Everything.
Chaos.
A scribble on a piece of paper.
A riot of colour as a prelude to anything but this.
Suddenly a diagonal strip of blue sky painted on an artex ceiling drifts past. This narrow line of blue and white float away in the distance like some ethereal spirit.
Suddenly a wider strip of painted sky rushes by. This provides a glimpse of a whole room.
A couple of minutes pass in time.
Suddenly two strips of the physical plane glide by and show a brief relief of a Nicaraguan painting depicting a naked couple sitting in a garden of paradise.
Since two strips revealing two sections of the same painting fly by in tandem it is then evident that these travelling glimpses of depth are not layered over the riot of colour but exist behind it.
Their true nature as long, thin cracks in an otherwise random, colourful blanket of chaos then manifests itself.
Bobby sat up suddenly and considered the hallucination he’d just had. He hadn’t expected it but sometimes this kind of shock can unlock the most vivid interfaces between the physical and the metaphysical. Seven hours after he’d dropped a low-grade tab of LSD he’d had a sudden and inescapably real visitation from a dragon.
Bobby had been lying on a bed with Shiva in Gorman Road in Woolwich in Saaaarrrff Eeeeeaaast Lundun. It had been 4:30 a.m. on the 3rd of March 2001 when the hallucination had swept into his consciousness. It had lasted 23 seconds.
At exactly 4:30 a.m. on the 3rd of March 2001 he’d realised that the figure in the corner of his eye was a giant fifty-foot fire breathing dragon. It was pointing at the clouds that Bobby was looking at. The clouds that Shiva had painted on the ceiling of their bedroom had become animated when Bobby had been staring at them a few seconds earlier. Now he felt that he was in another dimension and out of doors and that was when the dragon had turned up.
It flew off ahead of Bobby and then spun around in mid-air and hovered some distance away but near enough for Bobby to see the expressions on the dragon’s face.
“Who are you?” asked Bobby.
The dragon just grinned at him.
“Who are you?” asked Bobby again.
The dragon just grinned at him.
“Who are you?” asked Bobby.
The dragon just grinned at him.
“Who are you?” asked Bobby again.
The dragon then grew immense as it shoved its face right up to Bobby’s and roared “WHO ARE YOU?”
“Well I’m Bobby Re....” he suddenly stopped and grinned at the dragon.
“Yes?” said the dragon.
“C’mon you know who I am.” said Bobby.
“Bobby Rewind!” said the dragon who then laughed as he retreated to the distance he had created between them when he first faced Bobby.
Before Bobby could continue with his question again the dragon thrust a massive fist in front of Bobby’s face.
“There’s someone who wants to complain about your literature Bobby.”
“Who?” asked Bobby.
“Him.” said the dragon as he opened his fist and revealed a small robotic creature that sat in the palm of the dragon’s hand.
“Hello.” said Bobby.
The robotic entity was a metal sphere that unfolded a cybernetic wing and then closed it again. It then grew a steel rod that instantly bloomed like a flower into an ornate metal umbrella. It then withdrew the umbrella and a panel slid shut. Another panel opened and out of the resulting orifice shot a propeller and its shaft that instantly started turning at great speed. All these actions were accompanied by clicking and whirring noises that resembled some form of speech with its own cybernetic dialect. Since Bobby couldn’t understand any words he waved at the creature. It then produced two round holes along its top surface. Two steel balls popped up and with the retraction of metal lids on both orbs two eyeballs made of some milky coloured alloy with black glistening pupils were revealed. The creature blinked at Bobby.
“All your literature has included organic and inorganic beings so far. It doesn’t seem to have included artificial consciousness as of yet.” said the dragon.
“You’re right. I’ll amend that as soon as possible.” said Bobby.
“Good.” said the dragon once more breaking into a grin.
“This is a fantastic life-form.” said Bobby.
“Humans are not the only robot builders.” said the dragon.
“No I suppose they’re not.”
The metal creature made trilling and purring sounds which gave Bobby the impression it was content with this exchange of information. It withdrew its eyes and propeller and sat in the dragon’s palm as a solid sphere once again.
The dragon closed its palm and withdrew its fist. It then held its other fist up to Bobby’s face. It unfolded its fingers and claws to reveal a metal, octagonal box.
“Open one of the slats on one of the sides of this box. It’s alright, you’re allowed.”
Bobby slid one of the slats back and looked inside the box. Within was a massive sprawling citadel surrounded by mountains and a sky dotted with giant white clouds.
“Jeeeesus!” said Bobby.
“Seems as though they have their population problems sorted eh?” said the dragon.
“Wow!” said Bobby.
“This box is virtually indestructible and can exist in the vacuum of space. I’d say this civilisation had their impact on natural environments largely dealt with wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.” said Bobby.
The dragon closed the slat and closed its fist and withdrew its hand. The dragon’s grin had become even more extreme. Around the dragon was this riot of changing colours and chaotic fractal images all weaving around one another like animated interlocking pieces in some gigantic cosmic jigsaw puzzle.
There was a flash.
Bobby was suddenly sitting at a wooden table opposite a well-dressed man who looked somehow Victorian. He was sure he’d seen the well dressed man somewhere before. He suddenly realised he was sitting in front of a well-dressed dragon.
It grinned and looked reassuringly at Bobby. It was the same dragon that had spoken to Bobby just now. Bobby realised the dragon was playing tricks on him and laughed. The dragon laughed too.
The dragon kept changing colour and seemed to have a silver sheen to its scales that at one instant looked metallic and in another looked like some heavy form of liquid. Bobby couldn’t be sure whether the substance of the dragon seemed this viscous as a result of the acid he’d had or whether this was the true extent of the dragon’s form. He laughed inside at the sudden realisation that all of this had been somehow triggered by LSD.
Suddenly the dragon disappeared.
A face then appeared in a darkness that replaced the swirling colours.
Bobby recognised it as Baphomet.
He floated cross-legged in front of Bobby. He was about six-foot tall in the seated position. Baphomet was a fearsome androgyny with a woman’s breast and an erect phallus. Baphomet was the goat-headed and horned devil of many a Christian nightmare. Yet he was a god of magick and initiation, concealing a smile within the horror that many Earthly religious orthodoxy’s had invested in him.
He was analysing Bobby.
Bobby was comfortable with this. Bobby remembered that he had included Baphomet as a benign character in some writing he’d been doing recently.
Suddenly a huge eye replaced Baphomet. It was as if something was looking at Bobby from a distance of one millimetre. Bobby pulled back a couple of inches and recognised the eye as that of a lion’s. He was momentarily confused but then realised who the eye belonged to.
It was the goddess Sekhmet. He’d written about her recently too. Sekhmet was the goddess of vengeance, battle and punishment. Sekhmet who was the goddess of female sexual heat. She lifted her head up and stood upright before Bobby. She towered above him as her naked human body rose fifty feet in the air.
The air, itself, was filled with crackling spears of light that seemed to be emanating from a tubular staff in her right hand. She held an Ankh in her left hand and her only adornments comprised of two golden necklaces. On top of her shoulders was her giant lioness head with a long golden mane hanging down her back. Around her head was an orbiting sun that was a little larger than her head itself. Coiling around the sun was a serpent that changed colour continuously but never losing the definition of its scales.
She was analysing Bobby.
Suddenly she disappeared and the riot of colour returned. A dot appeared in the centre of Bobby’s vision. It grew as it hurtled towards Bobby. It formed the shape of the dragon who raced right up to Bobby’s face and looked him straight in the eyes.
“You’re merely writing it Bobby but we’re actually living it!” said the dragon as it withdrew to the distance it had been when it first turned to face Bobby before the robot encounter, the miniature citadel and the visitations by Baphomet and Sekhmet.
“You can look at it the other way around of course,” continued the dragon, “it may be us that are merely writing it and you who is actually living it!” It then flew off chuckling. Before it diminished in size to a speck in the distance it turned to Bobby and winked.
Then chaos.
A scribble on a piece of paper.
A riot of colour as a prelude to anything but this.
Suddenly a diagonal strip of blue sky painted on an artex ceiling drifts past. This narrow line of blue and white float away in the distance like some ethereal spirit.
Suddenly a wider strip of painted sky rushes by. This provides a glimpse of a whole room.
A couple of minutes pass in time.
Suddenly two strips of the physical plane glide by and show a brief relief of a Nicaraguan painting depicting a naked couple sitting in a garden of paradise.
Since two strips revealing two sections of the same painting fly by in tandem it is then evident that these travelling glimpses of depth are not layered over the riot of colour but exist behind it.
Their true nature as long, thin cracks in an otherwise random, colourful blanket of chaos then manifests itself.
Bobby sat up suddenly and considered the hallucination he’d just had. It had only taken 23 seconds but seemed more like a quarter of an hour or so. He then had a flash-forward.
It was Monday 26th March 2001 and a mass grave for cows, sheep and pigs had been dug in Cumbria. It was one of many spreading up and down the country. Thousands of animals were to be slaughtered, disinfected and burnt by the army. Bobby wasn’t sure whether foot and mouth was indeed fatal for these animals. It hadn’t been discussed on the news. Bobby was pretty sure the murder of so many animals (some of which did not even have foot and mouth disease) was largely an economic decision on behalf of the meat industry and the government. It had been Shiva that had first suggested this to Bobby.
Government and meat industry claims that mass destruction was the only solution to the disease spreading were instant and fuelled by media hysteria. It was true that the epidemic had spread fast but for such a virulent strain to appear and spread so suddenly it begged loads of questions in Bobby’s mind. Who started it and was it an accident? Why wasn’t full-scale inoculation automatic after the out-break in 1967? Some thanks these animals got for their continual service in the interests of the carnivore’s dinner plate. It served as an irony that it was the move towards greater levels of large scale industrial farming that had led to a general decline in health and safety standards and a decline in animal welfare. The meat industry had shot itself in the foot in its attempts to meet the demands that a corporate, super-market society had made on it. Bobby was appalled that more people weren’t vegetarians by now and the subsequent lack of growth in organic farming techniques certainly contributed to the present agricultural crisis. Organic farms were increasing but not quickly enough. Big business was still trying to block environmental awareness.
Outbreaks of new variant C.J.D. (mad cow disease) as a result of feeding livestock the mashed-up remains of pig’s brains had already depressed the market in beef. Many humans and cows had died of the disease so far and the governmental ministers responsible for covering it up at the time when it first spread had still not been brought to task. Previous Tory ministers were now responsible for death and economic disaster yet they were still free to enjoy the money they had made from it all. Now New Labour were following suit. It seemed strangely coincidental that the subsequent revival of foot and mouth disease in pigs, horses, cows and sheep had suddenly reared its ugly head. Especially in the light of the fact that the meat industry was going to the wall anyway.
Gentlemen farmers were doing what the upper classes had always done in an economic crisis. They were destroying their stock, claiming bankruptcy and disappearing with all the money. It was the same pattern with the manufacturing industry and the closure of factories. If you’re an owner of the means of production and the market slides (even if it’s as a result of your very own cost-cutting schemes and desire for greater profit for the few) you close up, disappear and leave whole communities destitute. Workers seemed to get little more thanks for years of generating profits for the wealthy than the livestock who were being slaughtered.
It all seemed to be the results of a hierarchy from rich humans down to poor humans and then down further to the treatment of other species. All were ultimately exploited by those humans on the top of the pile and even there you would find the super-rich exploiting each other. In fact you were less likely to find anything other than competition and exploitation of one form or another if you mixed with the scum on the top of the shit heap. Bobby was safe in his belief that many of those under the shit heap could at least find the odd social oasis where you could be one among equals and truly find outlets for self-expression. If you constantly have to impress a boss then you have to hide large areas of imaginative thought in order to appear in the form that the boss expects. Fuck that shit!
Nearly every part of rural Britain was now concerned with out-breaks of foot and mouth and Ireland and countries in Europe were showing the first signs of it too. Little had been said about the need to vaccinate on the news. Slaughter and mass-murder were touted as the only things to be done. Bad enough that many of these animals had been kept in cramped conditions for much of their short lives but now to cap that there were mass graves and funeral pyres being constructed all over this green and pleasant land. It seemed another example of capitalist economics running roughshod over the poetry of nature. It had been bad enough that this country had witnessed an insane amount of defoliation over the last thousand years. It had been enough of an aesthetic and environmental outrage that nearly every bit of countryside had been formed into grids with land enclosures that had dispossessed thousands of peasants and destroyed loads of natural habitats. It was surely unwise to turn a countryside where a squirrel could once have gone from London to Brighton from tree to tree without touching the ground to a land of sprawling, uniform suburbs that lacked character and community. Greed had fuelled over-deforestation and this had, in turn, led to a human population explosion which, in turn, supplied the wealthy with more labour in order to tear the countryside up. By March 2001 there were so few trees to soak up the water that Britain now had a series of flood plains that threatened wild-life and the security of many recently built houses. Fewer trees world-wide and global warming as a result of human pollution had fuelled the rains and flooding that were now wreaking havoc in all four corners of the globe. Ireland, Britain and Europe were not least among them and many were counting the cost of our capitalist system.
The foot and mouth epidemic was now another layer on the bitter cake called media hysteria. We were now a society of the spectacle and this attitude of morbid voyeurism seemed nowhere more prominent than when it turned its hungry eye towards environmental crises. The T.V. and the press never failed in their attempts to cause greater levels of panic in order to sell papers or media airtime. It wouldn’t have been that bad if they had had the knack of waking up the populace to certain areas of collective responsibility but they seemed to do the opposite. Sensationalism seemed to be pushing big business and government into short-term ideas that were as insensitive and as badly thought out as the kind of doctrinal stupidity you’d have expected from the likes of the Third Reich in Germany, the McCarthy witch-hunt in America or Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.
With a right-wing extremist as president of America (the same thing as saying another insane, ignorant Caesar is on the throne of the Roman empire) and loads of pagan environmentalists getting involved in ways to bring that empire crashing once again to the ground; 2001 looked to be a frisky year. George W. Bush had gained access to the White House through corruption and the mess that surrounded his acquisition of that poison chalice called presidency looked like it could very well be mirrored in the British elections in the summer. The continued bombing of Iraq by British and American planes perpetuated the Orwellian war with “Eastasia” and Britain had most certainly earned its status as “Airstrip One”. So very little had improved since New Labour had taken control. Even New Labour’s commitment to abolish fox hunting was being swept aside by the unelected House of Lords. It made you wonder just how much clout Labour party members actually had. It felt that the same people were still in power from before the 1997 election. Any advances that had been made had been made through the struggle of workers and the unemployed. Politicians and the heads of industry were still trying to squeeze lower income groups and the environment in order to swell their bloated financial reserves.
American cultural imperialism dominated British media and most of the young, poor, white trash in London were wearing baseball caps. America was responsible for most of the poisonous emissions that were causing global warming and it once again seemed to be a race against time in order to prevent genocide. How ironic that the largely Christian power base in America seemed to be inadvertently spearheading a path towards flooding on a potentially biblical level.
Bobby was finding it hard to watch the news. The egos that T.V. presenters splashed across the screen made their ignorance of the subjects they were reporting on even more obvious. Half an hour after the culling of livestock in Cumbria began Bobby turned the T.V. off in Gorman Road.
Tuesday 27th March 2001. The midday news seemed to have established pigswill as a possible root cause of the foot and mouth epidemic. They suggested on the main commercial channel that the pigswill had been contaminated by leftovers from an Oriental restaurant. They did admit that it was only a possibility but the intensity with which John Sooshey, the presenter, seemed to blame the restaurant had all the underpinnings of a xenophobic technique with which to distract the viewer from the obvious fact that British hygiene standards were lacking. It was bloody typical of the right-wing media to try and blame foreign cultures. A classic line had already come from John Sooshey’s lips a week or so before. He had said (or his prompt sheet had told him to say) that the infection must have come from something imported from another country because viruses like this don’t just come from thin air. Well where did they come from once established in one of these so-called foreign countries? The logic of his argument had made Bobby spit his tea everywhere with laughter. He had turned to Shiva and bellowed.....
“IF IT HAD TO COME FROM SOME COUNTRY BECAUSE IT DIDN’T COME FROM THIN AIR WHY COULDN’T IT BE THIS ONE!? WHY DOES HE HAVE TO SUGGEST THAT BRITAIN IS SOMEHOW BLAMELESS? WHAT A CUNT! IT’S QUITE OBVIOUS THAT THE OLDEST INDUSTRIAL NATION (NAMELY BRITAIN) MAY WELL CAUSE SOME OF THE WORST FALL-OUT FROM INDUSTRIAL NEGLECT! OUR BUSINESSES ARE RESPONSIBLE! IT’S FUCKING OBVIOUS!””
“Alright calm down.” said Shiva.
Bobby did.
“Anyway,” he continued.... “If conditions are worse in some other countries British business has usually had a hand in that too.”
It was Tuesday 27th March 2001. Last night the House of Lords voted in favour of blocking the will of Parliament and thus prevented the ban on fox hunting. The fact that the establishment had such a down on other species in their recreational lives seemed to mirror their attitude towards cows, sheep and pigs as merely “live-stock”.
Bobby Rewind’s flash-forward ended and he was back on the bed in Gorman road on the 3rd March 2001. Glimpses of the vortex had appeared in these second by second switches in time and Bobby was almost getting used to knowing something, then not knowing it, then knowing it again.
Shiva was asleep.
The ghost of Bobby’s dead mate Barry Powell visited him.
Barry had been one of Bobby’s best friends at secondary school. They had been particularly close between the ages of 11 and 18. Barry had taken an overdose of pills and died when he was just 25 years old. He had been doing microbiological research just before he committed suicide and Bobby and a few of his mates often wondered if certain projects Barry had been working on had had any part to play in his death. He had certainly not left a note as far as anybody knew.
Apart from scientific research he had also composed music and had written short stories and comic scripts. Bobby and Barry had been a formative influence on one another.
Barry descended through the ceiling as if submerging under water. His whole form was billowing as if distorted by spinning eddies and twirling ripples of liquid. He was wearing a pothole harness and lowered himself to the bedroom floor on the end of a rope that seemed to be connected to some invisible pulley on the other side of the ceiling. He absailed down the wall facing the bed and his feet did not seem to even touch the African batik painting of a tree that hung in his path.
Barry eventually stood at the end of Bobby and Shiva’s bed and turned to face Bobby. Shiva remained asleep.
Barry remained connected to the harness and rope throughout the whole conversation that followed. Although he was translucent, as you would expect from a ghost, Bobby could still make out his tall 6ft. form with his black hair, his blue eye and his other half blue and half brown eye, his large ears and his eager smile. He was wearing his customary blue polo-neck jumper and jeans.
He then suddenly walked backwards around the bed and ended up next to Bobby. He stretched his arms out and looked at them appreciatively.
“I can feel what fun muscle tension was now.” he said. He then walked backwards to the foot of the bed. He seemed to be in a time continuum that was physically moving in reverse but verbally running forwards.
He then walked forwards to Bobby’s side.
“Wown saw nushnet lussum nuff taw leef nak I.” he said.
Now speech was backwards and movement was forwards. He slapped his own face with his left hand and walked back to the end of the bed. He slapped his own face again and walked forwards to Bobby’s side. With hissing reverse echo sounds getting louder before each word Barry then said.... “Right I’ve only got so many minutes of stability before I fragment and return to the plane I’ve come from. Don’t be alarmed as I am not in despair. I am happy with this state of affairs. I am visiting on behalf of various parties from the interzone. I am also temporarily split from the totality that we are a part of. You are also split from it but whereas you have corporeal expression I have metaphysical. I will be back in the totality shortly so I have to tell you something quickly. I apologise for not being able to enter into two-way dialogue at present but there isn’t the time. Maybe that will happen at a later date.”
“Fire away mate.” said Bobby.
“There are, outside the illusion of normal time and space, many things open only to those who have broken down all boundaries, and are on a desperate, failing sequence. Among these things are the Four Solids, much thought of and utilised by Time Travellers. These are four, indefinable in size and location, twelve faced three-dimensional solids; of the form generally known as the dodecahedron. Each face is a pentagon (with five equal sides).
The solids are dodecahedrons constructed from various things, which gives them their individual identity. First we have the WORMAHEDRON which is lots of sliding, slithering, thick, segmented worm shapes all pink and dark and seen through a dodecahedral shaped window.
Next is the SLIME-O-HEDRON which is the same dodecahedral form, all made out of a sort of slime, flowing with dark and light organic blood and plant colours.
Next is the MUZZLE-O-HEDRON which is a twelve-sided solid made from growling, snarling dog muzzles.
The fourth of the Four Major Solids is the ANOMALOHEDRON which is made out of glimpses of anomalies like UFO sightings, geniuses, Loch Ness Monsters, Time Travellers and all anomalous things glimpsed through twelve faces, all mingled together and ever changing.
Some poor sods feel that they have to have a purpose. Time Travellers realise there is no purpose, or reason, so they do things anyway, anything.
So it comes to pass that for this reason Time Travellers, when known, are not liked too much. Some of the little scum who suck after purpose make their targets the Time Travellers who are, of course, those indefinable entities who have set themselves free of all definitions and boundaries.
The Time Travellers are the enemies of these so-called Hunters. The Hunters are an elite squad in the Normality Department of the Law Police of every and any system. All across time you’ll find a small, stinking cell of the Normality Police holding up as sacred their own bigotries. The Normality squad hate the Time Travellers, call them depraved and debauched just `cos they dance across the universe, just `cos they don’t have form.
Let’s pan out across the wastelands of the city of New Cambridge with its broken, blue towers and focus for a minute on a small shed wherein some Normality Police, under Inspector Noncom Failish, are assimilating data, tracking down a Time Traveller.... a certain long necked, bearded Time Traveller.
“Anything to report constable?”
“Yes sir, we’re getting reports all up and down the time lines of certain perverse anomalies that all have the mark of the Time Traveller upon them, or so it seems to me.... Let’s see.... yep, well, for one, there’s a whole load of strange occurrences in the late 1980’s Christian calendar, in New York, San Francisco, Nottingham, Manchester, London.... It seems to me that we may have some of the scum there.... I mean, look at these newspaper cuttings from that time.... they stink of Time Traveller....
“....the Prime Minister today narrowly escaped being abducted by a strange figure in a matt black car, probably a zodiac.... “She said that he had offered her market information and asked her if she wanted to go back to his house to see some cute little baby SLIME-O-HEDRONS.”
“....BIRTHS AND DEATHS....To Mr and Mrs Scum E scum scum, a bouncing baby WORMAHEDRON....”
“....STRANGE GOINGS ON AT THE ABATTOIR.... Mr. Lupp the proprietor of Lupps Nice and Wholesome slaughterhouse reported yesterday to this paper a strange incident that occurred recently. He was awoken at night to find two women dressed in black, a chicken and a very tall giraffe trying to climb through the carcass of a cow in the big freezer behind the congealing blood storage area. Before they all inexplicably disappeared, the giraffe explained to the police that “We’re only looking for a doorway....”
Noncom Failish speaks excitedly; “Constable! That’s it! We have `em. That report describes the typical Time Traveller behaviour of using corpses as doorways or portals to other dimensions.... Let’s go to that slaughter house and catch us an OLD TONGUE and maybe Mr. Scum.”
So the Hunters (the Normality Squad) all descend in droves, in full riot gear, on Mr. Lupps Nice and Wholesome Slaughter House. Night-time. Blue floodlight and loudhailer through smoky mist, helicopter air chopping. Sound screams through to inside where Miss Scummyscumscum and Old Tongue are running around, both now as women in their twenties, climbing up and through fatty, bleeding ribcages.... They can’t find a portal though.... and they are surrounded.
Loud hailer: “WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED.”
Constable Finnice, Noncom Failish’s right hand man says “I’ll go in sir, and get the filthy scum, personally.”
So in he goes. With a sub-machine gun.
In the blue half-light he sees two dark, slim figures pushing carcasses about on hooks and climbing through animal corpses. He corners them and sprays a mass of hanging meat with bullets. Then he dumps the gun and goes in looking for dead Travellers.
There’s the body of a girl....
“Got you!” he says, “Now it’s my turn! I’ll screw the Time Traveller corpse, that’s all it’s worth!”
He takes off his shirt and is pulling down his trousers when he is suddenly knocked to a wall by a big, frozen hunk of meat on a hook rail, pushed by Old Tongue the bearded giraffe in a long black dress. What Finnice had assumed to be a dead Time Traveller was, in fact, a very alive one: Miss Scummyscumscum.... and she gets up onto her feet.
Old Tongue the bearded giraffe and Miss Scummyscumscum look at Finnice. He has a long deep cut down his bare chest where the hook had hit him.
“I think we’ve found our doorway.” says Old Tongue.”
Barry’s ghost grinned at Bobby.
“Wow!” said Bobby.
“I feel the tug of a pan-dimensional portal.” said Barry. “Make of that story what you will and try to apply it to the worlds around you.”
As Barry’s ghost said this it was as if he were on a reel of sped up film but his voice was at a more normal speed. He quickly pulled himself up the wall with a tight grip of the rope and just as he was about to disappear up through the ceiling he turned to Bobby and said....
“Be seeing you.”
“Have fun.” said Bobby. Barry grinned again and a split second later he shot up through the ceiling as if a mighty force had finally pulled him into another dimension.
Barry had belonged to a bunch of radical artists called the Neoists before he died. Bobby had heard stories about their “performances”. One Neoist used to shop at supermarkets bouncing a ball as he loaded a trolley. At the checkout he would give the till operator the ball and leave without any goods. Another Neoist used to pick up match boxes in the street, take them home, photocopy the sides and then stick the photocopies onto the match box and return it to the place in the street where he had found it. Neoists were prone towards writing repeated sentences. One had been kicked out of Kingston Polytechnic for answering essay questions with one repeated sentence. The sentences he used did pertain to each subject though. He always exceeded the minimum amount of words required aswell. These sentences were never organised in columns. Say we take a sentence like.... “TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE.” Instead of arranging the sentence like this....
TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE.
TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE.
TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE.
TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE.
....your Neoist would arrange the sentence thus....
TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE. TREAT EVERY SPECIES WITH EQUAL IMPORTANCE.
The point is to see the writing as a totality and look for visual patterns. It is also recommended that you read it in any direction be it across, up and down, diagonally or with an eye for zig zagging around the whole page at random. As an example of one way to read it, you could, say, take each first word of every line of writing across the page....
TREAT
IMPORTANCE.
WITH
EVERY
IMPORTANCE.
SPECIES
IMPORTANCE.
WITH
EVERY
IMPORTANCE.
SPECIES
IMPORTANCE.
WITH
EVERY
IMPORTANCE.
SPECIES
IMPORTANCE.
WITH EVERY
IMPORTANCE.
Now you lay it out as a block as with the original sentence....
TREAT IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. SPECIES IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. SPECIES IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. SPECIES IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. TREAT IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. SPECIES IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. SPECIES IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. SPECIES IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. TREAT IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. SPECIES IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. SPECIES IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. SPECIES IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. TREAT IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. SPECIES IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. SPECIES IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. SPECIES IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. TREAT IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. SPECIES IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. SPECIES IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE. SPECIES IMPORTANCE. WITH EVERY IMPORTANCE.
Even with instructions like the one above written into each essay the undergraduate Neoist was still expelled. He wasn’t surprised and nor was Bobby.
Barry’s story of Time Travellers would certainly require a deep level of analysis as far as Bobby was concerned. Did the reference to time portals in dead carcasses have anything to do with the present foot and mouth crisis? The name of the Normality copper Finnice was similar to Minnice who was the copper that had attacked Bobby in June 2000. The fact that Finnice had provided a time portal instead of the carcasses in the slaughterhouse was interesting. It may be symbolic of the need for society to direct its destructive capabilities towards self-defence from authoritarian aggression rather than turning our appetites continuously towards the mass consumption of badly treated herbivores. Bobby quickly wrote down what he could remember of the story. He would have to analyse this at a later date.