by Wayne Hill
The movie continues.
In the Nirmana’s home universe, Tommy Salem is different to the anarchic and strong-minded individual that becomes Splinter Salem: the piratical scourge of the dark seas of space. Their Tommy Salem took full advantage of the opportunities that his father, mother and USA offered him. He was successful in his application to join the USA and, at the tender age of 14, became their youngest ever recruit.
Splinter watches with growing disgust. His alternate self is happily socialising and picking up awards amidst the elite of the USA. Looking like someone has lit a bonfire in a steam room, Splinter sits gushing steam, chugging beer and literally belching in protest at the visions on the screen.
“Fuuuuck! When will this fucking end? Exactly how much more of this Bucky-sludge shit do I need to watch?”
Immune to his imprecations, the movie continues.
Like with every bad movie he had ever had the misfortune of seeing, Splinter feels as if he is dying inside. Luckily, he is dying. But not watching, and thus missing the point of this most terrible bag of bollocks, would have been an egregious waste of his remaining time. The movie now changes to show filmed footage of the many domes and space stations that Splinter and his highly unorthodox and (mildly) elite band had broken into and robbed. No doubt this was an attempt to shame him with his nefarious deeds.
“Now we’re fucking talking!” shouts the steam cloud that is Splinter Salem. “Finally! Now this — this — is interesting!”
The walls projected pictures of all the people that he had robbed in this universe, whose possessions he has stolen, traded, then traded those traded goods. People whose expensive booze he had pilfered, whose clothes he had worn, whose pillows he had taken a shit on. (The latter was pretty much the Splinter Salem calling card — wherever you found a dome robbed and ransacked, wherever there was a still-steaming turd curled up where you usually laid your head at night, there Splinter Salem had been!) On the walls of the command centre, multiple Splinter Salems were running away from raided domes dressed in the outlandish garb he had purloined from the wardrobes of his victims.
I remember that flowery dress! Splinter thinks with a smile. Lovely little number. Great hemline.
The movie continues.
The images of him from the Nirmana’s home universe are back. Splinter looks at a clean cut — not even any dreadlocks! — version of himself who is the dominant star in the USA constellation. Horrific! thinks Splinter shaking his steaming head. If anyone in this universe sees this, my fucking reputation is Bucky-sludge! Who could respect this goody two-shoes? Fucking horrific!
As these images stream, Splinter gradually notices that the scientific research this annoying version of himself is toying with are mostly preliminary sketches of an idea that he has already finished. Even in his dying and inebriated state, he immediately understands what this terrible version of him is doing — or, at least, attempting to do. He understands what the Nirmana want from him. The Eternal Power Clamp. Splinter had created the EPC in his adolescence — at least, in this universe. It becomes more and more evident that the Nirmana’s version of Tommy Salem had never realised his EPC idea.
The movie continues.
His alternate life plays out on the walls. He watches himself, at the age of 35 marrying Sherindria Devlin. Her face looks extremely familiar, but his memory is blocked by years of alcohol abuse and memory suppression. He sees himself not just as a young Turk — a rising star in the USA — but also a revered, and venerable, elder statesman of academia. He sees USA schools dedicated to the teachings of Tommy Salem — the founder of Nirmanan method of time travel. He sees the death of his other self. He watches Tommy Salem’s large family and innumerable friends grieving at his funeral. This Tommy Salem inspires generations of great minds. Splinter watches the steady technological advancements in this field of thought flash on the command room’s walls. Splinter wafts steam away from his eyes and they hungrily dart from equation to equation, devouring them. He sees one great scientific mind after another toying with the EPC idea — Splinter’s simple, to his mind, solution to the problem of power generation — and failing, one expensive mistake after another.
Splinter now knows the Nirmana are not aliens. They are humans from a parallel universe whose evolution leads them to travel through time and space. The Nirmana used technology that was directly inspired by an alternate version of Splinter Salem.
The movie continues.
Now he sees the Nirmana. They have become piratical themselves, in a way. They use their futuristic knowledge to travel through the multiverse, raiding multiple Earths in search of something precious. The motivation of the Nirmana was — unlike his physical self, which was starting to resemble a gaseous version of Lot’s wife — demisting to Splinter. The Nirmana confessed to finding the ancient teachings of Buddha a key catalyst to finding — in physical reality — Nirvana. The Nirmana show images of Buddha walking halfway across India, helping others and spreading his views on how the Hindu people could escape their awful fate of reincarnation by experiencing every pain in one lifetime; then, and only then, could Nirvana be found. The Nirmana regarded every reality as a new step in their learning, a rung in the ladder to enlightenment. The Nirmana had bastardised Buddhism into an obscene space quest, where Nirvana can be reached by breaking free of the never-ending reincarnations of universes. They had become time-travelling, Buddhist scavengers — lost in delusions of grandeur, drunk on power and mad with a twisted religion. Keen to ‘better’ themselves for their final journey, the Nirmana had been ruthless in their choice of individuals that could go on this endless quest. It appears to Splinter that the entire Nirmanan craft was full to the brim of dim-witted USA space-turds.
Levy will fit in perfectly with these egocentric, bureaucratic assholes, Splinter muses chugging a warm beer — his body temperature is now so high that the beers did not remain ice-cold for long.
The main problem for the Nirmana was that each time they created a reality portal it took a huge amount of power. This power consumption took large amounts of time for the Nirmana’s ship to replace. During this down time, the crew choose to go into suspended animation for around two hundred years. Hence, they sought Splinter’s EPC. Using the EPC they can punch through all the universes in one go, turning their infinite ladder to Nirvana into a rocket-propelled elevator.
The movie ends.
“Well, thank fuck for that!” explodes Splinter, finishing another warm beer and tossing the empty bottle over his shoulder. “That pile of space shite ain’t winning any Oscars, boys, I can tell you that much!”
His Lala starts to blare and his body judders with an electric shock reminder. After the shockingly bad story of the Nirmana, the Lala alarm is a welcome experience. It reminds Splinter that he will soon be dead. Good, he thinks. Death might stop those visions of me as a sell-out USA stooge who traded fight and legacy for fucking ass-kissing and awards. I could have been that person. The person that had inspired generations of scientists — good! — and eventually given rise to the time-travelling Nirmana — bad! Very bad! I could have spawned those Bucky-brained babies who holiday through spacetime bumming information off people like test-cheats. Bloated, jumped up, posh fucking space hippies!
In a burst of recollection, Splinter’s frying brain remembers Levy saying the Nirmana destroy every universe they leave. Dying, in a cloud of steam as hot as any sauna, he says —
“No, they must die — they must die.”
5
A wise man once observed that peace could be defined as the period used to prepare for the next war. War and action always generate great technological innovations, whereas the greatest contribution to the world that peace and neutrality has provided is the cuckoo clock. Bearing this in mind, benign moments could be considered the brutal beast that buggers creativity. Splinter certainly thinks so, he thrives on turning points, activities, the strange and the absurd. Many people wilt in moments of adversity, when all hope has been stolen by the toothless drunk
of Life — who has not only stolen your shoes but taken a piss on you whilst you were sleeping. Splinter comes alive when crises occur — his only genuine crisis is a lack of crises.
He often ponders about his thought processes, with no egocentric feelings attached to his musing. It had always been this way, ever since childhood. Perhaps it was the result of the tampering of others, or maybe it was due to a long-forgotten childhood illness. Who knows? Regardless, Splinter started to learn things — odd things — not even facts he found interesting. The information he gathered, which at first glance appears banal, becomes beautiful to him when it is fused with other random musings. He found that, through this natural (for him) mental augmentation process, he made the trivial serve to express the sublime.
His obsessive personality leads Splinter to study an array of fantastical things. His thoughts appear erratic to most, often moving sideways rather than forwards to reach a conclusion. He had escaped the mainstream of education which had swept so many great thinkers away in a barren tide of conformity. Splinter scuttles along the bottom of his self-made, stormy, knowledge-filled ocean. He moves from one island of ideas to another, without detection — until now, that is. Splinter’s natural mental camouflage is his unnatural thought processes combined with his radical behaviour. These are largely because of two directly correlated factors: his affliction with the Dionysus virus and his chronic dipsomania. His erratic mentality spurs him to do the most audacious and elaborate raids. Splinter’s unpredictability sets him apart from any other space pirate, admiral or commander in all the known realities of the multiverse in the year 12,016 AD.
His raids on the Dome communities often results in similar dramatic (and often comedic) scenes. Confused witnesses often respond with a series of inquiries: firstly ‘What’s that smell?’ progressing to the existential ‘What’s happening?’ and, finally, concluding with a query which raises a point the underlying unfairness of reality: ‘Where’s that stinky harlequin going with all my stuff?’
Splinter observes nature and sees patterns. He watches people and perceives order and structure; he views maps and sees plans slowly coalescing. The oddest things can trigger in him a burst of creativity: a squirrel stealing a jackdaw’s eggs; a drunk vomiting on a table full of people eating; frost patterns growing on icy windowpanes or witnessing the aurora borealis from space. All were equal in their quotidian nature but mesmerising in their ability to inspire. Splinter must battle his ego in moments like these — although were there a personal god observing this universe, Splinter is certain that during his lightbulb moments the watching god would surely quip ‘fuck, that’s clever!’
Splinter knows that he is not being observed by a god, or gods. He is, however, being stalked by space toffs; morons from another dimension who plan to steal from a dangerous, drunken space pirate. To Splinter, the Nirmanan religion is the Chinese whisper of intelligence — fading in relevance as it passes from generation to generation. Splinter did have one thing in common with the Nirmana: he too is a pillager. He kills those who threaten him, takes what he wants and never looks back. However, that is where the similarities end — Splinter never dresses up his crimes with grandiose pretence, as religious people must. Religions are antithetical to science. And science is Splinter’s reality. He believes that when you die you are dead, and nothing exists of you after that. Following the death of Marie-Ann he had decided that nothing matters — besides, no one would give a fuck in one hundred years, anyway.
Splinter is happy with this. He understands nothingness. He understands loss and the feeling of emptiness — they hold a certain comfort for him. The Nirmana had turned his viewpoints on their head and made him devise an alternative plan, one that he had mostly come up with while Levy was stumbling towards him with a table leg lodged in his head. The Nirmana flew through stars, sideways through time and space. Unlike the Nirmana, Splinter thought as a crab moves and snips out and ingests whatever information is relevant for the task at hand. But he does this with a speed and a subtlety, which borders on obliqueness, that is unsurpassed.
Only in times when Splinter Salem is cornered does his vast knowledge and cunning come into play. He becomes a different creature altogether; he switches into what he refers to as his attack mode.
The Nirmana, for all their advanced technology, had made the same mistake that everyone does when dealing with Splinter Salem: they had underestimated him. Like a naïve child who finds a brightly striped insect staggering around a summer orchard and brings it close to their ear to hear the unusual noise it is making, the Nirmana are now holding a dying wasp next to their collective ear....
6
In the Nirmanan spacecraft, a vast ship with illuminated orbs containing cities, the Nirmana float. Bio-luminescent technology makes the entire craft more alien, the ship is alive with light. To one side of the comparably small Golden Falcon, the bright laser beam continues to connect the bow of the Nirmana’s colossal craft to the centre of the Sun, the violet portal growing.
The leader of the Nirmana again speaks to Splinter, his voice now sounding like many were talking all at once, a hive of voices.
“We need what you have. You need what we have. We can take you to a reality where Marie-Ann O’Shea is no longer dead. She still sings in infinite worlds and we could replace an alternate Tommy with you. You would be young again, with her and virus free. You can spend a full life together, have a family together. We offer you love, life and children. In short, we offer you a future.”
Splinter’s eyes widen as the Nirmana show Splinter the life he could have. The walls flash images, still at first and then moving, as the wall’s NTB meshes with his brainwaves. His mind is shown an alternate reality. Images of his children growing older and experiencing a myriad of experiences. Then Splinter sees his grandchildren. Glugging Oban, watching through tear-filled eyes, he watches his grandchildren play with his children. His grand children grow; he watches them live.
“Now look ahead of you at your star,” comes the hive voice.
The wall of the control room directly in front of Splinter changes and he can now see the purple laser beam bombarding the star, darting into the ever-widening vortex which the Nirmana use to navigate the multiverse. Splinter’s metal arm came up again, puncturing the cocoon of steam surrounding Splinter, to cool the throbbing veins of his rapidly dehydrating head. He turns the ring on his mechanical arm to the scribbled word PICASSHOLE. Ice flies out of his arm, and he fumbles to catch it. Immediately, he bows his head onto the ice, trying to cool this awful heat that was eating him up, burning him away.
“All you have ever dreamt about, for all these years, is ahead of you, Splinter. Abandon your pain and your death. Accept our offer and live. Live in happiness. Live the life that we have shown you.”
The steam flume emerging from Splinter’s blast boots strengthened and Splinter screamed as, inside his left boot, he felt his little toe detach.
“You should now be in the final stages of our virus. We leave our mark on universes. To monitor the effects on the human condition. It holds so many fascinating possibilities.”
The implications of this boomed like a death knell in Splinter’s feverish brain.
“You killed Marie-Ann?” Splinter — his skin like a hotplate — says coldly.
“Do you know what we have found out during our experiments with this viral form of culling?”
“I couldn’t care less, you evil bastards,” Splinter mutters through gritted teeth. His mind is foggy, his body disintegrating around him.
“Well, we will tell you, anyway ... Nothing. We uncovered no marvels of the soul. We saw no righteous saviours doing miraculous works. Nothing. Nothing but tears and hugs from mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, all clinging to hope — a universe of humanity lost in pointless emotion.
“Then we move on to the next universe, the next inadequate group of wasted human lives. And this is all that we find. Until we consider you. You are an anomaly. An enigma that we wish to
decode.
“We have travelled the multiverse for an eternity — many eternities — spreading our enlightened lessons to the masses, laying foundations of pain so that all can journey to find the glorious peace that awaits in Nirvana. And here we find you, in all your celebrated genius, using your EPC device, the final piece in our religious puzzle, to create ice cubes for your distilled or fermented beverages. You do not deserve such power. It is wasted on you, Tommy Salem.”
“Fascinating. You really do believe in your own fucked-up version of Buddhism, don’t you?”
“We take Buddha to be one of the most intelligent of all humans. His path through suffering to promote learning is masterful.”
Splinter screams again as his little finger steams vigorously and then shoots off like a bullet, striking the far wall. Pain wracks Splinter’s body.
“Fucking shit! Shit! Shiiiiit!” Splinter cradles his damaged hand between his legs for a while, biting down hard on his lower lip, drawing blood.
“We know your pain, Splinter. It’s awful to watch as your body burns and falls apart, as your energy transforms to —”
“Yeah, yeah,” says Splinter, cutting off the Nirmanan leader’s fake sympathy. Splinter flexes his remaining fingers. There was no blood coming from the stump, his moisture levels were insufficient. The flesh of the stump was an ash grey colour. He moves quickly, attaching cables to his arm before responding to the Nirmanan leader.
“Okay. So, the Buddhist thing on suffering. Good, good. I like how you have carved out a space-travelling religion by twisting all that Buddha believed into some elaborate bastardisation of the truth.” Stalling for time, Splinter briefly flinches as a burning pain begins to crawl up his legs. Time is against me, he thinks. What’s fucking new? Wincing, he leans over and shuffles through some cables and flicks down a push-button panel on his mech-arm.
