Ecological/ Corruption/"Command"/literary process version of novel

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penguins as at 23 feb 2007 9.03am

Contents 1 Preface 2 Psychedelic 3 Brain Food 4 Schrödinger's Cat 5 Strip Back 6 Line One 7 Valentine's Day 8 Staying Afloat 9 Two Curious Things Before Breakfast 10 Fascination 11 In Which Jim Finds the Cure to Cancer 12 A Meeting with the Author 13 All You Need is Community 14 True Story 15 Right House, Wrong Road 16 Questions Without Notice 17 Murderers and Millionaires 18 The Validity of Text 19 Jim Looked at the Text 20 Translation 21 The Road To Bailly Romainvilliers 22 Les reflections dans l'oeil d'un chien: Or How I Learnt French to Please My Daddy 23 Line of Inquiries 24 Kick 25 The Cardboard Boxer 26 Helena 27 Trapped 28 Toilet Door 29 Wooster? 30 Mass Confusion (101 Things to Do when Wasted on Smarties) 31 Stalin Forever 32 Old Friends 33 Chance Encounters 34 Notes Scribbled on the Back of a Canvas 35 Presence 36 The Madonna Effect 37 The End (But not as we know it) 38 Artie Wins Trivial Pursuit 39 Impressions 40 Dread 41 Sahra's Place 42 Invasion 43 Mary 44 Dual 45 A Million Regrets 46 Viscountless 47 And On 48 How I loved a certain type of fierljepper 49 Paradox 50 Tango in the early morning 51 Bear and Rabbit 52 True Story 2 53 "1 Corinthians 15:8" 54 Noonday Sun 55 Thin Veil 56 Straight... or bent? 57 Feast 58 Away...... Drat! 59 Paranoia 60 An hour 61 The bonus postpostmodern imploding Chapter 62 Epilogue 63 Life Goes on... 64 A Time to think! 65 The Rise of Ike 66 Afterword for the 23rd Edition 67 Möbius strip

[edit] Preface

Deep waters , black as black-ink, swelled and receded. As far as the eye could see in these conditions, there was nothing but the breadth and mass of the waters of the ocean - or was it a lake? It was hard to see in these conditions. If the inky darkness could itself be used to write a story of The Ocean and its Secrets it would surely be in the genre of a mystery, or of an unsolved crime.

One could not say that this huge liquid mass was dead; it clearly pulsed with a dark force. Yet it was hard to imagine that life existed beneath her. Certainly for a human it meant potential death: below its surface lay the wreckage of countless souls. We had dared to journey across it, some had been brave enough to explore its depths. Many journeys had spiraled into odd turns and demise. Others had traveled straight and calm under pristine cobalt blue. But such uncomplicated, anecdotal-drawn lines are often not the meat of narrative; more of bread recipes, post-it notes and emailed jokes of the day. 'The journey is the destination,' someone once wrote: and "To travel hopefully is better than to arrive". And there is the deep-water lure of the unfinished; the ebullient radiant incompletion of things. This great sprawling narrative comprised of loss, loose ends, the unfinished, the weight of what is lost, is as deep and wide as the ocean itself.

This was the beginning of the end.

I was trapped on a Möbius strip where all would end up where it began.

[edit] Psychedelic

Variant facets from different vantage points, lay before him. It could possibly be the most unlikely combination of thoughts and words. Was there meaning in it? Possibly. If life is the thread of meaning that runs through a myriad of otherwise random, disconnected and competing events and actions, then this was life served up in all its fullness. On whales, on bananas, on the mysterious collusion of the 'command', on the very process of transcription itself. A hand lifts a plain blue pen, touches its point to the texture, and writes, writes so slowly that even birds could hear it. It was not a regular letter but a letter of understanding. This was the most important thing that I was going to write to day. Paper was wet from last night's incident but I couldn't care less. It was a letter of intent to the corporation. He had such a huge inspiration that he felt like he was about to implode in his own creativity. Words kept coming out of his hand and he was satisfied that his goal might finally get a deserved ending.

[edit] Brain Food

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day... a swim, perhaps, but not a walk - for Artie was a whale, a humpback whale, to be precise. It was a sunny day, and Artie would have worn his sunglasses, but being a whale meant he didn't have ears, which made it difficult for his sunglasses to stay on. No matter, he thought, at least he was young and strong. He revelled in the feeling of the water - jumping, splashing, rolling, frolicking. He wondered what it must be like for beings that weren't whales; it was a hard concept to understand, and thinking about it made him feel a little dizzy, but Artie liked to think - and eat krill. Not necessarily at the same time though. He very much enjoyed eating krill, indeed, but when dizzy... Hmmmm...

Mmmmmm...zooplankton.

Artie had breached the surface and was enjoying the sun when he saw a large shape out of the corner of his eye - blurred by the sky, hazy with seagulls diving and plucking silvery fish from the surface. It was a square shape, very different from the organic shapes he came across under the water. If he had ever seen a crate of bananas before, Artie would have realized that's what it was, but he hadn't, so he didn't. Instead, he blew some water out of his spout hole and dived. He would go look for some krill. They were much tastier than bananas! Or so he thought....

As Artie was diving the depths of the ocean, two much smaller mammals on a ship sailing across the ocean were discussing how to spell the word "banana." Larry and Fred were mice - not the clean, white pet-type but the dirty, vermin riddled, disease-carrying type.

"The thing is," squeaked Larry, "if you are a poor typist, the word 'banana' is one of those words that can be difficult to type. There is a tendency to type 'bananana' or even 'bananna' - none of which is right."

"This is true," Fred replied. "I personally enjoy eating bananas but don't enjoy writing about them for that very reason."

Both Larry and Fred paused, gathering their thoughts.

"Besides," continued Larry, "who says the sense of being alone has to be omnipresent, and we have to feel weighed down by it? All said and done, 'being alone' is a feeling, and like all feelings it is supposed to be transitory, and it will pass, whether we like it or not - like a kidney stone, though less painfully."

Fred wasn't sure what he was talking about. The mention of bananas had made him hungry. He felt like a banana, or a banana split, or maybe a banana smoothie - or perhaps, at a stretch, banana pie. It was such a versatile fruit! He did a little dance - spelling the word "banana" out with his body - "B-A-N-A-N-A"! Larry, overcome by the excitement of his dancing companion, mirrored a few soft steps of his own on the other side of the keyboard, but his staccato shuffle only resulted in spelling out the letters N-O-M-O-U-K-L, which even spelled backwards, meant very little to either of them.

[edit] Schrödinger's Cat

Fluffy the cat was currently both alive and dead. It was a fairly tricky position to be in, but as Fluffy didn't know any better she didn't seem too worried. Schrödinger's ex-student had been approached by the animal welfare several times over his treatment of Fluffy - but the problem was, the only way they could determine the wellbeing of Fluffy was to open the box. And in doing so, they could be causing the wave functions to collapse and for Fluffy to move from being both alive and dead, to just being possibly dead.

Sometimes Schrödinger's ex-student wished he had bought a pet turtle instead of a cat. Surely a turtle wouldn't be as much trouble? And turtles came self contained in their own boxes. His girlfriend, Gina, was beginning to wish she had never met Schrödinger's ex-student, full-stop. Elaborating that idea, she thought it would be much better if she never set foot in Copenhagen, just to be on the safe side. There was probably an alternate universe somewhere, where she hadn't met him, she realized, but unfortunately it wasn't this one.

She had begun to wonder whether he was worth it several weeks ago - when his pursuit of the so-called 'one that got away' began to turn into a holy quest for him. She had become enamored by her boyfriend Mark's obsessive romanticized interest in the genius of Schrödinger, although she did wish he would not mimic his thought experiments as much, and come up with something original. What withered her petals, was the puerile populist pursuit of codified Templar droppings he was embarking on. She found it all rather droll and disenchanting. All she ever heard from him was his ideas on catching it. She sighed before hauling herself over to the pantry, where she contemplated their miserable selection of food with no small measure of depression: smoked salmon, caviar and champagne. But no biscuits for the caviar, damnit! She couldn't go on living like this.

She decided to order out - maybe that new French cafe that had opened up down Tenth street would deliver. Maybe she should order some frog legs and French fries... oops, Freedom Fries, she corrected herself in a rush of patriotism.

Little James lifted his quill from his manuscript. It wasn't his stomach that was supposed to grumble, it was his character's. "What in the world was happening?" He remembered that George was supposed to meet him for lunch - or was that supposed to happen later? He couldn't keep track of things ever since he had shuffled chapters (he paused as he had the uneasy feeling that he may have mixed different versions of the same chapter,.... "Ah, what the heck, they shed light on different facets," he thought to himself. "As long as I never let the proverbial cat out of the box." he mused loudly, "Or is that bag?, the universe would remain full of mystery and possibility forever."

[edit] Strip Back

In the beginning there were no computers, no Internet. Animals communicated with each other in a purity without words, bereft of the symbolic intricacies of language. Of course it was always eat or be eaten, as usual. Then the monkeys decided to come down out of the trees. They used sticks to measure the depth of water and bananas to draw things in the sand. Later they chipped things into stone. Invented a printing press. One clever one with a name that rhymed with 'cabbage', invented a mechanical computer. Which led to an electronic computer. A PC. A Modem. Which leads us to why we are here today: in deep trouble.

Even before the computer was invented, Jim had a problem. He started writing his own 'novels' if one could call them that, when he was eleven. He worked furiously with a two-fingered typing style, as he devised his own detective murder mysteries. But even as he sat there he thought, 'there must be a better way than typing, and then re-typing if you make a mistake.' Looking back, Jim was longing for the invention of the computer, which, despite all the computer games and hi-tech 'graphics cards ' was, for him, about having a system that could allow him to edit his work and correct mistakes without having to re-type the whole thing again. Jim could not imagine the days of the typing-pool, where women and men would sit re-typing draft upon draft of text in what would now be a simple re-edit on a computer.

Jim had inadvertently frightened a lady with an email he sent once, when he asked for a set of documents and only got a hard copy. The lady informed him, by email, that there WAS no computer text version of it available. Jim had a complete meltdown. "But, it has been type-set.. there... there simply MUST be a version of this on text..... " he ranted. He continued: " I simply cannot endure the thought of re-typing something that some poor soul has already had to type in once..... Just think of how many times we have to scan or re-type text that, once entered, should not have to be typed ever again." Jim, somewhat disappointingly, never got a reply to that thoughtful, if intense, email.

[edit] Line One

Mary sat at her desk adjusting a few rather troublesome files. She was unhappy to say the least. She had taken this job because it might be nice to work in an area close to her heart, but it was clear that her boss was not in the slightest bit interested in the very reason this department existed.

The phone rang and Mary dutifully picked up the receiver. "Department of Environment, Fisheries and Customs, Mary speaking."

Mary listened attentively. She was an excellent executive secretary.

"Yes, Minister Wagenknecht is in. Yes, may I ask who is calling, sir?" Mary was the picture of clarity and efficiency.

"Thank, You, Mr Mikael... Oh, I am sorry, excuse me, " Mary stumbled. "I didn't realise that was your first name. My sincere apologies." She kicked herself for this oversight.

"Putting you through now. please hold........" Mary pressed the paging button for her minister, Ms. Sahra Wagenknecht, Minister for one of these new Mega-government departments, with multiple portfolios, which were all the rage in the late nineties and now were beginning to unravel.

"Minister, a 'Mikael' for you. He declined to give his surname."

As Mary hung up the phone, not for a moment tempted to listen in to the call, which she could easily have done if she were THAT kind of person, she could not stifle a sense of real resentment towards the Minister. She hid this resentment well under a cloak of efficiency and carefully honed politeness. But Mary was quite put out about Minister "Ms Sahra."

"I don't know what she does with her time, but it obviously isn't anything about trying to stamp out the whaling industry. And our fisheries policy is a disaster waiting to happen! Why would a minister be in the department of Environment if she didn't care about what we are doing to the environment, to the whales, to our natural resources. Pathetic!" Mary was working herself up into a rare moment of outward annoyance. "And what is going on with this strange man she is happy to talk with, and her obsession with Customs procedures? There is a point where one can only do so much changing of well-established policies."

Mary remembered a report she needed to follow up and automatically picked up the phone. She heard Sahra saying the words "unimpeded" and "nano-toxins" before she realised she had unintentionally listened in to a private conversation. She was mortified and replaced the receiver as silently as a mouse.

[edit] Valentine's Day

Meanwhile, Artie's friend, Kim, was asking him why he hadn't got her anything for Valentine's day. Artie was puzzled - he had forgotten all about Valentine's day - but he wasn't supposed to forget! No, wait, it's elephants that don't forget - and he wasn't an elephant! The reason he kept forgetting he wasn't an elephant was because he wasn't an elephant. If he was, he would remember. He reminded Kim that he wasn't an elephant and Kim was a little confused, but he managed to explain it to her. Kim finally understood and forgave him. And then they went to eat krill together.

Krill was a very much underrated food, thought Kim. So tasty! So plentiful! So small! So salty. Although, of course, the salty taste might be the salt water they lived in. She hadn't really thought about it - she always left the thinking to Artie, who thought well, but soon forgot what he thought, for, of course, he wasn't an elephant!

It was difficult to grow fruit or vegetables under the sea. That was why Artie had never eaten bananas. . . or spinach( lucky Artie!).

Larry and Fred, the mice, were glad that they didn't live under the sea. If they did, they would never get to eat bananas. And they would also drown. But they agreed that they would prefer drowning to never eating bananas. And they would definitely prefer drowning to eating spinach.

If only people would use bananas in traps, rather than cheese! They were getting tired of cheese - besides, Larry thought he might be lactose intolerant, and the continual diet of cheese was making him feel very lethargic and run-down. Which isn't a good state to be in, for a mouse. And a state he wouldn't have been in, had he eaten more spinach than cheese.

Artie, the whale, was also feeling lethargic. He had eaten far too much shrimp. He groaned, holding his full belly with his flippers. He felt like he might throw up - an ill-advised course of action for a marine mammal - but somehow managed to hold himself together. Finally though, he succumbed to the unpleasant rumblings in his stomach. It was, thought Artie, very unpleasant to throw up in the ocean. It is excedingly difficult for a whale to swim backwards.

Fifteen phone calls and two hours later, Artie discovered that he was unable to make phone calls. His flippers were too big to touch the numbers on the phone. The pain of this discovery flashed briefly across his mind before he remembered the crate he had spied on top of the ocean.

"What is a Banana?" he thought aloud.

"Would the Irish have starved if they'd had these Bananas?" he asked Kim, who had joined him..

"What is an Irish?" Artie thought aloud.

Kim looked at him and shrugged - which was a great trick as whales don't have shoulders. "Good questions. Maybe tomatoes don't go as well with ice-cream as bananas," she mumbled, mouth closed to avoid the vomit that was still floating around the ocean depths.

"What is a Tomato?" Artie thought aloud. "A Tomato is red and also called a 'Love Apple', said Kim. "Love! Of course," exclaimed Artie. "That goes with Valentine's Day, which is what I was supposed to remember, and forgot, and would have remembered, had I been an elephant!"

[edit] Staying Afloat

Artie was asleep, snoozing away in the depths of the ocean. When he slept, Artie would often dream. For some reason, he dreamt in Latin - or was it Latin, he sometimes wondered. He wasn't sure why. In fact, he didn't even know what Latin was, which made it all the more strange. As he slept, he dreamed, and his dream was:

Ut murky unda of suus somnium videlicet Arti could animadverto faint umbra of a pessum do traba in loginquitas. Swimming inter is erant oversized prawns ut vultus tanquam they had dentibus amo Leo. Puteus ut est quis Arti sententia ut is had nunquam seen a Leo pro. Is palus propinquus parumper vultus video vidi visum quare they had forte themselves in lacertus deck. Illic eram rutilus liquidus oozing ex traba hull an is videor ut blanditia nefas typus of turba. Arti eram iam vix ut is could videlicet animadverto a giant octopus bellator a valde niveus partis. rutilus liquidus eram ex partis.

When Artie woke he remembered he couldn't speak latin so he was unable to tell his friend Bella about it? Bella would have been frightened for Artie. She was a Latin scholar and would have told him his dream was about murky waters where he could see the faint shadow of a wrecked ship in the distance. Swimming around it were oversized prawns that look as if they had teeth like sharks. He swam closer for a look to see why they had perched themselves on the upper deck. There was red liquid oozing out of the ships hull and it seemed to be attracting the wrong type of crowd. Arti was now scared as he could clearly see a giant octopus fighting a great white shark. The red liquid was pouring from the shark but what did it mean.

Artie thought the language problem was because of the murky depths of the water where he stayed. He thought that this problem could be overcome if he could get himself to the surface and sleep afloat. maybe this would help clarify what the dream was about.

[edit] Two Curious Things Before Breakfast

George, Jim's brother, was in a thoughtful mood.

"Well?" Jim asked George as he pondered the ream of paper in his thick fingers.

"It has a certain hypnotic effect. And they are majestic and beautiful, but..." George began slowly, carefully choosing his words.

"But... always with the but's. But what??" Jim was never known for his patience.

"Well, it's just..... How can you mix a story about a whale with a spy genre and expect to get away with it."

Jim was just able to hold himself together. "The... same... way... I... expect...YOU thought you could go through and add references to BANANAS AND OTHER FRUIT into the text and expect that I didn't notice!"

George, known affectionally as 'nerdy' for his love of the Romantic Poets and windswept nature, laughed unaffectedly at this. "Ah, well, you got me there. But, I knew you would catch them and cut them out. Jimmy, you have to lighten up. You take yourself too seriously, mate." George looked at Jim with those big, vivid green wide eyes and patted his shoulder softly.

"You know," Jim said weakening. "Every time I write about the whale, I picture YOU with flippers!"

George flinched ever so gently, unsure if Jim was saying that to hurt him or as as the great sign of affection that it actually happened to be.

Jim went back to his serious side again. "George, if you must know, whale is a counterpoint to the human brutality of social order. The whale - majestic and innocent, playful and peaceful, is so sharply contrasted with the harsh, addictive, violent and dogged reality of the lives of the other storyline -with Carlo, Mark, Gine and Sarah and the likes. One can't help but notice the different environments. It makes me wonder why we don't all go to the sea, rather than splashing around in the muddy, stale water of our urban crap we call 'the city'."

[edit] Fascination

Chad Thompson was a tough man, but he had a weakness for words. He wondered where his next adventure would take place? A city would be novel, he thought. He'd taken on all the other clichéd locations - vast, snow-capped mountains, harsh, arid deserts, tropical beaches with blue waters and lots of mice - maybe it was time to explore the urban jungle.

And then, an email arrived entitled Top Secret. Cautiously opening the email, he checked over his shoulder to make certain that no-one was watching. He could never be too careful. He had learned this fact the hard way, in one of his previous exploits, when his blond companion had turned out to be a spy. And not that good-voyeuristic-spy type, or even the sexy-sultry- casino-type but the bad-Russian-spy type. He would never make that mistake again. Whenever he finished making love, he would rise from the bed and phone for a dozen roses to be sent to their work, making sure they were marked from "a colleague". Better safe than sorry, he reflected to himself. Thinking wasn't his thing, action was.

He needed to decide what to wear on his upcoming adventure - he needed something that would allow him to blend in - but something that would also show off his arms. That was very important. He flexed one bicep, and kissed its round mound. He repeated with the other arm. And then the first again. He had one tattoo on the upper bicep of each arm. On the right, was a gray and black ink prison caricature of a long snouted, wise guy mouse with a cigar in his mouth, and a particularly ratty looking tail that curled upward in his gloved left hand. On the left, was the cartoon version of ripe, yellow banana. His mouth began to drool just looking at it. It was several minutes before he could drag himself away from his own body, which made him more resistant than the lads in his life, he reflected wryly. He wondered what exactly 'wryly' meant. Or, for that matter, 'reflected.'

He began to pack his bag. High-tech gadgets that would help him out of tight squeezes? Check. Items that seemed pointless but would allow him to Macgyver his way out of sticky situations? Check. Products that would allow him to fulfill his product placement obligations? He checked it off on his to-do list on his kitchen door.

He left a note for his house-keeper, telling her that he been called away on a business trip, and that she should make sure she watered his plants, especially his Venus fly-trap. He was sure there was a double-entendre in there somewhere, but it wouldn't come, so he ignored it. Which reminded him - he needed to perfect some new snappy come-back lines - lines he would use when he had sex with villains in a variety of gruesome ways. Maybe he would use the time on the aircraft to work on them. Perhaps he could try them out on the airline steward? He started to grin wryly, but managed to stop himself just in time, nervous about doing too many wry things in one morning.

[edit] In Which Jim Finds the Cure to Cancer

Meanwhile, across town, Jim was staring despondently at the first draft of his novel. "This isn't going well" he thought. There were far too many banana references, for a start. No one cares, or wants to read about bananas anyhow. Maybe I should be trying to find a cure to cancer, the wart virus or devise a way to save the whales. Something worthwhile. He began to wonder why he started his novel with a quote from Sun Tzu and whether or not something would reflect in the eye of a mouse. He doubted it, but it was a critical piece of imagery. Not that he knew imagery from a bull's foot really, but he knew even less about plot details and thematic concerns.

He sipped at his banana smoothie in contemplation. He was happy with the way the character Chad Thompson was turning out. A real sly shit-eating grin kind of guy! Much like himself, Jim reflected. Only he pictured Chad to be sunburned, and as pale as a frozen chicken leg in the shade.

"Jim," the bartender said, "There's a banana for you, on the bar in the fruit bowl. Oh, and a fall."

Jim started. Did the bartender mean the fall of man from the garden? The fall of human civilization as we know it? 'The Fall of the House of Usher?' Or a fall that resonates with the echoes of a much deeper horror? The fall of ourselves through the vortex of an unutterably impersonal mouse hole.

Jim pushed his wine-stained manuscript away and looked at the bartender, raising his left eyebrow. "Oh! A call" Jim finally cottoned on. "For me?... but everyone knows not to call me here."

"They're calling your cell phone. How would they know you're at the bar?"

"Of course," said Jim, nodding meaningfully as he took the phone out of his pocket. Life had been so much better when they thought he was anywhere. Now he'd probably have to pretend to be somewhere anybody would want to be.

"Hello" the voice echoed on his tinny cell phone, "Is that Woolly Jeanette?" Why would someone think he was with his Auntie? Now nobody would wanna be there.

"No, this is Shiny Jim."

The caller hung up in Jims' ear. This angered Jim. His face was almost as red as his shirt. It wasn't a good idea to make Jim angry, as many had found out to their detriment, as he'd have a propensity to make wild accusations, and write about them adversely in whatever fiction/fantasy he would be working on at the time. Jim took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled his anger away. Maybe another smart red would help? He reached into his pocket and drew out his wallet. Searching into it, he found only a few pennies and an expired credit card. He knew he was supposed to have cut it up to focus on what he was going to do, but the hollow in his stomach just wouldn’t let him. A man could be many things but not without his black card, expired or otherwise. He was hungry. Unfortunately he only had enough small change to order the margharita. Luckily, his adopted pleasure-withholding mantra allowed him to make such sacrificial choices. If he was honest with himself, though, he was actually starting to get some strange enjoyment from doing so.

"Sortez de mon lit de fleur!, or "I never wear a watch, because it just reminds me that I'm another second away from my death" his teacher had told him long ago. Unlike Artie, who dreamt in Latin but thought aloud in English, his teacher thought in French, and thought (wrongly) aloud in English. Initially, he'd been annoyed with his teacher's random sayings - these kind of white boy zen statements that had little impact on him, except giving him some great headaches - but he seemed now to understand this strange circular logic, especially since he bothered to translate the saying into some clarity. "By withholding pleasures, one heightens the enjoyment of that which comes naturally. But withholding pleasure too long can result in problems, not to mention constipation. Wasn't it Voltaire?, another pale faced Frenchman" he remembered vaguely, "who wrote a whole treatise on how constipation can be traced as the source of many infamous wars throughout human history?"

Shaken out of his reverie by the voice on the phone acknowledging his pizza order, he checked his wallet. He'd pay exact change of course; no tip, no nothing. Jim was a sneaky son of a bitch. Everyone knew that. Just like Chad Thompson. He decided that it was time for Chad Thompson to get into some real trouble - time for him to show his chops! He picked up the manuscript, wiped the rosé away, and dryly and mechanically resumed writing.

[edit] A Meeting with the Author

The front of the Neo café in Riga opened slowly and Chad Thompson stepped inside, eyes narrowing, scanning for suspicious looks. The place was darkish and decorated with green tones. Sitting at the bar was a shiny, combed over guy - and he looked like trouble. He was sitting with his back to him, apparently drinking and writing some sort of manuscript. Chad Thompson wondered what he was writing about, and why people would want to write, when there was so much to do!

And then, Chad had an overwhelming desire to create trouble. It was as if he had moved too far away from the chaos that was at his center, a meteor fallen out of orbit or a yo-yo at the end of its string, but now violently yanked back to his chaotic course. He marched up to the shiny guy sitting at the bar, and tapped him on his shoulder.

Jim felt a tap on his shoulder. At last, the pizza had arrived. Turning around, mouth watering with Pavlovian anticipation, he extended his hand, exact change ready. But it wasn't the pizza guy - it was someone who felt strangely familiar to Jim, though he couldn't place where he knew him from. But he knew he was trouble - Shiny Jim had an instinct for trouble.

Chad Thompson snatched the paper from Jim's hand. 'What is that? Some kind of story about boys in bandannas and their little bananas?'

"Story?" Jim started to stand, but Chad Thompson thrust his hand onto Jim's shoulder, forcing him to remain seated.

Jim glanced down at his manuscript, at the last line he had written:

Chad Thompson cracked his nuts. He felt like starting some trouble.

"Wait," said Jim, "you've made a terrible mistake, Chad."

"Ah, so's you know who I am! That figures!" The hand tightened on his shoulder. "I wrote all this," said Jim, and he waved faintly at the papers in Chad's hand.

"A writer, eh?" Chad grabbed a handful of Jim's collar.

"Wait!" With the quickly, and rather cowardly, Jim scribbled out a line on the manuscript: Chad was in an indulgent mood; he'd hear this guy out. The grip on the shirt loosened. "You're lucky," Chad said, "I'm in an indulgent mood. I'll hear you out."

Jim wiped his forehead with his manuscript and asked him to have a seat.

"I've come to meet Gina", Chad Thompson explained. "We can do it the easy way or the hard way".

Jim thought - why would he choose the easy way? "The hard way" he said . "Good man", said Chad Thompson , "Tell me how I can get her address and telephone number... And I'll leave you to do your... filthy, dirty writing."

[edit] All You Need is Community

"I SAID that it is NOT TRUE," George repeated. He hated repeating himself, especially when the cause of the repetition was his little brother, Jim, who could not admit that his hearing was poor.

"So a community can write a novel?" Jim looked up with a skeptical expression.

"Yes, but only a humorous one."

"And only if they put all the new stuff at the start, and the old at the rear".

Jim chuckled.

"It is true. Although we all know the gravity of the human condition, I promise you it is humor that is shared by a community. We respect serious authors who write great globs of sad and dramatic prose because the natural inclination of us all is to laugh."

"Oh come off it." Jim objected, but he was starting to wonder.

"This will ONLY work if we move it into satire and humor," George insisted with great emphasis.

Jim wasn't really listening. "humor and fun depends on our paradigms, our references, our taboos... Those differ, substantially"

"Yes." Jim screamed angrily, "but Laughter is the panacea for the pain of the human experience, just like apathy is the icing on the tractor and pepperoni is the topping on the pizza when someone orders pepperoni and they get the order right. Dude, laughter is, like, one of the only true opiates that makes us recognize our humanity and take bold pleasure in it, or some junk. That and a few other things, like singing to trees and picking daisies in the sunshine."

"Still," George dully continued because he was too much of an idiot to end this boring argument "some serious things have to be formulated seriously, man. Seriously, they seriously do. I'm serious!!! Otherwise, they will seriously lose their sobriety and not be serious any more. Some things should reach our minds unadulterated.

At least, that was George's take on things or whatever.

[edit] True Story

Jim was just now standing at the corner of March and Kent Streets, Maryborough in sunny Australia. This address would mean nothing to most, but it was the tiny little bronze statue of a lady with a rather fetching hat and a cane with the handle in the shape of a bird that might have given people cause for thought. This old building featured that old Victorian style that Jimmy had always loved and was sad to see had been replaced by so much glass in modern architecture.

This was the house where Helen Lyndon Goff, later known as P.L.Travers, was born, in what was then a bank building in Maryborough.

Jim was rather intrigued by the connections. It was thrilling and rather unbelievable that such a well-known author had lived in his home town before moving to England and becoming known around the world for her children's books, ad her muh beloved, Mary Poppins.

He had come to this point by walking through Queens Park, past the most beautiful old rotunda, (did they once call these things folly?). Ironically, this rotunda had been featured in the less-than-successful Kylie Minogue Movie, the Delinquents, which, by another bizarre coincidence also featured Jim's next-door neighbor in the bit-part as the red-headed prison matron.

Pleasant coincidences followed Jim throughout his life. He was still getting over the fact that his father had grown up in the, then, sleepy town of Cairns, next door to the man who later went on to write the Doctor Who theme tune. Jimmy's middle name, so his family always joked, was "But wasn't he/she British?" because that was the wide-eyed question he would always blurt out whenever these topics popped up.

Now, as Jim stood looking at this fictitious character of Poppins, next to the building where a woman who later transformed herself, complete with new identity, into its creator, he was struck by the fact that Mary Poppins, given her influence on the world, and how many people knew her, (despite being a figure of fantasy), was actually more real than he.

[edit] Right House, Wrong Road

Carlo was a literary fraud. He wouldn't have described himself as this. In fact, he would have honestly believed the opposite. However, the moderate success he was having with the weekly serialisation in a prestigous broadsheet, based on his apparent first-hand real-life experiences, was in marked contrast with the lukewarm reception he had received for his experimental, stream-of-consiousness "hallucination-vandal" poetry (as he had himself dubbed it). People were lapping up all this BS about the inside information he had personally received about corrupt Ministers of the Government. It was all a figment of his imagination....Or, at least he THOUGHT it was. The problem was, his addiction to strychnine sent him into extended periods of 'hyper-realism' (another self-deceiving euphemism for spending half the week completely delusional). He really couldn't say if he had ACTUALLY overheard two women in a bar talking about saving the whales, and how some cow of a boss was diverting funds into some offshore black market deals with money that ought to be helping the environment and protecting rare species. Maybe he had imagined it. But he was certainly lying about knowing this information first hand from friends of his, with whom he worked and socialised. People love fiction dressed up as fact, and he was just meeting a need. His information was racy enough to steam up a local rag, but vague enough to be unable to be slandering any real person. Or so he thought, but his mind was so cracked on drugs that he was unable to realise just how poor his judgement was.

Mary was sitting having a quiet one with her best friend Cassey, in the Stalin pub. She was trying to keep her voice low, but she had to keep raising her voice to get over the sounds of the tribute band playing at full volume across the room.

"Maybe we should move somewhere else," Mary said uncertainly, as the strong odour of strychnine wafted over from some spaced-out scruff sitting in the cubicle next to them. (Jim lifted his pen from the manuscript briefly and looked over at Walry and George. "Does strycnhine have a distinctive odour, or any smell at all??" Walry just shrugged and George gave a shake of his head to indicate a rare gap in his usually encyclopedic mind for trivia. Jim made a mental note to Wiki it later).

"This boss of mine is into something really shady. And the environment is suffering for it," mary continued.

Cassey was also a great supporter of the environment, but she was finding it hard to hear. She had had a hard week at work and just wanted to unwind and listen to some loud music.

[edit] Questions Without Notice

"Well it is OBVIOUSLY referring to me!" Minister Sahra Wegenecht shouted down the phone line.

"You tell me, Mikael! He obviously knows something."

Mikael was trying to stay calm on the other end of the line, but he knew this was bad. Some two-bit writer had begun a series of 'real-life' articles in the local paper. It was identical to what 'the command' was trying to do through Sahra's coordination. How did he know, and how long before people start asking if Sahra might be the minister so subtly referred to?? "Listen Sahra, I have done some checking. He is a bloody druggy, wannna-be writer. He is off his head most of the time. I will eat my hat if he has any sources at all. You know what. I reckon he is just a lying little shit. He probably just made it all up to sell his pathetic lies!"

Sahra shook her head in disgust. "SO, he made it up and just happened to hit the nail on the head? Great. All this work, all this planning and preparation to gain public acceptance. SO many years of 'flying under the radar' and all for what? Just so that some flaked-out nutcase can cobble together a story that just happens to be true and brings us all down. Listen to me, get rid of the man. Get him out of the papers."

Mikael nodded, which did nothing to reassure Sahra, who couldn't see down phone lines.

"And also, get Mr Dimitry to move on obtaining extra 'product.' Oh and remind him that we need them ALIVE this time! We need them for our plan. As I said before, if this works, despite all the rubbish swirling around us, we will be able to operate unimpeded. That is the goal."

Sahra hung up without waiting for a reply. She picked up the paper again to compare the article, searching for anything that might alert people to her.

[edit] Murderers and Millionaires

Siobhan had broken her ankle and was having some difficulty staying upright.

She tried to scream several times but Chad kept turning the music up to drown her out or leaning in to kiss her. His breath smelled of fish. She thought he had recently eaten kippers, or maybe it was halibut, or flounder. Everything from the sea is pervasive with a stale salty stench.

Shouldn't her short life be flashing before her eyes? Maybe her life was not really worth having a flashback for; she was after all only 33 and a third, but at this lonesome moment, she felt like 87 and a quarter.

The climax of the dance arrived and Chad was sweating as he led her gracefully across the room and back again before the final dip to signify the end. He leaned in and kissed her full on the mouth, tongue and all. Siobhan felt her body orgasm as the taste of the tides overwhelmed her.

He then released her and watched. She started to feel extremely weak, and her body's convulsions intensified. Poison. She did not have the time to wonder how, only collapsed.

Chad was pleased. Pity that she was unable to dance as well as he could but what could he do? The dance floor for him, was the ocean of life, and he was the great white shark of its waters. He took the dress off his victim as a keepsake, so that he could relive the dance they shared. He had forced her to wear it and watched as she changed her clothes but that did not matter as she seemed rather confused by the whole ordeal. It made no difference though as now she lay there dead, wearing only a white slip and a mismatched fushia lace bra.

It was time to flee the scene. He was sure the neighbors would have called the police to complain about the noise and he did not want them to find him here when they found the body. But before he left, he placed a fish scale on the woman's cheek, so that it looked like she was crying, and left his favorite paperback beside the body.

He slid out through the back window and through the side gate into his Austin Mini.

Lieutenant Gerarson surveyed the scene of the crime as various criminology personnel took pictures and samples of pertinent and curious items in Siobhan's room. He already knew that it was the work of a fairy floss eating tough man, and that he most likely left nothing behind, except that stupid fish scale on the victim's cheek. And always the same damned book. It was too hard to determine the origin of one paperback that could have come from anywhere.

Seargent Mathers called him from outside.

"One of the neighbors saw a car drive off. They thought the license may have spelled out a type of fungus - but they can't remember which one."

"Ergot, Fly Agaric, Truffle?"

"Well, at least we got the type of car. Any bets this guy ditches the car like all the others?"

"Yeah well, we already know all this. We know that he has a pattern, and that he has a lot of resources. Plus the fact that he can tango."

"This has only been the third murder; maybe we should be looking for a different pattern in all this madness."

"Smart idea. Get right on it and see if you can discover the name of the poison this guy uses."

The officer saluted Gerarson and called back to HQ to relay the instructions to his inferiors. Meanwhile Gerarson had other things to do. Life never seemed so endless as after someone else's death.

[edit] The Validity of Text

It was during one of their late night meetings, after 6 or 7 cups of coffee that George began to doubt the project. Jim was at the desk in the corner carefully rewriting chapter 7.3, when George blurted out, "What is writing but letters placed next to each other? What makes the word 'the' more valid than the word 'gsj"? It's the arbitrary choice of a society to pick one over the other and decide the rules that follow. Language, essentially, is only a set of symbols constrained by certain arbitrarily agreed upon rules. It's a pity we use use it so often to express our personal experience with reality. For it is so co-dependent on the arbitrary creation of somebody else's rules. Is, after all, ntly pasivabjewiller renlenturives der des mards ablemed awsorecestited faxidin g scrodersole sition tendeffung sulanchel ecrar lere domplent???"

Jim sighed and rolled up his sleeves, "George," He said, "Read an introduction to post-structuralism or a little Derrida or Barthes and then get over it. I think we can make realism viable again. I think there's a way to get back our textual innocence. I think I can do it with chapter 7.3"

George put his head in his hands. Jim had attended a few classes at the local polytech on literary and cultural theory and had since developed a tendancy to spout. "But this isn't realism, is it? It's metafiction, we're questioning our conventions, we're writing in the margins. Hell you and me are characters in a wiki book authored by thousands of people..."

Jim paled and began to breathe rapidly, "I'm not anyone's character." He said.

[edit] Jim Looked at the Text

Jim looked excitedly at the text. It proved his theory. The page was filled with a series of letters that looked like words but were really, on closer analysis, just random letters. But, a closer look told him something about his brain that he had suspected. words were jumping out - patterns were emerging. If there were any actual words that came out randomly, just by coincidence, his eye and mind would immediately seize upon it. He realized that there was a deep and mysterious connection between the object and the mind as 'meaning-creator.' It is not just about the message intended or sent, it is very much about the message received. The mind steadfastly and with unfailing determination, is intent on finding any meaning from a stimuli that it can possibly find. The text would come alive if the mind had anything to say on the subject.

Jim smiled, for he had discovered some small thing about the relationship between the writer(or the randomizer), the text, and the receiver. And it was that small revelation, the realization that such a relationship exists, that was helping him, slowly, but ever definitively to come alive again, once more; in his mind, and the minds of all his readers.

He recalled something someone once said: a monkey could write a whole book if it is just about combining a series of words or letters. Jim found himself replying: "aha, but it takes a human to be able to read and to make meaning of what is there. It is the receiver, the 'appreciator,' the 'beholder,' who determines beauty and art."

[edit] Translation

There was a great German writer, by the name of Karl Rahner, who specialised in the religious area of "Theology". He was so brilliant that his writings were filled with long sentences and complex clauses as well as the extraordinary ability, that comes with the German language, to make new words from the combination of other whole words. Karl's brother once joked, when asked if he had read his brother's latest book (which was written in his native tongue), "I haven't read it yet - I am waiting for the translation in German to come out." (A testament about how difficult the construct of his thought was even in his own language). It was suggested that the reason for this complex writing was not because he wanted to be 'snobby' or high and mighty, but rather that his grasp on things so complex required a complex way of writing to attempt to express the ‘inexpressible.’ Now, here is the thing. Jimmy once wrote an assignment quoting Karl Rahner, and being quite impressed with what he thought the famous writer was saying. The assignment came back: "this is good, but I don't think this is what Rahner was trying to say...." Jimmy was not at all put out by this. Rather, it served to impress him even more. This man, Karl, had written in such a way that the text revealed insights and thought even greater than the original intention of the author !!! The text, had taken on an ability to teach, to challenge, to inspire even broader than the author's intent. Ah, the miracle of the word. It excites and frightens with its potential.

[edit] The Road To Bailly Romainvilliers

Gina was a nightbird, though she'd never admit it. She hated getting up in the morning, because it meant going back to the grind. Every morning, she'd go through the same routine of drinking coffee, brushing her teeth (one of her real prides, her teeth. Which, themselves, were not real at all), putting on the clothes she knew would attract maximum attention in the street and on the metro, not to mention at the office, arranging her hair just so, then putting on her knee-high boots before stomping out of her appartment in Issy.

Every morning, she'd get the same whistles and enamored cries from the youth in the street. A pack of would-be pushers, age somewhere between eight and twelve, boys and girls alike, they would invariably follow her with a air of envy. She did not seem to care that Mark (**ps it fits with a plot point before and after this chapter**), her boyfriend might get insanely jealous, he always seemed to be preoccupied with his next planned fishing trip, that is,when he wasn't tangoeing. A great tangoer, was Mark, and a great fisher. The boys would pretend not to notice the way her hips swayed, or the way the fabric of her grey sweater accentuated her form. Gina would sometimes gratify them with a nod, even a smile, but would never engage conversation, because she knew where that would lead her. The thing Gina valued more than her perfect body was privacy.

As usual, she was late. She took the RER. Crossing alleyways wasn't Gina favorite game, but this morning, it was different. Her boss, old Pierre Dewinckel of Dewinckel et fils, good old Pierre had asked to come in early so as to prepare a witness for a deposition. Gina had a knack with nervous people. She always knew how to put them at ease, and Pierre had even hinted at a promotion in the near future, something Gina would welcome, though she suspected it entailed more than just treating witnesses right.

No doubt Pierre would hit the promotion subject again in the near future, among other things. Though he was nearing 60, he was still reasonably attractive, and Gina hadn't got laid in weeks--something she wouldn't admit in the presence of others, not even her best friend, Pamela--, though she let people think what they wanted to think.

The alleyway was darker than she thought, and Gina was careful not to step in puddles of unidentified liquids of various colors and consistency. The boots were made for walking alright, as the song went, but they were also brand new, and had cost her an arm and a leg. Their metal-covered heels hitting the ground in cadence, Gina pushed her way past Dumpsters and scattered refuse. She heard a noise behind her, like a dog foraging in a trash can, and thought, Great, some stray doggie with his snout covered in shit or something; all he had to do was to greet her the way dogs always did, tongue out, a canine smile painted on the face, panting, begging for a stroke and a kind word. "Just what I need", Gina thought.

The first hit took her down to her knees.

The man hit her a second time, on the head, and she thought she was going to puke her croissant, right here and there. She managed to get on all fours and tried to right herself, but a strong hand pushed her back down. Then she heard a man--she thought it was a man--whisper in her ear:

"Vous êtes tranquille, et tout va bien!"

"What do you want?" she managed without looking back. She was truly scared, now, and for once, she regretted not acknowledging the youths attention, a few minutes back.

"Vous savez ce que je veux. Soyez silencieux! Vous et moi, nous aurons une petite fête, chérie!"

Gina shivered. The man sounded French, but hey, this was Paris, France after all. No surprise there.

"You can't do that to a sister," she ventured.

The man then started to pull her jeans down, and Gina knew that if she didn't do something, anything, right now, she was dead. The man wouldn't let her go, not alive. Plus he seemed to know where she worked, and that was even scarier. She could feel something warm and hard pressing against her buttocks, but before she could do anything, she was flat on her belly again, her face inches from a dog turd. She started whimpering, but the man shushed her with a shove.

"Soyez ouvert!"

Gina nodded yes, and started to prepare for what she knew had been coming her way all along. The man kept on groping her, pulling down her underwear.

"Oui," she heard him say, almost reverently.

A sudden crack, a sharp intake of air, then she felt like a ton of brick had just fallen upon her back. She was pinned to the ground, no matter how hard she tried to move. The man was on top of her, but he didn't move, and she could feel his erection quickly fading. A liquid started oozing on the side of her face. It was warm, and smell of copper. It was red, too. Bright red.

She screamed. "Wrong move," another man's voice said behind her. Gina fainted.

Mr Dimitry, pushed the assailant off Gina and checked her breathing.

He had been successful - This is the third girl he had 'saved today.

Dimitry had saved them from the dangers of the city, (it never took long to find something bad going on in this town) but now their lives would be at the disposal of the "command" and its purposes.

[edit] Les reflections dans l'oeil d'un chien: Or How I Learnt French to Please My Daddy

"Have you never made sense of something after the event?" Jim was getting exasperated again.

George was peering too intently at the text.

"Just leave it!" Jim man barked at him. "I know what you are thinking. No need to say it. Is it only good if it makes linear sense? If I put it in the right order, would that make you comfortable? Never mind the 'kick' you get when a connection dawns on you - out of sequence. Get it?"

George indicated he didn't.

"Well, then. I am not going to explain. Watch !"

Jim put pen to paper again:....

It started off about himself, and what really happened, but there was an exhiliration in the fact that at any juncture, the real could (seamlessly) segue into the unreal, or the near-real, or the preposterous.

He walked home across Queen's park, and noticed a police car driving past him very slowly. He was now walking along the footpath and the police car had slowed down to a crawl. Should he look across. He had done nothing wrong. But he recalled what his mother used to say to him and his sister and brothers whenever a police car pulled up beside them on the road, "Don't look at them." Jim could never work out why. His family had always been perfectly law abiding. It was as if she was afraid that even looking at the police would induce them to book us for speading. Jim laughed to himself, remembering with infinite fondness his mother. He had been taken aback one day when she had broken off once when talking about her recently deceased mother and said "Jimmy, you can never imagine what it is like to lose a parent." Jim had been struck by that for two reasons, Firstly, the loss of a parent still weighed with indescribable sadness for people whose parents were of advanced age. Jim knew that was naiive to say it, but that was what he had assumed, that somehow it was easier to lose a loved one when they were older - not so. Secondly, (he hated constructing these first part/ second part dialogues because they were clumsy and also because he usually forgot to bother with any seconde point), here was his own parent fore-warning him of what it would be like to lose her. She was right. It was unimaginable.

Jim became aware that the police car was still cruising along beside him. He could not help it, he looked sideways at the police officer in the car. There was only one occupant. Jim wasn't scared of being pulled over for questioning. In fact, he admitted to himself, he kind of wished he would be. In that moment, Jim felt, in a depraved way, that he knew why delinquents acted the way they did. At least someone engaged with them. Jim half desired to do somethign wrong, because at least he wouldn't be invisible. He really felt invisible. And, he was such a good young man that he never rose above the static of life.

He looked with a fixed gaze at the officer in the car beside him. The policeman had an expression on his face that defied words. It was not anger, it was not gentleness, it was not sadness.... the eyes... they were staring.... (or so he imagined, since they were hidden behind streamlined sunglasses). The mouth was set, with the lips showing the faintest of what might have been a smile. Jim had a blind spot to this particular look. He knew how to interpret everything else.

Jim was suddenly overcome with an inexplicable sense of loneliness and pain. He wanted to call out to the policeman and having him help, but help with what?

(Jim was aware of George who was reading as he wrote. George was mesmerized by this narrative, but he could also feel that he was fidgeting noticeably, uncomfortable about something in the text).

He had become completely obsessed with police officers. He didn't know why. He had even written a few into the narrative of the text. He had orginally called his hero "Lieutenant Cory" but that name was, he was ashamed to say, too interesting, too sensual. he changed it to a name that was more stern, more craggy: Gerarson. Yes, Lieutenant Gerarson. He was not overwhelmed by that name.

"What is it with policemen" Jim asked himself. (Jim felt George move off from standing behind, this was too uncomfortable to read for him, but he KNEW George would come back and read this when no one was looking). Jim felt ashamed. He tried to use some pop-psychology on himself. Is it a desire for order, for certainty, for clear application of rules, and right and wrong? Is it just the uniform? Whatever it was, it was driving him crazy. And, for some reason it was drawing them to him like a fly to ointment. But, he wasn't DOING anything.

Jim definately sided with the police in any fictional narrative, yet he always felt that the villian held more attraction.

Jim's pendulous reverie between text and torture was interrupted when the police car came to a complete stop and the man in the car beckoned him over.

Jim's heart started thumping erratically. He could hardly breathe. The fictionalised theme was much more sedate than real life.

"Yes, sir" jim could hardly speak the words.

"DO you live in that building at the end of the street?" The officer said politely." Jim could see himself reflected in the mirrored sunglasses of the officer.

"Yes.....Yes,... officer." Jim was not sure if he should call him 'officer' in this country, but he hated the word constable.

The policeman leaned closer to the window. "I thought so." he smiled. Clearly, Jim thought, he was not as invisible as he thought.

"YOu have security cameras in that building?"

"Yes," jim said eagerly.

"Excellent. And you are the caretaker?"

"Yes, yes sir." Jim replied.

"Good, may I have a look. There have been some disappearances recently. Women vanishing. We are concerned that there may be a serial abductor."

"I would be happy to show you. They are in my office."

The policeman got out of his car and locked it. In this country they wear hand guns, and the sight of it both appalled and fascinated Jim. He hated guns, but.....

"We might as well walk, its not far," the policeman said, setting off.

Jim walked behind the officer. His senses overloaded.

If he could help catch a criminal he would be delighted. But he would find he had to do a bit of explaining when it turned out that whole sections of the security recordings has been blanked out.

Only the faint shape of Carlo, unrecognisable to police or Jim alike, could be seen in one final frame.

Still, Jim enjoyed the chat with the officer in his apartment.

[edit] Line of Inquiries

Lieutenant Gerarson pulled up in his sleek police car. Mark was standing at the curb. Gerarson got out of the car and placed his reflective sunglasses higher on his head. He was with a younger policeman, impossibly goodlooking, with an aloof attitude. The younger officer never took his sunglasses off his head, but sauntered around to the crub side of the car and parked his bottom up against the car door, folding his arms. His mouth was a straight line. Gerarson, by virtue of the years, had lost his swagger and arrogance and walked around casually and shook hands with Mark and spoke with a friendly and polite tone. Gerarson had been in the job so long, he had nothing to prove.

"Lieutenant, any news?" mark asked nervously. His left eye had developed a pronounced twitch with the stress and lack of sleep.

"No, sorry, Mark. Just a couple of questions, to clarify," Gerarson said as he pulled out his notepad. "What is your occupation?"

"I am a caterer. I specialise in fish that I have caught from one of my secret offshore locations, and freshly cooked. I was at a catering event the night before Gina disappeared." Mark replied.

"Have you got all the relevant fishing licenses?" the handsome young police officer suddenly interjected, still leaning his athletic butt against the police car, with arms tightly folded.

Mark was slightly startled by the intensity of this question and answered more honestly than he should. "Well, actually yes, but frankly, the way the present minister of Fisheries is operating, there are hardly any checks and balances for fishing compared with the past. It has become a real free-for-all." Mark suddenly thought again of Gina and came back to focusing on the matter of importance. He had never told her how much she meant to him and now......

"That's fine, constable, I will handle this," Gerarson said gently but firmly putting the smooth skinned policeman back in his place. "Mark, When was the last time you saw Gina?"

Mark looked exasperated. "Officer, I have TOLD your men this already.... But anyway, she had gone out by the time I cam back from my fishing trip on Tuesday. I saw her briefly when she got up for work, but she never returned. Apparently she never even got to work." The stress was showing on Mark's face. He could not believe this was happening to him.

Lieutenant Gerarson was writing furiously into his notebook. "There are two possibilities, Mark, that we are looking at. There has been a serial killer wandering around, poisons his victims. ALthough usually he strikes indoors and appears to be at least casually known to the victim."

Mark was stricken with this news.

Lieutenant Gerarson continued. "The other, is very serious but there is a chance she might be still alive: There have been a few women who have vanished. Kidnapped. Unconfirmed intelligence suggests they may be being kidnapped for use in some kind of organised crime ring. It has international implications. They appear to be taken out of the country, but it is unclear how they are doing this undetected."

Mark was becoming hysterical. "Oh, so Gina is either dead or some kind of sex slave. This is pathetic. What are you doing to track her down."

Lieutenant Gerarson, moved closer and tapped Mark on the shoulder with a kind of gentle but gruff comfort.

[edit] Kick

Carlo felt the strychnine kick in as the familiar creep up his backbone materialised. His senses began to shift as the diamonds in the sky above him tunred into snow flakes that slowly drifted downards. The snow flakes slowly melted into the throw rug. A blue bulldog walked by. People milled around. There was no beer in the fridge. His CD begun to jump, then skip, then play hopscotch.

A door closed in his mind. But he knew another would open soon. He could smell blue. He could taste blue. But he couldn't see blue, he could only see white. Everything was white. A cacophony of static.

He realised that he was a truck. He started himself up. Rowdynu, the Blue bulldog sat in his cabin. He could taste the hair in his mouth - the taste of wet dog. His breath.. his exhaust.. was visible in the cold air. He turned his lights on. The dog was a deeper shade of blue.

He decided to take himself for a drive. He drove down the street outside his house. A fresh layer of snow hid all signs previous traffic. The street was a long tunnel, an impossibly long ride to the telephone. As he drove, his thoughts turned to global warming, and how this vehicle, and the thousands of other vehicles, in the hundreds of thousands of other cities, were warming the planet and destroying the atmosphere. And what about all those penguins? There was a telephone out here somewhere. The ringing became overwhelming. He decided to walk. He would leave himself behind. Parked outside, alongside his memories he no longer needed.

As he walked home, a blast of warm air made his skin sting. Snow dripped off his boots into the throw rug. He could see a fish in the sky, glowing as it writhed. He watched, waiting for the fish to talk to him. But it didn't say anything, just gasped in the air. And then there was Liz, biscuit in one hand, pills in the other, standing on the pavement.

"Carlo." It seemed as though that was all she could say. She mumbled the name like a secret prayer, her lips moving, but no words coming out at all. A question he couldn't answer. "It was once too often, Liz," he mumbled. His attention fixed on the small plastic bottle... the yellow pills scattered on the white wet carpet. Then on the dog. For a second on the slushy snow. All that madness. Distortion. Frenzy.

"It was just once too often, Liz," he said again, with finality creeping into his voice and his heart at the same time. His attention fixed for a second on the medicine bottle... the yellow pills scattered out on the snow. Then on the dog. For a second on the slushy snow. All that madness. Distortion. Frenzy.

"You're not dead, yet?" It sounded facetious and somehow he knew it, even as the bridge between reality and what began back there in the house began to crumble.

[edit] The Cardboard Boxer

Just getting their overalls off, the dawn sun lighting the top of the Rockies, the two handsome young American factory workers, looking as though they had walked straight off a Socialist realist propaganda poster, entered a small coffee shop in Boulder, Colorado. A diminutive waitress approached. She gave them a table near the window and then took their orders. "I would like two coffees, black no sugar," said one, looking up at her sullen little face. "And perhaps I'll take a waffle with blueberry syrup too."

They had finished their coffee by the time the waffles arrived, the taste of them turning bitter and acrid on their tongues. "Funny that, I really am in no mood to eat Tuna", said one.

"Strange, that," the other worker responded," I realized myself that I am in no mood for tuna, but even stranger is that this thought occurred to us at all, since it is breakfast and we have ordered waffles with blueberry syrup".

"It is a dissociative mnemonic device, another trick of the capitalist superstructure." The one worker suggested.

"A fool's gambit, if so. There is no money to be made on an aversion to tuna. We are suffering from a simple mass delusion." The other worker looked outside at the dirty mounds of snow. "Perhaps it is the heat."

"Wait, maybe there is money to be made. What is the opposite of tuna? Some sort of citrus fruit, perhaps a berry?" The one worker glanced at his waffles and the potential goldmines they were smothered in.

The other worker scoffed. "Fish do not have opposites. You cannot place negative signs in drift nets and harvest oranges. These are complex devices that cannot be reduced to ideology or math."

"You speak as if math is not an ideology, borne of the tyranny of subtractive logic." The one worker glanced at his waffle, a grid of nine squares by nine, cut circular. "Subtractive logic is the heart of capitalism."

"You and your capitalism. That Chad Thompson has really messed up your brain and your heart." They were quiet for a while, and felt how someone they met months ago still made his way between them. Look its cliffs falling sheer to rushing streams, magnificent peaks with placid lakes in the background, silent villages in the sunshine. In one word: Colorado! From one of its gorges the imposing tower of a power station stood out against the sky. Many people came here and have been working for many years. In the near town, on a dusty road, there was another snack bar. Inside Keepsake talked to Grant. "Are you gonna go on a trip to Riga?". "Yeah, I've gotta check what's the weather like.". "The device's to remain ours someway". "Chad Thompson can sell it to enemy". "You! Stop talkin' loud". "A waitress with oriental features and sleepy expression glanced at them. "He's one of our side. He already made a packet of money". "We're givin' a crowd a pack of money". "Somebody disappears sometime". "His pack too". A truck went past the bar breaking the silence. "What about those communists in the command?". "Who? Those mashed their middle class, ain't any purpose now". "Well, they wanna win elections".

Meanwhile 9 timezones away, the setting sun shone in through the panorama windows of the second floor of Neo. Mikhael sat in the corner gazing out at the view. From side to side of Riga decorated houses in Modern Style had left the place to futuristic buildings. La vie est fait de morceaux qui se joint pas, he pondered. The sky was clear over the harbour and the cold was beginning to make itself felt. The bare wines slept on the near hills, with a little snow here and there. The town spread quiet on the right bank of its river, the spans of the New Bridge stood out against the horizon. The Daugava, the old town, and the railway station were laid out beneath him. This was his empire.

Mikhael gave the bartender a slight nod of his head and reached for the phone. Though well known for being ruthless he was also a little slow, the excesses of both his dining that day and the vodka only hindering him further. He took the phone in his hand, then paused. Something was wrong - no one dared call him when he did not expect it, not at this time. He paused... it was... Sahra Wagenknecht... That meant trouble was on its way. Didn't they decide not to call each other? Not until the Big Problem was solved?

He sputtered... "What the hell are you...", "What?" "Yes there is a man in a red shirt here... but look...." "Aha..." His voice dropped, he fell deadly silent, his eyes took on the smooth sheen of a predator. "Ten minutes, ok...". Mikhael checked his wallet. He didn't realize that his cell phone had a digital clock on it so he always used his calendar. He took out his finepoint and circled the date. Ten minutes! He'd be ready! A wry grin came across his face as he threw a 10 Lat note down on the table.

Jurek returned from the bathroom, "Never mind, in two minutes it will make no difference... I guess that means you got the call too, lets do it!" "Two minutes" said Mikhael coldly and calmly looking at his watch.

Jurek nodded. He knew what had to be done, but he couldn't help wondering if there was a better way.

He bent down and set the timer on the detonator for one minute -just time enough to get down the escalator out of the door and and to jump out of the way of the falling debris. The explosive charge hidden inside his briefcase was just enough to do the job.

At that moment, back in corner of South America, in Buenos Aires, a tractor-trailer truck pulled away from a loading dock in the lamp-lit gloom, its haggard driver chewing on the cap of a pen he had just used to sign the shipping manifests. He was doomed. The truck keys must have been in his pocket.

[edit] Helena

First was the sun and then came the rain on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. A silent woman looked out over the street from her little appartment. She had wanted to spend some time in a foreign country, to experience another culture and learn another language - that's what Helena told her mother and father. She longed to know something beyond her private convent education and the small, picturesque mountain town that had remained hidden away from the world.

She headed to Germany. On the train there she had befriended Mikhael, who had told her of the personal agency he owned and given her his business card, saying she would be ideal for a special job he had on his books. She went there with no idea of what was waiting for her. She ended up in Hamburg, capital of prematurely wrinkled hookers, outdated leopard skin tights and cheap switchblade knives.

They'd burnt her passport, given her drugs and kept her in the flat off the Reperbahn. Helena had not seen Mikhael since his first visit to the flat, when he had raped and beaten her. She had developed a fanatical and violent hatred of him. Yet at the same time she knew that her hopes of ever getting out depended on him. Sahra Wagenknecht was the key, who came to see her on behalf of Mikhael. She could convince Sahra to let her go. They had become friendly. She knew Sahra must feel some sort of compassion for her.

Surprisingly her flat was a not too bad a place - an oasis in this blighted house. Sometimes she even tried to get rid of the addiction. But she was never successful. This evening she tried to sit in her armchair and read a magazine, but her thoughts were restless. She was trying again to stop taking the drugs so readily supplied to her after every client. The cloying nausea of withdrawal was just starting to kick in.

There came a sudden knock at the door, frightening her. After a moment she got up, crossed the room and opened the door. In front of her was a man in a dark grey coat, dark hair, and a pale, nameless face.

"Helena," he said, looking at her in the eyes. She stared at him for a moment, her mouth open. But before she could utter a word he rushed forwards, grabbed her hand and whipped her away.

"What are you doing? Let me be!" she cried as he dragged her across the tangled weedy patch between the house and the pavement. He paused for half a second, turned and gave her a quick once over. "Come, hurry up and do not ask!"

Frightened she followed him. They were running very fast and as they reached the crossroad on the end of the street there was a great explosion behind them. They both turned. The row of flats she was just a minute ago was in ruins, flames leaping from blackened windows, roofs caved in. Helena's ears filled with ringing silence.

"What happened?" she stuttered with tears in her eyes. "I could have died..."

"You are giving me too many questions, girl. Just one after another. There is an answer for everything in this world, you just have to seek patiently," the man said.

"Who are you?" said Helena angry, she started to shiver and sweat. It was here right now. She was really angry that she did not die and had to suffer now.

"I am..." – "...Ka."

"Ka? Huh. Great. I have ever wanted to meet my Ka. I had such a feeling there is something missing in my life." said Helena with a sad smile. Ka grinned. Helena stared at Ka and then at her former house. "How did you know?" She shuddered.

"That's my business... to know..." replied Ka.

Helena burst into tears. "Everything I had ... is gone...and I have to stay here. I do not want to! Do you hear me? I wish I could die. Why did you do that? Why did you save me?" Helena yelled at Ka and her lips went violet.

"Calm down", Ka said gently, but it had no effect. "You must live. We need you. I will let you know later. Now come on..."

"Listen you ...," Helena wanted to give him some names but nothing bad enough came on her mind, " I do not know you and I am not going anywhere with you. I feel miserable because I need my stuff and I am going to get some."

"I will not argue with you." said Ka and made a strange move with his right hand. Then she followed him without knowing why and how.

[edit] Trapped

Gina bawled into her hands. All there was of Gina now was crying. An apocalyptic, diseased crying, one that corrodes a heart and destroys a world. Where was Mark in all this?

That cut her more than the cause of her tears. How did her life turn to shit like this. She was a prisoner. Gina was trapped at the mercy of some awful group. She was a prisoner in her own apartment. The woman next door, whom she was not allowed to speak with, had left the building with a strange man. Gina suspected she too was a prisoner. Her neighbour's name was Helena, or so she believed. Would someone come for her and take her away from all this? Or would this go on forever. Gina thought of Mark. Had he looked for her when she did not return to the apartment they had shared. What did he think had happened to her?

[edit] Toilet Door

Basketball man was a very sneaky young man who hated his parents. Why writing? In later years, Basketball man would conclude that it ws the height of arrogance to prefer writing to sport, but such was the situation in which he found himself.

As an eighteen year old at university, he was so very sly, in what he thought could be his success in controlling the rage that always threatened to take over. It would have been cute, really, if he could have taken a step back and looked at himself.

Going to the 'bathroom' at university was always an experience. Shitting there, reading the toilet door, one foot balancing to allow the forward reach necessary to allow valuable time when someone tried the unlockable door, arm muscles screaming at the effort of maintaining the finger tip contact. Being shocked and at the same time somewhat compelled by the appalling combination of obscene drawings and messages and the occasional phone number (which Basketball man always assumed was the result of a practical joke - surely no one really sat by their phone -mobiles hadn't been invented yet- hoping for a call to meet them at the local 'john'). Truth be told, Basketball man always felt deeply the sense of loneliness and longing for connection that must have drawn people to communicate, even if it was in the most ancient of communication, scratching pictures on walls. Basketball man was so very sly, one insight struck him with a clarity befitting a pro; - For all our supposed 'modern enlightenment', there are still a lot of people who get very, very excited over 'nawty' things. Perhaps the sexual revolution was not as revolutionary as we had hoped.

[edit] Wooster?

"I am willing to revise that theory though!" George was backtracking.

"Well, here I was saying that famous writers are taken seriously because they write seriously," George began," but then a name came into my head, and hasn't gone out again......"

"That's beside the point," Jim AND George now chimed in. "But what is the point?" walry scratched his very round head.

"The point is that Jeeves, and Wooster and the likes are a much loved British institution. The extreme sillines of names such as that do not seem to have done a jot of harm," George finished with glee.

"Yes...... but.." Jimmy hesitated.

"But what? Now it's you with the 'but's'".

"That reminds me," Walry added smiling cheekily, as if he were about to go and add more naughty words to the manuscript when no one was looking. "Remember when we were kids, we used to tease each other for the preposterous names that we gave the characters in the plays we wrote."

"How can I forget," Jim laughed, "Stephen Taskey... and James and Ted Fingersnipps.... and of course my alltime favourite, Mark Goodrem Moddisum. ... he initials of which spell MGM after the great movie company... ha ha. Preposterous."

"But there was one very weird thing that has happened as the years went on," George said lowering his voice.

"What?" Jim and Walry both chimed in this time.

"I have met people with names almost exactly like that. It is as if 'fate' or whatever you like to call it comes up and slaps us on the face and says, 'any silly thing you make up, I will show you that I have already done in reality!"

Jim and Walry nodded in reverent amazement.

[edit] Mass Confusion (101 Things to Do when Wasted on Smarties)

Carlos fell asleep on his keyboard. When he awoke, he looked at the words his head had spelt out on the screen during his slumber -

"On the nature of toads; in general, they are terrestrial animals, rarely entering water, unlike their cousins the frogs. This was Carlo's recollection, when he paused to regard a particularly fat specimen of amphibian that was crouched, in warlike posture, on his knee, as he swam through the dissipating fogs of unconsciousness, back into the hazy mist that qualified as his waking state of mind these days."

It didn't seem to make any sense. Carlos selected the 'strychnine' text, and hit 'delete'. He was glad it was gone.

(Jim looked up briefly from his manuscript. Creativity has its own meaning. He had always been fascinated by the likes of David Bowie, an artist in many ways as well as a musician. Jim recalled how Bowie apparently wrote some of his songs by cutting up random words and sentences and then choosing the words in any order. The meaning was random but the effect was often inspired. Jim did not know where this section would relate to the whole, but he marked it off and was quite delighted with it, in its self-contained glory. Georgy interjected with a question, as he looked over the text "Why does someone have to be assumed to be 'on something' just because they write in a surreal and 'fantastical' way?" Jim just rolled his eyes and answered impatiently, "Because, Georgy, linear thinkers can't cope with the idea that someone might want to write in a surreal manner, defying the usual rules of logic and gravity, so it calms them down if you just tell them 'it must be because of that diet.' Jim patted Charlie and decided to move to Riga).

[edit] Stalin Forever

That night, Mrs Brown sat at Stalin's, a pub whose name she could only guess the author had taken at random from the S section of the phonebook. The floor had remained sticky, unmopped since a time he could not remember, and the wooden stools chipped and falling apart. The occasional crack of the cue ball breaking the colorful triangle of balls into a flying array reminded him only of the unseen whip that cracked daily the meaningless grind of her life. Because all workers have a meaningless life, as devised by those devious captialists.

The bar itself which he sat leaning against seemed almost invisible. The light from the few lamps hanging above could not reach behind it so that the bar appeared set into the wall, reminding her of the eyes he saw when gazing into the mirror after a sleepless night. The bargirl did not talk. She grunted when she was ready to take your order, and made no sound at all when she was tipped. It was perfect. What came next, however, was not part of the perfection.

Gunshots! BANG BANG BANG BANG The gunshots that haunt his dreams even now. They rang through the thick aftenoon air, the air filled with the never dissappearing smell of beer in that ridiculously small cafe, the Stalin.

It was exactly as you see in those cheesy films all the time, where the speed of film is purposely slowed down so you can see the bullet, its smooth trajectory, its merciless bite. And yet it happened in a split-second.

The briefest of silence, after the gun shot and before all hell bro. Both men lay in a pool of blood, next to their fallen stools. One of the men was wearing a bright red shirt which looked like it was melting all over the floor as the blood spread wider.

Pandora's Box had been opened. And like a microwave oven with the door wrenched off in a high-speed impact with a parking meter, there was no way the lid could be put back on again.

[edit] Old Friends

"Hey, mate, the picture show's down the street." Chad leaned in and glared at Little James from across the cafe table.

"Why would I, being the 12-billion fingered typist, ever want to and see some half-baked, half-cocked, linear, predictable story written by some hack who probably types with 2 fingers?"

Chad leaned in and glared even harder. "I suppose you think that you've got something better in that notepad under your arm there? 12-billion fingered typist, huh? From where I'm standing, looks like you've only got ten. And short, stubby fingers at that. You think you're something so special. You think your in control of..."

"I have everything under control. Even you," interrupted James.

"Guess what, Jackson? You win the grand prize for nerve. No one is in control of me. Do you know who I am?" Chad blurted out in his usual way. Never thinking before he spoke.

"I know you better than anyone I've ever written about. You're my..." James trailed off. "Right, well, you probably won't believe me, but you are a character in my story." James tried to finish his thought politely.

Chad was beginning to boil. "Prove it!" Chad demanded.

James scribbled on his manuscript: This two-bit writer will never learn, he thought. Then for some reason, unbeknownst to him, Chad began thinking of the number 71

"Seventy-one." James whispered quietly.

"What did you say!?" Chad exploded.

"Seventy-one," James quietly replied again, "is the number you are thinking of, but you have no idea why."

"And I suppose you do Mr. 12-billion fingers!" Chad said in that mocking tone of his.

James started wolfing down another slice. He scribbled in his notebook once more. Chad began to calm down and take it all in- his existence, his purpose, everything. And soon it all began to make some sense to him. He began to see things James' way.

Chad was silent. "How did you know?"

James did not say a word.

"Fair enough. Pass the glass of Fernet Branca!"

[edit] Chance Encounters

Chad was enjoying his luck at a casino, as she walked passed him. At first Chad didn't even notice the creamy white elbow that brushed him sligtly as she walked by, nor did he notice the sway in her walk, but as soon as that same banana decided it was it's time to go and broke free from the hat only to fall in Chad drink, she had his full attention.

- "Oh i'm so terribly sorry about that, I've asked the manager to have someone fix this monstrous thing. Things are always falling off." Appologized Cassey with an honest expression on her face.

- "Don't worry 'bout it, said Chad. It was a complementary drink anyway. Besides, i've been known to enjoy a banana or two". Chad poked at the subject.

- "Oh, realy? We'll i've got a whole crate in the back, if you want to have some." Cassey replied to a silly flirt.

"Do you like to Tango?" Chad asked solemnly.

[edit] Notes Scribbled on the Back of a Canvas

Walry was never known for his towering intellect. However, he was the most loyal and loving friend one could ever hope for, even accounting for people's incessant need to anthropomorphize their relationship with their dogs and cats. (That was Jim just now having a go at pet owners, and he realised it was purely malicious, because he had never owned a dog or a cat and wished he had).

Walry had not only been invited to contribute to Jim's proposal of a novel written by a community, but now he was being asked to 'give feedback' about it. Never mind that the word 'feedback' for him meant that awful screaming noise that occured when the microphone got too close to the speaker system in almost every speech to which he was forced to listen.

And that made his thought go on a tangent. Walry paused and thought about public speaking. He had a theory about public speaking. It was not a literary theory or one of those 'shrink' theories, but a practical one. "How many speeches have you listened to in your life Jimmy?" Walry asked.

Jim was surprised by this question. "Ah, Walry, what has that got to do with proof-reading the manuscript?"

"Just a thought, just a thought."

Jim pondered for a moment. "Thousands and thousands, I suppose. Impossible to count, really."

"How many were any good?"

Jim laughed. He had been caught off guard by this whole line of questioning. "That is a lot easier to answer. And it has a two part answer. Of the speeches I have read or heard printed by historians and other commentators (usually BECAUSE they are regarded as excellent examples of speeches) I would say about twelve."

Walry was impressed by this first part of Jim's answer. To tell the truth, he was impressed by most of the things Jim said and had an amost childlike sense of awe, which Jim secretly envied.

George was in the room too, but he was pretending to be busily reading his copy of the manuscript and pencilling in some notes on the margin (well, actually more scribbling enormous notes and crossing out whole sections of text).

Jim moved to the second part of his prolix answer. "As to speeches I have actually been PRESENT at that were excellent, ....... mmmmmmm " he mused for more than a long time. (George looked over at Walry and rolled his eyes, one of which was glassy). "I would say ten were excellent, fifteen were tolerable and the rest were overly long, out of touch with the mood of the audience," (Jim didn't notice Walry and George both stifle yawns), "...and in the end didn't actually SAY anything."

"So," walry concluded slowly, "most speeches are like microphones too close to speakers, painful to listen to and best silenced as soon as possible."

George couldn't help himself, he blurted out. "I believe that one ought never to stand up to do a speech unless one has something substantial to say. This is even more necessary when one is making frequent speeches. Life is too short for wasting opportunities to speak by words that make no difference."

"Perhaps," Jim replied, giving in to the temptation to be contrary. "Nevertheless, every speech a person makes can't be expected to be world-shattering. I mean, take Lincoln in Gettysburg. He thought at the time of his speech that it was a disaster. It didn't get a brilliant response there at the time. it was only after it was printed in the newspaper that the true brilliance of it was revealed. I suspect that if someone went into a situation intending to make a 'great speech,' what would come out would actually be a concoction of 'try hard' words and 'artificial gravity.'"

George and Walry smiled at the thought of so many speeches made with a false sense of import.

"But, anyway," Jim shook his head as if to clear a bug from his ear, "what has this to do with the text?"

"Speaking of the text. I have read the section about 'Shade' and 'Billy Gates' and the dream-sequence section with the penguins.." George said after clearing his throat, as if to make an important speech. "But, for the life of me, I can't quite work out what it is saying. I feel it might be clever and insightful and a metaphor for something, but I can't really grasp it at all. I have read it several times. Do you think it matters if a whole section of text makes little sense?"

Jim showed his pearly white (save for the evidence of wine stain) teeth ina broad grin. "I have always believed that the mind will accept nonsense so long as the final paragraph gives it sense. A little like watching all those close-up dots in an art gallery painting and then only when you step back do you see its the picuture of a dog or whale with creation reflected in its eye."

George laughed.

"I have a question," walry put his hand up, as if he were at school.

"Yes?" George and Jim sad together.

"To be self-conscious or not self-conscious?"

George and Jim stared at Walry with amazement and looks on their faces that were either horror or delight.

"I beg your pardon?" Jim asked, still feeling stunned.

"Well, its just, can a text hold the magic if it swings like a pendulum between the story and the writers of the story?"

George nodded slowly. "That, Walry, is the best of questions."

"Don't get me wrong, Jim and George, I think its great the way the story and the characters writing the story intermix, but is it like turning a camera around in a 'haunted house' movie and showing there is a film crew standing there. Does it destroy the flow and the suspension of belief?"

"Walry, you are amazing. But of course, the flow of a story is always up for debate, and certainly so in an expermiental form such as this," Jim replied.

George had a thought, and was never one to leave such things unspoken. "I know what you are saying. Would anyone be offended if I used a religious metaphor?"

It was now Jim's turn to roll his eyes. "Depends on if its a sermon or an example. But what can we expect from a retired minister," Jim said having a dig at George.

"It is like the Garden of Eden. Who was it that suggested, 'before Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil, there was no sin, because they did not know what sin was."

Walry, exhausted by his previous brilliant insight, felt that his head was now full and did not understand George's obtuse point. "What?"

"SO, are you saying, the reader ought to be left in the garden of the novel, unsullied by the awareness that there is a creative and intentional purpose behind it?"

"Perhaps," George nodded.

"ah," Jim rounded softly, but with quietly forceful words rammed in like a knife, "but the apple has been eaten, the knowledge has been revealed. The audience has seen the camera reflected in the mirror of the haunted house scene, and still keeps watching. The horse has bolted, the curtain has accidentally fallen to the ground revealing the half-dressed ballet dancers. nevertheless, the play is only into act one and it can and must continue."

[edit] Presence

"Did you know Fellini," he asked. She couldn't answer. Helena thought that Ka might be referring to one of her clients, and she made a habit of never remembering her clients names. "Never mind," he said. They were walking through a park that Helena didn't know. Ka had taken her with him in his car, a 1955 Mercedes 300SL Gullwing 3.0 litre straight six, rear wheel drive classic, and they drove out of Hamburg, into the Nordic German countryside. After about forty minutes drive,Ka parked the car next to a deserted farm. They walked for a while, Helena struggling on her high heels, then they crossed a little forest, and then entered a neatly maintained parkside. They curved around a little pond, and then they stood in front of a grand country house.

"We're there," Ka said. "Come." They mounted the stairs, Ka pushed the door that was ajar and they entered a spacious hall.

All round the walls, candles flickered in their holders. Between them at intervals were long narrow mirrors, their gilt edges reflecting the darting flickers of yellow. It was, Helena thought as she looked around the vast empty space, to be some kind of prelude to a grand happening.

"Look up," Ka said, and as she did so, Helena became aware of a large screen in the roofspace, a screen resembling not only a large painting curving above her, but also a kind of television screen, and as she continued staring up at it, Helena became aware of an intense light circling around where she stood. "Come," Ka said, "let me introduce you to some of my other guests." "I may be cheap, but I am cheerful".

Helena couldn't make out anyone in the room, but sensed that there were more people present. When her eyes got accustomed to the candlelit dark, she saw a man standing in the corner. He wore an immaculate white shirt and was studying a painting on the wall. In his hands he carried a little pile of car magazines. There were other paintings too in the room, picturing ladies in dresses and small dogs. The man turned around observing Helena from top to toe. "Well hello" the man said. "Finally you're here. We've been waiting for ever!" And he smiled.

Helena would soon discover that his name was Dimitri.

[edit] The Madonna Effect

Staring at his creation, Big James (Jim, as he thought of himself) could not help but put his head in his hands. He resisted the urge to pull out his hair. In front of him was a huge array of pages. It was brilliance, madness, funny, sad, scary. It was too much. It was not enough.

He knew that his gift was also his curse. Jim had described to himself his own writing style as being like Madonna's acting. The tragedy of Madonna was that many people believed that her first movie was her best. How does one top the best if it is one's first work? He was fascinated to read that Madonna's next movie effort was a movie that was never near any quality; a project in Hong Kong with Sean Penn. She went to that country with a hair stylist and only a few general ideas for a movie and started filming before she really knew what she wanted to play.

He looked with exasperation at the pages he had written. Every time he had a new idea, he would write a new chapter and write a section of text, with new and wonderous characters. But then, the lure of another idea, sometimes tangetial, sometimes totally disconnected and new, would send him off another track. Jim had even put himself in as multiple characters with similar names. He didn't want to remove any of it. It was all creative, it was all brilliant. yet, he knew his ill-disciplined juxtaposing was like baking a cake with too many ingredients. He had so many ideas that he didn't know which one to follow through to the end. So, here he sat, staring at thirty or so different ideas, all fighting for life. Yet, his interest could not be held on any one for long enough to complete it. He felt cursed and angry.

It was like the opposite of writer's block, but the effect was the same. Too many ideas, so he stalled. If he only could have the writers equivalent of a hair stylist with him, someone who would make it all look good, regardless of what the content of the scenes might be.

He heard a knock on the door and was surprised to see that some one was here to visit him this late in the night. Jim opened the door only to find the "Data Walrus" AKA Mick Striker staring back at him with his large green eyes. One could just keep falling in those large walrus like eyes and drift into infinity. During this calm and peaceful moment he was remembered the history of the walrus. He started to ask Mick Striker about Mick's previous life as the Professor in the Intergalactic University on Halla Ballula 6. (How Jim remembered those role paying games). At that moment, Jim had decided that he was going to write a sci-fi movie.

But, Jim hesitated. Although he liked science fiction, he was trying to get his mind around an uneasy feeling. He just couldn't quite work out what the problem was with it.

He turned around to "Data Walrus" (thinking to himself, "My goodness he has the greenest eyes I have ever seen") and a thought struck him. "I like you a lot, Walry, but, you know what? People think that sci-fi fans are nerds from another planet! They treat sci-fi as if it is like the tabloid journalism of the writing world."

Data Walrus looked back at him blankly, not sure if Jim was insulting him or just making a point. Jim tried to explain further, knocking over chapter 15 in the process and mixing it accidentally with the second half of 16; it still made sense.

"Data Walrus," Jim said excitedly, (he always used his full nick-name when he was really excited), "Don't you see? It is like comedy actors at the Academy awards. They almost never get the award. Sci-fi novels are like that! " Walrus nodded, but only partially understood.

"Take Robin Williams for example. He is a great actor. he should have won an academy award for 'Dead Poets Society,' but he didn't. Do you know why?" Walry shook his head.

"Because it had some comedy in it! Although it was sad and serious for most of the time, it also featured scenes where Robin Williams comedic brilliance was showcased. And I reckon there is this unspoken theory held by some out there that comedians cannot act, they are just being themselves. So......" Jim continued, not noticing that Walrus was nodding off, "when does Robin Williams win an Oscar? For 'Goodwill Hunting'; one of the first movies where he plays an almost completely serious and dramatic role. See what I mean." Walrus nods, but doesn't quite get it.

"Listen, Data Walrus, I am not keen on writing a Sci fi novel because it is not going to be taken as seriously as the other genres."

[edit] The End (But not as we know it)

There was nothing more to do, There was everything to do, She had no more use for him, She promised use after use of him, Get out quickly, Stay forever, Eat me tomorrow, Digest me today.

That face…then noticed the gold ring on the old man's dry, wrinkled hand. It had that pattern like it had in his day dreams, in that faraway place where the dragons slept, two serpents coiled around each other…He sucked his thumb, tasted the strychnine.

He got up off the couch, picked up the motel phone, dialed to the outside world, determined to mix his saliva with reality… “Is that Huge James? Sorry, wrong James” and flung the phone into the corner, handle over cord over dialer tumbled over each other and landed like clumsy lovers in the corner of the room. The dial tone grew louder and lo ud er and LOUDER in head and he clamped his hands over his ears as the gateway to the ether through an old green receiver greedily gulped and slurped and sucked the now and tomorrow and hate and light and stench and passion and decay from the room and from and from as a child and Shade as a corpulent husk and all of his lovers and none of his ascendants and swallowed and spat and shat all of it out to Yestermorrow …… and GG

Shade picked himself up of the floor, walked into the bathroom and stared at his face in the mirror

He called himself Shade, after his former self, and when he looked into the mirror his eyes were black and bottomless. In a motel room in the states southern most coast in the north’s hottest town in the cities worst hour, he thought he’d come here to find what he was told he was looking for. But perhaps this was what he was supposed to find - endless waterholes of blackest water. 3 simple stepping-stones led to their edge. Mother- raped bride of Christ, spat him from her womb 33 years ago. Asylum- her new house of god, kept her in meditative bliss till two weeks before. Inmate-high priest of sanity spoke him his plights as he walked out and left behind her finally dead husk-body. With no meaning in any of this, there might be meaning here. Out of the mouths of children and idiots, he took the only word he could as gospel and followed them all to the edge of reason.

He looked into his black pits that reflected no light. Broke the mirror with his fist, picked a shard of glass off the floor and dug it into his eye like a monocle.

[edit] Artie Wins Trivial Pursuit

Artie enjoyed playing trivial pursuit. Sure, the question cards often got wet and soggy and it was hard to pit the triangle pieces into their container with his flippers, but he enjoyed it nonetheless.

Perhaps it was less enjoyable when the whales joined in. Those massive egomaniacs, if they were losing, they emptied their blowspout and blew the cards across the ocean. Somewhere in Madagascar, a crab knew more about Dwight D. Eisenhower than was necessary for a crab's existance.

His favourite experience playing trivial pursuit had been when there was a question on the largest plant on earth without a woody stem. Artie immediately knew that the answer was bananas! He also knew that bananas were actually classified as herbs - they came from the same family as palms, orchids and lillies.

Of course, there were no bananas in these parts, sad to say. It always drove him, well, bananas to think that he shall never see anything as beautiful as a banana tree. Herb, I mean, herb. Bananas were the second best herb ever. The first best is alpert.

But these days, Trivial Pursuit was one of his more trivial pursuits. Artie was way more involved in the Junior Socialist club. Some square-jawed lunatics trawled his part of the sea with a net full of long rectangles. They seemed disappointed when all they caught were groupers. Who can blame them? Groupers are total assholes.

So these guys threw a copy of the Communist Manefesto in the water. Why, Artie couldn't say, but it was a revelation to him. The pages swelled with water immediately and, as a dolphin, Artie could not read, but he knew that this book was important. Soon, the whole world would know it too.

[edit] Impressions

The wine not only stained his manuscript, its inky darkness was noticeable on Jim's teeth as well. Jim wondered if he might be alcoholic when he started contemplating drinking white wine, not for the taste but because there would not be that familiar red stain on his teeth, impossible to brush away until several hours later, because the sweet liquid seeped into the calcium and made it chalky and resistant.

Jim wondered if he should make it clearer that Chad, his major antagonist, was a big, round, imposing figure, like the antithesis of a whale. Chad was like those shocking seals who would suddenly jump out of the icy water and swallow up an unsuspecting penguin. WHilst Jim supposed he could have made a more orthodox comparison by pitting Chad against some more human a protagonist, the whale compelled him not only for its picture of innocence, its enormous power, pre-thought, primordial and eden-like.

He continued writing, while taking another sip of this tell-tale addiction.

[edit] Dread

Everybody here knew Corry, a man of South-african origin. His family had been in the diamond business for generations. In fact, the word among the traders was that Corry was onto something huge, possibly a rare 100 carat stone, called the 'universe'. Word on the street was that the universe was recently pilfered from a green-toothed childe in Cape Town but had changed a few hands. Rumors had spread thick and fast, about its black radiance, strange cut and potential for building high power lasers. Corry's men passed a briefcase on to a girl in a shabby dress. She walked away quietly.

He had followed his directions to letter. And even when Sahra had asked him to shoot the man in the red shirt, he complied. "But Where is Sahra?," he thought. She was supposed to be here by now. He had done everything command had told him to do, but now they order this meeting? Was he supposed to follow Corry? To meet him, adress him?

Was he good at what he did? Undoubtedly. Mikhael muttered to himself : "Avoir d'autres chats à fouetter." I have other fish to fry. Was Sahra deadly efficient? Yes, when she wanted to be. Mikhael had always trusted Sahra despite what the guys downtown thought. Mikhael decided to find out what had happened, and got up. Just as he was walking through the door he saw a gorgeous girl looking at him. She smiled slowly and begged him with her eyes to come over, which he did.

She placed one hand in his neck and pulled him closer, whispering something in his ear. Intoxicated by her perfume he noticed a necklace dangling between her golden breasts. It was a piece of rice, wih the name 'Eva' written on it.

"Yes, I would very much like to join you in death, Eva" he whispered back. "Have you found this piece of rice here? I think it is mine. I missed it".

Maybe Mikhael had already seen that girl. She was sad but clever and concentrated, and nice too. Mikhael did not need another ideal character to introducing in his life. He wanted a real person. He hoped all the other women from his life would vanish. Not because this girl was the only but because he felt better. His mental status was improved. The name on the piece of rice had to be that of the girl but he did not ask her it. She gave him the object and said: "It is good I found it".

[edit] Sahra's Place

All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must watch the Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman movie, 'Far Far Away' - we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him. -- Sun Tzu, the Art of War

And then, with a sudden start, she woke up. She quickly squeezed her eyes shut again. Maybe, she thought, it had all been a dream! But what a confusing, jumbled dream... almost as if a mausoleum had been constructed by a million short squat black and white flightless birds. Oh well. She rolled over and went back to sleep. Perhaps to dream some more... what would she dream about this time?

Then she felt a cold shiver descend on her, like a knife through her heart. Looking up in the wide open sky she saw an angel descending slowly towards her. And then, with a sudden start, she woke up. She quickly squeezed her eyes shut again. Maybe, she thought, it had all been a dream! But what a confusing, jumbled dream... almost as if a mausoleum had been constructed by a million short squat black and white flightless birds. Oh well. She rolled over and went back to sleep. Perhaps to dream some more... what would she dream about this time?

The rattle of the door handle pulled her back from the enveloping warmth she was sinking into. A surge of black humor filled her as she debated between telling the caller ; "can't get to the door, all tied up". The opening of the outer door followed by the calling of her name immediately drove out all the endless puns floating around her brain.

"Sahra?"

She tasted the salt on her lips and wet face as she imagined Tanya's teenage son's face when as he came further into the room. She got up, and worried that she would look as bad as she felt. "What are you doing here?"

[edit] Invasion

Artie was diving the depths of the ocean again. Life was so peaceful, so serene. The frightening dreams in a strange language, images of violence and fear, had subsided as Artie slept closer to the surface.

Artie was now rising to the surface to get some fresh air when...

Searing Pain. Vision blurred. Blood everywhere.

Artie was panic stricken. It was Bella who had been hit. His beloved Bella. NO! Someone help her. What had she done to anyone. All they did was swim and play and eat and exist. No ambitions, no hidden agendas.

NO. No.

A harpoon had inextricably wedged itself in this noble creature. The more Bella pulled away, the more the pain, the stronger the resistance. Artie was helpless.

[edit] Mary

How could one word play so badly upon her. Mary had heard all sorts of words during any given day, and some words were a lot worse than others. This word was so simple, so inconsequential. Uttered by her boss, Minister for the Environment, Fisheries and Customs, Ms Sahra Wagenknecht.

Mary was working late, sorting out some files. Her mind kept going back to the phonecall she had accidentally overhead. The Minister, Sahra, had said the rather ordinary word 'unimpeded' but it had echoed in her memory. Obviously that poor whale was harpooned by a crew that acted completely UNIMPEDED!!

"Perhaps I am just annoyed with the Minister" Mary thought.

Mary always had a soft spot for environmental issues. The recent, graphic, news of an illegal whale kill in international waters outside the territorial zone, had deeply upset her.

Mary's hand rested on Minister Sahra's proposed budget for the coming year, for this department, with comparatives from last year. Something caught her eye and it caused her blood to boil.

Sahra's budget clearly had slashed funds in the areas of Environment and in particular border patrols in relation to illegal fishing (and whaling?????).

And what exactly was all this money for "fact finding trips to Riga." Mary could not help but think that the pathetic rundown of resources had left gaps wide enough for an illegal whaling trawler to sail through. This minister, Mary concluded, was up to something.

Mary picked up the phone and dialled the number of an old acquiantance, Lt. Gerarson.

[edit] Dual

"Isn't strychnine a little far fetched?" George said looking over at Jim.

"What do you mean? Back in the sixties......" Walry began

"Oh come off it," Jim objected, "don't start with that again."

"It's just," George continued, "that of the two drugs most likely to induce severe hallucinations as a symptom of their use and one of those horrific drugs that would be instantly recognisable to a wide audience even if they did not know much about it (and I am not expert) methamphetamine may be more of a 'fit' for the story. Also meth also can cause severe sleep disorders as a symptom and that is exactly what poor Carlo seems to be going through with all these weird episodes."

"Oh fine. So, use a drug that is causing untold carnage throughout the world and glamorise it," Jim shot back.

"Wait a minute." Walry interjected. "This text also features murder, abduction, assassination and general mayhem, but no one has suggested that this is somehow saying the reader should go off and do the same."

"Yes, and in any case, Carlo is off his face most of the time, he is pathetic, and virtually dragging himself from one disaster to the next. He is destroying his body, having horrific blackouts and sleep problems (too much, then not enough) and that is suppose to be a good thing?" George looked dumbfounded.

"I suppose we could always excise any controversial bits out until we are left with an inoffensive, politically correct work." George growled.

"Listen, if you want to do a book that has Meth in it, then you can always go off and write your own," Jim stated bluntly.

George was normally a fairly even-tempered soul, but his face reddened noticeably. "And how exactly do you define a collaboration if we go racing off to do different books at every point of disagreement? Talk about "team effort as long as you don't touch a word of my stuff."

"Hey," Walry jumped up from his computer. Someone has gone and changed all my references to the 'vascular system' and replaced it with 'Vasco De Gama.’ Bloody bullshit."

“Well, you WILL go online when you are using your composing. What do you expect” George observed.

"I am TRYING to go for something so ludicrous that it makes the point."

Walry had an idea. "Why not a fictional name then, something like Rigazoid or bicalcitrocallidazine. Apparently it is Latin for "double kick with hallucinations in a bad sense"

"You wouldn't see Harry Potter fighting one of the Hogwarts students over their meth addiction, or telling Voldermort to 'Get Fucked!!" Jim answered.

"Perhaps, but I reckon a real seventeen year old would !" said Walry.

"Oh fine !" George gave up. "But now that you have gone and scribbled 'strychnine' back into the text, I think you should know that you missed one in chapter 12."

"Not for long," Walry observed wryly.

Jim smiled and kept his head down.

[edit] A Million Regrets

Carlo looked at his hands in horror. With these he had caused so much sorrow. First guilt overwhelmed him, then a sense of shame, he was rhyming. He hoped no one had noticed. He squirted some more anitbacterial gel on his hands and scrubbed. Bad enough that the penguins were dying, he said, and the whole world sadly sighing. There it was again. He must have rhymedejitis.

But it was too late, it was all over the news. On the television bolted to the wall in his motel room, pictures were coming in from all over the globe. Penguins dying. In Spain, Brazil, Japan, Antarctica, everywhere. Places he didn't even know had penguin colonies, like Mauritania where apparently 10,000 Emperor Penguins had succumbed. Each had tried the new joy ride of strychnine, as popularized in the online novel, A Million Penguins, each had paid the exceptionally high price of $60.00. Carlo was rich, it had been such an easy sell, he'd simply added a paragraph to the online novel about how you will fly on strychnine, yup on strychnine your wings will work. The orders had rushed in. But god, now the penguin's gibbering drug fueled fun had ended in death!

"Why didn't I tell them to use methamphetamine? Why, oh why, oh why?! Then they wouldn't have to die." Carlo broke into great hysterical sobs, it was a few minutes before he was able to breathe normally.

The reporter on the television swam into focus again "Today a million penguins lie dying around the world, poisoned by Strychnine. According to some sources 200 ostriches on a farm in Cape Town are allegedly suffering from high dosages of strychnine believed to have been acquired at the Simon's Town Penguin Colony. The man responsible for this tragedy is believed to be Joseph Carlos (Carlo) Sandiego von Gordo. His whereabouts are unknown but we believe he is armed and dangerous and currently suffering from rhymedejitis. Some penguin lovers believe he works under the alias of the Bad Bad Bard..."

Carlo switched off the t.v. He felt sick. This was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Worse than the ingrown toenail that had resulted in his paralysis. If only he had only used references to the fictitious drug Bi-calcitro-callid-azine which could,and instead portrayed the horror of drug abuse whilst steadfastly refusing to be seen as gloriying in any way the use of illicit drugs. Then they would never have been able to pin this on him.

"Well, they will never pin aguin!"

[edit] Viscountless

Little Jamie paused, mid-thought. There was nothing usual in this. He put the pen down, with Carlo and his Ninja assassins from Latvia still spinning in his head. He knew what this reminded him of. He was not a music scientist, and yet he knew that Ella Fitzgerald was the greatest singer there ever lived. He had always been fascinated by the notes of Fitzgerald, who not only sang well, but also dared to make the listener conscious of their part in the music. They expected a note that came next, but when you listened to Ella, one never knew if the following note would be that note or some other marvellous note, higher, lower, longer, shorter, with vibrato or without. You just didn't know, how many times you listened. During the song, the singer made it clear that the song is yours, about your expectations, wishes, desires. The listener is the music, and it is unfolding even as they listen to it. Outrageous. Fascinating. Scandalous.

Jim's friend Georgy interrupted his thoughts: "You know what, Big Jimmy?"

"What, George?"

"Have you ever noticed how natural and good people's sense of humour is?"

"Pardon?" James said in one of those annoying Faux French accents.

"I mean, go to most workplaces, and listen. There is natural and full laughter coming from the lunch-room, and from the floor of the shop. Everyday people, in ordinary workplaces across the country are naturally funny, probably better than the fellows we see on the telly."

Jim paused. George had a point there. He recalled his early days in the pizza shop. The two older blokes who trained him, had everyone in fits of laughter most days of most weeks. They were good days. He sighed as he looked back.

Maybe, Jim thought to himself, it is why it is much easier to write humourous things. Maybe it comes naturally. Perhaps it is a diversion from the harsh and the sad, and there is much too much of that. With that thought, and grateful to George for this insight, Jim went back to his manuscript and put a few "arses" and "elbows"; "pups" and "penguins" into the text - just to liven it up.

After surveying his work, Jim smiled as he took up his pen again, ready to go down another tangent. He remembered another famous Calvino story, "The Halved Viscount" in which the protagonist's body is halved by a deep cut. Was Mikhael like that character? He had two important issues: the first was the violence that ruled his world.

Jim wrote: He said to Eva: "My name is Mikhael. Would you like to drink a coffee with me?"

Mikhael's second issue was loneliness. Nevertheless not everybody could enter in his interior space. Now he had to choose and not be chosen. He smiled as Eva answered "Here? I thought we might go somewhere else."

(Then Jim changed tack)...........As the first raindrop hit him square in the eye, Carlo had a sudden flash to the dark times of early childhood which shaped his life. He remembered the plastic womb of his mother, Petri Dish, swimming in nutrients, not a care in the world. It had all come crashing down when Doctor Fillango accidentally dropped a Dorito crumb on his twin brother, killing him instantly with its cheesy edge like a guillotine upon the head of a French aristocrat.

"Simon!!!!!!!!" he had tried to cry, but could not because he had no mouth and he could not scream.

As he had swum around the inseminated corpse of his brother Simon, the child his father always favored because he came last, Carlo had had a flashback of the good times, before he left his father's cruel loins like so much discarded dishwater slipping through the cracks of a manhole.

But now a tear mixed with rainwater ran down Carlo's cheek, and he cried for his brother for the first time, years too late and with malice for the dead. He shook his fist and cursed Doctor Fillango. "Damn you! One day you will get yours, Doctor Fillango! One day you will get yours!"

And so our story comes to a close..... Who say you can close the story ..?

The doctor and all of his friends went for a tour to India...........

[edit] And On

Across the city they trundled. The wallah strained the tiny muscles on his wiry legs to accommodate the rickshaw and Carlo's bulk. The air mixed jasmine scents with rather high-density carbon monoxide. High-rise hotels and electrical shops testified to Bangalore's burgeoning economic self-confidence. Twenty minutes later, the rickshaw wobbled past the aquarium and, five minutes after that, arrived outside a small pet shop where Carlo could see, inside, a wallpaper of fishtanks....

Now he understood that the only thing in life he could desire was that wonderful wallaper. Oh! If he could only lay his hands on such a beautiful thing! Oh! But he knew that these fantasies could never come true, so he turned back and went away, where he could forget his unreachable desires.

Then, during his escape from himself, he encountered a queer person who asked him : "Why do you escape?" He answered: "Because I cannot face the cruel reality" The queer one slapped hardly poor Carlo, and said: "Fool! Follow your desires, or you will end up like me, a poor idiot that slaps people and gives them useless pieces of advice! Run now! Never, never, never stop yourself, act before you're sleeping with the fishes!"

[edit] How I loved a certain type of fierljepper

Atop the office building on the corner of Newborne and Imperial streets, people were looking down on to people one last time, as they leapt giving up their life in the hope that something would happen once they die. Everyone watched to see who would be next. Breaking filters off cigarettes and taking strong tokes, before crushing them out on an empty beer can. The living dead, they were often called. Sometimes they changed their minds at the last minute - maybe there were those who changed their mind when it was too late. But there was no way of knowing.

My dad beat my mom twice a day with a wet newspaper. Each time I went out to school she had his portion of news printed on her bones. Sharps hit without meaning. Her body was dull. I realised what was going on, the day, that day I forgot my notebooks...I saw everything and I could not stand how he was treating her, so I tried to defend her... I was not successful. Since that day he began beating me as well.

Suddenly, the sky was filled with the thudding throb-throb-throb of several helicopters coming south from up the river, and all heads at the corner of Newborne and Imperial St turned to watch as three black police gunships swooped low towards the Suicide Slums and blasted away with their rocket pods. The missiles shrieked like a chorus of demons, and towering fireballs of twisting flame and black smoke blossomed above the jagged skyline of the Slums. They knew this day would come.

"Hell on Earth," Minister Wagenknecht muttered as she stood at the window of her tenth-floor City Hall office and watched the carnage begin across the river.

A tear ran down her right cheek, and she turned away.

A few minutes later, as the gunships ceased firing and broke off their attack, a convoy of police armored-personnel-carriers and tanks rumbled down Constitution Avenue into the heart of the blazing Slums, and as they approached Freedom Square angry mobs poured out of surrounding buildings and swarmed towards the oncoming vehicles.

"LIVE FREE OR DIE!" one woman screamed, and she hurled a flaming Molotov cocktail at the leading tank. The leading tank opened fire, bullets ripping open flesh.

"This should not have happened," the commanding officer said, realising that he should have led the charge instead of an inexperienced officer, young and trigger happy . Most of those in the army knew a molotov did very little to one of these babies and yet obviously this idiot paid no attention. Now the mob had become infuriated. Time for some tear gas. At least it will calm them down; for now.

On the other side of town a little boy became upset at his game.

"That does it!" Bill was typing furiously now. The images in the room around him had turned to dancing flames, an inferno of emotions as it sought to match his mood! He banged on the keyboard. Send, send, send!

He knew that he was merely marking time, as he was certain he should have his mind elsewhere. But he couldn't think about that. He just couldn't. It was far too shocking, and he was far too worried about his own fate. Did that make him selfish?

"Shut the hell up!" he replied, "Why do I keep thinking this crap?" He was now talking to himself, trying to prevent his brain from thinking about it. The unoriginal clichés just kept pouring out like blood from old, old wounds.

"When You Say Nothing At All" began playing in the background and Jim found tears rolling down his cheeks and dripping onto his polo shirt. "Oh, the pain!" he cried, grief-stricken.

Grabbing his cat, he began to slash his wrists (horizontally, of course) with its claws. Upon finding that it wasn't working, Jim ripped the covers and attempted to tear through the skin with the metal shreds.

"What are you doing, Jim?" a voice boomed from inside his head.

"You stay out of this. I know what I'm doing. And I dont need you to tell me I'm talking to myself," Jim shouted to himself knowing how pointless it was.

"Fairly true, but you don't have to do this. You must trust your inner voice. You have neglected me for so long with your obsessions and fantasies and spending hours staring at a screen of violence and mayhem."

"What makes me think my own mind can help me?"

"There is much buried here within your own mind. you'd be surprised at just how close you are to happiness. It's just that you need to trust fate. Don't doubt yourself."

Jim pondered this for a moment, the shard of metal still clutched in his hand. He then dropped it and started cleaning up. He always wanted a life less ordinary.

He laughed loudly now that he thought of it. He sure did have a way of turning his life into a comedy. Maybe he'll write about it someday in a book. But that will have to wait for another time.

[edit] Paradox

The red car pulled up outside reggies, as Chad Thompson put his paper down. He'd been looking at the photos on the sports pages, the healthy athletes blurring in his eyes while he pondered that photo of some ugly pottery. Why would anyone care about a useless piece of clay made by a young Joan Collins, escaped him. A figure slid out of the car and walked around the back of the diner.

"You like 'em smoked? There's nothing like smoked ram chops," the bartender asked. Suddenly there was a movement in the corner of the room, as if everyone had been called to dinner simultaneously. He recognized the smell of punji sticks from a time he did not like to recall in a place where he did not dare to go; not even if it meant seeing her one last time.

[edit] Tango in the early morning

Big James loved to Tango. His primal killing instinct came out when he could dance freefall on the floor. Tangoing to kill; just call me Big. Mr Big. That was his call card, and had been for many years. His followers adored him. Would die for him. Would sacrifice their souls just to see him Tango. Until now. In the same moment another story took place in Hamburger Ham burg. There were a few tiny flats with common bathroom just off the Reperbahn and it was quite dreadful place. None of sane mortals could live there more than two days but there was a woman who has spent here already more than two years of her life. Helena - a girl from Moldova. Originally well raised, smart and pretty, in her 21 years there was not much left of her former existence. ...They met in central square, in the Arabian Deserts. Each one prepared to do duty for his honor. "Ya think ya can beat me Mr B? Ya too big for ya size! U know mah name? I'm the Tango Prisoner!" With that, the little man with the long beard tapdanced. Mr B boomed appreciately. "You tap well, my friend. But tango is not for small children, and you've missed the point entirely with your tapping." The little man stopped and frowned. He flicked his mobile open and beeped a few numbers. After a few shorts and mm-hmms he yeehaed and screamed:" Ya dead Mr G! I Called my lawyer, and ya know what he say? He say I could sue your pants off for a fortune! You slander mah name Mr G! Ah yes!~" James was angry. Who was this lil fellow challenging him to a Tango fight? He clapped and a few voluptuous women immediately appeared. Classy, polished, with no revealing outfits. That was how he liked his Tango partners. And then the Tango Prisoner whistled and from the sands of the desert, out came 4 cosmetically-enhanced women with Barbie bodies and no underwear. Big James started foaming at the mouth with the sight of these scantily clad dancers. And then the scantily clad dancers started to Tango around him...

And that was all James Big saw as he faded away in an ambulance, to be cut up by a statistics-spouting Sturgeon and assassinated by a woman with an ugly black mink coat. How foolish of him to have thought that this was a set up.

It did not make sense though. Bob knew his identity, but certainly not anyone from around here. No he will find out who did this even if he had to temporarily give up his way of life. Then again, maybe he could use it to his advantage.

Firstly though he would have to get patched up by these second rate doctors. Hopefully they wont screw up to much otherwise he may never get his chance for revenge and he did not want to die just yet.

Back in the central square where the assassination took place, the woman in the ugly black mink coat and the Tango Prisoner met in an outdoor cafe. The breeze was cooling on their skins but atleast it was better then the hot afternoon sun that would normally be blazing down upon them by now.

"It is done. That fool will no longer be able to tango any more. You shall be the best tango dancer ever," Said the woman in the ugly black mink coat.

"I must admit that this was easier then I had expected but i must ask you Claudia, are you sure that he has been eliminated?" asked the Tango Prisoner with a slight frown.

"Of course he is. I'm not a sharp shooter for nothing," said Claudia feeling slightly insulted by the Tango Prisoner's comments.

"Then just one more thing then if you don't mind me asking?"

"Sure thing."

"You see if i'm to become the master of tango then I will need a partner. And since you have such a beautiful and full body I was hoping you would be that partner?"

"I'd be delighted but I don't know how to tango."

"Thats quite alright. It is a mans job to lead the woman in this dance."

With that they got up and left the cafe and headed for the nearest camel to take them to the airport, laughing all the way at their private joke. They would be heading for the international tango dance off over in the United States.

(Jim, (Big James) smiled to himself as he surveyed his page of writing. "I suppose a lot of authors have named characters after themselves before, either obviously or subtly. But, how many authors have named a character after themselves and then killed themselves off in the plot?" Jim was touched by the irony of this and continued writing.....)

[edit] Bear and Rabbit

Mikhael and Eva met at the bus stop on 23d St at 11 AM. They took a cross town bus to the Zoo. Eva was only working as a prostitute to put herself through art school. She liked to wear odd socks and ear muffs and talk about Deleuze and Guattari. Her current project was lyrical performance art. "It's sounds more complicated than it is" she had told Mikhael on the phone, when arranging their meeting. "All I do is act out Paul Simon lyrics."

Eva and Mikhael rode at the front of the double decker bus because Eva said she liked the feeling she got from looking at the tops of people's heads. Mikhael wondered if she was also acting out Belle and Sebastian lyrics without telling him. "Riding on city buses for a hobby is sad." he said underneath his breath. "What?" Eva asked. "Nothing." He said and smiled brightly and pointed out the top of someone's head to her. She was clearly a bit of an odd fish. Neither of them noticed the two suspicious characters sitting two seats behind them. One of the suspicious character's had a handlebar moustache, the other was wearing hornrim glasses. When the bus pulled up in front of the Zoo entrance and Eva and Mikhael disembarked, the suspicious characters got off too.

Eva and Mikhael went straight to see the the polar bears in the glacial zone because Eva said she found them enchanting and at the same time a little sad. The suspicious characters followed at a reasonable distance. One was humming the theme tune to the A Team. Mikhael was about to ask her how she would act out 'The Sound of Silence' when the the suspicious character in the hornrim glasses, letting out a throaty cry of "Geronimo!", sprung at them. The second suspicious character was hidden behind a palm tree. He appeared to have some sort of electronic device pointed at them. Mikhael thought he recognized the handlebar moustache, yes someone he'd known back on the mean streets of Riga. It was too dangerous with Eva here to stay and find out. Mikhael didn't want her mixed up in any Undercord business, hell, right now he didn't want to be mixed up in any Undercord business. He grabbed Eva's hand, "Run!" he shouted. They shot past the gaping children with ice creams, the unconcerned woman cooing at the penguins, skidded round the corner pen where the walrus was napping and out the exit of the glacial zone. The suspicious characters were right behind them. A bewildered zoo keeper tried to intervene. "Look here!" He shouted, "No running at the Zoo." The suspicious character with the handlebar moustache knocked him out.

Eva and Mikhael ran through the nocturnal zone, a fossa woke up, a bush baby cried. The suspicious characters were keeping pace. They were in the tropical zone now, pursued past the orangutans who looked duly skeptical, the insincere giraffes, the kindly elephants until they came up against a dead end- the crocodile pool. "Ha!" shouted one of the suspicious characters. The pair advanced slowly, backing Mikhael and Eva right up against the railings. Eva was shaking, "What do you want?" she asked in a quavery voice. Before the suspicious characters had a chance to explain, Mikhael scrambled over the railing and frightened Eva followed him.

[edit] True Story 2

Jim sat facing Mikhael. They were at their own table in a very trendy new bar. Mikhael had a little water weed in his hair and his shirt was still damp from the unwanted swim he'd taken in the crocodile pool earlier. They were both sipping Mojitos.

Mikhael was speaking softly.

"It is not as if I have had no offers."

"Really?" Jim sipped his drink. The mint leaves stuck to his teeth.

"They spoke to me the other day. Asking me to come and work for them."

"What did you say?" Jim was intrigued and a little frightened. Who were them? Virago?

"I said no. But guess what they said next..."

"What?" Jim said as casually as he could manage. He hadn't imagined it would be this difficult. He'd heard of "the character's taking over" In fact he'd just read an interview recently in which the novelist talked of how pleasing it was when his characters finally took on lives of their own. This was not pleasing at all, Jim wished he had someone to talk to, someone who he was 100% certain was not a figment of imagination (his or anyone else's.)

"They asked me what was stopping me? And I didn't know. To tell you the truth Jim, this is a terrible novel, the plot is incomprehensible, my character is half formed. Jim, I'll be straight with you I'm unhappy. I've just come from an entirely meaningless scene in which I and an art student/prostitute with a love of Paul Simon are pursued around a Zoo... this is not the kind of narrative I'm into."

Jim almost choked on his drink. He went quite pale.It was very hard to stay calm and pretend not to be utterly shocked and exposed. He'd put everything he had into this wikinovel. "Uh, uh... it's a work in progress. We'll edit and re-edit. It's a rough draft."

Mikhael did not look convinced.Jim was nervous, this was not the kind of novel he'd planned at all. Things were wildly out of control. He couldn't have Mikhael making these kind of demands on him. He had to stay calm, pacify Mikhael and then get back to the office and write him out of the story. Chad Thompson could terminate Mikhael. Yes.

"Look Mik," he said trying for the calm voice of control, "Here's what I'll do. You and Chad Thompson can go on a mission, we'll make it James Bondesque. You can fly business, wear a tux, meet a girl. It'll be great, just great. Okay..."

But it was obvious to Jim that the problem was twofold: His characters were wandering in search of a plot, and he was a living, breathing human being wandering around within his own life, having lost the plot. Was this some kind of divine joke? Yes, he still believed in something bigger than himself, but he was a little disturbed by the idea that was now germinating in his mind. Jim was berating himself for not taking charge of his own characters and forcing them all into a plot of strict proportions. He had, so far, steadfastly refused to do this, as it was limiting to the credibility of his characters. Yet, how many times has “God” been blamed for not taking a more decisive role in the violent ‘screenplays’ of life that world history keeps dishing out (complete with leads, supporting and cameo casts of countless players),.

[edit] "1 Corinthians 15:8"

Suddenly, it all began to come together. All the disparate threads combined, much like spaghetti cooked without salt often combined together in a gluggy mess unless hot water is poured over it. But there was no hot water available, at least, no literary equivalent of hot water. And so the threads came together - but in a clumpy, messy, annoying way.

Mary realised that she was a new character and that it was perhaps a little late for new characters - it was chapter 28 after-all. She felt like crying. She didn't want to be there in the first place. Mary didn't ask to be born. "It was as if I was born when no-one expected it." But no-one knew how long the adventure would continue for. She stood, stretching, feeling her back creak in protest. She had been playing computer games since the wee hours of the morning. The wee hours being when she had needed to go to the bathroom but couldn't stop playing Super Mario Bros III. She would wipe it up later, she decided. She needed something to eat. For some reason she felt like spaghetti. Mmm, spaghetti!, she drooled, in a homer-esque manner. Not homo-sexual manner - that would have been quite different. She spilled it all over. What a mess! If only Mom was here to clean it up.

In three weeks she herself would be a mom. She felt the fear tighten its grip on her spine. Would she let the child be born? Would she give life to another person? She found the thought absurd, and even perverse. Life depressed her, and now she would hand over the depression to someone who lived still in fine darkness, the good unknown, the numb carefree, safe from harm. Jim thought his reader-character Mary expressed well her feelings. There was that acute feeling of loss and a question. "Why am I in this plot?". A child can ask his mother the same. He seemed the opposite happened in Pirandello "Six Characters in Search of Author". That author didn't want to write their plot because this was too scandalous. So they talked to the leader of a theatre company because everyone needed his plot. Everyone depends on somebody else, as a character on his author and a child on his mum. If one loses that somebody, one misses him. There's little left to be done. Pirandello had to join his characters and actors together writing their plot. Jim was in the same situation with his readers and characters. However that nostalgia could help him, as in the play it leaded the characters towards their actors. Players need correct cues. "Only if you partecipate in my life, you'll be able to be my author and write your play". No adult feels safe as a child in motherly womb. Odysseo wants to return to his past world. Then he finds changed everything. His beloved objects are somewhere else.

[edit] Noonday Sun

Jim paused. He was more than halfway through his text. To say it was 'an unorthodox text' would be an understatement. He was feeling an inexplicable sense of melancholy. Perhaps it was just that Jim had always felt like a spectator in his own life. He was always a writer by nature. So much so that in a few amatuer films he had made, even though he also appeared in the film as an actor in it as well as the primary writer, he would always refuse to be 'credited' as an actor in the play, (no explanation would be given as to why a major player was not credited) as if he didn't exist - just as he felt in his own life. He was truly 'the invisble man' - but hopefully not always though. He was happy with the 'stream of consciousness' progress of his novel - To Jim, the test of a 'text that works' was when he would naturally laugh out loud as he read (not that it was always funny, but, as Homer Simpson would say, 'it's funny cos it's true"). needless to say, Jim had laughed out loud several times. He had been moved, he had laughed, he didn't think he had cried over it (except the part about "all beauty was vulnerable, because beauty possessed neither weapons nor goals" which, ironically he was planning to position in the text in the second half of the novel). Jim thought long and hard and concluded that his melancholy was the result of what the 'desert monks' described as 'the noonday devil' the lowering of the spirit caused by the halfway mark of exhaustion and doubt. Jim pushed on, he would finish this text, because it was an expression of him.

[edit] Thin Veil

Sitting in seat 36C, aware of his own weight against the upholstered cushions and the dulling effect of the carefully controlled temperature in the cabin, Mikhael felt a sort of enlightened amnesia. This was all there was until he landed. A weak ray of light danced across his tray-table until the thick, grey clouds engulfed the window. The first time Mikhael had met Chad Thompson was on a plane. Funny that, Mikheal thought. Life consisted of pieces that didn't fit. Mikhael admitted to himself that he was disturbed by Chad's new power. Chad was so damn sure of himself these days. Command's memo had said The Brainoid was installed for two reasons. First, so Chad could increase his mental capacities to save Sahra, an agent who barely escaped. After all, the Tango poisoner was after her. Second, to try to get back to the capacities he had lost due to saving one too many undeserving rats. Mikhael knew better than to believe a word command said, he'd been in the game long enough now. It grated him to to remember that when he joined the undercord,he'd thought command was the shit now he just knew when to accept their money.

In the hotel room last night, he'd asked Chad directly "Is there something you're not telling me?" Chad had smiled."I am sure Command has informed you of everything." Mikhael had interrogated dozens, maybe hundreds of suspects in the past. He remembered his drill minder's favourite quote "brute force is best when combined with more subtle methods." "Inu is dead."

Chad had flinched, " I'll be clear, "He said, "I don't fucking care about any of your noble deeds, if it comes down to it I won't hesitate to terminate you."

They both were pawns in someone's hands. But whose? Mikhael was determined to find out. But for now, Chad must think he trusted him. + Mikhael buzzed for the stewardess, he could do with another vodka. There was no point in worrying about Chad, he was 30 000 feet in the air and he'd made sure Command paid for him to fly business, he might aswell as enjoy it. He flicked open the t.v screen in his arm rest. He'd missed the first fifteen minutes of Roboto Cleans This Town Up! Right now Robotowas downstairs in the basement, prying apart the bars of a high window. Slowly it began to creep up the staircase. The first floor was strewn with meaty human detritus, like a grisly Jackson Pollack painting. Roboto cast a sensor probe over the macabre scene and then began cleaning, first by scooping up the largest chunks and pieces and bagging them, then by getting out the soap bucket and water and scrubbing. Mikhael laughed appreciatively and unscrewed his fourth minibottle of vodka.

He fell asleep before Roboto put the screws to City Hall, his leg jutting out into the aisle. Below him in the darkness, lay the peaks of Alps. In his dream, Sahra Wagenknecht, stepped out from behind the curtain holding a diamond in her hands. Giggling, she bent over to give Mikhael a sloppy kiss. It seemed to matter little to her that he hadn't washed in days. "Time for a little fun Mikey," she said. "Indeed," he replied. A grin came across her face.

[edit] Straight... or bent?

He was yellow and bent. This was nothing unexpected, if one was a banana, but this was not a fruit. More to the point, he was yellow, because he was scared of getting caught and although he was working for the 'command' he would often do as little as he could so that if the whole operation was blown he would not also be exposed. needless to say, he was bent, bent as they come. He had worked for his employers for fifteen years and had risen up the ranks. He liked the uniform, and he looked good in the reflective sunglasses, but it was the kickbacks that lured him to work for the 'other side'. All he had to do is warn the Minister or one of her agents in 'command' if Lt Gerarson was getting too close to their plans.

[edit] Feast

Helena was grateful to Ka for saving her, but what she had heard from the lips of the mysterious man in that large house was very unsettling.

Ka and this man, van Gorp, had made her a proposition not much better than the imprisoned apartment that Ka had so hypnotically led her away from and to freedom. But, was it really feedom.

Now they had proposed (literally proposed) something that would ensure her a life of prestige and comfort, but it was still a gilded cage as far as she was concerned.

If Helena really felt she had a choice she would have refused them and left to go home where she belonged. But, as she looked over at Ka she realized that there was something quietly threatening about him. He was not a man to be refused.

And so, here Helena stood, dressed in the most magnificent bridal gown. Staring at her slim figure in this clearly expensive silk dress, she wondered about how so many things could have gone wrong, in an endless force of fate.

Helena and Ka were in the vestry of an enormous church. Outside, the church was filled with the most amazing array of dignitaries and celebrities.

“This is not going to work,” Helena objected.

“Trust me,” Ka reassured her (though she remained secretly unconvinced). “Mr Dimitry is a most respected man. He is a very high ranking diplomat. You will be his wife and your every need will be taken care of. He will be able to assure you of personal protection and safety. You won’t even have to spend much time with him, unless you both find that you do grow close as time goes along.”

Helena nodded, more out of a sense of defeat than because of any actual assent. For some reason, she was to be a mysterious, unknown but beautiful woman marrying a respected diplomat.

Little did Helena know that among the guests at this wedding were a few people she would rather be a million miles away from.

Sitting on the side of the church meant to be reserved for the bride’s family, were Sarah Wagennecht, Tony, Carlo. and all manner of other operatives from ‘command.’ They were hardly ‘family’ to Helena, in fact they had been her abductors and kidnappers responsible for keeping her in her apartment under a form of house arrest.

Sadly, Ka knew them better than he had let her know when he appeared and seemed to save her. He was not actually saving Helena from the ‘command’ but in fact had been taking her to the next job they wanted her to do for them, marrying this dignitary as the perfect pawn for their operations.

To have the wife of a famous diplomat under one’s control, she could take things from country to country under the cover of diplomatic privilege without any obstruction.

However. The ‘command’ was not going to have a smooth operation this time. Inspector Gerarson was looking at the guest list with great concern. He had not ‘twigged’ to the plot in relation to the arranged marriage, but there were certain person or persons in the guest list that he had major concerns about. “There is no way that the Prime Minister can be allowed to attend this function.”

“But,” one of his police officers objected. “Sir, he is on his way here. He has been invited by the Diplomatic service to attend the wedding. it is a major social occasion.”

“No way. get in contact with his minders and turn him back home. This is too much of a security risk. I have reason to believe that a murder is in that crowd,” Gerarson explained.

“Won’t the Prime Minister’s non-show warn the guests that there is something wrong?” The officer inquired.

“Not necessarily. I have arranged to have a message sent to the organizers saying the Prime Minister is coming, but will arrive after the first course is served, just as the main meal. SO until they are placing the baked fish dinners onto people’s tables they won’t think any more of it. That will allow us to monitor the security measures we have had put in place. They don’t know it down there, but the place is wired for sight and sound,” Gerarson put on an alarming grin.

Ka had taken his place in the church. Helena was pacing up and down in the vestry. She was very worried about this. She was beginning to realize that she would still be at the beck and call of others. She opened the vestry door and peered out through a crack. Suddenly the back of a man’s head made her start. And the sight of a big bald head of the man next to him made Helena almost faint. Even from behind, she knew them.

They were Carlo, Big Tony and Mikhael and beside them was Sarah.

“My God,” She whispered bitterly. “I am still in their web”

Helena was not hysterical. She tried to find a door that would lead directly outside, but they were locked. She though of just walking out of the vestry door and turning right and running, but she noticed a big man in a black suit watching her and knew it was a security guard.

A man entered the vestry. He was the priest for the wedding, or so Helena, and the guard who saw him enter, assumed.

“Hello Helena, are we ready?” The priest asked brightly.

“AH,….. well… Father… I……” Helena hesitated.

“My name is Fr Chad, by the way. Now listen. You are nervous…. I shall turn on some music to relax you.” the priest switched on a tape machine and rhythmic music filled the vestry. “I find dance can be so relaxing. Would you mind doing the tango with me, something completely ridiculous, just to relax your anxiety……….”

Sarah Wagenknecht, a highly respected minister dressed in a blue that seemend almost black was wondering what was taking Helena so long. She went to the vestry and was surprised to see a priests stole lying crumpled outside the door of the vestry.

Sarah looked inside and stifled a scream. There lying on the floor was the body of Helena. Sarah was heartless in her reaction. “They have ruined everything.” She felt for a pulse. There was none. Helena was dead. Sarah took her phone and spoke rapidly. “Our bride is dead. Now what do we do? Really, a second. Can we pass her off as the same lady? Well, now that you mention it, no one has met Helena so why not. What is this new lady’s name?"

The voice on the other end of the phone was a husky alto. “Gina was a lady we abducted much like Helena. She has been a prisoner waiting for our plans and now she can be the backup.”

Inspector Gerarson was listening into the conversation in the Vestry. he was amazed. He had unwittingly overheard about the plan to use diplomats as a cover for illegal movement of goods through different countries. This was a bonus. He was just about to send his men in to find out what the commotion was in the vestry, but he now knew that the Tango poisoner had struck again. He called his men to go in.

When Carlo, Tony and the rest saw the police running towards everyone,m they knew the game was up. They ran for their lives, knocking chairs and people over to cause maximum confusion. They began shooting with guns they had smuggled into the church via their own security guards.

In the confusion, Gina, looked down at the stray dog that had run for cover in the vestry, where she cowered, beside the blanket-covered body of Helena. The dog looked terrified. Suddenly, she saw the shape of a man rushing towards her, reflected in Inu'st eyes. She leapt aside and he went crashing into the bookcase behind. This 'backup bride' was able to use this momentary delay to break free of her captors and run into the confusion.

She rushed over to the church hall and knocked over the caterer who was carrying trays of fish to the table. He was about to yell at her, not realizing what was happening next door in the church (he assumed it was fireworks) when he exclaimed: Gina, It’s you> I …… I thought you were dead????

“Mark? Gina screamed. "I ….. what are you doing here…. I am saved. “

“Gina, what happened. Where have you been?” Mark said delirious with joy.

“You won’t believe it. I have been held a slave by this disgusting group of lowlives. How did you know I was here? “ Gina asked.

“I didn’t,” Mark said. I am the caterer. They loved my fish so much, I was doing the main meals.”

Sara reached over and kissed him, while in the background, the bodies of carlo and Tony and Sarah were being carried out of the church. No last rites for them this day.

Mark smiled as he knew that his first love, even over the ‘ones that got away’ was back with him again. “Thank goodness for that kiss. I was fishing for compliments all night.”

Mikhael checked into a Holiday Inn close to the airport. He was expecting to be contacted for his debriefing by command. His room looked over the car park. Grey, wet, depressing. He turned on the television.

• click*

"-The Hunter Bloodworth Show!"

"Howdy, folks! Welcome to the Hunter Bloodworth Show. I'm your host, Hunter Bloodworth. Last week we showed you how to bait and trap a shagamaw, then later in the program we tracked and shot a white-tail jackalope. It was a heck of a good show, and if you missed it, we'll run it again on Thanksgiving Day. So program your VCRs kids so your parents can watch it again at Christmas!

Now, don't you hate it when you've been out in the brush, or the hot desert all day long, trackin a diller, or a tasty looking doe, and the Law's gotta go and show up and spoil all the fun? Well, in today's episode, we're gunna show y'all how to avoid those pesky game wardens! We're gunna-"

• click*

"-with the severed hand of his estranged wife in a pickle jar-"

• click*

"-which brings the total deaths up to twenty three for the day. For the latest tally, be sure to tune in later tonight at eight for News Hour with Jim Falls. Next on Headcrime News, the latest gory scenes of death, carnage, and destruction from central-"

• click*

"-and it's an air freshener too! Ok, now... just take it out and pop it in your mouth! Stroke it a bit-"

• click*

"-I've just about had it with up to here with you're incessant whining!! Do you have any idea how it is to have to listen to your awful, pathetic grousing, day in an day out. I swear, you can really drive a man crazy! Do you hear? Crazy, I say! Why you little bit-"

• click*

"-nth. Now, over here on this side of the mountain, let's put some happy little trees.... right along here, just... happy little trees... here, perhaps one over here by the river...-"

• click*

"-any large caliber rifle with a scope is good enough for these little critters, but personally I prefer to use the Colt ACR with a Leitz C79 ELCAN scope. Them-"

• click*

"-♫ ♪ Baby you can light my cigar! ♫ ♪-"

• click*

"-stage two of the process involves the use of a high powered Cryomolecular Resonance Harmonizer to stabilize the genetic interface between the mutants and the pure strain stock that we see pictured here. As you can see gentlemen, this is where we must concentrate our resources. If we do not, and we allow the Spectromagnetic Wavelength Discontinuity to get any worse, we will have more to face than the ignoble shame of-"

• click*

"-uck all ran out. Just like that! Can you believe it? I just looked at her and smiled. You you know what I'm sayin'? I wasn't gonna start no sh-"

• click*

"-zzle and continuing on into the late evening, possibly developing into a thunderstorm, or a blizzard, or-"

• click*

"-the perfect storm-trooper! Hitler now had the army he needed to begin his bloodythirsty conquest of Europe.-"

• click*

"-deposited neatly on the small of her back-"

• click*

"-to back episodes of The Hunter Bloodworth Show!"

"Thank you, Hoss. And welcome to week two of our continuing struggle to track the elusive northern striped sasquach-"

• click*

"-Yeah, I'm a dirty old man. And I'm going to be a dirty old man until I'm a dead old man!"

(laughter)

"Pop, I-"

• click*

[edit] Away...... Drat!

The harsh cold water was running down his face in streams. He was shaking with nerves. The cold shower was supposed to calm him down. But he couldn't escape the growing sense of dread. It was inescapable, he knew that but still remained in denial. SO far he had escaped.

What was he thinking. He stood with his arms stretched out leaning against the wall tiles, letting the water flow over him. He had risked everything, his reputation, his job. And for what, a bit of money.

Still, the others had been caught, but he had slipped through. Maybe they didn't know about him. Maybe he could survive to go on as usual. He would be a good cop from now on, not bent, not doing the bidding of Sahra and the other members of the 'command.' They were all either dead or in jail. All he had done was tip them off in the investigations were getting a little too close.

His police uniform hung neatly ironed next to the shower. He longed to put it back on and walk with pride like he had before. What would his workmates think, if they found out he was a traitor.

But maybe not, maybe he had gotten away from it. He wouldn't be able to face jail. He had always looked down upon those "low-lifes" he had arrested. It gave him great pleasure to slap on the cuffs and march them to the car, and then lock them in the jail, ignoring their yelling and protestation. He took more pleasure than he should in seeing their humiliation. He always justified it becuase THEY deserved it. But, not him, he would not be treated like them, he would not be treated like a crim. he was a policeman, and not the other side.

Suddenly there was a bashing at the door. His heart leapt into his mouth. No, it couldn't be. No this is not happening. No, not like this. please.. he just wanted to escape to the safety and dignity of the uniform. He leapt out of the shower and swiftly wrapped a towel around himself. he had to get dressed.

But, too late.

The police were surrounding him. It was his workmates, but this time they had the grim, unforgiving eyes of condemnation. He was exposed, physcially and morally.

He tried to grab his trousers but one of them knocked them to the ground.

"come on, please, give me some dignity," he screamed.

But they grabbed him and handcuffed his hands behind his back.

His towel precariously perched on his narrow waist.

"But... but I am a cop, you know me! Give me some dignity, plEEAASSSE!!" He struggled with them. he could not face the fact that he was now one of THE "lowlifes".

"Not any more," one of them yelled back and marched him to the door.

"you.... you can't arrest me like this. There are people out there. NO" he protested as they marched him handcuffed and in a towel to the front door.

"You can walk bare-arsed for all we care. Traitor!" one of his former colleagues snarled back.

How the mighty fall.

Mark was standing at the foot of the apartment steps as the arresting officers stormed in. He remembered the wise-guy cop who had been all smug to him when Lt. Gerarson was asking him about Gina. Now he had Gina back and this bent cop was getting his comeuppance. And what a way to go. No more starched uniform, no more smart-arsed 'sunnys.' Just a scared traitor in a small towel being marched, handcuffed into the street, with pedestrians, ghouls and media for an audience.

As he was frogmarched to the patrol car, Mark though he saw one of the other police pull ever so subtly at the towel. It came away and left this poor creature to walk the last few metres naked to the car.

He gave out an agonising, almost inhuman howl. Like the howl of a whale in distress, not that this guy and his 'command' mates cared for their plight.

It was an awful sight. not at all as amusing as Mark might have imagined. The sheer rudeness of this horrific situation shocked the senses. Mark didn't think it could get much worse, until the ex-cop resisted briefly at the car (crazy! It just prolonged the embarrassment)and got a rude little slap on his behind from one of the others to make him stop. His face went bright crimson with shock and outrage.

The last image Mark had of this disgraced cop was of his bare athletic bottom being shoved into the patrol car. Mark would remember the red face and that white behind for many years to come.

"now, that's rude!" Mark said wiping his brow. "Geeze, remind me never to get on the wrong side of you guys!"

Lt Gerarson was unmoved. "Don't worry about it Mark, we like to tailor the punishment to the personality of the criminal. He had it coming BIG TIME. He has helped a lot of people do a lot of harm. This is a small price to pay. And he was always strutting around like a schoolyard bully. But you know the real irony. We really don't think we have enough evidence to convict him. If he's smart and says nothing, he may get away with simply being dismissed from the force as being an unsuitable person. But, you know, the photo of 'him and his bum out', splashed across every front page across the country, should provide him with a lifetime of punishment. I can see the headlines now, 'Cop Caught With Pants Down.' Well at least that's why I called the media to be here when we arrested him," Gerarson laughed. His face softened for the first time.

Mark nodded solemnly.

"Now," Gerarson said changing the subject. "Where can I get some of that special fish you mentioned."

[edit] Paranoia

George's paranoia was only matched by his uncanny knack of being able to empathise with others. (At least he'd always thought so. As a child his mother had always assured him of his sensitivity.) He couldn't work out which was most influencing his present feelings. He sat surveying the novel that he and Jim and Walry, and so many others had worked on together (finally together). True, some had left in disgust, disillusionment, confusion - it turns out it is much harder to truly work as one than one first expected. It is so natural to want to impose one's own order, method and mind-set on the text, thought George. This letting go and working with a text that is not one's own is dizzying. Dizzying! He should write this down, this was good. This should be in the book. George began to rifle through the desk for a quill. George only used a quill. He conceded that it was a little pompous of him, but it was the Romantics that had really formed his aesthetic. He felt it was important to be true to your aesthetic, even if this meant quills and occasionally wearing a cape. It was when he was squirreling through the bottom drawer that he was struck by a terrible sense of foreboding. He sat up on his swivel chair, gripped the edges of the desk. There were others. What if they were simply waiting to the last few hours, minutes, only to replace this text, as convoluted as it may be, with their own sharply honed, but nevertheless controlled and exclusive tome.

Perhaps, we have only been humoured, and the ultimate winner, as always, will be 'imposed order'. George prayed that this would not be so. He'd found his quill and feverishly he began to write, " The great novelist will always be the one who goes beyond, not for the sake of being different or shocking, but who continues to tread the rocky unsafe path -not the road smashed into the side of the cliff and flattened out by big organised machinery, coated with so many non-slip layers of asphalt! Never the asphalt!Always the rocky path! Because brilliance does survive, some sentences just linger, beauty doesn't fear vulnerability. In fact, all beauty is vulnerable, because beauty like other abstract nouns, does not possess neither weapons nor goals."George felt a surge of energy and power, this was good. This was his new manifesto. He would give his life to beauty. Everything would be different now.

[edit] An hour

Between lectures, Alex would often be bored. Finding ways to entertain himself seemed key to his attendance at the next lecture but often caused some difficulty because while he may have studied physics, it was still awfully boring and to revise the lectures would be akin to taking your 72 year old grandma to a Barry Manilow concert where, because of the weather (or some other incredibly rememdial excuse), the only band to arrive on time was the warm up band who faintly resemble something bad you 'might' have heard 5 years ago on a show about failed 50's bands... but you cant quite be sure. So Alex sits at a computer and embraces the students best friend and what will for many be a lifelong companion - procrastination.[Unfinished]

[edit] The bonus postpostmodern imploding Chapter

The lamps on the gates across the street burned brightly as he considered the panda and what to do - the panda mewled in pain - the high-pitched wail driving him to distraction. A drunk wandered past, stared at the panda, did a double-take, and then continued onwards.

Then, the panda unzipped a previously unnoticed zipper down his stomach - and out stepped... the Tango Poisoner! It had been the perfect disguise! He grabbed the man by the neck, squeezed tightly and began to tango. Ahh, tango - the passionate dance of the dead!

Hours after Tango P, had strangled his last victim, and minutes before the stench of its body would become untenable to anyone, he pulled out a container of Tang mix from his pocket. "You know," he said to no one in particular, "Tang was created by the astronauts."

Another set of keys began clicking his death, click, click, click, delete, delete, delete as pieces of his newborn sky fell away like pieces cut clean and black away. Then the streetlight, then the snow, flake by edited away geometric flake, and soon the panda...pand...pa....

no more.... and the snow was the white space and hum of empty digital page... Please refer to your iPod Instruction Manual.

[edit] Epilogue

Jim leant back in his chair and surveyed the results.

"What was the Genesis of the bogus postmodern chapter, George?" he asked scratching his head.

George smiled. "Well, Jim, in the beginning there was only the word, and everything, absolutely everything flows from the power of the word."

"But," Jim objected, "I have read your fucking sections of it and it jumps around all over the place."

George smiled his monk smile. Since he'd started meditating, he become a bit of an arsehole. He sometimes talked in koans and hit you with the walking stick he'd taken to carrying around. He shut his eyes and then said in a soft voice, "I've got it. I can only explain what it means by way of an analogy, because the meaning is in some ways beyond words, primordial. Let me explain by saying this." He paused and made the sign of the lotus with his hands. "Have you ever been driving along at night and suddenly you see at the side of the road a person standing there waiting to cross? You put on the brakes and then as you approach you realise it is not a person at all, but just a tree. But in the light, in the distance, you could swear that this was a living, breathing human being..."

"Yes." said Jim, it was easier just to agree and wait for George to make his point. He'd been different lately. He'd claimed to have had some sort of revelation while working late at night at the office. He had stopped using his quill and started reading Zen poetry. In his spare time he was writing some sort of manifesto. "It will change the world, Jim." He'd said, his eyes blazing. Jim was beginning to wish he'd never got George mixed up in this. He suspected if his mother ever found out, they would both be in a lot of trouble.

"Well," George continued with a wild sweeping gesture, holding up the pages of the manuscript; the manuscript that defied defintion and genre. "Behold, this is the tree at the side of the road." The behemoth plopped open, revealing a random page of no significance.

Jim didn't understand. "What?" he said, squinting his eyes as leaned forward, inches away from its surface. You mean this stain here at the bottom of page 142, right below the passage about Sahra Wagenknecht?"

George snatched the manuscript away from Jim, apparently embarrassed. God, Jim thought to himself. George was like a painter that had failed to take a few steps back, to see the whole picture, as it were. A general lack of perspective. The work was like an ugly, petulant child. "George, you need to take a break. Get away for a while." he said.

George felt angry, who was Jim to criticize his sections? Jim wasn't doing much better. George had a strange sense of satisfaction about his finished work, if one could ever call it 'finished.' It may not have made much sense, but he had enjoyed writing it. He hesitated for a moment and wondered if he should go back and add some deep and meaningful subtext that spoke of the nobility of the human condition. "The thing is. The thing is, " He said, "that there is a mysterious beauty to a collection of random and only-obtusely connected themes and chapters. For, the great thing about humans is that they are, above all else 'creator of meaning'."

Jim objected: "But it doesn't make any bloody sense. I can't make any bloody meaning out of it at all."

"Well, I suppose I could just take a hammer to all the pieces of text and wildly connect them together and MAKE THEM into a logical flowing piece of crap!" George's face had turned a deep red, (he was having one of THOSE moments again). "After all, that is all Virginia Woolf did with Mrs Dalloway, and she's regarded as the nemesis of Literature."

"Nemesis of literature?!?" Jim spluttered in disbelief. "That doesn't even make sense!"

"What does it mean for something to "make sense" anyway? Maybe it should be our prime mission, to strive to ensure, (above all things), that we can NEVER be accused of "making sense" just so our audience can sleep soundly tonight, cosy and comfy. Unchallenged."

" Yes, yes, avant-garde, Brecht, Beckett, and afterall wasn't modernism about resisting appropriation, defying closure? Is that what you mean by saying Virginia Woolf is the nemesis of literature? The difference is they were actually interesting and well written... George?"

But George wasn't listening, he was talking out loud while he wrote in his secret notebook,"It is as if humans exist to keep finding patterns and meaning in even the most random of sequences, thoughts and scenes. These disparate thoughts that I have penned down randomly, as different ideas came to me; some mysterious, some sad, some hilarious, stand as a fragile testament to the human condition." He paused in thought and then stood up on his swivel chair "After all," he proclaimed in the direction of the drooping geranium in the corner of the office, " is not the world a collection of individuals who engage together in the great dialogue that is human significance and community."

Jim slumped back into his chair. He would send George on a little holiday. He could understand how this project might have tipped him over the edge. He wasn't feeling quite himself either. He needed to get organized. He pulled out a pen and wrote: .........this is the text.... Möbius back to page one "(Joyce on the red phone)"

[edit] Life Goes on...

Carlo's case had been dismissed. It turned out more than five hundred thousand of the million penguins that had died while tripping on Carlo's wonderdrug had traces of Global Warming in their blood stream. He was a free man. A free man with a curiously guilty conscience. Ok it wasn't all his fault but he had to admit, if only to himself, that he too left the television on standby and took long haul flights. He would change his life. He would use his drug empire for good. He would be like an Angelina Jolie/Richard Branson cross, he would, well he would be a something. He made a note so he wouldn't forget: "Energy is running out and the planet is overheated. A mass of people is setting out for foreign lands. What to do about it?" What he needed was to get the world working as one, pool our resources, a community project, a wiki for climate change. He was excited, he felt pure.

He went into the hallway and knocked on his neighbour's door. He'd never even spoken to her before but now he was bursting with love, with goodwill. He wanted to know what she thought. He knocked again. + The door opened, she had a towel on her head and a cigarette drooping from her bottom lip. She looked at him and then leant forward and looked down the hallway. "Yes?" She said.

Carlo explained everything that had happened so far, whales, Inu, penguins, the strangeness of George and Jim, Chad and Mikhael, the introduction of a banana and how he had suddenly become enlightened.. the answer was group action for climate change. What did she think?

"It is hard to imagine that humanity has remained unchanged such a long time, perhaps it is time we did. Nevertheless everybody experiences events in his intimate life. All over the world, balanced between publicity and privacy, men and women are continuosly under our eyes and the same in our minds. As we all know, nothing truly ends. Even after the curtain has fallen and the adventure is over, people continue to live. There are millions of filmstrips at this second playing out in time: one alone is shot from behind your eyes,within several you are in and out with great regularity, in some you are just background. To a million others you and your name have simply never been born into this world. And thus it spins on." She smiled at him, took a little bow and then shut the door.

Carlo was stunned. He just stood in the hallway, his arms by his sides, staring at her shut door. Then he pressed his mouth to the keyhole. "Are you in or are you out?" he asked.

[edit] A Time to think!

A Few days have passed before Jim had the time to look at his manuscript in progress.

"What the hell is going on!" he exclaimed in rage.

His group of employees at the Penguin Wiki Press, the three ladies, the gentleman, and the monkey, were all struck by his loud voice. They thought they were doing great, helping him typing his manuscript.

One of the ladies, Fransesca, not too fat, not too thin, came closer to Jim, "have we made any mistakes in typing, sir?" she asked him in a low shy voice as she moved her thick eye glasses back and forth.

At the time, Jim's cousin, Fred, the Monkey, was hiding under Pamela's red skirt patterned all over with bright yellow bananas. Pamela was a sweet blond girl, appointed by Jim as chief editorial assistant of the Penguin Wiki Press. A girl who wears a banana-patterned skirt must surely welcome monkeys, so thought Fred. Indeed, Fred found himself in a secure place between her legs!

"No..." answered Jim. "It is not your mistake, and certainly not the mistake of anyone in this room." Jim was relaxed now, speaking in a nice tone this time. "It's my fault!" he confessed.

"Why do you think so, sir?" John, the gentleman responsible of the Press marketing strategies, asked seriously.

"well, I think the manuscript is going too far away from its main original concept I had previously envisioned in my mind. It's becoming a kind of a "tabouli", a mixture of too unnecessary ingredients. If this goes on this way, we'll be finding difficulties in marketing the book. Don't you agree?" Jim answered back and looked at John square in the eyes.

"Well, yes... hmm.. you might be right?"

Lisa, the third lady, who was taking care of the office supplies, issued a bold statement, "Maybe.. we should start all over again. Let's get the right idea penned then!"

On hearing that, Fred, the monkey, moved from Pamela's skirt to Lisa's, although Lisa's skirt was not patterned with bright yellow bananas. No problem with that... this lady seems more powerful. She got strong legs, he thought.

A deep long moment of silence passed...

"Yes... that's a good idea indeed," says Jim. "Let's start again." He looked around all over the office for his long distanced cousin. "Fred... Fred... where are you?"

Fred didn't budge but his pink tail appeared expanding from underneath Lisa's green skirt.

"You naughty monkey... I can see you... get out of there... and this time 'write' the word banana correctly!"

[edit] The Rise of Ike

Rock Hopper the penguin hopped from rock to rock. In his peripheral he saw a small soggy card with the words trivial pursuit written on it. He went over and was suddenly enlightened by what he read.

According to the card his left flipper was not actually his left flipper! “Left is actually 12 degrees north and right is actually every other direction.”

That night Rock Hopper was sitting on a rock thinking of the information he had just acquired, when suddenly out of the ocean a whale surfaced and out of its blowhole came another card which landed at Rock Hopper’s feet.

Rock Hopper read the card, which as it turns out was holy. “My God! This is a sign from God; I need an ebay account, now!” Thought Rock Hopper.

After having successfully uploaded his prized possession to ebay he went to spread the word of God. According to the new god, who identified himself as Ike Eisenhower, that every 34th day would be Ike Day and in return he promised Rock Hopper that he would be the supreme leader (a.k.a. the grand chocolate taco) of the world and his capital would be greater than the Californians and that of the Aztecs combined. And all Rock Hopper had to do was take over Russia and build an interstate that connected to Alaska. That would show those damn commies.

Rock Hopper contemplated on how he could best carry out the wishes of Ike the holy master of the Eisenhower Doctrine. Suddenly like a train striking an SUV he had the perfect plan.

Now he just needed a gullible whale…

[edit] Afterword for the 23rd Edition

It is not surprising, looking back, as to why this book has become one of the most enduring and widely read and reprinted books ever produced. An eclectic gathering of authors with wildly differing influences and styles all blended together ultimately creating a cohesive, well structured story. Mostly. Well, close enough anyway. Okay, not even close. But it is still fun to read, even after all these many long years since it was written. Why, there's even a religion that uses this book as their holy book, the Penguinites. You've seen them, loitering around the spaceport dressed in black and white, handing out leaflets free panda-suits and candied suppositories, always begging for spare credits or selling beaded nose hats and the like. And they always wear those funny little hats. What is it with those anyway?

We digress. So even after it became a New York Times Best Seller and the authors went on to become fabulously wealthy and famous, and the film and theater versions had come and gone, and all of the various scandals involving the originators of the project had finally been resolved in court, or by firing squad in one case, it still went on to become a best seller again and again with each new printing. A unique gestalt of creativity perfectly blended to produce a truly astounding work of beauty and grace. There have been many imitators and knockoffs since this book was first published on the Internet, then later as a proper book, but this is the first, the original. There will never be another one quite like it. Where would Wiki, Inc. and all of it's subsidiaries be today without it? There wouldn't be a space station, the Wikistar, in orbit around Saturn if it weren't for this book!

We, as citizens of all the worlds and space habitats in the solar system, owe much to the original authors of this book, authors whose names are now inscribed in glow in the dark letters on the dark side of Luna, and will be forever held in the highest of esteem and praise. We thank you, all of us.

[edit] Möbius strip

He was breathing heavily as he rushed into the bar. He was very late. He was supposed to meet Jim here hours ago. Too late. Much too late! Jim had long since gone. In fact, everyone had gone.

Carlo shook his head. Now he would never know what Jim wanted to talk to him about. Life: full of half written sentences and sudden detours. Who can make sense of it? Still he was here. Might as well have a beer. While he was ordering a man walked into the bar with a large book tucked under his arm. He picked a table at the back. Carlo had only caught a glimpse of the book but he could have sworn there was a w and an i. on the cover. Perhaps he wasn't late after all. Maybe everything was going according to plan.

Carlo ordered a second beer for the man with the book. Then he went over to the table. The man was looking up at the ink black ceiling. Carlo offered him the beer.

"Yes" said the man, "Sit down Carlo." Carlo sat down. He should have been surprised but he wasn't.It was as if everything had been leading up to this moment. Someone is in control thought Carlo. The penguin deaths, his brother, Inu. It would all be explained. There would be no resistance of closure. Carlo softened with relief. "How does your book end?" He asked the man. " Like this."