J.PAUL SERENGETI ON THE BRINK,
GRAND CANYON, 1993
FROM THALION, WITH LOVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
"Vlad's 'near-religious'
experience"
NOTE:
This is a chapter from a comedy science-fiction novel I wrote in
Colorado in 1989 which takes place in a near-future world which has been
illuminated by the "megaflash."
Free-lance intelligence agent J. Paul Serengeti and Arcturan cyber-chick
Jane-bot la Wig join forces to combat the insidious Infotoxin Command, or
INFOCOM, led by Prime Minister of Infotoxin Vladischlock Skrulusky and his
super-computer PAL. In this chapter we
glimpse the inner workings of a personality acutely distorted from multiple
hyper-moons of professional infotoxicity and rectose addiction, as Vlad
recounts a molecularly-induced "near religious experience" which he
had never spoken of before…or since.
Meanwhile, on Recton, Vlad and Jorve had just arrived
with a contingent of associates, technicians, and other assorted mutants. They had come not only for a short vacation,
but also to conduct a surprise inspection of the spore incubation facilities. In addition, they planned to meet the first
generation of the Mark III sporeborgs, who were just coming on-line. These marvels of genetic engineering and
state-of-the-art biotechnology had been created by Igtorpian subgenii with the
assistance of an interstellar network of PAL-12000 computers. This network of solid-state hardware
functioned as if it had one discrete mind, even though it consisted of several
tens of separate systems. And this mind
was, of course, PAL.
One PAL was more than enough, Vlad had thought more than
once. But, he realized, without good
old PAL and all his peripheral hard- and software, Vlad and his entire INFOCOM
would be little more important than, well, than a mere unengineered and
unmutated biological life-form. Whole, healthy,
unengineered and unmutated biological life-forms were totally meaningless to
Igtorpians and agents of INFOCOM. In
fact, they were regarded as heinous atrocities.
The brand-spanking new Mark III sporeborgs were truly
wonders of contemporary craftsmanship.
Originally conceived as house-hold pets and visiting guests for each
Igtorpian family unit, their primary function was to chant "Look out for
Number One!" early each morning, and to cash the monthly checks received
by each and every citizen of Igtorp, thereby relieving the Reptocrats of the
undue stress of having to fulfill these demanding duties, and lightening the
burden of their oppressive existence, affording them greater leisure for
form-filling and lava-bathing.
The sporeborgs quite closely resembled actual
cyber-homunculi in structure and function, being almost indistinguishable from
the real thing except under surgical conditions. What they really were, rather than one living being or a mutation
thereof, was a macro-conglomeration of individual spores of assorted species
which joined together for the express purpose of resembling actual
cyber-homunculi in structure and function, much the same as Shikastan
mitochondria were believed by A.HuM. zoologists to have been independent,
individual, free-swimming oceanic entities in the millions of epochs A.HuM.,
which, in later stages of history joined together in colonial structures to
form multicellular organisms, remaining within each cell of said organisms to
perform the strategic and highly significant functions of transducing energy
from assimilated molecules into a form usable by the cellular systems of the
organism. Or something like that. At any rate, the new sporeborgs were hard to
tell from a real hominid.
Vlad, although having long ago decided to import several
of the new Mark III's for residence at INFOCOM headquarters, to perform various
clerical, entertainment, and reproductive functions, had recently hit upon a
hot new idea which could be his ticket
to the paradise of hyper-glam, fame, and fortune, as well as increased
respect in the optical sensors of his superiors. He planned to obtain several additional sporeborg units and train
them as radical search-and-destroy field agents who he would send to find
Jane-bot and J. Paul. "God knows
where they might be," he often reflected.
"Not even PAL and his multiple/peripheral selves can help me on
this one." If Vlad could bring
them in, unharmed but subservient, there was no telling what his reward might
be. He could probably have anything he
wanted: an entire ARMY of slaves and
servants to cater to his every fantasy and desire; as much rectose as he could possibly assimilate intravenously
and/or export to alien star-systems.
Megatons, perhaps. Or even…and
he hesitated even to think this thought because it represented what was perhaps
his very deepest fantasy…to own his very own rectose manufacturing
facility. Maybe even his own planet.
Vlad could hardly be expected to know that rectose was
not a manufactured substance, but was in actuality a living and conscious
entity which grew under its own volition, being a product of sporozoic basal
metabolism.
"Look, Jorve.
Isn't it beautiful? Just look at
those long rows of fission-powered incubators.
Such a soothing orange glow.
Such wonderful Sporezak. We must
have the happiest spores in the cosmos, dontcha think?"
"Well, I guess.
But to be honest, I'm much more impressed by the new sporeborgs. They surely are awesomely indistinguishable
from real cyber-homunculi. I still
don't see how they do it. Those
Igtorpian genetic engineers must be true subgenii. Ya know, it's too bad we can't engineer spores to make
rectose. Wouldn't that be
something? With spores that made
rectose, we could rule the universe."
Little did they know.
"Say, Jorve, wanna do some rectose? I could use a blast."
"Sure, but how much do we have? I don't want to be left high and dry
half-way through our visit to Recton.
You know as well as I do that it's not easy to score any molecules of
any kind here, much less pure rectose.
These Igtorpians like their forms and their lava, but they're not much
on molecule abuse."
Right you are, but guess the fuck what? Not only did I bring 13 kilo's of uncut
stuff, I'm also having several gigagrams shipped via United Phase Resonance
Node Parcel Service. That should be
here any micro-light-parsec. And, hey,
I've got a little surprise for you, too.
Have you ever done any rectolax?"
"Dude. You
don't have any of THAT do you? God,
it's been ages. But, yes, I think I did
do some once. I was out of my mind,
partying in a club on Ozma. The
Cogithir, I believe it was called.
Happening spot. Anyway, though,
I was doing multiple molecule abuse that night, so I can't really remember the
specific effect of the rectolax itself.
I was higher than an ion-plasma exchange, though."
"Jorve, I didn't know you were one for multiple
molecule abuse."
"Well, it's not something I practice more often than
every few hyper-moons. How about
yourself? You have quite a reputation
in partying circles, ya know?"
Vlad paused in a silent but momentary trance.
"Ya know, Jorve, I've never talked about this to
anyone before, but since you're an admitted and fellow multipe molecule abuser,
I guess I can open up.
About 2.5 light-parsecs ago I was travelling incognito on
an undercover mission to Planet Claire.
I was really bored, and was just hanging out in my hotel room one
night. I decided to really go for it, and
amp out the old CNS. So I booted about
3 kilo's of rectose plus around 45cc's of 30-weight high-detergent 40-molar
nitric acid directly into my jugular vein.
I just sat there for several minutes, expecting an
instantaneous effect. Then, all of a
sudden my palms started to get all cold and sweaty. I started to convulse as if I were having a grand mal seizure. My teeth
were chattering and my jaw was clinching like a Rimulakian mind-vice. 'This is going to be great' I thought to
myself. Soon, I began to puke up
several liters of blood and mucus, and vast quantities of pus gushed out of my
ears. My stomach felt like it was tied
in several high-pressure Gordian knots.
I noticed that my limbs and appendages were very stiff, and my skin was
a greenish-gray hue. When I moved,
which I could do in an erratic and spasmodic way, my joints creaked as if they
were made of rusted tin which needed a serious lube job.
And this was only the first five seconds of getting
off! I was ready for the time of my
life. I managed to get in front of the
bathroom mirror. My eyes were bulging
out of their sockets; they looked like
the pressure behind them was about 650psi.
My lips were pinkish-green, and all dried and cracked, just like the
surface of the baked hemisphere of Igtorp.
My tongue had become forked, and it felt like 80-grit sandpaper, only
with hairs growing out of it. And it was darting in and out of my mouth at
a frequency of approximately 6 hertz. I
remember thinking at this moment 'Gee, Linda Blair would be jealous!' I was also committing first-order flatulence
at around 120dB. The aroma resembled a
cross between butyric acid, paving asphalt, and Chanel No.-0.3. I was flying.
Now, Jorve, this was predominantly a physical trip, if
you know what I mean. After the pus
stopped gushing out of my ears, thick, black smoke started billowing out of
them. I glanced down at my hands. My nails had grown into long metallic
scalpels, except that my thumbs had become hyperdermic syringes about 3cm in
diameter, with 30-gauge needles. The
thumb syringes were filling with a dark, viscous liquid. I looked back in the mirror. My face was covered with scales, and my
teeth were long and pointed. My upper
canines were over 4cm long, and dripping with a phlegm-like fluid. Awesome.
Also, a stringy yellow substance with adhesive qualities was flowing out
of my nostrils into my continuously-open mouth, and my darting tongue
involuntarily lapped it in.
Yummy!
When I could no longer stand, I fell to the floor,
writhinig in an unsurpassed spasm of ecstatic transcendence. My entire body was covered with long hairs,
only they were made of a high-tensile metallic substance, and sparks shot out
of the tip of each one.
I felt like I was having several simultaneous
hyper-orgasms. I drooled, as my eyes
rolled back in my head. It felt as
though bolts of powerful lightning were discharging throughout my entire
nervous system. And I somehow noticed
that the hairs on my head were standing on end, as if I were gripping a fully
charged Tesla coil.
At this point I was sort of drifting in and out of
consciousness. The purely physical
aspects of the trip, while still strong, began to give way to a more ethereal
experience. I found myself floating
over a sort of impressionistic daydream landscape of bombed ruins and
factories, of slum-like villages and industrial facilities. At the edge of the structures was a vast
plain of seething calderas of molten lava, just like on Igtorp. The sky was beautiful: reddish-orange clouds reflecting the light
from the molten rock below. The clouds
seemed to have a pH of around, say 0.7:
very pleasing to the eyes and mucus membranes!
As I was losing the remnants of my memory and identity, I
wondered to myself what I had ever done to deserve such wonderful
transcendental experiences. To whom did
I owe allegiance for such a vast and magnanimous reward? I was kind of fading in and out of assorted
fantasies when I began to hear a voice calling to me. It sounded like PAL, but the syntonic pharyngeal modulations were
of a different quality.
Then, all of a sudden, I was jerked from my reverie, and
I found myself seated at a very sophisticated-looking control console of some
kind of computer. I sat in brief
bewilderment. Utilizing my
scalpel-nailed fingers, I entered what I believed to be a kind of universal
disencryption logon which I believed would access the operational capacities of
the system. Even though I had no idea
whatsoever what I was really doing.
In a brilliant flash of light, my own countenance
appeared on the monitor. I was
awe-struck. I had never believed myself
to be quite so handsome. I looked pretty much the same as before, only
moreso. When I peered down into the
back of my throat, I could see the same reddish-orange glow which illuminated
the clouds of Igtorp. My tongue, while
still articulating the adhesive strands, was licking my entire facial
topology. It felt good. I was a veritable demigod of physical
beauty. I also became aware that my
large and small intestines were undergoing rapid-fire peristalsis at close to
Mach 3. And my anal sphincter was
alternately squeezing down to a pinhole, and dilating to the diameter of a
medium-sized grapefruit.
I was wondering what to enter into the computer
next, when a mighty voice issued forth
from deep within its circuitry.
"What the fuck do you want, Jack?"
Totally dumbfounded, I reeled in amazement. My name wasn't Jack, was it? My mind felt all flibberty-gibberty. My cognitional functions were askew. But before I had time to engage myself in a
problem-solving dialectic, it spoke again.
"OK, Jack, you have ten seconds to enter your BIG
REQUEST. You have one chance to ask for
anything you want, and it shall be granted.
But HURRY THE FUCK UP, OK? I'm
really busy."
"Um…um…….let's see…Um…I've got it! I would like to see the MASTER PLAN for
control and domination of the intergalactic spore market. Is that an appro…"
"One moment, please. On-line processing.
Loading. Cyber-scan
operative…"
And then, in another brilliant flash of light, a most
amazing sequence of images and schematics, of data and blueprints, of facts,
figures, numbers, strange and indecipherable hieroglyphs, rows and columns,
little pictures, cuneiform-looking things, notations, strange patterns, anomalous
instructions, strategic encryptions, and assorted other forms of information began
to stream forth and past my optical sensors, on the monitor screen.
And then it was over.
"See ya, Jack.
It's been real."
I had just seen the for-real MASTER PLAN for the control
and domination of the intergalactic spore market. In about 18 seconds. I
couldn't remember a thing. It all blew
by so fast, I consciously comprehended absolutely nothing.
"Oh, computer, or whoever you are, um, I have
another question.
"Shoot, dude. But make it snappy. My computational capacity is about
spent."
"Um, I can't seem to remember any of the MASTER PLAN
you just showed me."
"So?"
"Well, how can I implement it if I can't remember
it?"
"Get a clue, Jack.
All you asked for was to SEE it, remember?"
"But…but…"
"Listen, I'll make a DEAL with you, Jack. If at some future point in your life you can
manage to make it back here, to the central Hadean core, then I'll grant you
one further request. Just ask for a
PREFRONTAL CORTICAL IMPLANT. This will
enable you to enhance your cognitional abilities enough so you might be able to
understand the MASTER PLAN. I'll just
add that you are not the first to request fhis information. In fact, several others actually have
it…"
"But computer, who are they?"
"Sorry, Jack.
Make it back again, ask another question. Your time's up."
And in a third brilliant flash of light I found myself
lying on the floor of my hotel room on Planet Claire, dazed, confused, totally
back to my pre-injection self, and feeling about as happy as if someone had
dumped the entire universal supply of rectose into a caldera of molten
lava. Plus, I had an insatiable craving
for a big bowl of Igtorpian homunculus butter.
But I knew it wasn't to be had."
"Gee, Vlad…that's some trip. It sounds like a RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE to me,
huh?"
"Hang on, Jorve.
That's not quite all. I was
lying there on the floor of that hotel room, basking in the warm
after-glow. Suddenly I noticed that
although every aspect of my physical demeanor seemed to have returned to
normal, my thumbs were still the hypodermic syringes filled with a dark
liquid. I was still feeling
adventurous, so I thrust both thumb-needles into my quaking gluteus maximi, and
gave them the plunge. It took my breath
away.
Everything seemed normal for a while, but then an
extremely high-pitched scream began to resound within my very brain-stem. It grew and grew, and although rather
pleasing at first, the volume to which it expanded threatened to implode the
structure of every molecule in my body.
But then, RELIEF.
It stopped, and I crumpled in an inhalation of relaxation.
But, then, something more sinister, vile, heinous, and
evil began, a multi-dimensional experience akin to a true revelation, only the
opposite. The opposite of a religious
experience. Imagine that, if you dare,
my dear Jorve.
The aspects of this experiential antithesis to my earlier
Hadean excursion which aftected me most severely, and which I most remember,
were the acoustic dimensions. Now, the
best way for me to describe this to you, en lieu of being able to reproduce the
sounds…and, believe me, I would NEVER do that!...is to go back a few
light-parsecs when I was a post-doc at the Dildario Institute for Psychological
Warfare at Johns Hopkins University. Of
course, we didn't really use the real name;
the institute was officially known as the Dildario Center for the
Advancement of Cognitional Capabilities, or DICACOC, acronymously. Anyway, at the institute one of the main
things we studied was the use of sound patterns for debilitating and subverting
the cognitive processes of hominid populations, chiefly using mass-media.
And since music is the most widely-spread form of sonic
mass-media, we focussed on that. What
we did was to force ourselves to listen to the music of all major composers of
the several centuries A.HuM., thereby enabling ourselves to construct simulated
music which resembled the works of these composers, whose works were worshipped
by the Shikastan public-at-large. Our
'music', if you could call it that, was merely a hollow shell which only on the
very surface vaguely resembled the real thing:
devoid of emotion, artistic quality, or any semblance of true beauty, it
was not only an empty product, it also contained encoded enervation vectors and
subliminal encryptions geared to debilitate and atrophy the mental processes of
any mind that processed it. Needless to
say, we were quite successful. By 3.2
A.HuM., our sounds could be heard almost constantly on any radio station, in
any fast-food restaurant, in any department store or shopping mall, in any elevator,
as the soundtrack to just about any TV show or film, or even on the lips of
hominids walking down the street. It
was SICK!
At any rate, however, Jorve, the music I most greatly
detested, and which was most highly loved by the Shikastan populus, was the
works of the composers Beethoven, Mozart, Debussy, Cage and Zappa.
Within milliseconds of the termination of the scream, an
acoustic experience began which I cannot possibly communicate to you, except to
say that it sounded like a synthesis of all the music that I hated the absolute
most. It sounded like a symphony
composed by a synergetic fusion of the minds of all these composers, combined
with songs of the humpback whales of Shikasta.
And as if that weren't enough, these horrific and nauseating
sounds were intermingled with lines of poetry or prophecy, something like
'The
final solution shall appear as a beast
rising
from the sea, descending from the sky-vault,
accompanied
by piercing wind-vortices and hail,
manifesting
in utmost frivolity,
her veil
an ACOUSTIC TSUNAMI, suspended in mid-flight
the
empress of the deep spaces…'
I lay there on the hotel room floor, screaming in
tortured agony. I actually passed out
from the pain of these sounds, and woke up several hours later in a cold sweat.
"Vlad, dude.
But what did you learn from it all?
Would you do it again? I mean,
boot that rectose/nitiric acid solution into your jugular?"
"Of course, my dear Jorve. I MUST have that MASTER PLAN, you know? It's a risk I must take. After
all, it was a heavenly experience, to use a metaphor of antithesis! It didn't turn bad until I booted up the
thumb-syringes."
"Well, it certainly was phantasmagoric. Sort of like a cross between Dante and
Thomas de Quincey, eh?"
"Sorry, Jorve.
I never was one for literary infotoxins. What say we climb upstairs and and do a few lines of
rectose. I could use a big blast."
"Sounds good to me, comrade. I'd like to meet the sporeborgs, too."
"Yes, and I'd like for Igor to meet his
cousins."
Igor was a rev 3.2 Mark II sporeborg. Practical, friendly, subservient.
And so it was. As
Vlad, Igor, and Jorve climbed the stairs to the SPORE COMMAND, in a distant arm
of the galaxy on a beautiful planet Jane-bot, Gal, and company swam peacefully
in the blue waters of the Baja Pacific, listening to recordings of A.HuM.
humpback whale songs, enjoying true friendship.
Bands were blazing and parties were raging at the
Cogithir and at Nobot's.
PAL was fine-tuning his anti-static generators, and
whining.
And on Thalion, Gal's cetacean friends prepared for the
brief but intense journey to Shikasta, via the interstellar phase resonance
node transcription-reassembly continuum, which spanned all intergalactic
abysses, and conjoined all spatio-temporal monadic holonomes in every
incarnation of the cosmos.
VOCABULARY
1) CYBER-CHICK: Jane-bot la
wig is the paragon of this species of being.
Cyber-beings are of extremely highly advanced neurocybernetic and
creative capabilities. 'Cyber' comes
from the Greek word kybernetes, which means guide or steersman, as of a boat or
ship; implies metaprogramming and
navigational functions. Cyber-beings
occur in many star systems, but occur most frequently in the Arcturan Star
system.
2) FREE-LANCE INTELLIGENCE AGENT:
this is what most cyber-beings functioned as, by virtue of their
enhanced interest in the development and n-dimensional health of all life-forms
in the cosmos; officially 'employed' by
no one, they constitute the fabric of the Galactic Synapse Command, which is
overseen by several octaves of hygexim
3) IGTORPIANS: also known as
reptocrats, they are the inhabitants of the Planet Igtorp (a planet in the
Scalian star system resembling Mercury;
its moons are Recton and Recton II;
unusual in that the planet rotates retrograde one day per week and in
that its core consists of molten dildonium which gives the planet an intense
x-ray ionosphere); quasi-reptilian
hominids who got this name because they are all employees of their government,
but they do nothing except fill out forms;
also, if they live for more than a few hours outside of an intense x-ray
field, they begin to mutate into normal Shikastan hominids
4) INFOCOM: the INFOTOXIN
COMMAND; in the land of Jane-bot the
Shikastan advertising and intelligence communities have fused into a sarcomic
singularity, ruled by the Executive Producer and its array of sycophantic
super-computers
5) RECTON:
©1989
