A short story about the future of your soul |
The screen door opens. Screech of metal/plastic. Exit Kenny. Bang. Boom, shut. The street with it’s smells strikes cold against warm flesh. Weather machines at work. The rain, regulated, runs it’s course. Footsteps: one, two, one two. He moves, irregular, past the power poles and under the line; the current above: constant. Constant current, correct and clear. Beside the curb at the edge of the concrete: streams of silt and filth pour into sewers; a Hades of molecular mixtures. The recycling of modernity in depth. The depth of Modernity recycled. Kenny. Pant legs and cuffs absorb new fresh moisture sent from above/below. New dirt from an old street. Hybrids halt beside him, metres away, ten at a time and ten by two, along this tangled avenue. caught between lights changing, red yellow green, no blue not this hue here. The symbols come through on their promise, continuing progress. Delivering deliveries: human cargo complete with bags and coats, cloaks and cases, masks. He tries to recall the mail received this morning; this morning’s mail received but undeciphered. The symbols, emoticons, con wink ;): Your profile is complete :) awaiting approval from: the+divisionofmating@themothersoflove.gov.org. . . Kenny, awaiting approval, approaches the entrance to the station. His day just begining, his progress put on hold. Enter the station, exeunt the street, new air now and in it is breathed, air conditioned ( a condition of air) particles parted and paired, the o2o and 2o2 welcomed by lungs and in they flew, forever new this air we drew. Nothing here is ever through. Inside the labrynth; underneath the city, on stones they walk in stride. The division divided and reflected back off mirrored walls made to make the dimensions seem endless within this station of regulated time. At 8am the main floor is flooded with movement, phermones drift in and out of orifices, the chemical cadence erasing and regurgitating memories; this smell here and that one there, recall times from everywhere. On the flat surface at the top of the station light streams in, bounced and bumped off panels designed to determine the direction of protons;(Light the place up a little, said the engineer) the pieces thwumped and bumped along the way finally arrive at retinas: the terminal, the final resting place(where else could this light go?). Eyes internalize the light; neurons triggered, striking out to inner space. Defining the external. A carriage of codes, the body in throes. Kenny walks against billowing air pushed up by pressure from the depths, the escalators spew bodies out with a breeze at their backs, fresh from tube rides that began in boroughs far out and far below; the scent of sunlight greets them and assures the safety of the surface, safe again from journeys in the deep. Kenny on the platform is exposed to stimuli o’plenty while waiting for the train. Beside him to the left stands a slender figure in slim boots and, and to the right at 5 o’clock another body, one with a dumper,(ain’t she a plumper) covered in furry strechiness and adorned with mats and smells, rubber shoes worn just a little too long. Curls and headbands held together over a skull, skin stretched back to make it tight. To the left and to the right are tunnels, dark mouths of the underworld, and these orifices deliver fresh born vessels of electric steel. A whirring and a wind, a whirring wind sends sound waves from the left and the whir in escalating magnitudes whirpwhiirppwhiiirppinng emotes from deep within the darkness. Slim boots beside Kenny shuffle in anticipation and the wind sends long blades of hair flashing about a face. Thin fingers reach out and collect strands gone wild, tucked carefully behind ears now bare to the sounds of the approaching train. WHOOooooshh, the station womb shudders and shakes from penetration (for you, I will return again.) The cars, linked together, come to a nervous halt. Capsules open up stiff and regular; bodies shove in and shove out. Slim boots enters first and Kenny lets them pass. Wait. Smell. Pause. This chemistry, the connection must be true. Made to fit and fit to be, solutions made sound by chemical compounds. Curls and headband alongside Kenny, akward stumble and glance, direction decided, turn left and grab the pole. The capsule is flooded with a soothing wave of agitated humanity. Slim boots are swept off with the tide, down the train and the curls can only be seen rising and bobbing behind a backpack and the third section of the Daily Sun. -A completed profile? Did that mean a match was made or am I awaiting one, Kenny thought to himself while standing in the train, pressed in and packed: snugtogethererness. Anxiety bounced about Kenny delivering short jabs with lefts and rights. It was always like this when dealing with the Mothers. Applications could take years to be approved if they were ever approved at all. Kenny’s mind puttered about in worry and his muttering continued as the train accelerated through tunnels towards the centre of the city. Kenny, was in fact a certified fat head. The condition of fatheadedness was, According to Kenny’s Conditioning coach, a condition wherein the subject’s head is swollen with unnecessary thoughts, so much so that performance is affected in task oriented situations. Thus, Kenny’s fat head, filled with useless thought forms, lumbered about clouded and unclear, his perception crippled and and his career, within the complex, hindered. Slimming Kenny’s fathead was a task that Kenny’s conditioning coach, had intended to champion. However, head slimming was a long and laborious process and progress was constantly set back due to kenny’s consistency to reswell. And what condition caused to Kenny to suffer this great discomfort, why , none other than the oldest condition ever. Kenny had been assured time over time that modernity had eradicated any need for concern but try as he might his uncertainty stupidly stuck to his skull. Fatheaded Kenny felt the train come grinding to a halt and he broke free from his mutterings for a moment to see the station appear through the plexiglass window of the the steel framed train. On the platform were swarms of sullen and smiling, awkward and hiding humanoids of every sort, categorized and cacheted into humbling groups of sub sectors and species and races and traces of ethno-deliberate specialization. Because the Mothers had produced a modernity that made certain the methods of civilization included every facet of this non-homogenous mixture of Oids, each person perfectly paired. Exiting the train, Kenny stepped onto the surface of the platform, on solid ground once again. Elevated by escalators, Kenny rose up from the undergound and found himself exiting the station and once again stepping out into the dripping dampness of the regulated rain. The city square, the square centre of the city lay flat before him. Patterned tiles spread out in symbolic arrangements. The seal of the city: cirlces, within cirlces, a symbol of connection, ran it’s endless route around the immensely finite square. Across the square from the Central Station where Kenny stood waiting for the signals to halt the endless traffic, a pillared hall towered over the emptiness: the Mother’s Hall of Everyone. This structure was erected after the fall; after the quake, after that unearthly otherworldly shake. Akuppara, the great tortoise, stumbled and shook and changed the direction of her path, the old dust of another age falling away into the emptiness. Those that managed to cling, to hang on, were left with the great chore of rebuilding. Rebuilding requires regularity. The order of putting things in order, an operation not to be taken lightly, an undertaking that takes time and care. The Mothers and their magic ways, oracles from another age, had rescued from the rubble, remnants of knowledge gained through the trials and failures of ancient fathers who stumbled across, by accident, the code to the design. The pieces of the pattern were puzzling indeed, but the rhythmn and the scope could not be denied. It had been uncovered through endless trials that within each and every little bundle of flesh lay a numberedstream of keys and ciphers, a cryptogram of matter; the basis of living, the platform of life. It was on this information that the mothers set out to build their new and loving civilization. These Mothers were clever ones, as women often are; their calculations were pragmatic and discriminating and filled with a lovingtenderness only a mother could provide. The fathers before them were men and only men, and men only; men are only able to understand so very little. These men stumbled across the pattern like younglings on summer afternoons flipping rocks in the garden searching for secret dark things that were said to be hidden throughout the kingdom. And like any curious youth exposed to pheromones of chemical curiousity, the scent of new knowledge springing forth from the open earth there before them, a fresh cunt of the world, their minds go spinning, spinning madly. And this subtle number scheme was truly just the beginning, and this beginning, their very manly embarkment was blind to the order they were bound to. Because men can only poke and prod they had prodded and poked this code to no end, and with no end in sight they set about equating it and equalizing it, and tearing it apart and making it anew, and spitting it out and chewing it up and feeding it to computers and splitting it into atoms and sending it to the moon(because you never know what could happen on the moon) and all this very scientific activity amounted to an extensive and expansive library of mottled misinterpretations. But underneath all the numbers and patterns and hypotheses lay a savage elegance that only these special women, these loving mothers, could dare to grasp, comprehend and hold close to their achinglovingheavingmotherlyhearts. And grasp these mothers would; they seized the dripping coils of knowledge hauled out of the inky blackness by bold, blind and ignnorant men, and in an ever so lady like fashion spruced up the design and added in the one missing ingredient. Because the whole stinking mass of men and boys and girls and women were and was and still is an unending equation forever balanced on the pinnacle of precision; and this newly born and bustling babe of a civilization was bent on being, on balancing the scale. Chemistry, it seemed, was the new order of things and order was the rule of the day, if these mothers were to have their way. The pattern in question revealed a universal constant, a regularity: the process of creation at it’s very chemical base is coupled to a force that originates within the core of living things, within all matter: The machine of life is a machination of love and love is born in the minds of the living. The Mothers knew then and know now that love is what binds with blind devotion and the Chemistry of love is a faculty that sways with might over the dominion of the living, her long blade, flashing steel. Love is a bloodthirsty beast with an unearthly mercilessness that kindly and cruelly coaxes all living life. The rage of love has wrought madness into the minds of men. Through love, cunning acts of callousness have been justified. Love of a nation will wickedly weave inside the way of a people and this love will raise armies and build weapons. The Mothers, ever cognizant of the horrors love harbours, were determined to harness this all consuming force that oozed through everything, and much like men had dammed rivers before the mothers set about damming the unceasing flow of love. For love could and would and has before wreaked havoc in unquantifiable ways upon every aspect of the living world. Love left unchecked will tear the living apart, but the might of love is undoubtedly the strongest force known to man, for love makes humans believe. She (love was and is most certainly feminine) shoots across the spaces in between and bolts it all together; the it being: the it all, meaning: everything the whole foul muck of matter that began as a bang way back billions of years ago and is still spreading into the blackness. Love, like anything in the universe, can be measured, observed and influenced, it is a calculable force that ignites the living world and once it is harnessed the creative capacity of Love knows no bound: boundless, bodyless and benevolent. It was reasoned through careful observation that the chemical process of creating love is triggered by the very beings that love brings into life. Thus, an eternal paradox sprung forth from the black box of knowledge: The living breathe life into love and love breathes life into the living. And what could link this cosmic debris together; what vessel could deliver all this love to the dead matter of the universe? Throughout time and since forever there has been a bridge that links matter with the intangible force of love and the mothers knew before they set about proving it with math that the soul and only the soul would and always will yoke the seething might of love with the potency of matter. And faith in the soul allowed the mothers to boldly blast into the half baked theories of the past and plot out a map of the living soul within the body of science. For the soul had only been an hypothesis since god first made mention of it at the dawn of history, and God, with his impossible omnipotency, never needed to prove the existence of a soul he merely had to say it was so, and when almighty God was kicked out of office by the faculty of reason, the credibility of the soul went along with him. However, science is a funny thing and the very ideas that science, in it's infancy, had scoffed at from the high chair of logic were now living facts. And the code, embedded in a complex organic substance present in all living cells, had revealed to the minds of the mothers that life was no accident and it was very much an act of love. At this point the math gets oh, so stickily complicated like all math does when it nears the end of a great equation, but the magnitude of love's velocity(yes it works in waves) was estimated and gauged and graphed and weighed over by those ever loving mothers and their endless devotion, and the ageless equation was ulimately revealed in a most curious and simple way: Life=believing(love)soul2 Therefore, believing in love is what makes it be and anything is it, thus, love is everything. And how is it that the soul gets caught up in this juicy explosion of numbers and love: well, a soul much like the code of life is split in half and requires it’s opposite in order to become. Therefore a soul is only one half of the great equation and it, the soul that is, requires a mate, a soul mate, in order to be. And the code in all it’s divinely decreed mathematic majesty indicated that each eternal soul would have it’s other, and this other was forever. A souls journey through the infinite ever of the the universe was purposed and plotted and it’s potential was met when it was bonded with it’s mate. Those daring mothers had dared to delve into the very voyage of a soul and using their womanly wisdom coupled with the power of science they had determined that a soul was bound to it’s other but due to the nature of the universe the coupling could only occur in matter. The soul and it’s mate, these soul mates, were what breathed the universe into life due to the creative potential of love, and soul mates love each other more than anything; however, matter only lasts so long and eventually crumbles under the weight of the seething might of space and time. The soul released from it’s physical form is bound to it’s other through ceaseless devotion and will return to matter in search of it’s mate again, an endless process that shapes the living world. For the struggle to find the other can and will make any living thing do extraordinary things and it is these unordinary acts that drive the whole thing forward. And the offspring of soul mates, the spawn of infinite love, are left to continue the process while the old souls wait in limbo for their next chance to find the other. Those magic mothers and their wonderful math had broken open the code and their computations had revealed the equation that determined the time and place when that eternal connection would reoccur; rebirths, reincarnations and resurrections, acts now known to be true. And the math could and would point precisely to the point in space and time when this great harmony would continue, but what awful math it was; the numbers required for the precise deduction of each and every individuals opposite were extensively comprehensive and every facet of the individual in question had to to be accounted for, including date and time of birth along with scrupulous renditions of chemical characteristics and previous experiences in past lives. The Mothers had made these calculations a living part of their modern society and each and every individual was ledgered and balanced and tallied and chronicled in a most descriptive and detailed profile. A machine for calculation was drawn up and designed and erected within the great hall of everyone and this machine, this love machine, was capable of crunching these dreadful numbers; the soul cruncher it was colloquially called by the engineers. And it was this calculation that Kenny was anxiously awaiting. The light changed and he crossed the street, feet flung forward forced footsteps. His destination near now. The Office of Internalized Information, his place of employment. The Mother’s Hall of Everyone was flanked by each office of importance within the governments centralized operations. All divisions were divided into separate sectors and housed in their own particular hall and each operative was placed in order of importance on either side of the Mother’s Central Structure. immediately to the left stood the Division of Direction and it’s sister office, the Ministry of Management, made it’s home on the right flank. On down the line each purposed bureau was situated in ranked and obedient order: The Service of Secrets, the Commission of clarity, The Elected body of Electrics, The Department of mediation, The Agency of Order, and somewhere within this complex arrangement of functional bodies stood a deliciously nondescript stone and brick building , within which Kenny plied his trade. The Office of Internalized Information processed every domestic communication of governmental importance, an important process indeed. And noble Kenny kept those all important transmission lines open and operable for the correspondences of the good people of the city. In laymans terms his position was known as a linesman, and the lines he oversaw pumped an endless volume of communication back and forth between governmental and civilian offices. His footsteps brought him to the humble entrance of this essential operation. He fumbled in his pocket for his identification card and clipped it to his cotton shirt underneath his heavy coat now soaked by the unceasing precipitation. Seven steps to the top of the stairs and he stopped to be scanned by the security system which sought out his distinguishable identity through a selective series of inspections starting with his number and ending at his eyes. The eyes were given chief importance in the Mothers modern society due to their direct connection to the soul. The machine whirred and winked and wondered and after a moment of consideration recognized Kenny’s identity and granted him access to the inner sanctum of Internalized information. Sanitized and silent, the mezzanine glowed dull under luminescent lights and Kenny’s hollow footsteps echoed off the marble floor as he approached the elevator which would take him down below ground, once again, into the hub of a thoroughly intricate web-work of wires and electronic lines that ran through the city, twisted and ornate, orderly transferring transmissions to their proper terminus. Bing! the elevator announced it’s arrival after Kenny politely summoned it, with the touch of a button, from the bottom of the complex. Steel doors slid open and revealed a soundless metallic chamber complete with mirrors to enhance the dimensions of the claustrophobic capsule. He stepped in and turned towards the entrance, the panel to the right had only a pair of buttons: one marked one and the other two. He routinely reached forward and pressed with proper authority the glowing second button. The elevator binged once and the doors camly and quietly closed. Kenny felt his guts rise up inside him as gravity gave way to the falling elevator. A hushed hummmmmm filled the capsule as the mechanical cables lugged the vessel down into the elaborate central hub nestled in the cool earth below the city. Kenny caught his reflection in the mirrored walls of the elevator, his yellow skin appeared weary under overhead lights; his asian eyelids altered to allow for a double lid, considered more attractive in these modern times, blinked back at him. -I hope that this won’t take much longer, he thought to himself. His mind, insidious and unpractical, laid traps in plentitude for his dim and desirous ego. His heart, yearning, called out for undeliverable delectables causing such a stir within his consciousness that reasoned thought was disturbed and distracted by nonviable matters, and absurdly ill-thought illusions. It had been stamped in Kenny’s brain since an early age that faith in the Mothers was paramount to purpose, yet Kenny and his killjoy ways refused to reject his obstinateness. Perhaps the power to delude grew in multitudes due to Kenny’s longing for love, for Kenny wanted nothing more than to love and be loved, and love his other in all loving sincerity, for believing is the truest act of being and believing in love brings with boldness a being into being and Kenny undoubtably believed. Bing! The elevator arrived at the bottom and the door slid open softly and he stepped out in the sombre atmosphere of the central station of civic communication. The secretary, named Stephanie, smiled sincerely at Kenny as he cautiously came forward from the elevator. -Good morning Kenny, her voiced chimed in sing-song splendidness -Good morning Stephanie, Kenny carefully replied. His heart jumped at the sound of her voice. -A phone call came for you this morning form a man named Craig who claimed to be your conditioning coach, I didn’t know you had a condition? she courteously reported. -Did he say what for? -Only that you should contact him immediately. -I’ll make the call in my office . . . He paused, caught in a moment of ponder. -Thank you, Stephanie. -Your welcome Kenny. Her utterance stung his soul as he stepped past the pony wall of the reception desk. Entering his tightly packed quarters he removed his damp coat and hung it on the rack. An urgency rushed through his head as he reached for his rolodex in search of Craig’s cardinal integers, digits that directed the call. Ag, Ar, Bo, Ca, Ca, Cr . . . Craig: 6789-430-24-2323. His left hand hoisted up the receiver and his right hand danced over the buttons in rhythmic order. The tone in the ear piece was replaced by an audible pulse indicating that a call was being placed. The pulse was interrupted and a voice filled with obnoxious enthusiasm chimed through the speaker, - Conditioning Coach Craig here, may I ask who is calling? - It’s Kenny, Craig . . . I’m returning your call. - Kenny, Good Morning, I hope your soul is still. - I’m trying to hold it together Craig, your message said I should call immediately. Is there something the matter? - Well, there is a matter most certainly, but it is a matter of the most positive importance. I received notice this morning that your application has been approved . . . - Yes, I received a message as well, just before leaving home. - Yes but, I have just been notified that an appointment at the Mothers Hall has been made for you this afternoon and you to report there at 6 pm sharp for a very special sacrament. A wellspring of emotion flooded Kenny’s swaying heart. - Special sacrament . . . what do you mean a special sacrament? - It appears that the process has been completed and the Mothers have granted approval to a match. - A match . . . Kenny could hardly hold the phone to his head as his hand shook involuntarily. -Yes kenny, a match has been made. I would like to offer my congratulations to you on the reception of this very special news. - What do I have to do, should I prepare anything, do I need any papers of identification, how is this verified . . . - Hold back there man, my orders were to give you the message, your individual identification should suffice, and I’m certain if there is any problem it can be easily rectified. It’s great news isn’t it . . . - Yes Craig, it’s wonderful news, I’m overwhelmed, I, I, I . . . - Well you just be there at 6 six o’clock. - That won’t be a problem, thank you Craig, thank you, thank you. - Don’t thank me, thank the mothers. - I’ll thank the mothers then, when I see them. - Don’t count on that, it’s not likely that they’ll show themselves, they very rarely do, but something will without a doubt be revealed to you. - Craig, I’m speachless, you were right all along, there was nothing to worry about. - Faith, my friend, will take you there. - Too true, too true, I’m not sure if I’ll be able wait, I’m so excited. - You’ve waited this long, a few more hours won’t hurt. - Right again, I'll call you as soon as I’m through with the Mothers. - You won’t be able to, you’ll be too tied up with your mate. - Perhaps, but I won’t forget all your help, you’re a great coach Craig. - Thank you, Kenny, I always had faith in you. - Wish me luck. - You won’t need to worry about luck anymore. - right again Craig. I’ll talk to you soon. - So long Kenny. The line went dead and Kenny returned the receiver back to it’s holding place. His mind dashed about in all directions. He had spent a lifetime waiting and preparing for this day and now that it was upon him and he didn’t know what to do. He recalled lessons learned before: - Don’t panic, have faith in the Mothers and all will be well. He assured himself. But, his fathead wouldn’t allow him to relax. 8:30 arrived right on time; duty required him to assume his functional persona and disregard his personal affairs for the remainder of the working day. Dutiful Kenny swept aside his emotional involvements and engaged his preordained ordinance, awful ordinariness. He inserted himself into his uniformly androgenous jumpsuit, and exited his office. Stephanie smiled silently as he calmly stalked by her sectioned segment (he felt like he might explode) and approached the ample entrance to the chamber of dissemination which housed the central communication server, a monsterous machine, that, as the median conveyor of all disclosures, mechanically disassembled, reconvened and dispatched each received dictation after distinguishing it’s intended direction, a complicated process indeed. Upon gaining entry, Linesman Kenny, assessed his familiar surroundings: The server before him stood , as it had on every day prior to today, in stately grandeur. It’s steel frame, smooth, glowed green under the orb housed inside. This Orb, this gleaming green globule, a magical mechanism, radiated rhythmically behind transparent glass. Each and every memorandum of any particular character was processed through this pragmatic phenomenon. It’s purpose was transformation: in a most practical fashion: it altered communications from one form to another. Thus, this contraption was capable of creating coded information in relation to any transgression and rendering it anew in any functioning mode that the sender had intended. If the message was sent in sound the machine could and would supply an appropriate depiction in corresponding colours and waves. Meaning was no longer bound to words in this modern world, Impression was given prominence and emotion was esteemed above all media in accordance to the might of love. It was evidently obvious to the Mothers that Love rules over emotion, immanently, and any communication would be addressed and asserted in accordance with loves resolute astuteness. The correlation contraption was the last thing that Kenny really wanted to be engaging at this most pressing hour but the pulsing pressure of progressive information demanded his most particular attention. The error screen to the left of the principal manipulator was casually nodding and winking and blinking and bucking about in order to gather the full attention of the the linesman on duty, that linesman being dutiful Kenny; Kenny now on duty, did his best to derive the operational error transcribed from the central hub and provide a meaningful correspondence to the appropriate address and on and on and on and on his day went. Awful uneventfullness was accompanied by the weighted expectations that clung to the neck of dutiful Kenny like the rotted corpses of howler monkeys cursed to sing their awful laments even in death and each emote was a single dagger digging into our heroes already distraught psyche. But, Linesman Kenny fought on, his courage elevated by new found hope. And as always, time comes through in the end and delivers the deserving to their destinies; Kenny deserving nothing more than destiny had to offer had done what duty desired and was relieved of his most prominent post and directed to the office of the managing officer of the Office of Internalized Information. Brian. The manger. Manager Brian was benevolent and absorbent of others emotions; a sanguine smirk rested under Brian's management mustache as he read aloud a dispatch received moments earlier from the Mothers Department of Mating. - Linesman Kenny, of the Office of Internalized Information has been dutifully summoned to the Mothers Hall of Everyone for a most important meeting with the Council of Collective Agreements for the purpose of properly assigned mates within the Institution of Souls, Brian almost sounded like he was boasting as he brought the letter to a close. -Kenny, I feel very proud to deliver this most blessed of good news. I remember, very clearly, the day I received my summons and my god man, my heart hopped out of my throat and began flopping about on the floor like a cod hauled in fresh from the ocean, well . . . not exactly but, you know what I mean, I was really excited, as . . . I imagine you are . . . And on Manager Brian went with his management soliloquy. Excitement wasn't exactly a word that Kenny would have used to describe his particular condition at the moment; however, Brian's use of adjectives was the furthest thing from his soaring consciousness which wanted nothing more than to rise from the bowels of this suffocating department and fly towards his ultimate destiny, that being his already decided, his beloved forever and now prescribed and approved soul mate, waiting, he was certain, in a waiting room connected to another waiting room within the comfortable confines of the Mothers most humbling sanctuary: the Hall of Everyone; so, whatever adjective Brian felt appropriate for the moment would more than suffice as long as the schedule of this ceremony was kept within a reasonable time frame. Brian, who was long on ceremony, and short on sense was quite happy to carry on ascribing adjectives to the situation however inappropriate they may be for he was certain of his convictions and men like this often found themselves in positions of power and were always parading up and down in squares during executions or celebrations of dead queens or executions held to celebrate the death of a queen and making speeches that were supposed to inspire men to condemn themselves to death for the sake of the state and at this moment Brian felt the need to further inflate Kenny in order to help him fly onward to his meeting with fate, so much so that the Kenny could feel the heat of the hot air emanating from Brian's ceaselessly flapping mouth. But, eventually Brian ran out of breath and Kenny was awarded an honorable hand shake, two weeks of holidays and was ushered out into the open lobby and swept on to the waiting elevator that eventually ejaculated him onto the surface facing his fate housed within the mothers holiest hall of everyone. |