Genesis 2.0

by Collin Piprell

  Just as I myself am.

  •

  Harry's Hat 4.01 remains securely ensconced in the Empty Volume. Still a safe home away from home and everything. A cozy little hideaway that lies exactly nowhere.

  But I've also managed to install Harry's Hat 4.02 in the Nigma. That's what gives me a foothold. Without too much jiggery‐pokery and only a modicum of fancy dancing, I've managed to shape this adjacent space, roughly speaking Harry's Hat budded off my upstairs room through the mirror, followed by the downstairs bar.

  That's not quite the way I did it, of course, but it's close enough for the purposes of our history. The main thing is this: I've established a legoitic lab inside an adventitious forcefield bubble. A place that's generally neither here nor there to the Nigma or to anything in it.

  •

  So here I sit, parked in yet one more iteration of my headquarters. The whole of Boon Doc's, upstairs and down, is now a cloayka, a quantum deke of the first water. That's Boon Doc's 4.01, at least. Boon Doc's 4.02, as I say, is another matter. A work in progress.

  The latter edition is like a halfway house, budded off at once from Harry's Hat and from the original Living End force field. It represents a key part of my plan to re‐emerge to full agency in this new world as a deevi—a fully autonomous me tethered to a legoitic downlode vehicle. Boon Doc's 4.02 is nowhere nearly as secure as its 4.01 twin, besides which it's still under construction. Nevertheless, I spend as much time as I can here. In this limbo.

  But all that's going to take some explaining. Just bear with me for now, okay?

  •

  You wouldn't believe how long it took me to get this fucking contraband writer/editor keyboard functioning again, not that the editor ever knew its ass from its elbow. Mind you nothing works the way it should, here in Boon Doc's 4.02, including me.

  Part of the problem, I'm not always entirely here. Even when most of the bits are present and accounted for, I remain badly organized. Never mind. I'm finally getting things together again. Or so I tell myself.

  The 4.01 version lies safely nowhere in the EV, where it remains tethered to my Rube Goldberg backup with my trusty avatar Muggs as caretaker. The other, similarly tethered, is less securely expressed in the actual legoite mantle, enbubbled, we could say, in the Nigma. Yet that's the one which leads to light at the end of the tunnel.

  Boon Doc's 4.02 is my escape hatch. I plan to emerge, butterfly‐wise, from this cleverly constructed chrysalis. In short, I'll transmigrate into a legoitic downlode vehicle, a "deevi." Call it an independent substrate for a spossil scendent.

  Cool. Self‐resurrected as a substantial, autonomous Brian Finister. Newly empowered, newly at large. Like Zeus in his swan suit, like Jove in possession of a bull and a plan, I'll head out on the highway looking for adventure, following my rocklike legoitic dick wherever it might lead.

  Whoo‐ee. God is dead. Long live her new and improved successor. Me, eh?

  •

  Never mind I'm still living in what is too much like Hell for my liking, the quality of my life has nevertheless improved and, as I say, light lurks at the end of the tunnel.

  All those years with nobody except myself for company. Far from ideal. Like teetering on the edge of Alzheimer's for an eternity. Big fun. Try to imagine it.

  It hasn't been easy. Though it has been a learning experience. Among other things I've discovered how important it is for me to talk to myself in this way, to conduct this nice conversation with the page. Most importantly, in fact, I'm writing for myself, independently of any potential readers somewhere down the road. We all need one frame or another to hang ourselves on. And if I don't tell the story of myself, especially under recent circumstances, then who will?

  Not that it's easy. At times my scendent mind, this cognitive can of worms that passes for a personality, resembles a fluorescent tube on the fritz, bits of Sweetie and Rabbit flickering in and out, all kinds of shit. Way back, Sky said she'd reboot a clean version of yours truly, if only I went for her carrot, something I didn't believe then and still don't.

  Fai kaphrip. That's Thai for "fluorescent tube on the fritz." This perfectly useless information comes to me for no reason and to no effect. Who am I going to speak Thai to? None of these ebeegirls. Especially not in Boon Doc's 4.02. They don't heed any language to speak of. If I yell "Bring me a whiskey" loud enough in English, one or another of them may deliver a glass, and sometimes it contains something that tastes like whiskey.

  But they're only poor sketches of the wallpaper they used to be, much less of their wet masters, which I now mourn. I admit it. Who's left to tell me I'm a young man and han'sum too mutt? Nobody, that's who. And I'm afraid to take one of them upstairs for a ride, these days, much less a bunch of the buggers. I'll also admit that. My last attempt at a rock and roll session here in Boon Doc's 4.02, some years ago, had me wallowing in a waterbed full of unruly body parts, miscellaneous orifices and other things that defied easy description, much less sportive choreography.

  Maybe it's only my imagination but recently a couple of them, especially Dinky Toy and Boom, are gaining resolution. Though they're far from ready for fun and games upstairs.

  Look over there at the cash. We've got a hand and shotglass popping up and down at the bartop, going at the tequila like a plastic bird on the rim of a highball glass. That's all we see of Big Toy these days. Aside from her voice: "You break, you pay, na?" Over and over again till I fear I'll go loony.

  Whoa! That can still catch me by surprise. One regular feature of life in Boon Doc's 4.02 over the past few years, I get this presence, a barely anthropoid blotch that half materializes here and there in the barroom space. Most often, as it did a moment ago, it pops up right there in my face. My guess? That's Son of Big Guy.

  That's far from the worst of it, though. I can't shake this idea that Mildread is amalgamating in the Nigma, still trying it on with no great success, something like Big Guy 4.02. But I believe that every time that boy Son fucks about with the backup ball, Mildread's blotches flesh themselves out a bit more. What it is, every time the Lode leaks into the Nigma, both Mildread and Sky get booster shots of data. And every dose takes them closer to a critical threshold. Effective amalgamation would not be good news. Far from it.

  •

  Meanwhile, I myself tend to morph. From moment to moment, bits of me melt off or change like something out of an old horror movie. One minute I look into the mirror behind the bar and I'm a legless scrap of a man, the next minute I'm Eddie Eight, my malls telep of old, all pumped up and ready to rock. Except there's no one to rock with. The story of my sex life over the past twenty‐seven years or so.

  Here's a thought that doesn't bear thinking about. What if my personality has been changing just as much as my appearance—how would I know? I wouldn't, is the short answer.

  Speaking of spooky shit I'd rather not speak of, from time to time I note a tendency to fold in upon myself. I get this distinct sensation of turning inside out. Like a flashback to Sky's interrogation all those years ago. A scary thought: Is our favorite MOM personality firming up again? Is she gaining a sufficient amalgamic foothold that she's once again able to fuck with me in this way?

  One thing for sure, at the same time some of the ebeegirl‐things are holding steadier, stabilizing as nicely predictable wallpaper, the Sky thing may be growing more articulate. What I take to be MOM's sexiest alter is trying, in a sporadic and totally ditzy manner to contact me through a variety of objects, notably that collection of knick‐knacks on that shrine over there on the wall.

  "…Careful!"

  See? As though on cue, the Mini Cooper is talking to me. Over there on the shelf, behind the Mekhong whiskey flask with a severely desiccated rose in it. Just between the goddess figure and a tarnished lipstick. "Watch." This tiny Matchbox classic sounds as anxious as a toy car can sound.

  "Be careful of what?" I say.

  "…ickels."

  "Wooden nickels?"

  "No! The dark." />
  "What dark? Do you mean dork?"

  "Darkness approaches. Yes."

  I don't already have enough to freak me fucking out? Now I'm supposed to be afraid of the dark.

  What I like about that Mini Cooper, it has a clock built into it the ticking of which torments Rabbit.

  Whatever. Sky and I need to be allies, now. Forget the past. Let bygones be bygones, the two of us need every ally we can muster.

  In fact, I find myself often sitting here in negotiations with both this oracular Sky and an inchoate Cisco amalgam. Helping bring them into fuller being is part of my plan to restore my own self to red‐blooded semi‐godhood.

  •

  So yes, I'm still living in Hell. But things are looking up.

  For one thing our wild geese turned out to be homing pigeons, and that's good. I'm amazed at Son and Dee Zu's persistence. And pleased. What's the point of playing God if there's nobody around to fear and worship you? Not much point at all. Lo, and verily. Forfuckingsooth, eh?

  Of course it's inconvenient that they're free to ramble around up there on surface while I remain trapped in here. But we need each other, and I'm taking measures. Eventually we'll join forces.

  Mind you we also have the small matter of their propensity for fucking around with the backup ball. That's proving problematic.

  I also need Cisco's help, which presents a different kettle of fish. At the moment he isn't much more than spotty amalgams of spossil data scattered throughout the Nigma. Though moves are afoot to give him real substance.

  First we have to establish the necessary channels of communication, separate ones for Cisco and for Son and Dee Zu.

  Then there's Eva, our prodigal. She has helped me negotiate a version of Muggs, who may now in turn help with efforts to negotiate a real deevi me. Eva's adventures have also inspired Dee Zu to go some way toward resurrecting our boy Cisco, which further inspires me to think we can do the same with yours truly, only better.

  And I'm thinking of giving my Despatches from Hell a more upbeat title. How about The Book of Geneses? Never mind my editor wants to call that a typo.

  •

  What's that you say? You think things are getting complicated. Well, so they are. That's life, my friend. It's what happens when everybody's making plans.

  It's like the genre novelists of yore, their neat plots all worked out in advance. Great for beach reading. With the real literary shit, on the other hand, the writers had no idea where things were going. They set out on voyages of discovery to see where characters and narrative took them. That approach didn't always work, mind you. So it was lots scarier than following a beaten path. It could lead you into a dead end with no energy left to write your way back out, or deep into a great story with no conclusion.

  When it did work, though, you got a yarn full of twists and turns that surprised the shit out of everybody, even the author. Lots tougher on the writer, and sometimes harder work for the reader, but closer to the way life itself unfolds. More rewarding, if you stayed the course, and if you weren't just after something to keep the sun out of your eyes on a beach holiday.

  In fact you can stand back, because I'm about to launch an epigram: Shaggy stories are the structure of life.

  Rube Goldberg as God.

  •

  So it's time we get on with the rest of it. This story is to be continued.

  Hear ye, hear ye, dear reader, whoever you might be. Here I stand, newly imbued with a sense of purpose. A real man with a mission. Part of a potential human renaissance.

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