AfroSFv2

by Ivor W Hartmann

  Have you ever given everything you got

  only to find out you have to give more?

  Have you ever perceived beyond good and evil,

  grasped both worlds and strove for greatness?

  Have you ever truly felt alive

  or known deep in your soul what it means to be blameless?

  Have you ever wondered why

  in the first place you chose to be born?

  Can the depths of your true self be fathomed

  or must the gods forever mourn?

  I wish I could ask these questions

  but would it make a difference?

  Forgive them father for they know not what they do;

  They are blind and deaf to their own divinity,

  gods with their tongues cut out,

  unable to smell what the third rock from the sun is cooking.

  I would despair had it not been foretold:

  Babylon will burn to never rise again.

  And we will finally be free.

  I wish it were today,

  but that’s an ion quest

  for trumpets players and other aficionados

  of the sound of real brass.

  Not my will but the Most High be done.

  Right now, we’ve got work to do.

  “Yo, Gutter Dice.”

  “What's up?”

  “Care for a little joyful participation in the sorrows of the world?”

  “:)”

  Meanwhile, twenty one floors down below...

  A certain intrepid young reporter stands on an empty street chewing on a stick of ginseng flavoured gum. A monkey the size of a young boy swings through the alley behind her and drops to land by her side. It has indigo fur and is wearing a necklace, tin-foil hat, dark leather trench-coat, and dungarees. The reporter steps back startled as they both study each other closely.

  “Are you my contact?” she asks feeling ridiculous even as she does so. Nevertheless, events of the past few weeks have opened her eyes to a whole other world she never suspected could exist and at this point, she has suspended all disbelief.

  “Who are the Kings and Queens?” the monkey asks.

  “Em...the rich and powerful?” she answers.

  “No. The Kings and Queens are those who have in common with the Earth, the spirit of natural leadership and their true wealth and power is not measured in the material, though of course the Earth always recognises royalty. Tell me, who is God?”

  “I’m God, you’re God. It depends on your level of awareness, I guess. We are all infinitesimal fractals of the infinite and eternal One that is ALL.”

  “Do you know why a full third of the host of angels rebelled against God?”

  “Em... I haven’t read my Holy Word recently but isn’t it because they wanted to be rulers in heaven and not servants?”

  “That’s the official story. The real truth is found in the setup of any good game. For it to be satisfying, the opponent must be powerful enough to challenge you into becoming a better player, but not so powerful that you cannot overcome. Tell me, who is your opponent?”

  “My opponent? Well I’m a reporter so I guess my opponent must be lies.”

  “What of the lies you believe to be true? What of the lies you tell yourself? Tantric practitioners in their sacred ceremonies, take off the mask of their temporal personality and wear the masks of the gods. It is a way for them to see that both the gods and themselves are masks worn by God. If you know you are God, why not take off your mask?”

  She is silent as she contemplates his questions. A soft breeze blows by, whipping dust and discarded newspaper pages into mini twisters. For a moment, the debris is shaped like a man sat cross legged in the air. The monkey is also silent, watching her face with an inscrutable expression. After a while she asks, “Tantra is about sex, right?”

  “Tantra is a spiritual science. Sex is a part of it, but far from all. But before you get into tantra, first you must get into yoga which is the science of the mind. And before yoga, you must be healthy in body for which the science of ayurveda is most useful.”

  “Why are you wearing a tin-foil hat?”

  “It is lined with thin strips of an advanced form of magnetic orgonite that protects me from negative vibrations. My necklace is also made of it,” he says pulling it out from within his dungarees to show her. It is translucent and shaped like a pyramid, filled with bubbles and layers of different materials of varying colours and textures that she can’t identify.

  “Come,” he says, reaching out a hairy paw. “Let me show you the city underground and reveal the true nature of your enemy. Do you know what a friend you have in the Lord? He ain’t sitting at the right hand of the Father for nothing. Motherlover’s creating new worlds. Come, there is much I would like to show you.”

  As he gently holds her hand, acid rain drops reflecting neon playing a staccato beat on their clothes, and the metal, glass, and concrete surfaces of the dark alley, she realises just how strong the little monkey is. He could snap her arm like a twig if he so chose. But she feels no fear, no hesitation. Her strange path had brought her this far and she intends to see it through.

  The Network is Real. It is not just some conspiracy theory or SF fantasy. It is her destiny. Most folk believed in the illusion that they were separate entities. She was entering deeper into the knowledge that all is one. This she felt in her bones.

  5: Who’s the man?

  Lil’ T

  What is the value of a hueman life? Let me rephrase the question. If the only thing standing between you and your goal is some motherfucker continuing to breathe then what would you do? Well, you’ve got three choices really.

  One: you turn around and walk away. Take the hit and go down. Live and let live. But what if you’re desperate? Why? Who can say? Life has a way of pushing you to the edge of the abyss sometimes. Don’t get caught slipping ’cause it’s a long way down.

  Option two is to take the motherfucker out yourself. Get tooled up, find the guy, drop him and get away clean. That ain’t easy for most people.

  That’s where option three comes in. If you can’t put in your own work, you call me. That’s who I am. That’s what I do. I am a powerful tool, use me wisely.

  I am currently in the hands of an employer who rules much of the street level of criminal activity in this city from his base in Freaktown. I deal with life and death every day. It’s cold out here, son. Don’t step up if you ain’t got what it takes.

  So what is the value of a hueman life? Is it measured in the number of heartbeats per lifetime? Do you count those moments when the record skips? All I know is if somebody wants your corpse donated to medical science and my employer doesn’t need you breathing, then I might just be the last face you ever see...depending on how I kill you.

  “Yo Tone,” JoJo said. “Let’s check out a university, bro.”

  I stopped writing and turned to look at JoJo driving, the city lights flashing behind him, harsh reds and bright greens, slashes of purple and yellow lighting up his dark face, square jaw, scarred cheek, and nose that had been broken and reset one too many times. We were in the west end where all the theatres, cabarets, and speakeasies played out their narratives amidst the glow of flashing lights and razzmatazz. I like showbiz people. They know how to have a good time.

  “A university?” I asked

  “How many pawn shops we checked today? How many guys Legs got out here doing exactly what we’re doing right now. But think about it. This machine or whatever it is that we trying to get so bad, it’s some kind of advanced science type gadget, right? So maybe someone at the university might know something.”

  “What, you wanna go now?” I asked. “Who’s gonna be there at eleven in the pm.”

  “I don’t know. Don’t they got mad scientists and shit doing secret experiments late at night when no one’s there to know they’re breaking the code of ethics or some shit.”

  “Man you watch too many movies but okay, what’s the clos
est university? Wait, hold on a moment.” I pulled out my pocket screen and activated it. An oval of light filled with data organised in a hexagon appeared before my eyes. I clicked on the GPS and quickly located a few universities in the vicinity.

  “The closest one that seems relevant is the Obatala Institute of Learning. Here.” I flicked the information onto the windscreen and he headed uptown.

  “Obatala? Wasn’t he like a gunslinger from the vampire days?”

  “You’ve never heard of Obatala? Wow nigga wow, where’d you go to school? Obatala opened up the world’s first university, only back then they called them mystery schools. I’m talking about thousands and thousands of years ago, long before the emperor. There were many levels and you had to study for like, forty years, before you could read the secret scrolls. Obatala was so wise a lot of people believed he was an alien from a race so far advanced people worshipped them as gods. Some even believed that they created hueman beings.

  “Aliens created us? I thought we evolved from monkeys.”

  “Well, they took some apes and used their own DNA to genetically modify them to create us. We’re all hybrids essentially.”

  “And forty years in school?” JoJo exclaimed incredulously. “That sounds like a long fucking time, man.”

  “Yeah but by the time you graduated, you were like, a Jedi master. You could levitate and see halfway round the world and blow shit up with your mind and cure diseases and read people’s thoughts and all sort of cool shit like that,” I said.

  “Man, I can do all that with technology and as for reading people’s minds brother, that’s easy. All you gotta do is watch how a nigga moves and you’ll know all you need to know. Anyway, fuck that. Did you hear the one about Mr No-one?”

  “Mr No-one?”

  “Yeah, Mr No-one.”

  “No.”

  “One... Okay so Mr No-one is like a nobody right, a regular invisible man who becomes so good at it that he disappears. I mean he’s still there only no one sees him. Unless he chooses to be seen. I mean this guy’s a ghost, no one knows he exists. So after awhile he decides to sell his services to get paid. I mean he’s also just a regular guy you know and he needs money so he becomes a private detective.

  Of course he’s good at it. Efficient. Reliable. Discreet. Makes a name for himself among those in the know, you know? Then one bright and early morning, Mr No-one gets a client who asks him to help him find himself. ‘You want me to help you find yourself? What are you, lost? You’re right here, ain’t ya?’ ‘No I’m not,’ says the client, ‘I only think I am but I’m really somewhere else entirely.’ ‘Where’s that?’ asks Mr No-one. ‘I don’t know. If I knew where I was, would I be paying you to find me?’” Jojo chuckles to himself then continues.

  “Mr No-one can’t argue with that kind of logic so he says okay. He figures he’s got a lunatic on his hands, probably a rich eccentric or something. If the fool wanted to pay him, what harm could it do? He could always give some of the money back if a relative complained. Besides, it’d make a change from the usual dirt chasing he was hired to do.”

  We pulled into the university’s parking lot. It was filled with cars, mostly practical fuel efficient little numbers. The campus was one of several spread out within the neighbourhood.

  “Let’s take a walk around. There sure are a lot of cars. You think there’s something going on?”

  Jojo was checking on his screen. The ball of light hovered in front of his eyes as we walked, bobbing up and down to match his movements so that the image remained steady for him. “Yeah, there’s some kind of science fair going on.”

  As we approached the building I saw a security checkpoint. No doubt they’d have weapons detectors. We stopped walking. We were both strapped.

  We ducked around the building, casing the joint for other points of entry but all the windows were closed and there were cameras everywhere.

  “Okay,” I said as we stood under a tree round the corner from the entrance. “I’ll go in, you stay out here.” I passed him my weapons one by one, the twin sub-machine guns in my shoulder holsters, the quickdraws strapped to my forearms and the grenades in my boot. I kept my ceramic knife tucked into the small of my back. I was wearing an exoskeleton but I had a license for it.

  “So what happened to Mr No-one,” I asked as I walked away.

  “Right. So Mr No-one has this cush little earner right, he don’t have to do nothing but sit back and let the money roll in,” JoJo’s voice was clear in my earstud, audible only to me. Unless another hueman being was standing with our auditory passages cocooned by the cave of two ears physically touching, they wouldn’t hear a thing, and even then it would sound like a whisper.

  “There’s only one problem. The client. He comes in once a week pestering Mr No-one for answers. It gets to be a real pain in the ass fobbing this guy off. I mean he’s a nutcase and he’s convinced he doesn’t really exist or something. And the madness starts to rub off a little. Mr No-one finds himself contemplating the nature of reality. Asking questions he’d never asked before like ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Why do I exist?’ I mean, he was just a nobody, a regular guy who happened to have a knack for being invisible and a mind clear enough to figure things out. Then a funny thing happens. He starts getting answers.”

  I walked up the stone stairs that led through a marble archway into a lobby area.

  “May I have your ticket?” the security guard asked.

  “I should be on the list,” I said a little breathlessly like I’d just jogged here, “I’m helping with one of the exhibits but I’m late. It’s been a nightmare. My uncle got hit by a bus and the whole family’s been going crazy with worry. I just came from the hospital. He’s alright but I have to get back. I just came to help out with some settings on the flux capacitor.”

  “Who are you with?” he asked

  I glanced up at the corner of the room as if seeing something startling, he turned to look and as he did so I took the opportunity to check out the list.

  “Class 2B,” I answered, “Dr Maria Hoon.”

  “Let me see...okay, here we are...and what’s your name?”

  “Justin Thyme.”

  “Justin Thyme? I don’t see your name here.”

  “What, did they fuck up again? I told Dr Hoon to get a new intern. Look, there’s been some kind of mix-up. Here’s something for your troubles. Just let me in and you’ll be doing a lot of people a favour.” I pulled out my billfold and peeled of four high notes for the man. He looked into my eyes for a moment and I added a fifth, threw in a rich kid smile for free. He took the bills and turned around without even asking to see my exo license and I walked into the main hall.

  It was filled with people walking up and down the corridors between the various displays that filled up the space. All sorts of gadgets with screens full of schematics and equations and vids filmed out in the field. Directly opposite the door was a huge banner. It showed a blue skinned female child with a dozen arms, each one playing with different items ranging from the nucleus of an atom surrounded by whizzing electrons to a hueman heart with wings.

  DevilDog

  According to The Art of War by Son Tzoo, what the ancients called a clever fighter was one who not only won, but excelled at winning with ease. Hence her victories brought neither acclaim for wisdom nor credit for courage. She won her battles by virtue of making no mistakes, conquering an enemy that was already defeated. This is my inspiration. To be that good. To be a Master.

  We live in a world without heroes so who’s gonna step up if not us. If not me. After all, I do believe in certain principles like freedom and honour, principles sorely lacking in Paradise. How great do I have to be to actually make a change in my world?

  In the real world, everyone makes mistakes of course. Nobody is perfect, at least that I’ve ever met, but I believe it is within us to strive for impeccability. Life is simple really, perfectly imperfect; somehow the great invisible machinery of the cosmos keeps on rolling and our crude
souls are the fuel which we refine by living our lives like a Fibonacci sequence approaching the golden ratio. Why else would we choose to be born? By luck or fate, I’m ahead of the curve because I know who my enemy is and what my true heart desires.

  My enemy is me. Devildog. A hueman being who likes to play games. My true heart desires to be my best friend, to nourish and support my healthy growth.

  There are no such things as external enemies. I am a living breathing woman, manifested in this reality, which wise ones say is little more than a dream. I see the elegance of the game and I know real life is beyond the material, beyond all abstract concepts. All that matters is here and now. Live. Not on a screen, though the infernal devices have their uses.

  This is first and foremost, a universe of energy. Matter is an illusion. It’s all magic and we are gifted with many tools. Some are fools, blind to reality, others are wilfully ignorant.

  Am I a fool to hunger for revolution? Even after the riots last night? Even after all those dead people. Perhaps. But then the real revolution has ever been within, found in our beating hearts and inspired by cosmic winds.

  A non-violent revolution would be ideal but can we afford to wait? Wait a minute, what am I saying? Afford to wait? Why do we speak of time as money? Why do we spend time and save time? Is it because our time is the real wealth and money is just ones and zeroes running through the mind of a computer somewhere like a daydream, or perhaps a nightmare?

  Maybe the whole city, God’s clock, is nothing but a complex machine designed for the sole purpose of stealing our time and converting it into energy for the machine to feed on while giving us the illusion of wealth in return.

  Maybe it poisoned the natural world so we’d have no choice but to live in symbiotic relations with it like some sort of insane psycho control freak partner that can’t let go of a bad relationship because of the fear of being alone.