Stonefish

by Scott R. Jones

  I watched as their forms assumed an x-ray intensity. Shafts of sickening light escaped through grinning rifts in their provisional flesh. The cuboid column of whatever Horvemoan was using for a spine began to spin and buck, showering the forest floor in phosphorescent sparks; Anal Andy licked the air with a steaming tongue that bristled with red spikes; Babayoko stepped to the base of the bridge, itself humming and mutating on the fly, and with the placement of a massive foot on the construction, seemed to merge with the thing. Arteries of light and a kind of electricity travelled in instant arcs from Babayoko to the bridge. Electricity is the wrong word; it was an energy, and I want to say it was clear or that it had a clarity to it that made me think of electricity but also tubes or filaments, filaments of glass. Living, liquid glass. Babayoko half turned its head to look back at The Laird and held out a hand.

  Her breasts were magnificent, it was true, but their interiors swarmed with grey, gleaming shapes, like tadpoles or seed pods, a few flashing what might have been teeth, or thorns. The sight made me retch, but nothing came up.

  “Hang in there, son.” I felt Gregor’s hand on my shoulder. “Won’t be long now.” The Laird, who seemed to be diffusing into the air, becoming a choking mist of emerald particles surrounding more of the clear filaments, had taken its place next to Babayoko, had accepted the proffered hand. As You Know Bob and Anal Andy, each of them seemingly chiselled from migraine carnelian light, flanked the two at the base of the bridge. Horvemoan and Ol’ Dirty Bastard roamed the ravine as grinding tornadoes of flesh. The grass and mosses scorched and smoked beneath them as they spun.

  “They’ll bring in a few more, I’m guessing,” Gregor said. “I’ve never seen more than five come across at a time.”

  “They’re not sasquatch.”

  “No. Never were.” He laughed bitterly. “No such thing! There really is no such thing.”

  “You said that people would see breasts. If they thought they were looking at a female.”

  “That’s part of their schtick, I think, yeah. We see what we expect to see when we see them. The world view again. So, you’re out in the woods, hunting maybe, or hiking. Getting firewood. Picking berries. You know what’s out there, you have a rough idea of the kind of creatures you’re likely to see. And you look up from your work and there’s a fucking archon standing there in the trees, watching you. For the briefest of moments, you see it, and I mean you really see it, like you’re seeing them now.

  “It’s an easy rewrite, though. We like wool over the eyes, turns out. Being of the Stonefish, and yet not in the Stonefish proper, I dunno. Maybe it’s a special dispensation we’ve been given. Maybe every other critter that’s cursed with perception sees these things, sees them as they are. Our brains have their filter game on point, though. We rewrite what we see to be acceptable. Incongruous, sure. Frightening, appalling, astonishing, maybe even maddening or bordering on the incomprehensible, even, but in the final edit, somehow, in some way, acceptable. Data we can use, data that won’t upset us too much, that doesn’t corrupt the dominant paradigm. So, where there is an archon, we see a hominid. A giant. Something like an ape, something like a man. A wild beast of the woods, archetypal and ancient.

  “Then we reach for a camera to catch that durn bigfoot on film and when we look up, hyuk! its gone. Of course. And so it remains what we made it seem to be, in our memories, in our culture. What they allow us to see. But make no mistake, this is what they are.”

  Throughout all this, Gregor’s monotone and the alteration of the archons, I could feel the unnatural composure that Gregor had triggered in me sloughing away from my awareness. I knew I was quickly approaching a moment of real panic, a discontinuity in my consciousness. Truly, everything felt like a dream, one that was sliding inexorably into nightmare territory, and that soon I would see something that would drive my mind from my body entirely, some transcendent tableau that no psychic trick or work-around could stand against. I would awake to find myself standing in the blast range of an imminent revelation that I would not be able to survive.

  The archons and the bridge were by this point all one vast entity, or event. Their shapes could be separated from each other, but only with increasing effort. The ravine was a single gash of unearthly light and energy, and it shared itself now with another space entirely. Shapes, protean and shifting, were being added to the light.

  “Only three of them today,” I heard Gregor say. I managed to choke out some random collection of vowels in response. He immediately stood and began to walk around me where I sat, shaking, making guttural sounds of appraisal as he did so.

  “Okay, Den. I’ve put you through enough here, you’re all messed up. Any more of this and you will fly apart, and I mean that in a very literal sense.”

  “We’re leaving?”

  “Christ, no. We walk away now and we’re fucked. You’ve seen them and they know it. Forms must be observed, kid, and there’s a logic here that has to be adhered to, just don’t ask me what it is. You feel it, right?”

  I did. The entire scene vibrated with the railed significance of ritual, of programming. Fate. All the players had arrived on their own tracks to this point in time and space. We were part of a node, I felt, Gregor and I. To remove ourselves now would bring a terrible fate down on our backs. Fleeing was simply not allowed, not part of the narrative. We were locked in. I nodded vigorously with the realization.

  “Right then. I’m taking you out, Den, and putting you somewhere else. I thought the second attention would be safe enough, but there’s more going on here than I estimated, and it would be crazy irresponsible for me to leave you here.”

  Gregor crouched behind me and placed his broad, flat palms on my shoulder blades, which immediately tried to slice through muscle fibres to leap away from me. That was the sensation at least; a tearing iciness that made me gasp and suck at the air in shock.

  “I thought you said we couldn’t leave. Gregor, we can’t leave!” I was so sure of it, the absolute and uncompromising conviction of a nightmare. In the ravine, the new shapes began to coalesce at the base of the bridge. One was much larger than the others, larger even than The Laird. Gregor noticed this as well.

  “The size of that one,” I heard him mutter, and then he struck me again, once, and again and a third time. The first blow landed at the base of my spine, the second just over my heart. I couldn’t tell where the third landed. The shock of it registered, but it felt as if Gregor had hit me somewhere far removed from my actual body and as my consciousness spiralled away into the new position, an idea lit up in my thoughts, firefly-like, that I was a thing made out of language, or text, text that had been printed out somewhere, and that Gregor had pounded on the page of me with his fist.

  The world became a sketch, an outline only, as if some phantom editorial hand had brushed across the scene, removing unnecessary detail. Everything spurious and rich vanished from view. Texture banished, odour replaced with a marginal note regarding odour. Insert blank here, was my nearly instantaneous thought, but so much of the forest, the ravine, the brush and sky and dark wet ground underfoot had become blank that I quailed at the thought even as it arrived. Trees became mere amber and grey vertices, a carpet of ferns on the ravine wall opposite a flimsy, pale sheet of chevrons spread over the rock. The scattered amphibian survivors of the awful bridge project were reduced to punctuation spilled on the provisional earth, wriggling slightly before giving in to the stillness all around.

  The only thing that held any of its previous presence was the asymmetrical, hideous bridge, the offensive shining brilliance of it, and its builders, welcoming the new arrivals.

  I turned to Gregor. He, too, had been rendered simpler, but only by a degree or two. His face was a recognizable if idealized portrait of Gregor Makarios. I put a hand to my own face in wonder and he nodded.

  “Yeah, you’re looking pretty strange yourself, kid.” The sound of his voice was polished and smooth.

  “What is this now?” As was mine. I s
ounded foreign to my own ears. Over-produced, lacking whatever timbre or resonance might have been there.

  “I’ll give you a chance to guess first, Den.”

  I had it in one.

  “This is, what...the Numpty?” I smacked my lips like a fish in astonishment as the idea bloomed like algae in the brain. “Or not quite. Numpty Lite?”

  “Registered trademark, yeah.”

  “Jesus, Gregor. Jesus. What have you done.”

  “Another shift. That’s all. Moving a human being up and down the scale of perception is easy once you know the trick of it. Once you know how we work, how the Stonefish works.

  “You’re right where you were a moment ago, but higher up. Or outside, if you want. On the wall of where we are. Or deeper, deeper into the skin of the Stonefish, where there’s less fertilizing muck to confuse things. What I mean is the data is less rich here. Fuck it, Den, you know how words fail when you try to make them do anything interesting. This is where they fail best. This blueprint of the world. But it’s here we can talk, at least, and watch, and worry less about what we’re watching.”

  I asked him how he’d learned the trick. What else could I do.

  “They taught me,” he said. He flapped a cartoon hand at the ravine and its inhabitants. “Same as they taught me the fairy food thing. I learned from them.”

  “The Numpty is theirs? They’re responsible for the anomaly in the Arctic?”

  “And the little one in Japan. There will likely be more, if there hasn’t been already. I’m guessing they’re running a few tests before they commit to a full-scale implementation. That, or they’re cruel, grade-B cosmic perverts who like to fuck with people. I’m betting on the latter, but then, I know them better than most.

  “Your thinking is still flawed, though, Den. In regards to them, to what’s theirs and what isn’t. Listen to me. Listen to me and hear what I’m saying: there is nothing that is not theirs. Nothing here, at any rate. This is the Stonefish. This is their beastie, all of it, from superstring to quark, from amoeba to your old nana. So, yes, the Numpty is theirs, a part of the coding, such as it is. It’s very basic, and that’s how they like it.”

  “Why, though? What the hell is it for?”

  Gregor laughed and the sound was dry and old, and frightening in a way that the events in the ravine were not. “Oh Den! My boy! Would that the world gave half the shit about it that you’re giving right now! But no, they’ve gone so deep into their own heads, they barely notice that the place is burning down around them. What the hell is it for?” He swept a palm across the vague mosses at our feet, then turned it upward into the provisional light. There were suggestions of forest litter stuck to the callused skin there. Small twigs and flecks of dirt, a boreal punctuation, alien in its blandness, and forgettable. With his other hand, he pointed at the detritus.

  “May as well ask what this bit here is for. Or this one.” Gregor flexed the elbow of the arm that owned the hand that held the mossy bits. They fell back to the forest floor, immediately becoming indistinguishable from the rest. He pointed to the elbow. “Or this. What’s going on there, anyway.” He stuck out his tongue, crossed his eyes to watch as he waggled it in the cold air. “Jesus! Right? Why?”

  “The Numpty, Gregor!” I hissed. I was barely hanging on to sanity, I felt then. Frustrated and twice-removed already from a true panic by processes I did not understand. “Goddamnit! Or the Stonefish! Fuck, you! I really don’t care which, just tell me what the fuck is going on!”

  “It’s their baseline, I think. A patch? Stripped down of all the secondary qualities that make the myriad parts of reality distinguishable from other parts, for us. For the inhabitants. It’s the world that is there but not there. The Numpty partakes of their mode of presence? But reversed, somehow. In the world but not of the world. We enter into it, and perceive nothing, because at the end of the day, Den, at the end of the day, there is nothing there. There’s nothing on your plate, son. Not really.

  “And they’re shutting it down. My theory? They have countless others running at any given time. Other simulations, other stonefish. They may even be living on one, victims themselves of a nested hierarchy of horror, simulations running their own simulations, though you won’t catch me crying over their plight. Nope. So, I’ll answer your question, but first, one for you, Den: why do you run a simulation?”

  “What.”

  “You’ve run them before. Games, and the like? They still play games on the noönet?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why did you play?”

  “Jesus. For entertainment. Because I was bored. Because it’s a game.”

  “Now suppose you’ve got a higher purpose than mere shits and giggles. Why run a simulation?”

  “To learn things. To test out possibilities?”

  “Good. Good. Now scale that up, that testing. Add literal trillions of data points. Trillions on trillions. Keep in mind you have unlimited processing power for this. At no point will the creatures inside your simulation, and may I just step outside for a moment to mention that yeah, creatures is the best term for the inhabitants, because you’ve made the poor fuckers, you cos-playing pervert furry motherfucker, at no point will they guess their true status. Oh, they may play around with the idea, they may make games of their own, philosophical and otherwise. But none of them will dig in their heels and make a stink about it. Because how could it be? What kind of monster would do such a thing? Anyway. The purpose, Den. Never mind how your victims might feel about things. What’s it all for?”

  “If it’s not for entertainment.”

  “If it’s not for that, yeah. Which is not to say it isn’t crazy entertaining! I mean, look at us go, here.” He made legs of the fingers on each hand and mimed people walking about, bumping into each other, fucking. “Doot, doot, doot!”

  “And not for research.”

  “Christ, no. You’re effectively a god! What need have you of higher education? There is nothing new under your cubic sun, bless its innumerable chartreuse rays of demolition!”

  “Product,” I said.

  “What was that? Speak up, son.”

  “Product. You build it to get something out of it. A simulation is a process. It starts, it runs, and it stops, at some point.”

  “Good.” Gregor made coaxing motions with his hands, his eyebrows reached for his hairline. Even cloaked in the simplifying aura of his low-rent Numpty, he was insufferable.

  “And there should be something you can pull from it while it’s running. Or there should be something left over when it’s done. Something you can harvest.”

  “You do have a way with words, Den. You’re too good for that digital rag you work for, you know that?”

  The natural world around us may have been reduced to the vagaries of Gregor’s cut-rate Numpty but one thing was not: the wind. As I tried to absorb his compliment, we were hit by a gust so strong at our backs that we toppled over onto the suggestion of the forest floor.

  The bridge was collapsing.

  I turned to watch but Gregor’s arm came up like a wave and shielded my eyes and his voice boomed in my ear. “Nope! Eyes closed, Den, if you know what’s good for ya!”

  “What’s going on?” I had to shout over the ascending howl of the wind.

  “Watching them put the thing up is one thing!” Gregor yelled. “You’re not ready for the take-down!”

  “Are you?”

  ***

  Here in the shitbox, it’s night. Earlier a pack of sunset-red children came wading down the street, chasing some desperate thing in the muddy streams; their howling laughter punctuated with the plosh of rocks heaved into the water, the smash and tinkle of the last functioning street light being ended. I heard one of them scream something like vandals for life and nodded without thinking.

  I’m washed in the febrile light of this cracked phosphor screen, a vague island in a sea of darkness. Every word reads plastic, so, eternal, sure, but false. Layer upon layer of lie. Would any of
this read as more sane, or be perceived as somehow more valid to an engaged perception, were it created in a ganzfeld chamber and uploaded to the noönet for conspicuous consumption. As entertainment? Or prophecy. Enlightenment.

  Ganzfeld chambers. Jesus wept.

  But your gospel is nearly complete, Gregor, in spite of the limited tech available. I might also be approaching a finish, if I’m honest with myself. The choice defines itself before me with a deep, lambent glow. The cable, the pistol, like images from a tarot deck, limned in significance. The holes in the wall I made days ago concentrate what little light there is outside and leak photons into the room.

  I asked you if you were ready for the take-down, Gregor.

  Here in the shitbox, I have my answer.

  GREGOR ON THE MATRIX

  Somewhere in all those yottabytes of storage of which Gregor was so proud, I found a film archive, fully indexed and tagged. A search for simulation unearthed a number of titles I’d never heard of, mostly from the last century. Simulated reality as a theme had fallen from vogue before I was born; who bothered with such questions anymore? But there they were. Brainstorm. Synecdoche, New York. Welcome to Blood City. Open Your Eyes. I liked that last one, but in the end, in the interests of engaging Gregor on what I, at that moment, perceived as the ridiculousness of the subject, I went with another selection, convincing myself it would make some kind of difference. That it could turn around his thinking.

  It couldn’t. Nothing could. Everything here, all that is in and of the world, he could track it all back to their penetrating touch.

  At least we got a movie in. Cut off from the noönet as I was, I found myself starved for entertainment, for distraction between interviews and high stress episodes. I imagine Gregor felt the same way, or at least the film archive indicated that. He’d queue up a random selection most evenings for our mutual enjoyment. But I can’t stand them, now. Movies. I blame Gregor Makarios for many things; souring me on film with his barbed insights is certainly one of those things. Is there anything worse than an amateur critic in full bloom? I am forever suspicious, now.