THE COSMOCOCCIC TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY

"I don't have any more!" Jayk cries hollowly, and he imagines that he hears his too-shrill whining faintly echo off the far walls of his mind. "You've taken it all ... please, please, please; all I ask of you is one more chance ... just one more chance. I've got to ... I ... you just don't understand! There's this woman ... oh she ... I love her ... and ... but, and -- well, I can't ask her to ... you know, proposition her ... not unless I have something to offer her. I can't woo her as I am; I need ... I need Level 3 at least ... please, come on, please, just one more chance!"

"I'm sorry," replies the maintenant, compassionately but firmly, "but even if I wanted to, it's not in my power to dispense free chances. Not only would it be taken out of my lift, but I'd be fired."

"The Buddha didn't need a job to get his lift," Jayk feebly parries, trembling, anticipating her ready, trite response.

"The Buddha didn't need a casino to get his lift either, my friend. Now kindly move along, there are other customers waiting."

"Quite right, quite right, quite right my dear," he grumbles, not resolutely, and as those around him feel him fumble, limp, he falters even more under the weight of all their pity and their fright and disapproval, understanding....

"Look," says the man just behind him in order, "I'll give you a fit, right here, okay? Just point your receptor here, toward my broadcaster ... right! Just hold fast!" And the man jumps, screams, curses and hollers with most of his might -- reserving some for himself, of course, but thinking in the back of his mind that compassion is a better path than casino gambling anyway ... what are the odds, after all? throw a million fits and get, perhaps, one lift to level ten, on average? Once Jayk was lifted past level one in the casino, up to 1.1 or 1.2 perhaps, he can't remember ... but he didn't know how to live that way, didn't know how to maintain it, and before too long he was back to that .7, .8 existence that he knew too well. Back to the borderline poverty level. Back to the cowardice and rage, the jealousy, hatred and false passion of the ghetto.

"Oh thanks, thank you so muchly!" sputters Jayk -- "Look!" he tells the maintenant, a lovely girl of 1.3 or so, "OOOOOOOAAAA

UUUGH!" He pounds his fists on the edge of his screen and his picture on her screen tumbles up and down, left and right, spiraling his repulsive .3 or .25 image far too close to her core of perception ... any experience can be positive, she repeats to herself, but the schoolgirl adage means little to her at this moment. She can feel herself slipping back down to 1.35 -- I was hoping to make 1.4 this week, she vaguely mutters, but she knows that worry is very rarely positive, at least in her experience, despite what they tell you....

"Okay," she replies evenly, "here's the token, sir. Have a nice day."

And Jayk flicks his screen onto nothing, and savors the moment. Here, alone in his cubicle, nothing but him and his screenand his nutrient tube and his excrement tubes and his spray bath and that trace of his daughter he did back when he was an artist ... you were a 1.2 then, he tells himself irately, and suddenly his cube doesn't seem so welcome and he flicks back on the screen, to the casino this time! okay! no more languishing in order! time to click and wait ... he scans the whole field of converters, proceeding slowly, examining all the irrelevant details of each one, the different logics by which each artifice transforms the probability distribution input into something new, hopefully something luckier than he's lately found ... at random, he clicks his token into one. He flicks the switch, and softly settles into the winsome tinge of waiting ... what'll it be? what'll it be? what'll it be be be? His eyes can't focus as the win moves into place ... plus 2.7! Plus 2.7?!!! Wait -- is he seeing right?! Yes, he is indeed! He hopes the same girl who denied him one lousy fit will have to personally dispense the prize, but no ... some 5.3 guy with a strange sort of lute music in the background ... something primeval ... very strange ... "Well well, congratulations Mister..." the man grins.

"Mister Jayk Lloyd Ngo Heid," Jayk grins back, barely able to contain himself, in fact vibrating so effusively his out-tube shakes a little loose and a few spatters of his feces hit the sparkling floor.

"Direct your receiver thus," the man then indicates, and Jayk tilts the small silver protrusion from his head straight

toward the center of his screen, looks from the corners of his eager eyes at the strange, immense broadcaster that the man wields, pointed straight at him, and he feels the power, sweetness, strength, course through him. This is enlightenment! he smiles, then blushes profusely as he realizes how very far he nonetheless is from Consciousness 10, the ultimate state, pure, pure perfection, crystal bliss -- a measly 3.332914668! Truly

pathetic! And then he realizes he's never felt so profoundly

weak before -- I guess that's part of enlightment, he smugly

smirks to himself ... and then the whole train of thought repeats

itself a dozen times, and then the man is done; "Have a nice day," Jayk hears him echoing, so very, very distantly, off some unseen wall. Not knowing what else to do, Jayk returns to the casino, to the high-rollers' room where there's not even an order for tokens. He clicks up to the maintenant and bellows at the top of his lungs, amazed at how easy it is, and receives an odd token, the likes of which he's never seen before. He clicks on his status read -- 3.332914628. "Hell if you're going to lose your whole fortune this way!" he admonishes himself -- "notlike you did before. That was different. 3.332, that's a totally different stratum, that's a new life, and you're not going to simply squander it!"

"Well of course you're not!" replies a different voice inside him -- "you're a 3.3 now, aren't you? That whole vicious cycle belongs to the lower class -- getting so angry because you can't get angry enough to get tokens that you're too tired to get angry anymore! How ridiculous it sounds! How absurd it all seems to me now! How miraculous that I've escaped that ...aged nutrient tube. Now, though, what, where?" And he clicks his new token in the first conv he finds, and he loses and doesn't care, not one bit --oh well, yeah, all right, just a little tiny bit of him was hoping that he'd shoot up maybe to 5.8, or 9, or something -- but really, when you're a 3.8 you know that the best way to subtle knowledge is to practice and to grow within your own bounds, not to reach outside to artificial means like the casino. In fact, that's why many enlightened souls have proposed to forbid them! "I never saw the logic there before," ponders Jayk satisfiedly, "but, yes, I do now. Yes, I really do. The attention of the lower classes should be focused on getting ahead by honest spiritual labor, by inward-turning and perfection of the soul. The presence of a facile alternative merely serves to distract already addled attentions from the truer goal. Ah... but, then again, perhaps my reasoning is not as subtle as it could be -- after all, is this not only my truth; I, a former compulsive gambler, would of course focus on the negative aspects only. What deeper insights a level 10 might have I cannot even conjure in the most imaginative sections of my mind -- better to leave the legislation to those souls that are perfected, and devote my own imperfect consciousness to its own much-needed betterment!" How Jayk astounds himself, the ugly memory of his old, impoverished consciousness so vivid to his mind. "Never forget where you were," he tells himself resolutely. "Humility is the first key to going higher."

And then he remembers: the woman! His dear Euterpe, of the mountains -- God, what was she? a 6.9! Oh, and how rapid her ascension -- perhaps she's surpassed the 7 mark by now! And does that give her any pleasure? or has she surpassed the very conception of striving toward a goal. Don't know whatis it about her that dances through my mind like the biggest lift of all ... it's not her level, not entirely, not at all, cause there are others at higher levels whom I admire, of course, and whom I long to fathom fervently, but whom I wouldn't want to ... I don't know? Persevere! Call her! -- what've you got to lose? Insecurity does not befit a 3.3, now does it? What's that -- a 3.33291267?!!! Nothing to get excited about, the well-known Rossbaum effect -- the rich get richer while the poor get poorer, right? But -- oh! -- this fast; I didn't expect it. Call her, call her, call her, call her -- now! "It is a fact that through communion with a member of the opposite sex complementary patterns are elicited and ascension is quite often expedited"! -- phrases from high school screens agglutinate in his mind, carousing forth and calling him to call her, call her, call her, call her, call her! And so he does -- he can't get through. He's put in an order -- but by the time I get to the front of this damn order, so he reasons, I'll have slipped to 2.9 through despair, through lovelorn-illness, I don't know.... "And so?? Would that be so bad?" a voice in him whispers, desperately, insistently. "2.9 isn't just a mere pang of serenity, you know! Wouldn't it be better to lose a few points and have her?!"

The idea sickens him, attracts him and dishevels him at the same time -- in order to repel it, or at least forget it for a while, he clicks toward Stellin, his closest friend and ex- schoolmate. "Stell!" he grins triumphantly, glowingly alive more than his friend has ever thought he'd ever see him.

"You got a lift somewhere, mate, didn't you!" gasps Stell,Stell proud-of-his-1.23232323999.

"I'm embarassed to say where," smiles Jayk, a little sheepishly.

"You don't have to tell me," chuckles Stell good-naturedly. "I know you better than you think. Say, though, I was thinking of cruising down to the Center. Wouldja like to come along? Or have you flown too hiiiigh for the likes of me, huh?!"

Jayk giggles lovingly, "It's not like that at all. It's quite the other way; I feel much closer to you now; now, with the extra 2.7, I don't feel jealousy toward you, or ... my, I guess I sound mighty condescending, Stellin, don't I."

"In fact you do, my friend, but don't let's worry about it,

you're no Buddha nonetheless, let's just go shopping and forget

this metaphysical stuff and nonsense."

"I don't know if I can forget it but I can ignore it for a little bit. Let's go, then!"

And off they go, clicking their screens into strict unison and flicking through the various clustered frames which form the center of the city ... Jayk stops in a mantra frame to browse, but clicks out when the salesgirl gets too pushy; Stellin drags Jake quite reluctantly into a strangely colored frame the identity of which he has to admit is mysterious to him also ... it turns out to be a place from which various patterns of light are projected on one's screen at random intervals, interspersed with blankness, nothingness ... supposedly the patterns reflect the archetypal habits which constrict the average mind from total freedom; supposedly seeing these habits on the screen brings them out of the unconscious into the conscious where various therapies may be used to eliminate them ... or some such; Jayk really can't pay attention to the salesman's lame patter, and he mutters something about obfuscatory tactics and clicks out; Stell almost disentangles unison but dutifully follows along, no longer trusting in Jayk's newly lofty rank ... Jayk finally stops at an employment agency and asks what kind of work they can put him to, Stellin's amazement not stifling him one bit. "Why would you work right now, when you don't have to?" gasps Stellin, so dazed that the entire environ of the screen seems so weird that he thinks he might pass out. As Jayk skips to the front of the order, Stellin watches, shooting rays of disapproval in his direction ... but he does not unhook, only dissolutely watches as Jayk signs up to later interview with a firm that might want to use him as a disciplinarian ... "You want to punish those p-p- poor, pathetic souls who drag themselves down below nothing? T- t-the zeros? The subzeros, yet?"

"Someone's got to do it."

"Someone, yes -- someone like me, desperately in need of a few more points, of a little boost lest I sink back down into, you know, into where you were not too long ago -- but you, you've got it made, man! How many 3.3's you know working the discipline flick, eh?"

"That's quite irrelevant, Stell," explains Jayk patiently. "Remember, anything can be positive. Of what will be positive for you at any given time, only you can be the judge."

"I guess that's right," considers Stellin, "but still, look, punishing people is negative, extremely negative, and once it dragsyou down below 2 you might be wondering what the hell motivated you to do it. I mean, you know how it goes ... you get a positive boost every week from your boss, yeah, but it drags you down so much doing the stuff that you've got to spend all you got on relieving your tension, you know...."

"Don't worry about me," assures Jayk confidently. "Come on, let's go." But Stell can't forget it, as they wander from one frame into another; he's so perturbed, baffled, distracted, that as they exit one of the twenty or thirty houses of hallucination that form the backbone of the city's economy, he doesn't even notice when Jayk pauses to read a miniframe awkwardly posted in the corner of the exitscreen ... "REMEMBER: ANYTHING CAN BE POSITIVE," the mini says. "INCLUDING REJECTION OF THE WHOLE DAMN HIERARCHY OF ENLIGHTENMENT. BUT IF THIS IS THE CASE, THEN WHY DOES IT NEVER DAWN ON ANYONE THAT THE QUANTIFICATION OF ENLIGHTENMENT IS MORE THAN A LITTLE ABSURD? IT IS NOT WIDELY KNOWN THAT OUR ANCESTORS SPENT THEIR LIVES MOVING AND STIMULATING THEIR BODIES -- THAT OUR LIVES AS EXTENSIONS OF TUBES AND CATHODE SCREENS ARE QUITE ANOMALOUS IN THE COURSE OF HISTORY -- THAT..." -- someone catches his presence as they pass by the frame and he clicks away, into another house; but as he and Stell scream and hate vigorously to gain admission, as they sink into the soft welcome dream that the hall-house provides them, those strange, too-bold words fill his mind. A physical life? What would that mean? When he gets home he clicks on the newsy and hears of a ring of zeros scheduled for maximum discipline -- their crime? spreading miniframes designed to foster negativity. He barely notices the newsy dismiss "highly negative speculations" that Zarklo Rumbi, 9.3, is somehow involved with the conspiracy, as yet another insidious product of the conspiracy itself, of the conspiracy, the conspiracy, the conspiracy... as he so dizzily drifts into flawless, even, drug-induced sleep.

He is awakened after the optimum interval by the morning newsy screen; there is nothing about the conspiracy; he notices that the autoexercisers were working particularly hard last night, his body aches a little -- and this grates on him, somehow. He still has that woman on his mind. That Euterpe of his dreams. And then he realizes, dimly, that his body aches for hers. He feels a strange stirring in his penis, a part of his body that he's never really felt except when the suction of the tube indicated excretion ... he feels it press against the tube, struggle to stand itself straight up -- but it can't resist the tube! He has read about this at school, but according to the eduscreens erections can only occur in humans during sleep, when stimulated by the autoexerciser for extraction of necessary reproductive fluids. He never realized ... -- that it could feel good! "But what is this 'good'?" a soft voice asks him, a haunting stir inside. "Is it consonant with the only true goal of Consciousness 10, ultimate enlightenment?"

"Right now it hurts," answers Jayk aloud, and his screen squawks 'Query: Inappropriate response. Please click in next instruction.' And he lifts his hand -- for the first time he can remember -- and removes the tube from his penis, permits his first waking erection to flower. Filled with new confidence which somehow seems to radiate not from his mind, but from his cock, heclicks toward obselescent data -- not a completely anomalous request, as meditation on such fundamentally useless information as the coordinates within the physical substrate of the city of each human being's body is considered by certain groups to be a most desirable method of ascension. He feels the tube rise and try to reattatch itself; with a delicious glint in his eye, he places his finger down inside it and it rests, content. He feels a certain uncertainty in this trembling newfound passion, a certain dark side to this glowing, flowing lust; he swiftly realizes that the soft peace and compassion which he values so, which were so anomalously won just a few hours ago, which gave him a new life, are not quite consonant with the new things that he feels. Unflinching, however, he locates her coordinates and his and, brimming over with admittedly irrational confidence, he kicks through the wall of his cube and clambers up, up, up, up through the passages used only for the exchange of excrement, nutrient and electricity: the first two unspoken necessities, the latter the lifeforce, the medium of the soul of the city and all its inhabitants: the ecstatically ascending, the furiously descending, the peacefully static and the zeros, those unlucky, undeserving ones who have failed to execute even the simplest prerequisites of society: meditation, compassion, acceptance, self-love... And Jayk is none of these, for a little while at least; he is one with the veins and the arteries of the city, and its trickling neural currents; using the intellect whose extent he's never really tried to fathom, automatically, he traces his way round several corners till he reaches what, if his calculations prove correct, is his love's cubicle. Her! Her! Her! Her! Her! Her! Oh, his dear Euterpe, his dear beauty! "Oh yes, my beautiful one! Oh how the tone of your transmissions has transmogrified me!" It doesn't dawn on him that perhaps there's nothing special in her physical presence, no real point in coming close to her mere body -- why on earth would there be, just because he finds the overtones of the screens sent by her soul so soft enticing, unique, visceral -- "visceral, yes, exactly it! Her very voice sounds like the trembling of her body! Like my body! You're hallucinating", he reminds himself severely, as he kicks on through the wall of what he hopes is her cubicle, but as soon as the deed is done he knows he isn't. His penis grows yet ever firmer as he sees her body stretched across the autochair, eyes fixed on screen, all filled with tubes, but beauty nonetheless, pure unadulterated lust enough to make him scream -- Oh! -- as he rips the tubes out

from her, puts his fist through thedancing screen and bloody

spreads her legs apart as he flicked the animals did in ancient days, and plunges his penis in; all the while she's dazed and she can hardly conceive what's happening but her body can, but she can feel it coming down and up, and in and out, turning her inside out and through her every orifice his limpid love, his liquid love, the laughter of his efflorescent loving! Her buttocks begin to clench in and out, her fingernails, though trimmed so short by the autogroomers, nonetheless gouge out his back, his arms, his neck ... "Oh God!" she moans as he feels a novel warmth, a crystal perfection escape his rigid stalk, send moist sharp tendrils of pure light and radiant darkness through his legs, his chest his head -- he opens his eyes as he feels the last drop flow and out ofthe corner of one he sees her screen regenerate itself with smooth rapidity, and in the corner he sees the bright red marking "Level: 10.000...." She screams; he clenches her yet harder; clenches, clenches, soars....

AHEM AHEM AHEM

"It's not this pining for that shining that entrances me. Nor's it the shining of combining that enhances me. Its not the randomness of your dreaming that enchances me. It's just the knowing of the growing of your love.

"Purelove, I see, so tendersweet, so tickly-scream provocative and love to drool I am the verse, the universe, the never-seen contrararary motion of the sickling of the effervescent stars inside their fars, behind their dashboreds of a thousand tiny faces and their staring wheels of dungeons, death and dreams, I see a glimmering, a shimmering, a strange night of a neverknowing bliss, a neverending scream, a seem, a once-lit motion and a beautiful of infinite or seventeen or something, once-lit knowledge, several tits. It's not the shining of the emptiness, nor even the nineteen empty pharoahs of pure light and pumping thigh that trickles juice of lust so down on me like splinterscreams or rhyme devices, lack of meaning, lack of sense, or lack of anything, lack of lack, in this prismatic prism of vice's device, I scratch my head red but instead of dead lice I pull out some strange something not nearly as nice, yes to win friends and influence your uncles. I cannot comprehend your baggage, no, nor your other fiends of cartilage and life. I cannot grind myself upon your sweaty panties, cunt unseen, only to spill my love of life into your bellybutton. I cannot dream the dance of angel lust -- no more! Is it a flock of trembling arrows of pure light that pierce my nothingness? send skyward trembling bloodlaughs of delight fountain decay? Or is it a swarm of dancing tumblebees, alithe with contradiction, friction, grinding their wild passion on my soul's eager membrane? A hint of bunterlings and of slumberbuns and underdone meatballs, not the quite I sense, not the every all or neverbeen but the sometimes done of lust and occasionally it speaks to me but not particularly of the every-edged beyond that can't buy meaning, but more of the what I see and seek that cannot make my old beams creak -- perhaps I make your moonbeams shriek? your little wing catch fire? I am your one desire. The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone, causes Galileo's mathbook to get thrown, through the gaping laws of gravity's moaning rainbow, and the aching-wild chamber of commerce. And we're all bold as love, just ask the Axis. I am the axis: the wor(l)d spins round me. And I am the knotty not of nothingnesssssssss. I am the solitary: thus I have been fined nine million dollars for that strange lilt in my tender everlast. Comprehension is a mist to me; condescension is a test, and everything is even sweeter that it was before the million-year-long-rain of sweet Mariataste that confronted me, confronts me, makes me chew my ashtray nervous, bled my blast."

Thus spoke the odd but beautiful young redhead who burst her way through the palace fences and thrust herself upon King Zar andQueen Alissa, and dearest concubine that Jalypsal Xalypso, or was that Kanika Narula? or was that love? I think it was Gwumbldy's left eyebrow, or else was maybe lust. i cannot flower comprehension in my grove of trust. I trust truth, passion and creation, and all the clowndaries of your nation cannot follow you past all ultimate beyonds but threefold knowledge can. "Where on earth did she come from??!" sputters Jalypsal to baffled Zar: "And you said fairies were superstitions!"

"What I said was, unless it can be tested, it isn't anything. If this is a fairy, then I'll believe in fairies. In fact, I don't believe it is. There must be a perfectly sensible explanation for this."

"For a woman tumbling naked from the sky above us?!" giggles Jalypsal, delirious. "I'm waiting to hear it!"

"You're talking to the man who counts men using nothingness," reminds the queen, what was her name again. "Remember that?"

"Remember it?!" shrieks Jalypsal, quite playfully but disheveled and not quite ensensed as the eerie redhead shudders on the earth or ground. "Listen, girlie, I traveled with him from the god-forsaken deserts and I believed in him from the beginning, before he ever hatched the crackpot scheme of getting hitched to you. If I'd told the chief he was planning to run away, he would've been flogged and we'd be married, none of this, what, me chief concubine?"

"And we'd have died in eachothers arms," points out Zar meditatively. "Look up, though! What in the name of nothingness is that?" A huge black cloud towered above them.

"That's either the scariest thundercloud I've ever seen or some kind of phantom," replies the queen, and tickles him with frightened fingers on the stiff palm of his hand.

"and it's Coming Closer," whispers Jalyspsal, creations of indescribable visual reality, ornateness, splentastic tricklings of color, tubes of dreams all tied spaghettish in the knotty naughts of what was not creation, or creation was, depending on whose time of dizzy dreams.... And the black cloud landed, crushing trees, and then let out a grumbling hum and whistled higher than a human ear could hear, but Jalypsal heard it due to a freak of her creation and she tumbled on the ground )which Zar thought was frightening fear and Alyssa thought was a phantom -- I mean queen wutsername( -- and the cloud, so slowly dissssssippppated, or so I think to see, and as it disssssssippp p pp p pated, in fact, it left something behind, as if 'twere squatting on the ground to give birth, so Queen thinks, and then she wonders if she's pregnant but she puts the thought aside and tries to make out what it is it left: large, silver, strange protrusions... Zar yells proudly: "An air ship! Look, it's got little legs to land on, and some sort of paddle in the back ... a round one."

"i dont know how you see all that all I see is a big weird mountain," whispers Queen breathlessly. "You mean a boat that goes through the air like a boat goes through water."

"That's exactly what it looks like," Zar continues, enthusiastically. "I've seen boats with propellors on them somewhere ... in etchings I saw in a stone by the ocean as a child."

"you are a child." counters Jalypsal revivedly and the queen kisses her.

"In fact, I am the ruler of the universe," smiles Zar, and then the side of the thing opens and all these people walk out. And then another cloud, behind them, floats away, letting off a number of other people ... "Jake!" shouts Adelaide, on the ground beside Jalypsal. "Jake! Maria! Kiki!"

"what are those clouds?" asks Jake of Zar and queen and Jalypsal.

"You're asking us?" laughs Zar.

Armand approaches with uncharacteristic shyness. "Perhaps you should be asking me," he mutters. "I've been studying the ship's controls, and I think I see what's happening. We flew to Procyon, yes, and we landed, but somehow we ended up inside these black clouds which, according to some agency which I must admit I do not understand, transmitted us back on Earth."

"So we're on earth right now?" gasps Maria.

"Yes," says Armand briskly, "but several million years in the future. Not only are the ship's readings indisputable, but the pattern of stars in the sky -- I calculated a good bit of it bb..by hand, just because I didn't trust the computer, and it's just as it should be ... A.D. three million, seven hundred thousand or so years, or so...."

"jesus man, you sound terrible," observes Jake.

"Well I really don't understand how it could have happened -- these black clouds seem to make no sense whatsoever. And all the experiences we had together there ... on Procyon 4 ... you know, that waking up back on earth, switching back and forth ... all that, you know ... what was it? Those globes...."

Suddenly they look at eachother and smile an unboundedness secrecy grace. Those globes! They had forgotten them completely! That damn short-circuiting! The globe with that fucking scientist in it, probing back into the brain of that prehistory philosopher ... who knows!? Wait -- but did we ever get out?

And a strangegrinning man appears in the crook of a tree, and says "I'm Xaj Kalikak. I transported you back in time. I am the black cloud. I am naught, I am what you call God, I am all. I transported you back to the time of the greatest genius man has ever known, for this purpose: I am Ubik. I have brought your hereness into manifestation, shall I say, in order to work toward my ultimate goal of creating a society in which I will be comfortable renouncing my lonely existence and assuming, as my primary aspect at least, a human form. That is, my intention is to create a utopia on earth. Finally there is the possibility of that -- with my unprecedented power. In order to accomplish this it is necessary that a certain Joe Savage, living in 1989, be eliminated. And it is necessary that the seeds of certain thoughts be planted at a very early stage in the history of man -- now! It is necessary that your empire, my dear queen, become a bastion of science and civilization, and never fall. I shall be there to help you along the way, when necessary, but my intervention makes the estimation of probabilities very difficult, so that ... well, anyway, the point is, you see...."

"But a phantom," says Ben. "A creation of the moremegalomanaiacal, impatient aspect of my subconscious. All phantoms, disappear!" And the ground disappears, and the palace disappears, and all that's left are Juanita and Melissa and Marcella and Carl, who had previously been trees in the background. Oh yes, and Joe Savage, who lies on the bed. "he'll never come out," whispers beN. "He'll never. The fact is, he loved the world of delusion more than anything. He loved his ideas, loved his dreams. Enriqueta was your rational side. When you left her, all your realism pained to fade. The two of you combined to form my personality -- separated, as you see, you each succumb to your characteristic...."

A replica of Ben Goertzel emerges from Melissa's cunt and shoots the old one with a glob of glowing come. And then, of course, it begins talking: "You, you fools, you dizzy fools, you dance of dreams, you wad of nothingness! You clotted jugular of the silver-plated speculum of the gods! Caramba! Caramba! Ramba! Rambaba!"

And Jake grins at Jalypsal, queenie and Jake: "Phantoms, he whispers," he whispers, he whispers. Zar hiccups. "My friend," he says, "let me tell you a story...."

"You've got to be kidding," gasps Jalypsal. "You mean you guessed that months ago and didn't say a gods-damned thing to any of us?"

"Nothing could surprise me now," counters Jake. "It doesn't matter. After enough apparent realities are yanked from under your feet, you learn to put yourself in a condition of imperviousness. Enjoy, but don't grow too attatched. Hope, maybe -- without hope life could grow awfully dull -- but never, never, never, never expect. Just when you think you need something so much you couldn't live without it -- there it goes! Beautiful is beautiful only so long as you let it manifest its perfect beauty undisturbed by expectations of the lower realm. The realm of conscience, realm of habit, realm of laws that lash at life and cause its corpuscules to splash in anguished current toward the crying sun. it is not possible to be what we are. it is not possible to be any other way. nothing is possible, everything is possible, everything is nothing, and everything's here all at one time. my father's beard, Attila's Huns, the first Martini, the gamma function, eleven, nineteen, thirty- twelve, perfection, hatred, bellies, strife, and not the noodle nor negation of consciousness, never hatred, not the nineteen of your life and most of all constipated herrings, swordfish, swordfish, constipated herrings, swordfish swordfish, death and life!"

"Yes!" chimes in Adelaide so sweetly and completely, "not even nineteen, even twenty, even four or more is plenty, in fact the shining of my pining for entwining with your love is pure, pure love, is pure pure nothingness or nothing less than love."

"I see," says the Queen ... "Off with their heads!"

Jalypsal grimaces.

"She's only kidding," points our Zar.

"Jalypsal smiles sheepishly," says Maria. "Is it true that I'm the most beautiful woman in your book?"

Ben smiles mysteriously, or perhaps he mysteriously grins.

"Look," says Kristina, "obviously I am. I am the trulyenlightened woman. Only I glow with the flow of perfection."

"But is perfection what you lust after, Ben? Is it?" insists Maria. "You are imperfect; would you be comfortable with perfection? Or don't you want someone at approximately the same stage of development as yourself? Someone to grow with, flow with, someone to show your beautiful and gruesome and the secret darkest places of your soul?"

"But you're not the only one who's not perfect in the world," interjects Josie. "Keep that in mind. In fact, none of us is at exactly the right stage of development for him, are we? In fact, you see, at his peaks of cosmic consciousness, of communion, he is as perfect as the Buddha, as Kristina, Mark, or the Field: when he is everything, we are all his only mate."

"But at other times he's just as human as me," counters Josie. "In fact, some would say his flights of mystic fancy are just insanity. Recall, if you will, that he began to have mystic visions at latest at the age of five, when on a camping trip with his parents, when his fever reached one hundred and six degrees and a delirium overtook him. He saw strange creatures with angels' wings and devils' horns, the most ravishingly beautiful women in the universe, beyond good and evil, death spreading her legs, total perfect bliss, and he saw mountains speak and shards of love fall out of towering glaciers and melt him into perfect suns that orbit the galactic center still."

"Indeed I saw those things," nods Ben. "In fact, my mother may remember it as well. Look her up: Harold Goertzel, at 43 Clerk Drive, Tarrington New Jersey, o8607 ... or is it 08707 ... oh well, I always forget the fucking ZIP code, you know, but what the fuck. Anyway,...."

"Look," said Armand, "while I'm talking to the creator, there are some questions I've always had."

"Shoot," says Ben.

Armand begins: "Okay, why are the plastic wrappers on albums and cassettes so hard to tear off. I mean, you need to have razor-sharp fin...." As he speaks a gorgeous angel with devil's ears and a red forked tail with a propellor on it flings an arrow through his temple with her delicate, feathered bow.

"Why so slow?" asks Ben curiously -- "I told you to shoot a good ten seconds ago."

"I was busy getting my cunt sucked by Joe," she says shyly. "Sorry."

"It's quite alright; I was sort of curious to see what kind of questions he had. But anyway, you see, you'll have to die now." And he blinks his eye, and as they watch the angel's skin is peeled off layer by layer; it takes an entire day, but none of them can move, and by the time she screaming flails her last wad of blood out toward their gaping hate he's gone.

"you mean god is a sadist?!" laughs Jake, noticing that his right arm is where his nose should be and his nose is where his right arm should be ... the universe a giant, pliant pussy. "That explains a lot!"

"in a warped way," explains Andrea. "the fantasy of torture can arouse him, but he is sickened by the sight. He's no Marquis de Sade, I'll tell you that. Why, I tried to get him to whip myass with a little strip of leather -- no more that five feet long! -- but noooo, he wouldn't, and I had to get him to build me a machine to do it."

"Oh really?" smiles Melissa, "well he sure whipped me enough. Look, see, I've got the scars to prove it! I guess you trained him better than you thought you did."

"Is it true that all women are masochists, and all men sadists?" wonders Zar.

"Yes," says Jake, "that's the fundamental fallacy of feminism. Yes, of course men oppressed women -- but they both enjoyed it!"

"Of course it's true," says Jalypsal, "but it's equally true that all women are sadists, and all men masochists."

"And only one of us has truly balanced the two," injects Kristina. "Just you wait, he's going to come take me away to his Magic Castle, oh just you wait and see."

"You silly bitch!" grins Melissa, "remember, I was created as his Shadow-Lover."

"Oh yeah, you're right, says Kristina, and disappears," says Kristina and disappears. Says kristina And Disappears.

"forgot your diapers," says the old man and he frowns.

YOU BIT MY FUCKING CLITORIS!

First Uncertainty Principle:

Ummost Ummost <= Ummost <= Almost

Second Uncertainty Principle:

Why?

Third Uncertainty Principle:

"the old god is dead, and now i am prepared to rape its corpse.

Well I mean, why not, man, I can't seem to get laid any other way"

fourth uncertainty principle:

"I don't know."

fifth uncertainty principle: love

sixth uncertainty principle:

"Introduction: Methods available the case which function be has form a of sum squares, these form subject for chapter. Is first consider case which function be is positive-definite form,

the used solving problem employed in up in nonlinear. In linear the Cholesky of symmetric positive-definite has the tool in, and is in four. Recent by in has that certain cases the is zero very at minimum an approach on transformations preferable numerical. This is in five six. Section an to analysis considered, it shown this problem conveniently by variant the technique Jordan. The of problems several factors. The iteration systems n in unknowns a case the iteration systems n in unknowns. The iteration presented an to on amount calculation in Newton, it shown the iteration be in that, generalized an way the n>p, an that closely to due Powell. The transformation of has algorithmic, certain these indicated.

"Remark: The conditions not, or the is a complexity we not beforehand these are, then is to that local is a one. General, the requirements removed, SUMT can used find local. These may encountered any and theoretically have caused troubles many applications. Systematically the from initial it frequently to the solution if optima. Course, is to able recognize desired, and practice means there no for the."

seventh uncertainty principle:

eighth uncertainty principle:

"eight is my sister's favorite number"

ninth uncertainty principle:

deep inside the cosmic cunt

NONSENSE FOUND SCRIBBLED ON THE MADMAN'S BATHROOM WALL

"What is the universe, to me? It is one vast and pulsing pattern, a pattern in itself -- a diving-through-itself! ... -- a regularity continually recognizing itself within itself, continually seeing in its own eyes a deep pool, a sparkling infinite abyss into which it tumbles ... the walls of which are its own patterns (which are patterns in itself) -- And at the bottom of which is pure Nothingness, the Absolute and Unattainable -- the nonexistent, and therefore precious to an infinite degree ... -- and therefore perfect! And what is perfect? What -- but all, and none? What is not all and none? -- but nothing! In every thing I see this canyon-ness, this infinite plunge into which life means I am tumbling -- this shuddering scream, and soft fluttering whisper, in which to look at but one entity is to squeeze through to its neighboring entities, and to their neighboring entities, and so on -- until all entities have been reached -- And in these loops I've built another world! (the loops when an entity leads back to itself): -- Each loop another entity to explore. And I take joy in exploration! -- ... Why? Well, why indeed! Why anything?! Why even isolate the single concept "I" -- just as much an illusion as anything else, this little word on which the universe is based. This life is naught but exploration -- joyous words, in search of that which is but resolutely Nothing: in search of Life, of Freedom, Love -- of all inscrutables ... And this I know: that in the very act of searching, of exploring, for a few free moments I found bliss. And what is Universe but moments? For what is time? -- but sheer illusion -- like all else -- .... Thus speaks transnihilism."

Converted by Andrew Scriven