted’ (released from stasis) and blitz-briefed.
“Which one is your ship?”
Whutty pointed. “Dhe one with ‘Rogues do it from behind’ written on it.”
Cute. PA reference, of course.
“Cute. Ok, I’ll be on the bridge. I assume your father’s there.”
“Yeah, I already spoke widh him.”
“Good, good. See you later.”
Whutty called him when he reached the lift. “Hey, Wernher!”
“What?”
“Avoid sending me to a pointless deadh, ok?”
“Hey, you die as you’ve lived.”
“…bastard.”
Ouch.
Everyone stood up to salute Gauss when he arrived at the command bridge. He acknowledged the salutations. “Well, what’s the status?”
“I’ll be commanding dhis ship, Consul Archduke Marshal, Sir.”
“For the dynasty’s sake, Lysander, don’t call me that or you’ll run out of breath and die in the middle of the battle.”
Science fiction alternates for ‘for God’s sake’ and such always sound so clumsy, no?
“It takes a lot more dhan dhat to take me down, milord, but I’ll comply.” He gestured and a five-dimensional holographic map appeared between them.
The mind’s eye boggles.
“I see, we’ll have to make the bottleneck narrower.”
“Right. They’re coming through with too much pressure.”
“A stab right here. We’ll be between a neutron star and a hard place.”
“A crucial move. The rest is more or less easy, or rather, straightforward, but this is essential for any continued resistance efforts.”
“How many fleets?”
“All three with Zaitoichi flagships, and some house forces, corsars, mercs, and auxiliaries from Wendauer.”
Gauss nodded. It was all they could spare, but not little.
“And the secret weapon?”
“It will be crucial to kill their momentum.”
“What secret weapon?”
Gauss nearly fell down. It was Nicolette’s voice, and he hadn’t felt her presence. He turned and saw her holographic projection in one of the communications channels.
“I’m sorry, Wernher. I didn’t mean to unsettle you.”
“Nickie…”
“I’m here as commander of the House Ticine fleet. My father was the greatest shipwright, remember?”
“I didn’t know you had the training…”
“I don’t. Valendil will be my admiral. I signed a ducal pardon. Wallington is outraged.”
Valendil rocks. He’ll have a role when Palantenna happens.
Gauss took a deep breath. “Will you come back?”
“I… really don’t want to discuss this now. I’m fulfilling my duties before the Empire. We’ll discuss my duties as spouse later.”
Gauss looked around at all the officers trying their best to mind their own business. “Yes. I think you’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll leave you to coordinate your battle plans with Admiral Lysander and the sector governor, Exarch aKum. I want your forces to stay in the reserve, helping with the evacuation.” He ignored her objection. “It’s an order. I’ll be overseeing the commando briefings if anyone needs me.”
Exarch is an actual title, but it made me think of Exar Kun. This obviously led to the cameo by the protagonist of my late webcomic, Acum the dot. That’s the same word as in the lyrics of Dragostea Din Tei, ya know. Only just years ago.
He scratched his claws against the wall after leaving the room, creating three deep marks in the bi-phase carbide.
Whoever plays Ogre knows that to scratch BPC you need nuclear explosions. I figured it was fine to twink away Gauss since he was going to die anyway.
He found Whutty reading in his cockpit.
“I wasn’t needed there. You father is very competent.”
“It’s a family trait. Like dhe misery and dhe horror.”
“I want you to take this. It’s good luck. Chances are it won’t work for you, but…”
“A datacube widh all episodes of Yellowjacket Greenapple. Damn, dhat was a good show. Dhanks.”
That’s from an installment of Fashion SWAT at SomethingAwful. In the Book, it existed – thanks to this line. Defer.
“Now you’ll have something to watch in case you spend yet another six years lost in the void outside of time.”
“Meh, I learned to enjoy Music for Airports.”
“Enjoy?”
“In a masochistic way. Hey, look behind you, it’s your wife.”
“I know.” Gauss sighed and turned. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Nicolette pressed a button and locked Whutty inside his ship. “I suppose we have to talk, eventually, so why not in a hangar with enough ammunition to destroy the galaxy several times.”
“Did you talk to aKum? I was serious about my orders.”
“Yes. He’s a very reasonable, zero-dimensional sentient dot. The evacuation is proceeding smoothly.”
“Well, that’s good to hear.” Gauss lowered his gaze. “Now, about us…”
Nicolette held his shoulders. “Look at me, Wernher. If you ever looked into my eyes – if you ever did it, for one second, without thinking of her – then you know I would like nothing else in the universe more than to be with you forever.”
“I- I did…”
“But next to you, I feel powerless and jeraisical[1] as I watch you slowly die of grief. It’s a torture, seeing something so magnificent suffer so much and then end.”
Boring.
“I… Nickie…” Gauss took a deep breath and faced her. “Nickie, you flatter me too much. I want you to know I knew from the moment I set eyes upon you that you were the finest bride I could have, so talented, so strong, the kind of dragon that built this Empire in spite of my family’s frequent incompetence. I want you to know my only doubt was whether I was deserving of you, not the other way around, and it seems I wasn’t. And I want you to know that I love you, more than I loved my father, more than I love my Empire or my sister or any abstraction. You’re the living woman I love the most.”
Still boring. Living woman, huh.
“I know, now,” she replied, and moved her face closer to his, and continued softly. “And I know I’m just a living person who can’t compete with a ghost. I love you enough to know in my heart you want to die, and to accept it. So I’ll stay here, and you’ll go away and die, and I’ll still bring your body to the pantheon of kings and cherish you forever as my husband, my deity, my Emperor.”
Gauss blinked. “That last part was a little bit creepy.”
“Oh? Sorry. I guess I’m a little bit creepy.”
Still boring, and definitely hinting at neurotic.
“Delightfully so. What about Valendil?” he asked, passing his arms around her waist.
Nickie smiled. “He made me see things clearer. I have come to like him a lot as a friend, but somehow I missed your absolute maladroitness as a lover.”
Zing! But still boring.
“I take offense at that.”
“Don’t act as if you’re the first chief of state cornutto.” Her smile widened. “It’s the first time I see a hint of jealousy in your eyes. It’s beautiful. So, what about the ducal bower?”
“Full of furry neck-biting. Just kidding, it’s been cold and lonely.”
Boring, and gay.
“We should correct that.”
It was his time to grin.
“Where’s my continental bride? We’ll continental slip and slide…”
Line’s from Grand Hotel. Dialogue’s still boring.
She laughed. “Well, this went well.”
“Shakespeare couldn’t have done it better. My, you look so contagious.”
Poor Shakespeare. ‘You look so’ is a line from Macy Day Parade (Michael Penn’s, not Green Day’s). PS: boring.
“My memes have a message for you. It reads, ‘rawr’.” She placed her index finger on his lips.
This makes me think of The Sims, which is as boring as this when it’s really, really laggy, running on real time.
“I would catch it all,” he hummed, lifting her off her feet and squeezing her against the ship’s hull.
His communicator lighted up, and they heard a familiar voice. “Hey, you two. I’ve got better dhings to do widh my time dhan watch you, but dhere are a couple of hundred odher people in dhe hangar at dhe moment and it’s not as if you don’t have private quarters. Also, I can’t seem to be able to override dhe archduchess’s command and I really need to go to the toilet.”
Isn’t there some kind of astronaut toilet in his ship? Sheesh. At least it made the boring stop. I don’t know how a certain authoress manages to write these non-obscure, non-explosion-full ‘emotional’ things.
Gauss fixed his kimono while Nickie unlocked Whutty’s door. “Bah. In the days of my great-grandfather, everyone had to watch the Emperor’s honeymoon so the newlyweds could bless the fields with fertility and the warriors with strength.”
“A tradition my ancestors gloriously crusaded against,” retorted Whutty, stretching his legs and pulling out a smoke-stick.
Smoke-stick is what people who don’t enjoy cancer smoke to look cool.
“So,” asked Nicolette innocently, “you can’t open your soundproof ship when we lock it?”
“Nope. Stupid engineers and dheir retarded ideas.” He sighed and looked away thoughtfully. “How come everyone is so stupid? I’m ever amazed that things even work in this society. It’s as if… hey, what are you doing? Don’t go in dhere, it’s bad luck to… aw, shit.” He reached the handle a second too late. “Dhese two suck when dhey’re happy.”
He fidgeted with the remote control in his pocket for a while, until reaching a decision.
“Just because I can’t open dhe door, it doesn’t follow I can’t make the windshield opaque only to dhose inside…”
He snorted while walking away from the crowd quickly gathering. “That will teach them not to christen my ship.”
And soon it will be on all peer-to-peer networks in the Galaxy.
[1] Jeraisi: the feeling that things are so wrong and you could make them so right if others weren’t such fools. (From the Kantonnen Dictionary of Gamezohese)
Great word, great word.
***
Fourth season: something not quite right
En esto, y en suspirar y en llamar a los faunos y silvanos de aquellos bosques, a las ninfas de los ríos, a la dolorosa y húmida Eco, que le respondiese, consolasen y escuchasen, se entretenía, y en buscar algunas yerbas con que sustentarse en tanto que Sancho volvía... [Cervantes]
This season does not, in fact, exist. We only have four. Or two, in my city’s case. The quote is referred to by Borges in ‘Pierre Menard, author of the Quijote’. This works in many, many levels and explaining would be very, very boring.
Aris, David and Gunther walked around the debris of their ship.
“Well, that was a close one.”
“No shit,” said David, wiping sweat off his brow with the blood-soaked rags around his wrist. “Do you think we lost them?”
“What were they? They moved in a much less predictable pattern than Mi-Go usually do.”
Aris inhaled deeply. His chest felt like exploding from too much adrenaline. Where was this? A desert, obviously, hardly a distinctive feature. But what planet?
“They’re coming,” shouted Gunther. “Two scout gunships, and possibly a follow-up force. They’ll have line of sight in ten minutes.”
David slammed his wounded fist against the metal hull. “Fucking fuck! What the fuck are we going to do? Run? …ouch.”
David’s characterized as a certain author’s role-playing game characters. But only the bad things.
“If we do, they’ll search for us, and we don’t have personal thermal cloaks.”
David shook his head. “If we stay and use the ship’s turret, they’ll quickly destroy us with a couple of well-aimed torpedoes.”
“But then they might think they’ve killed us all, and leave.”
Gunther sighed. “Are you suggesting we do what it’s now clear we’ll have to do?”
“In any other occasion, I’d be happy that we all died in one glorious last stand, but I have a pocket full of payback to deliver.”
In hindsight, this line is rather pansy.
David nodded slowly, and then eagerly. “Ok, I’ll stay.”
“Not so fast. Let’s draw straws. And if I have to stay, y’all try and carry out my vengeance for me, ok?”
David produced some straws from his pocket. “Hey, you never know when you’ll need them,” he replied to their inquisitive looks.
Aris got the different straw. He didn’t flinch. “Very well, tell that fucker Klot that OOMPH!”
‘Different’ straw. I couldn’t decide on ‘shortest’ or ‘longest’. Weird.
Gunther kissed his knuckle. “There, there, baby.” He turned to Aris. “You just drag him off on that grav-board. I’ll stay.”
“How about…”
“I have a Blitz Knight IFF health monitor. When I die, imperial forces will be here in less than two minutes. Hopefully, they’ll be able to rescue you.”
“Can’t we just cut if off you or something?”
“No, just run already. Right after it sends the distress signal, it explodes in full one-kiloton glory.”
How practical. And convenient.
“…I guess we’d better get going, then,” said David, placing the backpacks and slumped Aris on the board.
“Yep. You’re lucky it’s all downhill from here. Ride the dunes.”
“Right. Anyway, see you eventually. Send me your killcount before you go or you won't get the credit for them!"
That line’s actually by Matt himself, hence the copy-paste ‘”s.
Off he surfed.
***
“Two dreadnoughts, GENS Bel Riose and GENS Hasimir Fenring, with their respective fleets, will be covering each side of the gap as we push our way in. They’re commanded respectively by admirals Lysander and Cook.”
There’s Fenring, from Dune. I remembered wrong, though, he’s not a general.
“L? Dhe Red Baroness?”
Angelina Jolie’s character in Sky Captain, mercilessly ripped off. I mean, awarded a cameo.
Gàrakz nodded. “That’s the one. Now, we’d like you to command GENS Fedmahn Kassad, Ricardus.”
Kassad’s the cool guy in Hyperion.
“I’d radher fly with the fighters.” He turned to Gauss. “Why don’t you do it?”
“I’ll be in the dropships with Gàrakz marines. I’ll lead a commando squadron to the main strike at their void-core.”
Whutty groaned. “Alright, it’s not as if my brain isn’t huge enough.”
Gauss laughed. “Two Lysanders in the fleet. They won’t stand a chance.”
“Continuing… the supporting fleets will mop up after the spearhead, and the Kassad will be escorted by the lighter, but equally state of the art, TMV Toreador.”
“That’s Valendil’s flagship, right?” Gauss flashed through the ship’s files to memorize them. A name caught his eye. “Hmm. Pyrite has volunteered as a boarding marine. Poor boy.”
“I’ll try to arrange it so he won’t face combat unless it’s really necessary,” said Nicolette.
“Yes, that’d be nice. What about the other Houses?”
“Most of them are engaged in the other front, while the secret weapon is prepared.”
“What secret weapon?” asked Whutty.
“One quadrillion ninja.”
Modesty aside, this is probably the best line in the whole Book. (Just kidding, folks!)
Nicolette snorted with disbelief. “Wait, is that your secret weapon? One quadrillion ninja?”
“Yes. Well, one of them. The most conspicuous one.”
“How can you keep one quadrillion ninja secret?”
“The terracotta protocol doesn’t just store troops of high quality. Sometimes, quantity is necessary.”
“Alright, if you had told me before dhat one in every fifty dhousand beings in the galaxy was a ninja, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
The whole quadrillion ninja thing was a hilarious exaggeration of the current military history thesis that (exaggerating somewhat) all Eastern (Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean) soldiers receive some kind of ninja training.
“You’d have been wrong.”
“Apparently…”
“Stupid times require extreme measures. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Stupid gazraki syntax.”
A nice saying, however it truly is.
“Stupid like tea widh milk.”
Nicolette raised an eyebrow. “I like tea with milk.”
Evil.
“Eeeeevil.”
Gauss laughed. “Say ‘vitamin’.”
“What about veetamins?”
“Hehehe. Cute accent dhere.”
“Look who’s talking…”
I should stop watching Irish movies.
***
“He has to be awake,” said Danring firmly. “I’m serious. It’s dangerous otherwise.”
“You’re just stalling,” said Nike.
“Why, are you eager to see your impregnator back to his evil old self?”
I must have used this line like five times.
“Hrm.”
“I forgot, that’s the one you fell in love with.”
“Oh, Danny, you know very well how ‘love’ works for me.”
“Or rather, that it doesn’t,” mumbled Kylie, passing her hand on Oscar’s forehead. “He’s warm.”
“It’s not a fever. It’s excessive essence. When he split himself in half, each half had to regain enough essence for its separate existence. He tried to force the reunion and now he has double the energy his body is prepared to resist.” Danring checked Oscar’s pulse. “If we administer the antidote while he’s asleep, he won’t be conscious and able to retain energy for himself. Theoretically, the other guy could suck more than his worth of Dr. de Viaminima’s power, which could be devastating.”
“Well, we could just tell Joel to not do it. Right, Joel?”
“Jes, m-my pain rat.”
A lovely anagram of Tiarnampsejym. Bet you didn’t notice it.
“He’s delirious. He’d easily be overwhelmed by the power rush. No, we need Oscar’s cooperation. Just then it might work…”
Danring frowned as he went again over Dr. de Viaminima’s recently declassified personal files. Correspondence between the doctor and Matthias Gamdoha?
When studying intelligence practice, one is often confronted with a curious problem - that sometimes one cannot act on intelligence obtained (...) to not compromise the sources of said intelligence, prompting the other side to develop better CI
That draws a little from Cryptonomicon, and the following from Gurdjieff’s style of writing.
An analogous challenge, my esteemed doctor, is presented to the guru. He has gazed deep into the soul of man, and knows it to be not a pretty landscape. But to act upon this dark knowledge?...
A herald announced the arrival of Saint Krigsley.
***
“Ok, explain to me again why we’ll be in charge of the most important part of the plan,” said Bob.
Ardy rolled his eyes. “Apparently all the good units will be busy opening the way for us, and our job, Operation White Spats, isn’t that hard after all.”
That may be one of the most implausible explanations I’ve ever given in the Book, but it’s a tough competition. ‘White spats’ is from Bustopher Jones.
“But it’s crucial. Not the kind of thing to be left in the hand of the Warthog Commando.”
“We can do it,” said Mitya, recently converted to Ass-kicking-ism. “The Lord is a shoving leopard.”
Spoonerism gave birth to a religion of Ass-Kicking worship. As fine a spirituality as any other, I say. The whole leopard thing has to do with Flem! Comics, but that story is… stupider than usual. Seven cats, though I might have missed one somewhere.
The black mage leapt up. “Atten-tion! Officer on deck.”
“At ease. I’m just reviewing your preparations before dhe Consul Duke Marshal joins you.”
“Where’s your escort, sir?” asked Mitya.
“I don’t need any. We are sufficient togedher, me and my spleen.”
I just had to use that line that occurred to me in a dream or in the toilet or elsewhere.
“Right…”
“Dhe adventures we’ve had…”
“Some people would say that about their prostates, too,” observed Dolph.
“…”
“Don’t mind him, Admiral. His epithet is Harbinger of Ellipsis.”
Pretty much the job Matt and I take turns at while role-playing.
“By the way… you want the formula for happiness? We learn the formula for happiness in seventh-dan physics.”
“Eep?”
Corso began scrawling a huge equation, and soon the entire sheet was covered in variables and numbers.
“This is step one.”
He took another piece of paper, and similarly filled it with unfathomable Math, finishing with, ‘therefore happiness becomes’.
“Here’s step three.”
“…what about step two?”
“That’s the easier one. It reads, ‘then a miracle occurs’.”
Joke heisted from Consciousness Explained.
Whutty sighed. “Thank you, corporal, you’ve been greatly helpful.”
“You’re welcome, sir.”
“Very well… as you know, you’ll be dropped at planet Sauvage as soon as we’re close enough to do so safely. You’ll find dhe void-core. You’ll use dhis psycrystal on it. And dhere will be much rejoicing by people who aren’t me.”
Sauvage is from… not sure. Probably uninteresting.
“You’re pathetic, man,” said Dolph.
Whutty was almost surprised. “What?”
“Don’t mind him, sir. It’s got to do with his new philosophy of life. ‘Pathetic’ is the second stage of futilitarian illumination, between ‘duh’ and ‘ridiculous’.”
“What’s next?”
“Hmm. ‘Supreme being’. It’s not a gradual curve.”
That’s my philosophy of life. It may not sound very deep, but duh.
***
“Hey Vinny,” Moebius continued, in a rather cheerful voice. “Know what else?”
“What now…”
“The black dragon, Emmanuel, he’ll be the vessel of Eçaraia’s final push, her avatar. My own dragon to power the Rocket for my own purposes. And you haven’t heard yet my plans for your dear dragon…”
Vincit sighed. At least he was learning all of Moebius’ plans now.
***
“Well, we’re lucky to have found this oasis,” said David.
“I think it’s called a vereda,” said Aris. “Look at the biodiversity.”
Grande Sertão: Veredas. Classic.
David glared at him. “Eh?”
Aris shrugged. “Never mind. An old hobby.” Then he jumped up and pulled out his monofilament knife.
“What now,” asked David, and then a black petal fell on his nose. “Oh.” He was run through with an exquisite obsidian flamberge blade. “Fuck.”
“Master!” Samsa’s soul opened a wide, vaguely inhuman grin. “Help me kick this guy’s ass, willya?”
“David, you’re dying.”
‘Eva, you’re dying’ in the Evita movie isn’t sadder than this. The ghost world is loosely based on Soul Reaver.
“Aw, crap. But I want to help Aris.”
“He can help himself, or he’s not worth helping, but either way he’s not getting any help from you.”
“Crap.”
“Wise words. Hey, just leave your body already and let’s possess the bodies of some pimps so we can celebrate your awesome kill/death ratio in the warm recesses of hoes until you respawn as a Zardarkian baby with an immense dick.”
“Hey, that sounds nice. Wait, when did you die?”
“I didn’t, but sometimes you have to leave your body behind to get some.”
“You should’ve taught me that earlier.”
“Hahaha! No. No I shouldn’t.”
They walked, hand in antenna, into the pink light.
This conception of the afterlife is so beautiful it makes me want to cry. Also, that’s Jacko, for those unaware of the in-joke. Ask somebody else.
“No! Dave!” Aris’ neck was seized by shadows, and they began smothering him…
***
“I see you’re working on a bonuchu[1],” said Nicolette.
“I was never as good as you, but it helps keep the mind focused.”
“I like what you did with the black hole there.”
“It’ll keep their scientists baffled forever.”
I hadn’t read that part in the Cyberiad when I wrote this! Also, I already had rules for Bonuchu back in the day I played AD&D. Gauss and the Gamezohans predate the book, believe it or not… it all works thanks to the multiple universe cosmology.
“We’re getting closer to their forces. Some ships are already engaged.”
“It’s time for you to leave, then. I need your administrative genius at the home front.”
“Alright. I’ll be at the Imperial Pantheon praying.”
“For my safe return?”
“For your glory, however you want it to be.” She held his hands, and deposited a very light metallic object in them.
“This… it’s the choker I gave you when we married. The finest work of the Imperial Goldsmiths.”
“I’ve put some of my soul in it. I want you to have it to the very end. This way, I’ll be part of you wherever you go.”
I hope this is original, because I like it. Well, it’s a bit like some parts in LotR and the Silmarillion…
Gauss’s voice was choked with emotion. “It’s… you’re sacrificing a lot for me, even as I leave to chase after my dreams.”
“It’s what I believe in, that there’s nothing quite as moving as unexpected greatness. The finest moments in literature for me were when the characters went out of character and – incidentally, peripherally to the plot, against the narrative expectations, cheating the game the author and the reader have agreed upon, just to touch something higher that belongs to that character metaphysically as if he existed – the petty showed hidden depths of wisdom, the weak showed honor, the cunning, sportsmanship, and the virtuous, a beautiful talent for resentful jealousy…”
“Othello?”
“A beautiful example.”
Wernher walked to the vault containing his most precious personal belongings.
“No, I meant I want to carry it with you.”
“I know, I’m getting something for you,” he replied in a low tone.
“I think that’s hardly necessary at a time like this…”
He pulled out a small black box, walked to her and opened it. Her face was flooded with silver light.
“Is it…” She knew, but she couldn’t believe it.
“Yes. The Sidhe Anklet of Palantenna. The jewel that lured my mother from her destiny as Empress, said to contain somehow the key to the elves’ lost home planet.” He sighed. “I had kept it to give it to Krystal somehow, if it had ever been possible to… well. I now give it to you, I lay it down before your feet, for it’s a humble gift indeed compared to what I should have given you.”
In case George Bush is reading this: this is hinting that the anklet is important.
“Shh. It’s beyond gorgeous. It even gives me a faint hope… maybe wearing it I might almost be worthy of comparing to your Krystal.”
“Don’t say something like that. I want these moments to be about us, for they might be the last…”
“It’s ok. You crazy fool, you never understood exactly how traditional I am, did you? I was raised to approve of the old Gazraki ways. You certainly know which ones I’m referring to.”
“The four wives a Gazraki man was said to need – Agon, Alea, Ilinx, and Persona – a sly one to challenge him, an unpredictable one to baffle him, an overwhelming one to dazzle him… and an elusive one to hurt him.”
Roger Caillois theory of games. I don’t know where the term “persona” is from, as he uses “mimicry”. I think I made that up. Anyway, Caillois RULES.
“Yes, indeed. Violin, piano, guitar and sitar. In fact, you’re actually extraordinarily monogamous. I just hope I fulfilled my dharma correctly – Krystal certainly excelled at hers.”
“We’re all one mind who dreams, aren’t we.”
“And we make that dream beautiful.”
‘All one mind who dreams’ is certainly something that a bunch of people I could only recall if I had Gauss’s memory said before. The follow-up is, I hope, somewhat original.
[1] A tray universe, that is, a miniature dimension with planets, civilizations etc. Dragons have pastimes proportional in complexity to their egos. (From the Kantonnen Complete Idiot’s Guide to Bonuchu)
‘Completely Idiot’s Guide’… hah, hah! I forgot that one!
***
The Wendauerian guard was too edgy since Skysong had been kidnapped (and later, luckily but mysteriously, returned) to be polite, even if he had wanted to be, which is not usually part of the Wendauerian palace guard belief system. Besides, he had no patience for gray anthropomorphic coyotes.
“Freeze, motherfucker! Who are you? What do you want in the royal palace?”
The coyote raised his paws. “I’m Collateral the Nuwisha. King Omnibus sent me from the future to kill Emmanuel before he can be used by Moebius to fuel the Rocket. I am his master assassin.”
Collateral is a movie too. It features a coyote and Tom Cruise. Hence this section.
The Wendauerian lowered his weapon. “No, no, no, this is going all wrong. You can’t just say you’re an assassin and you’re here to kill people. That’s the kind of crap that will get you shot.”
“I am a cool guy, with a job I was contracted to do, and I’m using a gift to control your mind, man. That’s why you didn’t shoot me in the first place.”
“Bullshit. Also, I’m a moron. Lalalala! I like to dance! Woo!”
XD
Mr. Collateral entered the palace with grim determination, leaving the guard to his dancing.
***
Gauss arrived at the command bridge late. “How are things?” he asked, straightening his collar.
This must be a teen slasher flick. Guy has a lot of sex, dies.
“I’m miserable.”
“No, I mean, the battle.”
“We’re almost dhere. Our flanks are quite open, dhough. L fought until her ship had to be evacuated. My fadher is slowly retreating, trying to cover us as he goes.”
“What about the lesser fleets?”
“Alright, let’s see. Dhe Toreador isn’t showing in our projections, but its accompaniment ships have all retreated or been evacuated. And dhat’s Lord Edmund’s flagship right dhere, going down in flames.”
“How do you know?”
“Dhe motto. Veni Vidi Castratavi Illegitimos.”
The actual Blackadder family motto. Blackadder is GREAT. I WATCHED ALL BLACKADDER. BLACKADDER FOR EMPEROR OF THE UNIVERSE!
“Ah, good old Admiral Blacky. I doubt he’s dead.”
“Yes. One of dhose doubtful dhings.”
“Right you are, Admiral,” said a communications officer sitting nearby. “The Cunning Plan reports they have recovered his escape pod.”
Baldrick saves the day!
“Well, dhat’s comforting.”
“Is it?”
“Everydhing in its right place.”
“Right. Ok, so we don’t have any more fleets on this sector?”
“Nope. I’m dhe Last Admiral. Dhere will be songs about me and stuff.”
“Well, just hang on a bit and get close enough for me to land.”
“Yeah, just go to dhe drop pod already. And Wernher… good luck, even dhough dhat’s not possible.”
***
Fifth season: cold, cold and dark
“Cursed are ye who weep, for ye indulge the reprehensible habit of crying.” [Borges]
“Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!” [Poe]
“All dreams shattered! What kind of a God would allow this to happen!? Pain and death are the only constant forces in this HORRIBLE REALITY!” [Cat Syrup]
Winter sucks. The Poe quote was, in fact, found somewhere in Borges, whose quote there is badly paraphrased/translated. The first quote is about subjective suffering, the last about objective horror. In the middle, the synthesis.
“He’s waking up. Bring the dart gun.”
Oscar opened his eyes.
“Oscar Angeles, I presume.”
Oscar blinked, as if the light were too strong.
“Alright, Oscar, we’ll need your cooperation with this. When you see a stream of light flowing from your body…”
Oscar interrupted saying something inaudible.
“What did you say?” asked Kylie.
“Not. Oscar.”
There was an explosion.
“Damn. Call the security,” said Nike, helping Danring to his feet. Kylie was already flying after Oscar, who had Joel in his new huge, sinewy claws.
Oscar became a demon! Oh no!
***
The commandos walked among the cacti of planet Sauvage.
Cacti feature in my life almost as prominently as kiwis and goslings.
“Can a woman ever be clever without being obnoxious?”
“I don’t think so.”
Take that, whores! I mean. Um. That’s totally the characters speaking.
Corso nodded. “Can you believe a girl once told me she wouldn’t read the Pendulum because it was ‘not her kind of thing’? What’s that, does she hate cabala and love? Does she despise intelligence, abhor beauty, object to all forms of metaphor and knowing oneself?”
“Unfathomable are the mad cunts,” agreed Ardy.
Gauss landed, two slightly scorched silver wings in his back. “Alright, there are two valleys we can follow. I attracted some anti-air fire from the east, so I think we’d better go this way.”
“The readings from that depression are level. Are we sure it’s the void core?”
“It’s almost certain, but we have classified plans in case it’s not.”
“I bet the plan is ‘panic’.”
‘Don’t panic’. DNA.
The ground shook and the skies opened. The sunlight began to flicker.
“Shit! They’re pulling the system out of our spacecraft cover.”
Dolph widened his eyes. “If this star moves faster than the speed of light, it will explode!”
That’s from that movie about the school bus, I think. ‘Terminal velocity’? Something like that. I’m just stealing Legendary Frog’s joke, anyway.
Corso glared at him. “Your grasp of astrophysics is appalling.”
“Allow me.” Gauss waved his arms dramatically.
The star imploded.
How NPC-ish of him.
“Oh yeah, real smooth, Wernher.”
“Hey, it stabilized the system, didn’t it?”
“Condemning all of its native life to death.”
“It’s the imperial way.”
Bob shut up. That did justify everything, theoretically.
This kind of thing makes you like democracy…
Some ten minutes later. Dolph was explaining his trade and hobby to his former Emperor.
“…now, y’see, the attribute Depravity is potential, it’s initially checked by Innocence. It measures how fast you can make the girl stoop to the lowest fetishes, because it measures how fast the returns from traditional forms of intercourse will diminish and cause in her a craving for something kinkier, to fill her Cockneed bar. Eventually it all ends up in snuff, cannibalism and necrophilia.”
There’s probably a game exactly like that in Japan.
“Fascinating.” He made a mental note to have the human euthanatized.
“We get signal,” said Mitya.
All Your Base will never completely die.
“From the Kassad?”
“One of its escape pods. Turning on the main projection…”
“Yeah, whadhever, the ship was retreating, so I wanted to be widh you down dhere where I can help.”
“You mad bastard.”
“I’ll try to land discreetly.”
Bob wiped the sweat from his brow. “What do we do, sir?”
“We wait, I suppose.”
Dolph readily sat down and pulled out a smoke-stick. “You know that song, Snowschadm?”
Schadm is a good word, but I don’t think that makes any sense. Simulate snow? Maybe.
“Pretty, isn’t it?”
“I find it a bit plain myself,” said Gauss.
“Yes, well. Shame that people have been singing the censored lyrics in weddings and balls for centuries now.”
“Really, now?” asked Ardy, genuinely curious.
“Ayup. That part ‘I wish to be kissed by a snow-haired princess’…”
“…yes?”
“Not kissed. Fisted.”
There was an uncomfortable pause.
“How in Glock’s name do you find out that kind of crap?”
“…three strikes and I shoot you,” said Gauss. “I’m serious.”
I have no idea why I wrote this, but it sure is embarrassing.
“Bah, I’m just lightening the mood.”
“You’re making me depressed.”
“Make that us,” offered Mitya.
“And Whutty’s not here yet.”
“I like to think I'm a site where bachelor memes meet to date,” said Dolph defensively.
A very quotable phrase.
“You’re the fanfiction dot net of memes.”
Oomph.
“And your stupidity is aggravating. You can consciously process up to a pathetic, what, 126 bits per second of experience. A pathetic system of consciousness with a ridiculous von Neumann bottleneck. I consciously experience in a millisecond what you couldn’t in a lifetime. And I can remember it all, too. I can deduce to nanometric exactness the fractal patterns in the shape of all clouds world-around Gamezoha Prime 65,349,914 seconds ago, by remembering the way the wind felt under my wings.”
This power is way more impressive that snuffing out stars or clawing BPC.
Corso yawned. “Shut up, will you, Gauss? I mean, Consul Marshal Archduke, sir.”
“I’m just saying I’m miserable in a scale only Whutty could comprehend.”
Whutty untangled himself from his parachute. “Dhat’s right… now shut up.”
“It’s like Montaigne, when he said he enjoyed life twice as much as other people, for the measure of enjoyment depends on the greater or lesser attention that we lend it. Only I have vast untapped reserves of spare attention to focus on my shattered heart, my bereft soul, my torn...”
“Oh Glock, won’t anyone shut him up?!”
The Unwritten Ones attacked.
“Glock truly is merciful,” observed Mitya.
***
“Who the hell are you?” asked Windsong.
“Name’s Collateral. I can’t stay here much longer. The Grandfather Lock. King Omnibus sent me from the future. He was in his death throes. Mortally wounded by Emmanuel Saurin. As his cãlãu, his carnifex, I had to do something… stupidly. I’m not meant to be here… but I’m warning you. So you can do something about it…”
Windsong rubbed her eyes when the coyote disappeared.
“Stupid dreams.”
She returned to her sleep.
Yep, I had to cut his participation short because somebody hates coyotes.
***
Kylie asked for backup while flying after Oscar. In normal circumstances, she could easily reach him using time kata, but he was the strange emanations coming from him seemed to weaken her somehow… she could see humans fainting down in the streets.
I really should pay more attention when revising. Mental note: fix… oooh, noodles.
“I have to reach him before someone starts shooting…”
Oscar landed on the roof of Mitokana Plaza. Kylie shifted to human and landed nimbly. Danring and Nike arrived right after her.
Nakatomi, from Die Hard. Did I say this before? I got a strong déja vu thing.
“Oscar, what are you doing?”
“I am not Oscar. I am Josephus!”
“No, you’re not! Your reunion with Joel can’t work this way.”
“All I have to do is consume his essence… and then I’ll be like a god… a dark god!”
Was that from Legacy of Kain? I can’t tell anymore.
Danring rolled his eyes. “You’ll explode. That’s a very different thing.”
Oscar blasted Danring off the building.
He had that one coming.
Do not fret, ladies, I shall be alright. Let me just catch my breath…
Two Grammaton Novas warped onto the building, and a girl with rockets in her feet hovered up, holding Danring in her arms and depositing him next Nike, who raised an eyebrow inquisitively. “Friends?”
“Back-up. I hope we’re enough to capture him without anyone getting hurt.”
Oscar laughed evilly. “That’s a concern I absolutely don’t share!”
Kylie approached cautiously. “Oscar, it’s me. Kylie. We’re here to help you.”
The angel (?) targeted Kylie with a tongue of fire from his fingertips, which was intercepted by the rocket-girl, who lept in the way.
Nike covered her face. “Whoah! The hot poor little girl!
“It’s alright, Cobalt Bleu is an android I built. She’ll rebuild herself automatically for proper introductions.” Kylie sighed. “Alright, twins, do the lobster pincer maneuver celestial technique deux.”
The twins weren’t meant to be androids, just Cobalt Bleu, but that’s how things ended up in chapter 30. CB is a tiny bit inspired in Ghost in the Shell, but considering I neither watched nor read it…
The twins closed in from both directions with neural stun guns in their hands. Oscar smirked. As soon as they came within his reach, he pummeled both with punches, kicks and wing strikes.
“Domenic! Leonhard!”
“I’m just a little bruised,” said one of them. “And Leo’s stable if unconscious. But I think we’ll have to use lethal force if-”
“No! Absolutely not!”
“Kylie, he’s sucking the life out of Joel,” said Nike. “If you don’t stop him, I will!”
“Look, it won’t just work,” said Kylie, firing a dart of antidote at Oscar, who swiftly parried it with a shield of flames, “to use the antidote at this distance. We have to immobilize him, or distract him.”
“Good luck with that,” said Oscar, grinning. “I’m almost finished here.”
And then Jon grabbed his head in a lock from behind and jerked Oscar away from Joel, who collapsed on the floor.
“For God’s sake, come quickly! He seems to have the strength of a hundred devils! I can’t hold him much…”
***
See Archduchess Ticine-Gauss kneeling before the altar to her husband’s ancestors. Inside it were the remains of the first Emperor, the founder of the dynasty. She spread the flowers she had collected in her gardens following the ancient Tfafnian art. She lit the incense. She felt a ripple of loss in her heart, and she knew clearly what it was, and hesitated.
Tfafnians had ikebana? Yep. Desert lemurs love flowers.
Much of the imperial rites were rewritten as Alisia’s poetry was put to verse. The scholars learned to identify four, maybe five stages in her style, that followed the flow of the eras in Draconic thought.
The poetry in Gules et Argent, her first book, the romantic style reaching perfection, was followed by Sable et Argent, her darkest phase, but arguably just a pathological corruption of her former style. In Azure et Argent, she changes her themes to a distinctly religious-mystical leitmotiv, and Or et Argent, her last book, written in her days of madness, contains verse of insanity few dare peruse, sentences making no sense, random ranting of exquisite musicality and no rational content.
These are, in fact, the titles of albums I listen to in my car.
***
The commandos were deep inside the ruins of a Dewne city, walls covered in ubiquitous “DEATH TO ASTUTE AAAARGH” graffiti. Gauss stopped when he felt through his boot a carpet of rose petals.
Eight cats.
“I see…”
Klot emerged from the darkness, and the darkness followed his movement to cover him again, like a vertical wall of black water.
“Sir, we get signal.”
Second AYB line from Mitya. Heh, heh.
Seeing Gauss was occupied, Sergeant Doom replied, “well, what’s the good news, Mitya?”
“Colonel Adelais’ team reports they’ve found the real void-core and destroyed it. Unwritten One forces are collapsing in a radius on many parsecs.”
Addy rocks.
Dolph giggled. “Hee. Parse.cx.”
Oomph.
“Whutty, get them out of here.”
“You need us.”
Gauss scoffed. “Please. You wouldn’t make a difference.”
Ardaster raised his hand. “I take offense…”
“Our battle could easily destroy this whole planet. Didn’t you see what I did to a fucking star? I don’t want to have to worry about you.”
Whutty sighed. “If you die because of dhis, I’ll fucking kill you.”
“Just go away. I’m sure an ex-silver paladin still has the honor in him to grant you a minute to set up the teleporters.”
Klot nodded softly, almost respectfully, but his voice had an edge of scorn. “As long as you don’t go anywhere, I have no reason to punish your friends for your cowardice.”
Corso synchronized the teleport beacon to a destroyer that could take them home, TMV Picador, and one by one the Warthogs left. Whutty reached for the controls, and stopped.
Toreador, Picador… a Matador is probably on the way.
“I tell you what,” he said. “If I die, dhe whole Dht’k’n’lz dhing widh dhe Rocket goes to heck, doesn’t it?”
“And the Unwritten Ones destroy everything anyway, Ric. We’re the ones who need you.”
“And you’ve just made things easier for me,” laughed Klot. Whutty felt a blade against his neck.
“Aw, shit.”
Aris had his eyes filled with solid black shadows, and Whutty in a deadly grapple.
Klot walked to Gauss. “Don’t fight back, and he’ll live, and you’ll have a painless death. What follows… may not be quite as pleasant, as Moebius wants to build a Paintatron for certain projects of his, but the offer is, you’ll find, better than the alternative.”
Gauss also gets Paintatroned. Hah, hah!
Whutty gnashed his teeth. “Ignore him! Fight back!”
Wernher stepped away from Klot. “I… tell him to let him go.”
“No, you jackass…”
Just then, from a Ticine marine dropship wrecked nearby, emerged its sole survivor, a young elf, and he had a graser rifle, and he shot Aris in the arm. Whutty jumped away from him, Gauss faced Klot again and parried his coup de grace, and Aris’ amputated arm fell to the floor.
“Now fuck off! Forget me, damnit! My battle! My redemption!”
Whutty looked at Aris grabbing his bloodied wound in agony, and understood Klot’s spell had been broken. He helped Aris to his feet and both ran towards Pyrite and the teleporter as beams of silver light and black fireballs exploded around them.
“Desist. You can’t fight my Black Fire.”
“The ancient Gazraki had a wise saying. Rnaim à fnatfol tfor wo dhrain. It means ‘I’m gonna beat you up so bad, you’re gonna pee your kneecap’.”
“The Black Fire of Eçaraia.”
This is so cool I got frostbitten.
***
WHY ARE YOU SHUTTING ME OFF, MASTER?
“No-one is to witness this, Damocles. Not even me, the multitudes of me. Leave the burden to Klot alone. We owe this respect to the warriors. Even my ‘brother’ Anaxerretibes knows better than to watch. This is a battle that must not be shown. It mustn’t be narrated. It shouldn’t even be told.”
Klot killed Gauss.
I’m so incredibly lazy.
***
When a dragon dies, there are ripples of this across history. Some dragons even train themselves to induce the ripples to change the past and avoid the birth of their murderers, the ultimate deterrence technique, but there are incalculable risks in this sort of behavior, and it has been chosen to dampen the effects as much as possible with the Grandfather Lock. But there are still ripples.
Grandfather Clock. Get it? Yeah.
***
See Gauss-Gauss, resting after a day of glorious conquest and exquisite celebration with his favorite slave, Ibifd, setting down the alphabet his vassals would use, writing with perfectly dexterous strokes the hard sounds of Draconian, Yl, Vn, Vd, Dhr, Rn, Nm, Rs, Kz, Tf, Fn, Pn… He then feels a ripple of loss in his heart, and even he hesitates.
My, that alphabet sure seems unhandy.
See Werther Gauss, sitting in a muddy trench, disregarding the battle raging around him, pen in hand, writing an old-fashioned letter - “Ah, my spiritual lover. Why would we ever need to touch when the rapport is so intense? I find delight in your games and confide my soul bare for your amusement. We’ve said so much between lines. Onwards: no affecting the harmony of our silences with more unbalanced words.” – but he too feels a ripple of loss in his heart, and his hand hesitates, before concluding: “Fastidious explicating is sinning.”
That sounds very Laclos. Werther is an interesting character.
See Wieslawa, bathing in the clear waters of a river in the Silberwald, knowing Laplace Saurin watches her from between the trees, and she feels the ripples of loss more intensely than any other, and she is angry, and strengthens her resolve to defile her womb rather than follow the destiny the stars have set for her.
Bitch.
See Kirsi in an impossible future, in the middle of a dark ritual of communion, feeling the loss as a mockery of her own debasement, suddenly full of shame and hesitation.
Slut. Also, that scene is based on the Royo illustration named Communion.
See Nike defiant of Wernher, “If I win, then that hot little Mercedes AV-7 of yours is mine,” and then she feels loss and does not understand it, but she does hesitate before answering his, “And if I win?”
Whore. (The ‘if I win…’ line is from Cruel Intentions.)
See Krystal watching a sunset and weeping at its beauty and the beauty of the loss she knows refers to him. She’s not doing anything, so she can’t hesitate, and soon she’ll be dead. See her and see her long, it is a treat you’re giving yourself.
You’re nice.
See Adelais, helping the wounded and the evacuees, her pure countenance covered with the marks of carnage, feeling the death of her cousin and hesitating, before biting her lip and asking with unusual concern in her voice, “any news from the squad engaged in Operation White Spats?”
You too.
See Alisia Sphexoren, sprawled before the altar of the Imperial Pantheon, consumed by madness, being finally driven to death by a feeling of loss. See Nicolette the widow in the same position, reading with eyes full of tears the words the poetess had carved with her claws in the theretofore blank slate of Gauss-Gauss’s tomb, just before she died, forming the whole of what a few scholars name her last stage of poetry, Argent et Argent.
Two mad cunts.
God was a dream of good government.
Requiem for the painful and eternal light of galactic sentience,
God-Emperor Gauss of Gamezoha.
‘God is a dream of good government’ is from Deus Ex. ‘Painful and eternal’ is an attempt at the same style of ‘dolorosa y húmida Eco’, but lacks the strength because ‘eternal’ isn’t concrete enough. God-Emperor makes me think of Stargate and Dune.
***
See, at last, if you still have the heart, Kylie hesitating for one moment before injecting Oscar with the antidote, giving him time to cast Jon away in fury. The appropriate dose hits his neck with flawless accuracy, but too late, as his hands reach the Sphexoren’s neck and crush. When Oscar recovers his senses, he is returned to his old self – not claws anymore, only his hands around the dead dragon’s neck.
Now this paragraph was just adding insult to injury.
~*~
Tiarnampsejymqatsi: Tfafn word for ‘Life as something totally fucked up and awesome’. (The Kantonnen Dictionary of Tfafnian)
I count tiarnamsejyms to sleep.
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