by John Shirley
CB: They do that sometimes when they’re excited … even add extra syllables….
VH: And now Pyne is … he seems to have hit on a desperate strategy … he is saying his own name several times to the creature. It is almost as if they are having a conversation, like so: Surly … Surlymon … and Hemlock says Hemlock. Hemlock Pyne. Hemlock. He’s saying it again. And the Surlymon seems to be having none of it. Surlymon. Hemlock Pyne. Surlymon. Surlymon. Hemlock Pyne. Hemlock Pyne. Hemlock. Surlymon. And now a terrible, terrible sound. You … you must never listen to this recording, Crystal.
CB: That’s what Dr. Chrysolite recommended as well, Vernor.
VH: Hemlock Pyne. Hemlock Pyne. Hemlock … Surlymon. And now I hear nothing but Surlymon. You must destroy this tape, Crystal. I think that is the only course of action.
CB: I will, Vernor. I will.
VH: Surly. Surlymon. Surlymon. Surly.
HEMLOCK PYNE
We are here at the edge of the Pokkypet Arena, deep in the Pokkymaze. The Pokkys have never allowed me this close before, but I think it is a sign of their acceptance—a sign of how far I’ve come—that they are allowing me to set up my camera here overlooking the arena and film their battles in progress. Remember, these are entirely natural and unstaged … these are not like the Coliseum battles that human captors arrange, which go against the will and the inherent nature of the Pokkypets. What you are seeing here is the source of humanity’s watered-down commercially driven arena battles. This, my friends, is the real shit.
Now it looks like a Scanary is going into the arena, setting the first challenge…. Scanaries have three attacks: Wing Blast, Chirplosion, and Tauntalon. This is a fairly good combination unless your Pokkynemesis happens to have natural resistance to more than one of these. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. And now … it looks like … yes, it’s a Pyrovulp. Oh, this is going to be intense! Pyrovulps are extremely vulnerable to Tauntalon—extremely. But if the little guy can get past the Scanary’s first attack, then things could get interesting. And it looks like … Scanary is rearing back, puffing up a little bit … just look at those gorgeous chest feathers … could be Tauntalon coming in first…. But no! Wings going out, we’ve got a blast coming in, and Pyrovulp has got its head flame forward. This was a very bad move on Scanary’s part, and I think it’s going to regret…. Would you look at that! Wing Blast has fed Pyrovulp’s headflame. The whole Pokky is on fire, just burning up … this lets Pyrovulp bypass an entire part of its normal attack and go straight to Auraflame! The only risk, and I’m not sure he knows it, is that Auraflame can easily feed into Scanary’s own … oh my god oh my god…. Auraflame, incredibly powerful and hot, has triggered Scanary’s innate Chirplosion. I am moving away from the Arena, friends, because when this happens, the blast can spread far outside the—WHOA!
VERNOR HERTZWIG
In his records, Hemlock speaks less and less of the human world; civilization and its pleasures recede into the distant past, remembered only for its discontents. At the same time, the brilliant, colorful struggles of the Pokkypets, seeming so much simpler, become more and more a symbol for the conflict of his soul. Deeply torn, it is as if he battled himself in an arena of his own devising. But no longer a Captor or a Trainer, without Pokkypets to do his fighting for him, every injury cut deep into his psyche.
LARCHMONT AND GLADIOLUS PYNE
HEMLOCK’s PARENTS
LP: This is Hem’s Pokkypet collection, much as he left it when he moved away from home. I’m afraid we encouraged him more than we should have, since he was a somewhat lonely boy, and he got such pleasure from them. His first Pokkypet was a gift from my mother, who had an affinity herself with the little things—
GP: I thought he won it at a state fair, throwing dimes in Collymoddle bowls, or a prize he won at school.
LP: —no, it was from my mother. I think he’s still got the card in his room somewhere pinned up on a bulletin board. We knew there wasn’t much of a future in it, but that’s not the sort of thing you can worry about when you just want your boy to be happy … but as he got older and we saw he wasn’t moving on to other things, wasn’t progressing if you will, then we started to get a bit worried. But somehow Hemlock found a way to make a living at it early on, doing his shows and trainings and whatnot; and although we were disappointed that he felt he had to move all the way to the other side of the country to pursue his interests, we did support him in it. It seemed like his Pokky career was really taking him somewhere. Then, well, I don’t know how much truth there is in this, but he tried out for the part of Burny, the Pokky Trainer in Chirrs, and according to him he was first in line for the part, but then Woody Harrelson tried out for the role and they gave it to him. Well, really, that was the beginning of the end for our boy.
GP: He just sort of spiralled out of control.
LP: I held it against Woody for a long time, but … well….
GP: It’s hard to keep a grudge against Woody Harrelson. He’s a fine young man.
CRYSTAL BURL
We used to go to the Pokkypet stores in the mall, and Hem would get really upset looking at them in captivity, and he always talked about starting a Pokkypet Liberation Front—but that’s not what Pokky People is about or ever was about. Pokky People allowed him to channel his frustration into something positive. You have to understand, the frustration turned so easily into anger. He could be the happiest most joyful person you’d ever met, but the flipside of that was … was also there. He could be very dark at times. I know he felt that if he didn’t have Pokkys, he’d have gone to some very bad places with some very bad people. The Missile Kids, for instance—they tried to recruit him for a while, and I think he was attracted. They could be very seductive. You know, Minny was a real minx, and Sal was sarcastic and cutting, but I know Hem respected them as Trainers … and then that weird Pokky they had with them all the time, Feelion. In the way that Hem could almost convince the Pokkys that he was one of them, Feelion had a bunch of us convinced that he was one of us. But though Hem flirted with the Missile Kids, he eventually came to believe they were on a bad path—I mean, certainly in terms of drugs they were doing crazy things … I think even their Pokky was on amphetamines.
HEMLOCK PYNE
If people knew, truly knew what wonderful creatures these Pokkypets are … they would consider, as I do, that to capture them, to try and train them, to force them through their tri-stage transformations at an accelerated pace—that all this goes against nature. Look at little Chickapork here … just look at her. She is my hero. So sweet, so loving, so intelligent … truly a hero. And to think that people want to put her in a ball and give her performance drugs and and and just dump her out in the coliseum to battle against other Pokkys that humans—fucking humans!—have declared her enemies … it’s just sick! And it makes me so angry. Because she’s perfect. The lifestyle they live out here in the wild, it’s perfect. I have learned so much from these creatures, but it’s hardly the beginning of what we could all be learning from them. Our lives … there’s something missing from them that these Pokkys have mastered effortlessly. We need that thing. We don’t even know what we’re missing … but I’ll tell you … it’s something fucking huge. And without it, we’re so far short of perfection it’s not funny. That’s why nobody’s laughing, isn’t that right, little Chickapork?
VERNOR HERTZWIG
As his differences with reality widened into a schism, Hemlock Pyne fought reality with tooth and claw. If it did not fit his idealized view of nature, it was reality that must be bent and even broken to fit. His insistence that Pokkypets held a deeper meaning does not stand up to scrutiny. Where Hemlock looked at the colorful characters and saw inscrutable depths, I see only crisp lines, primary colors, two-dimensional expressions. Even in this Rhinophantom, which Pyne in his writings calls a juggernaut of disaster, evokes in me no such premonition. It is just a cute, cuddly pet, that has undergone completely ordinary metamorphoses into a brute that is dumb and awkward, yes, but compl
etely without malice.
HEMLOCK PYNE
…What I found in the bushes here, by the side of the river, is something new to the Pokkymaze. I would like you to study it with me. This is something we have to understand, but I’m not convinced we can. We are so good at missing the point! I discovered this earlier today, just after dawn, and I haven’t touched the scene … I’ve just been waiting for it to get light enough to record. Now, in the night there was the sound of a Pokkybattle. This is rare enough, but not unheard of in midsummer. What is unusual is that it took place far from the Arena, and quite near my tent. Just a very weird sound of two Pokkys calling back and forth to one another in solitary combat. I couldn’t hear them clearly, but you can see now that they both cast exhausting spells on one another, and, well, here they are. They show no signs of waking or getting along with their day. You can see the Porphyrops has been trampled down into the mud, and the Glumster is just lying with its eyes open, which is a strange position for an incapacitated Pokky. I don’t want to intrude in their natural cycle, but I’ve made some very gentle sounds and I’ve been getting progressively louder, trying to see if I can wake them gradually. But so far no luck. I have to say, I feel very privileged to see this. To my knowledge no Pokky Captor or Trainer has ever observed this sort of behavior. I am the first. These are the sort of secret revelations the Pokkys have granted me now that I have become such a part of their pattern of life. And these are exactly the things that I need to protect from the rest of the world.
AUGUSTUS "JUSTICE" PEACE
There were really no poachers in this area. The one exception might be the Missile Kids, Sal and Minny, and their Pokky mascot Feelion. But I don’t believe they went up there to poach anyhow. The couple times we were concerned and apprehended them, there was no sign they’d been up to any actual Pokkypoaching. What they did do, I’m pretty certain, was show up to bother Hemlock Pyne. Tease him. They made a lot out of being his rivals, you know. And I’m sure it drove him nuts.
HEMLOCK PYNE
I’m here at the shore, this is so upsetting, here at the shore watching those fuckers … those goddamn poachers … Sal and Minny. I know what they’re up to. They’re rubbing my nose in it, that’s what they’re doing. They’ve come in to poach—look at that boat full of Poachyballs! There’s just no question … they know I’m watching even though I’m well hidden here. What kills me, fucking KILLS me, is that they have the full support of the Pokky Park Service. It’s criminal. It’s so corrupt! You just … the lesson here is that you just pay off the right people and you can come in and capture all the Pokkypets you want. Well, I’m not letting them get away with it. They think they can … what’s that?
“Feeeeee-lion!”
Do you you hear that? They’ve turned their Feelion loose.
“FEEEEE-LION!”
This is just sick, it’s perverted. They’ve trained their Pokkypet to turn against its kind. This poor Feelion doesn’t realize they’re using it to lure in unsuspecting Pokkypets … to pull them in where the Missile Kids can capture them. Well, we’re not going to let them get away with that. No fucking way.
“Can you Feeeeel me, Pyne? Can you Feeeeeeeelion me?”
Did you hear that? So much for them calling me paranoid. There’s no mistaking that for … for a threat!
“Feeeeee-lion!”
The cruel thing is, I can’t even report them. Because I know they are here with the full knowledge of the Park Service. I can’t believe I get grief for coming out here to protect these poor creatures, while Minny and Sal just waltz in, pack their Poachyballs full of innocent, defenseless Pokkys…. To think the rangers would actually try to stop me from getting close to the pets, while these guys … I’m sorry, I can’t talk. This is making me too upset. I’m in tears over this!
VERNOR HERTZWIG
Pyne’s disgruntlement became so great that he finally turned against the people who had given him the opportunity to work in the Pokkymaze in the first place. His associates became, in his mind, implacable enemies. There is a sense in his final days of rage that he no longer saw anything beyond the picket of Pokkys, among whom he counted himself, except an homogenous foe.
HEMLOCK PYNE
Oh, I know who they are, all right … I know they set me up for this those … those goddamn fucking motherfuckers. You know who you are, you fucking shithead mothercockingfucksuckfuckers! I’m out here trying to help these beautiful creatures, while you’re just swimming in corruption … you don’t care a thing about preserving their environment. You people who have sworn to protect it, you’ve become the thing we have to protect it against! Motherfuck! This … it’s just not right. It’s fucked. So very, very, very, very fucked.
CRYSTAL BURL, AUGUSTUS "GUST" MASTERS, PITER YALP
We’ve come here today to honor Hem, and to pray for him to wake up real soon. We don’t understand what happened to him—what was different this time that he refuses to wake up. We were thinking that maybe if we came out here, to a place that was dear to him, we’d have some insight … we’d get a glimpse of Hem’s thinking.
This right here is his favorite camping spot, where he’d come and spend the first part of the summer at the foot of the Pokky Range before heading north into the Maze. He chose this spot because it was right between two Chickapork dens. There’s footage of him playing with the Piglettas, and then of course when one of them made its second-stage transformation into Chickapork, Hem and that Pokky bonded real hard. It’s been a year now, and those original Pokkys have gone on and become Peccanaries and Boaraxes; the ones grazing out there in the meadow, one of them might have been Hem’s own Chickapork.
I wonder if they miss him. I sure do.
VERNOR HERTZWIG
The irony of Hemlock’s last trip is not lost on anyone who looked at his life. As the days of fall grew shorter, he left the maze as he always did, with no desire to return to civilization, but knowing he could not make himself comfortable among the hibernating and overwintering Pokkys. However, an encounter with an airport Pokkypet vending machine, in which Hemlock tried to buy the freedom of every captive Pokkypet but soon ran out of quarters, sent him rebounding from the crass commercial exploitation of his beloved Pokkys, straight back into the wilderness. Returning to the maze later than ever before, he found his familiar environment had been altered by advancing chill; and his familiar Pokky friends had moved on their migratory routes, while new creatures moved into the maze to overwinter there. Creatures such as the Surlymon.
HEMLOCK PYNE
I am back, friends. I didn’t know I would be doing this, obviously, and I would not recommend it to anyone else … but frankly, I find it exhilarating. I am overjoyed to be back here. The longer I can put off dealing with the fucking human world, the happier I’ll be. And you know what? This is a part of the Pokky life cycle I have never seen. This is a learning moment! I have never been here in the winter … and though I won’t be staying for the whole season, I will certainly see more of it than any person ever has. Because no other person—Trainer, Captor, or civilian—has stayed even this long. Who knows what I’ll learn, what wonders await?
VERNOR HERTZWIG
Toward the end of the process of compiling this account, we received access to Pyne’s final recordings. Here we see him with a large grouchy Pokkypet that almost certainly is the Surlymon that finished him off. Of most interest in these studies is that this Pokky appears to have changed radically sometime between the date this footage was taken, and the time of its capture by the Pokky Rangers. Experience gained in a battle is the usual mode by which Pokkys gain sufficient energy to transform into their morpheme. And it is hard not to conclude that it was the battle with Hemlock Pyne that caused this Surlymon to undergo its third transformation. Most confusing to Pokkyologists is that while its form changed dramatically, its name and its song remained the same: Surlymon….
Here, Hemlock records the untransformed Surlymon stalking the maze in an endless search for amusement. He seems to be
searching this simple creature for a deeper meaning, but whatever it is eludes him, as it eludes us.
HEMLOCK PYNE
I don’t know what this Pokky wants. Superficially, it seems to be looking for food and interested in nothing else. But there is something the Pokkys have, something innate in them, which draws me. I feel sometimes so close to them, I almost have a name for it—one I could express to myself, but which might be impossible to communicate to others. There is something … something there.
VERNOR HERTZWIG
But here I must disagree with Hemlock Pyne. The cute cartoon features, so simplistic and round and bright, need evoke nothing beyond the simplest emotional connotations associated with their coloration. He looks for depth where none exists. The Pokkys have no secrets, and nothing to teach us. If anything, this is their entire lesson: They mean nothing, and nothing about their relationship with us is real.
DR. JASPER CHRYSOLITE
If I open this door and pull out the tray, you can see the desperate effort we have undertaken to keep Hemlock comfortable in spite of the bizarre process that seems to be having its way with him. Here you see his head, the eyes still closed in an attitude of sleep that for all intents and purposes seems permanent. Here, his hand, somewhat distressed after its short stay in Surlymon’s mouth. The torso, on which the head hardly fits at this point. Part of a leg. The other parts, all gathered from the maze, do not quite add up completely. But this still seems the sort of risk Hemlock stated repeatedly he was willing to take to be one with these creatures, to learn the lessons they carried with them. Lessons, perhaps, that may one day apply to us, as we share their natural world?
