Something was different. Everything looked the same, but something was different. It was like being trapped in someone else’s stale breath, but different. A change was coming - big change - not obviate events foreseen by Nostradamus, Jules Vern, or even Jojo - heck, any slope headed newt would have seen that stuff coming. The coming events were bigger than all of them put together - as if you were too focused on the locomotive about to wipe your Hyundai off the level crossing to notice the 747 that’s gonna get the lot of ya. A change that hit so deep into the core of reality that only the insane might have had the slightest inkling of its coming. They never believe the crazies.
Naturally, we caught on immediately.
It seemed like just another day, only on way more coffee than is really good for your pancreas. You know, when you find yourself looking back fondly on the usual absurdity of it all as a wonderful time when you could actually make some vague semblance of sense out of whatever. `Loopy’ doesn’t even start to cover it.
It was the sort of day that made Old Testament writers say, “Gimme a break, that shit never happened.” Even the nut cases turned around and asked, “Hey, are you for real?” It was the sort of day that could make you ramble on endlessly about crap that really doesn’t make the slightest difference to folks in Poughkipsie just to give your fingers exercise, even though you’re coming down with carpal tunnel syndrome and all your nails have broken from the pressure you’re bringing to bear on the keyboard that came with your buddy’s computer, which really wasn’t made for this sort of thing but had to put up with it because you were having a real weird day and had to let the pressure out somewhere, even if it was an undeserving keyboard made by a large multinational corporation that would be the first against the wall when the revolution comes, which is probably next Tuesday unless it doesn’t fit your schedule. But we digress, and anyway we already wrote the Sentence to End All Sentences.
KDAmery and CWBorysowich had stayed up the whole week watching F-Movies from the ‘Just Worstsellers’ rental place in the next province. It was six thirty in the morning, and they were out of pretzels (always happens). So, they levered themselves out of their loungers and staggered to the door of the igloo, and...
“Holy shit, look at the size of that box,” KDAmery said.
“That is definitely big - you’d think we’d have heard the crane delivering it.”
“Well, I did think all the grinding gears were an odd sound effect for that last gratuitous sex scene...”
CWB examined the markings, “It says Mitsu...bishi - heck that means it could be anything! At least I hope it’s not from that stupid French singer.”
KDA frowned. “You didn’t buy `Get Dumb’ at Mac’s by mistake, did you?”
“Umn... No... No I didn’t”
It wasn’t a day for getting gifts or giving gifts since those typically come several months after your birthday or Christmas. As much as I like the idea of a gift giving season, I don’t want to be the one to pay for it. So, the next time you’re going out and picking up one of those over stuffed ‘Tickle Me Silly’ kinda dolls, take a step back for once. Step away from the towering warehouse shelving crammed with consumables that’s muffling your neighbourhood kids screaming for the toy of the hour in the other aisles. Look up towards the ceiling... hold your arms up in the air and in the loudest shrillest voice scream “I am a total victim of marketing!”
With a modicum of effort they hoisted the huge box through a small window in the 4th storey bathroom and lugged down to the middle of their basement rec-room floor.
CWB raised an eyebrow. “Now I can’t see my Persian rug.”
“Stop scrunching your eyes shut. Now, how do we get in this... oh, here it is.” KDA opened the sliding patio door and stepped into the box’s vestibule. “Wow, this thing’s bigger than our whole igloo.” [Blatant rip off of a line from The Wall. Please don’t sue us, we’re attached to our money.]
“That is a huge screen... and it comes with a couch!”
“And hey, two remotes!” KDA tossed one to CWB.
“But, the markings on the remotes appear to be Etruscan.”
“Hmm, let’s see if I can... Hey, the buttons are laid out in the exact proportions of the placement of all the statues on Easter Island.”
“What does this button do...” after CWB pressed the button the television set started to glow green - everything except the screen. “Maybe it has to warm up first...”
“Okay, you turned the cabinet on...” KDA looked closer at the remote. “Hey, the buttons are little faces sticking their tongues out!” He pressed on one. “Take that, ya rude little--”
“Uh, KDA...”
“What?”
“Check out the wall.”
KDA looked up. The wall that the remote had been pointing at when he pushed the little bugger’s tongue had turned into a giant projection of a porno movie. “Holy fuck.”
“Uh, that doesn’t look like Immaculate Conception to me... Here, let’s see--”
“No, hang on.” KDA hit the fast forward. “I want to get to the lesbian scene.”
But CWB had already depressed another button. And the screen bounced to another wall of the box and was completely white with a small speck that was just off center. The speck quickly grew larger and soon looked like it could be a person. As the speck grew, it yelled, “I’m here... am I too late?... I made it!”
CWB murmured, “Late for what?”
The new guy and KDA both asked, “You say something?”
Both CWB and KDA’s attention snapped to the guy on the blank white screen.
“Was he talking to us?”
“Were you talking to me?” Echoed from the speakers of the TV set.
KDA looked back and forth from the set to the wall where the guy was. “Interactive technology seems to be improving...”
“Apparently they couldn’t afford scenery tho...”
Now somewhat exhausted, the guy on the screen staggered into a close-up, “Am I... too late?”
KDA looked at his watch and said, “Yeah.” He turned the wall off. “Probably annoying.”
“There’s never anything on anyway. I’m not sure why we bother with television in the first place. It’s almost like we keep watching in anticipation that something good might magically appear one day. Plus, that grand achievement in the penultimate interaction between animate and inanimate turns out to have no friggin’ scenery.”
“Tell me about it. 67 million channels and dick all on. Too bad you can’t do anything really cool with these.” He casually gestured with the remote and hit a button.
An end table with a bowl of nachos appeared in the middle of the room. Not on a wall, not on the TV, in the middle of the room.
“Hmmm... Do you suppose it’s edible?” CWB posed as the drool welled in his mouth.
“Dunno.” KDA picked a nacho out and ate it. “Oh, fuck!”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Man does this need salsa!”
“Figures... Not up to par... Just like the last 70 years of technological advancement. All these stupid little baby steps... Why couldn’t a processor go from a first release of 4.77mhz to 500mhz the next year? All those damn useless processors that sit in garbage heaps. Now we have virtual Nachos... then they’ll have virtual nachos with cheese, then virtual nachos with cheese and ground beef...”
“Hang on a sec, I had the volume down.” KDA hit the button again. A table with a steak and scampi tail dinner appeared complete with Chateau Latour 1927. “I think we’re getting somewhere.”
“... Still, our little Interactive Dude Version 1.0 is just a guy on a blank white screen. If it was me designing this shit, I’d at least put the guy in a jungle filled with alligators for version 1.0...” As CWB Mashed a button with his thumb, the man from the white screen appeared on the wall again in extreme close up, as if he was knocking on the screen and wondering what had happened to the guys in the window. Then he slowly turned around.
Behind him was now a sprawling jungle with echoing noises of birds and animals, then the man’s face turned hospital white as he leapt from the close up into the background screaming as several alligators chased him through the now swampy scene.
“See, now this I like!”
KDA shook his head. “What, no velocoraptors? Say, doesn’t that guy look like Rob Smith?”
CWB approached the wall that was projecting the screaming image and squinted, “you know, I think you might be right...”
The guy on the screen was jumping from limbs of trees onto the backs of other Alligators in shear panic “GUYS! Get me outta here! What are you trying to do? Kill me?!?”
CWB pressed another button with his thumb and the wall faded to black. “How ‘bout some of that steak?”
KDA looked thoughtfully at his remote. “These things are weird. Kinda scary, I mean the raw power to change people’s lives... this is fucking kewl!!!”
“Yeah, that’s great, but I’m hungry.”
“Naw seriously, with these we could really turn shit upside down. We could...”
“Then who would put it right-side up again?”
“That’s just it, we could decide what’s up! What’s left and right, what’s...”
“Wait... I see the flaw here. The fact that we would look at things and see them as upside down is only due to our conditioning of constantly seeing them the other way. Humanity needs to curb its anal retentive views of up and down! Free your mind!!!”
“O... K. Well, consider these the enema. We could lay the powerful low... change the world... hell, we could move out of this igloo!”
“I’ve always considered the powerful beneath me anyway.”
“Well, now they’ll know. I’m getting a woody just thinking about it.”
CWB glanced down at his remote control and raised an eyebrow in intrigue, “you sure it wasn’t the lesbo show?”
“Uh... you could be right. But still, this is cool. So, first priority...” KDA switched the porno back on.
He stared at the stupid keyboard in front of him. Both of them actually since he had one of those redundant USB keyboards attached to his laptop because he hated to reach beyond the touchpad that he didn't use to get to the keys.
ReplyDeleteComments. Comments! He was supposed to say something. But what? His thoughts raced, fleeting, a myriad of mixed up imagery.
He tore one off as it passed. Yes, that will do:
"Good job! Can't wait for more!"
Ok, weak. But his mind had gone on to other things now and no more comments would be forthcoming. At least not comments on "The Plot to End All Plots". Work. Yes! he was at work and had to do something. What was it again?
Hmmm. Yes, that's it.....
Off he went....
---
Michael
As we were playing with a number of numerical games using the roman numeral system throughout the plot, this chapter was added significantly later in the writing of the manuscript. It became clear after completing chapters 45-50 that we, the authors, were getting pulled more and more significantly into the story lines as characters would start to randomly burst in us during writing.
ReplyDeleteBumping into them at the mall or at a bus stop wasn't quite as disturbing as having them actually knock the door down to the den. Little things that we had to deal with as the book continued to spiral out of time, out of reality and out of control.
"The ends" as we refer to a collective set of co-authored writings is also referenced in this chapter. "The sentence to end all sentences" was a project that had started off as the worlds longest sentence and another experiment in exercises to get past writers block. In the end, we probably decided that the sentence, though long, was not likely to hold up to any detailed scrutiny and it remained as a writers block scratch pad for us for a short period. 'The ends' also included "The Number to End All Numbers", "The Accident to End All Accidents" and "The Simile to End All Similes".
ReplyDeleteNumber was the very first item written in "the ends" as it was inspired by a lotto commercial that related the complicated process some people used to pick their numbers. We took it to the nth degree with this document and then went on to the other parts with 'The Plot' obviously becoming the most significant.