The Galgravolt, a fearsome beast created while (Name deleted) was had reverted to a maker after his splunders had been depleted and he was trapped in the 21st century, was a beast that when born believed it was an Otter. The galgravolt was a slave to preconceptions; which was its strength. As such, if it ever realized it was a Galgravolt, it would behave as people expected a galgravolt to act; it would act as the most fearsome animal ever created by the makers. naturally, it spent most of its time crushing clams on its belly in shallow water, the stereotypical otter’s behaviour. Sometimes they could be convinced that they were Matthieu Mconnaughoise, the french Matthew McConnaughey clone from 2854. He was exactly the same as the first Matthew, only he spoke french and ate yeast deposits he grew on his incarnate ethnicity. (in those days, a person’s ethnicity lived as a discreet organism, walking beside them in the body of a polar bear. And on that bear grew yeast all over itself to feed people. This was a result of the presupposition that ethnicity sustained a person, defining “where they came from”, if you can believe it, and a person became totally dependent on their ethnicity for survival. They were also dependent on Yamtalkers for survival, but we’ll deal with that later.) At this very moment, our friend from the hyper-future, Tyra Banks, was fleeing to the hospital to have his bullet wound treated. Would he make it before the Galgravolt devoured Toronto?

I raced to the hospital to have my wound treated. Would i make it before the galgravolt devoured toronto? There was little time to smear inquisitive pastes on my legs to ask the question in paste form; i had to get this lead out of me. lead was to Galgravolts what goats were to chupacabras, or keys were to O’Brien, the Lock Man. Fortunately, i was close by Mt. Sinai, and as I rushed over the cement plateau outside a building that my suit identified as the medical science building, I felt the warm wind behind me sweeping out of the 37 degree body heated breasts.

The chestmaker was a tool created to do good, not evil, and yet the titan breasts were no doubt sending out nippulary signals to voyeurs everywhere in the galaxy. By god, what if Peter Frampton found out? You might notice that some of the names in the future resembled names here, in the distant past. Basically, don’t think about that. There’s an explanation, but, dont’ worry about it.

I skidded into the doors of Mt. Sinai, past the security guard stationed at the door to prevent hopeful doctors from sneaking in and testing out their theories on people. THere were few people, and so i took it upon myself to let myself into the hospital, my suit fabricating a chart with my medical history and placing it in my hand. What kind of illnessed did people have in this time, i wondered. Strange primitive viruses, naked bacteria, perhaps auto immune issues. It was bizzare to think about such things, yet somehow comforting, imbuing me with a kind of pride that our species had evolved so far that our diseases were made to evolve to keep up with us. Bacteria had their own civilizations now, homes, and cars, and credit cards, and a debt based economy. Their debt was a debt of sleeves though, as the vest boys had ravaged the sweaters of the great bacteriological sweater turrets and denim keeps, proud bastions of sleeved garments, themselves civilized. They were in a medieval age, if you want a clear mental image of what it was like, while the bacteria were in a 21st century kind of thing. I mean in case you need a reference point. Don’t even get me started about memes. They were had been infected with their own memes, and were forced to relive “Meet the Parents” with Ben Stiller eternally. TI turned out that that movie was the most life sustaining entitiy of your time, full of rich textures of thought and ineffible conceptual complexity.

Entering an empty room, I lay down and waited for a doctor, who to my surprise entered quickly. he was an elderly man, brown skinned indian, with prickly looking eyebrows and salt and pepper hair that reminded one of a dad kind of deal. He spoke in a smooth ayurvedic tone but with the weight of real medicine behind it.

‘So lets deal with you, alright? We have to get you totally into a mega surgery now, guy. It’s mondo readical that you got had by a gat, bromagnon man. But with mad repsect, things are getting dank, and we have to slice into ya’lls.’

I agreed, and told him so via a sympatikiss.

Moments later i was wheeled through the toothpaste green hallways into the bleeping surgery. Can you believe how fast that was? The puttering of nurses and anesthesiologists covered the muted sound of soft whimpering coming from the tear speckled surgeon whose froggy little face was thankfully coated with a surgical mast. or mask. Were masts facial things yet?

Down came the gas mask and up came the tingling sensation in my hands and legs. I barely felt the prick of the IV go in, or the cold river of anesthetic chilling my consciousness to a hibernating crawl. What i did sense, however, was the tell-tale shriek of the galgravolt. It was here, just as I slid into the gravest slumber.

To be continued….

Meanwhile, back inside the dream inside the frown

The dream ended.

I awoke to find myself lying on the ground outside the hospital where I realized i had been enfrowned. In my gripping lobe I gripped a sleek iPhone 3Gs, the tweet-shank newly bloodied by my frantic attempt to share my meaningless thoughts. I didnt’ feel any different, though my gas bladders were semi deflated. perhaps relinquishing a part of your identity to the meaninglessness of conventional life wasn’t actually bad. perhaps.. yes perhaps smalltalk was even acceptable.

I righted myself on my … legs? I had… these were real legs. I had real legs. The form that the great suit of the future had hidden me under… it had become me. My gas bladders weren’t empty, they were gone. And what’s more, I could see. All around me i could see a city, the city of Toronto, its middling skyscrapers, its sprigs of trees cropping up stridently amid the cityscape, its bland pedestrians with country-folk haircuts and cheap suits. Toronto, i saw it now, as it actually was, no chromo-licks or visionscreams. The sight.. the sight! It was real! And i had it!

I ran through the yard towards a street, dull gray, with metal lanes in the middle, some type of rails perhaps. I ran right up to the first person I met, and opened my…mouth? I had but one mouth, a real mouth. “Excuse me.”

“Yes?” he replied.

“Nice weather we’re having, wouldn’t you say?” It was okay, i wasn’t diminished. I could talk about the weather. Why not?

“Yep. It’ll be like this all week, over the weekend.”

“Oh, i should get out the barbeque.” Where was this coming from? I didnt’ have a barbeque. I didnt’ even know what a barbeque was, unless it was related to the BarbeQueen of the Smokey Grill chain of planets. Delicious brocopian slabs there, by the way. But her majesty’s passions had waned of late, and her slab fires burned low. Alas.

“Yeah. I’ll grill my own meat that i bought on a grill. I’ll serve it to friends, and we will have a beer together by my suburban pool. I have a wife, and she works at a school. Anyway, later.”

This wasn’t so bad. He was relating facts to me. pure facts. None of those terrible ideas cluttering up the conversation. No emotions, nothing contentious, just plain information so i can know that he’s just like me.

I explored this new freedom from having to have a personality for the rest of the day. I encountered some very clever people too. While i was strolling through something that they called “Kensington Market”, i ran into someone with thick rimmed glasses without prescription lenses. He told me that he had a magic watch. I asked him to show me. Apparently it told the future time.

“What time is it now?” he entreated.

“it’s 3:49, by my watch.” I didn’t have a watch, but speaking on autopilot tended to relinquish the correct results to any situation.

“Okay… I’ve set my watch to tell the time one hour from now. So that means right now its… hold on… ” he stared at his watch for a moment, in a seizure of concentration. “4:49.”

I would have verified his results, but i just innately trusted him, and couldn’t be bothered to muster any kind of imaginary clock in my head and watch it go ahead by one hour.

Later, i ran into the cleverest person. He had come up with a novel use for mnemonic devices.

“Most people waste mnemonic devices to remember chemical formulas, the names of kings, and so on. However, no one has applied them to merely learning english words before. Watch. Let’s say you have to remember the word ‘eat’. I use the word “feet”, because it rhymes with eat. So whenever i have to use the word ‘eat’, i think ‘feet’, and then that remindsme of eat.”

“Brilliant.” It seemed brilliant to me.

“It goes further. What if i want to eat, but i can’t remember the word, but i can’t remember the word to remind me of the word. It would be pretty embarrassing if i said i was hungry, and wanted to… uhhh. uhhhh. uhhhh, you know what i mean? So i think of the word hoof, because a hoof is a kind of foot. That reminds me of feet, then eat. BUt it doesn’t stop there, for every english word i have a mnemonic to remind me. Some of the words i actually have whole songs for. For instance, the word “preamble”. I have a song that goes like this.

Ambling around,
shambling around,
peas are green,
spleen, heat, hot, lamb,
delicious greek food,
imbiciles are rude,
route, road, toad,
tight, fight, combat,
contention is the root of all
problems, preblems,
prebpreb, prepre, pre!
Now just add amble to pre and you get
preamble, and that’s the easiest one yet.”

“That’s ingenius. that really is ingenius.”

“I know. If i ever need to say any number of words, i have thousands of songs. i have songs to remind me of the songs. Shall i sing one for you?”

“I’d love to hear one, but barbeque season, you feel me?”

His eyes become empty, and his muscles slackened, as though being hypnotized by some transcranial magnetometer.

“Yes–barbeque season.”

All around me the rastas and hipsters had dropped what they were carrying, and like Pharaohs (which in the timeframe now approximated for my within the great frown, i believe were called zombies. of course in my day, the zombie people had conquored egype and ruled over a race of shirts as pharaohs. Egypt got swindled a lot. The pharaohs were really.. slow witted… There’s no polite way of saying it.) they stumbled forward in unison.

“Yes–” they spoke “barbeque season.”

Though i couldn’t hear it, somewhere out in space, the lips of the great frown of the universe were curling into a vague half-smile. It was barbeque season, and the barbequeen’s fires were smoking up some delicious brocopian slabs, by which i mean our personalities.

To be queentinued…

The man from the hyper-future, Tyra Banks, stands amazed at the chest unleashed by his powerful super-suit’s chestmaker. With him are the nerd he recently met, and soeone who looks remarkably simlar to (name deleted). But it can’t be him, can it? (name deleted) is sleeping, dreaming, even now inside the frown of the universe… then who is this man? What is his plan? And his span? Fan.

The dials and knobs on my suit dialed down and knobbed down to the minimum. I was again allowed to utilize my own bodily limbs to control my directions and motions. how pleasing it was to regain that lost control.

The night air swelled with the rush if heat of the heaving breasts on the now breathing chest, and with the cries and yelps of the hapless Torontonians who had, understandably, not predicted this occurance. Torontonians are notably terrible at predicting the emergence of body parts in the middle of their city, as their future history would bear out time and time again. Old Shafty-Cocks of 2140 really springs to mind.

I turned my gaze proportionatly, following the golden ratio, towards the man who, until only an hour ago, had been my trusted companion. And yet, after vanishing into thin air at the hospital, and returning without much ado, he had seemed to be like another man who just looked like my friend. What had hapened to him? It was like taking the orange out of the orange skin and then putting some rags in the orange skin, and then saying ‘this is an orange, OR IS IT?” I’m saying this is my friend, or IS IT? You feel me?

I ji-HAD no time to find out (had no time to find out), as the blood pooling up in my suit from my recent interaction with bullets meant i had to gather my mind and hurl my body onward. Why had my friend shot into my body with his gun? It wasnt’ even a malicious gun, it was a kind looking gun. one of those little stubby guns, that you imagined the big guns always teased and that you just wanted to buy when you saw it at the gun shelter. In the age in which i come from, guns were large wooly creatures, barely resembling the primitive guns of today, but in that stubby little fellow I saw the Grintaur, the gun I had growing up. Not actually growing up, obviously, as I blinked into existence all at once due to m suit’s conclusion that it was inevitable, but nevertheless, i blinked into existence with a full life’s memory set. With a bonus expansion pack of half remembered possible victimizations.

“You’re a real dink for some reason,” i shouted, as i turned and hopped away. My suit’s inflective screens corrected my clearly pained intonations into those of a tough urban fellow. While i said “you’re a real dink for some reason”, what (name deleted) and the nerd heard was “Yo, ya’ll is total douche machine, white honkey ghost!” Cool, right? That’s pretty cool.

The suit’s wound augmenter kicked in, and my bullet wound began to feel like a scorpion bite in my hand. It wouldn’t interfere with me running, though my leg now liberated from pain, i was running awfully hard on it, and I could feel blood glooshing out. It was without a doubt the wettest my jeans had ever been thus far. I made amental note to add it to the big wet jeans scroll in the year 249,493 when i was next visiting that time.

In the dim light of king’s college circle, surrounded on all sides by venerable old buildings, universty College, a vast victorian edifice with tasteful ivy growing on every side, i could make out the nerd leaping on (name deleted) and wrestling away the gun. The starlit sky arched overhead like a threadbare shroud, permeated with vague light from beyond. There was something remarkably peaceful about this epoch, no lip-chives, scenting the night with their spicy salivas, no gontules, lobing your legs with their lobes. No scrimshaw pipes hanging from everyone’s hoary beards, drizzling out smoke into the blustering new england autumn nights. All three of the worst things in time were absent.

In the distance now echoed the sound of sirens, emergency vehicles rushing to disruptions in the city’s life. Probably the giant breasts, I’d imagine. I’d be willing to bet that that ws, by far, the biggest disruption. However, though i didn’t know it at the time… I mean, though i dno’t know it at the time, i don’t know what i’m about to say, the galgravolt had realized it was a galgravolt. The city, and everyone in it, was doomed. I dont’ know that yet though. I’m saying it with my fingers poked into my ears so i don’t’ hear myself say it.

To be continued.

Due to his self doubt, he decided to ask an objective third party if he were dead, or merely trapped within a paradigm that was like death (perhaps Hegelianism).  What follows is extracted from the protagoniser’s gleam screamer ™.

…

The other man was in the form of a Methodist, and as his opticulated my torso and limbs with his oculonts, I gleaned from my mood groaner that his was moaning out a strong sense of recognition.

“You!” The waves of his outburst gallopped across my delicate membranes.

“You know me?” I rejoindered.  What a fool, he didn’t know iw as going to do that, i bet.  10 Greevalt Lamb-coins says he’s not prescient!

“Of course, or rather, i will know you–” he paused for effect “–IN THE FUTURE!”  The latter part of his sentiment was expressed with ominous arm motions and a grim look on his face.   The ocean of his face (a metaphor) became like a grim ocean face.  You see how I’m able to make you see images?

“Old man, how can you recognize me if you will only know me in the future?”

He just laughed at me, and gave me twenty canadian dollars.  He then combed my hair, while still laughing.  He pulled out a range of ties that surprisingly rated over Four Hearts on the suitability scale, and chose a 4.8er and gingerly tied it around my neck.

“This is the first time i’ll meet you, but not the last.  The last time i meet you will be the first of the last times i meet you.  And because it’s a first of something, i’ve technically met you one first time already, long long years from now.  Since firsts carry forward, in the direction they are facing, a first last faces the reverse, you see?  So that first is carrying forward relative to its own frame of reference.  That forward is our backward.  Thus, I know you already because of our final meeting, years from now.”

The chasmic void which we inhabited began to blow with warm gusts of stale air.

“That’s remarkable.”

“Yes it is.  Purely by logical construct i am able know anything, for you see, I’m a Rativore, an eater of Reason.”

“Ahh,” i said knowingly.  he had no idea i didnt’ know what he was talking about, but i squared my shoudlers to his, and mimiced his bodily attitude, while maintaining eye contact. i was winning this conversation.

“That and i live in three directions in time at once.  Forward for you, backward for you, and forward for ex-girlfriends.”

“A third direction in time?” I asked, while touching his body in a dominant way, witha broad open handed motion.

“Have you ever wondered with ex-girlfriends never seem to move on?”

In many ways i had, but i wasn’t going to show my hand.

“Maybe.  Maybe not.”  Booya.

“Well, that’s because ex-girlfriends live in a perpendicular timeframe.  They don’t move forward in the timeframe that you do.  For me, obviously, ex girlfriends move on rather quickly.  We Rativores are the third luckiest race in the known universe.  Not me though, as I am stuck in here.”

“Ah, the afterlife.  Kind of an anuser, eh?”

“Bummer.  Not Anuser.  But uh.. what do you mean afterlife?”

“Well.  I died.  In the frown?”

“Ahahahahaha,” he said each Ha as a separate syllable in a dry monotone, whie inflating gas sacks on his neck.  When he was done storing his laughter, the gas bags compressed, shooting his jocularity fog into my face.  I must admit, the effect was very amusing. “We’re not dead.  You idiot.  You’re only dreaming.  You are asleep, right now, inside the frown, after successfully giving up some of your personality by twittering on your iphone.  None of this is even real.  Except me.  I moved into your dreams last week, while you were awake, because it seemed like you had basically given up on having any dreams.  Since you clearly are using them again, i could move into your aspirations.  That’s a far more tractless void than this cavern.  But uh.  I have all my shells arranged here.”  He indicated several rows of beautiful seashells which he had arranged from smallest to largest.  “It would be a shame to have to move them.”

“It would.  It would.  Still…”

“What?”

“nothing.  You know.  It’s just… ”

“Ugh, okay, i’ll move if you want.  But look around, there’s lots of space.  If you realy dont’ ahve that many dreams, i mean.  I could even put up some of my own.  My goals are pretty great.”

“Gimme an example.”

“I want to own a boat.  Nothing too fancy, a 12 footer. And maybe retire with my 2nd wife to smalltown Ontario, and integrate into the community by volunteering to help it’s local historical society.”

“Say, that’s not bad.  You ahve a deal.”

“Good, becuase you’re about to wake up.”

“Oh, wait, what’s your name, and tell me about my future!”

“I’m Phile Maven, and actually you asked me not to tell you anything.  You made that very clear at our final meeting, just years from now.  You can’t even imagine, time is nuts!”

“What?  Why!  tell me!”

But it was too late, he already had his earphones in and was listening to his sleek, 3Gs black iphone, available at apple stores across the country.

to be continued…

So this is what it was like to be dead.  It wasn’t that bad actually.  It was basically the same as being at a billy joel concert.  Actually, since billy joel was a musician from 9 trillion or so years in my past, i had no idea whether that reference was amusing, but in my short stint in the 21st century i’m pretty sure i heard basically 30 or so people say that, and everyone around them laughed in the manner of the era, violently, through the lone oral cavity of the face.  Imagine, laughing and eating in the same place.  disgusting.

I am dead, by the way.  I was in the frown when I failed to pass myself off as food it could digest.  And so it expelled me.  Or so i think.  For all i know i coul dbe alive and just think i’m dead.  According to the Deepaks of Chopron 9, believing you are dead is the same as being dead.  However, people who are not stupid frequently point out that it isnt’ the same at all.

I made it a goal to ask the next person i saw whehter I was, indeed, dead, or whether I was, indeed, only convinced I was dead and needed merely to rouse myself back to consonance with the universe’s symphonic whole by means of right thinking.  And i wouldnt’ have to wait long.  it seemed that death was a spartan space, but nonetheless sparely crowded with enough people that it would be a piece of cake to sneak up to one of them and ask them a simple question and be out of ther ebefore they’d even noticed you.  I put on my best sneaking face and began sneakfacing towards people.  Not just any people.  one person particular.  Checkmate.  One might even say, chestmake.  Imagine saying that though.

I zipped up to the first man in the place who i could zip up to, and asked him, quite imperceptibly, “am i dead?”

He took no notice of me.  My plan was working perfectly.  I had no only to receive my answer and I oculd be occulted by his ignorance and secret meself back to my originiation point.  However, it was to prove a lengthy wait, one far longer than the great Minor Wait, the universe’s shortest wait recorded, or the minor Great Wait, the world’s smallest longest wait of history’s universe.  or even the great G Minor Wait, the time it takes for a musician to realize that he’s playing G Minor, when no one around him is really in the mood for that kind of chord.  Indeed, i waited for some time longer than those waits combined, and then some.  (some time i mean).  Was I dead?  The question returned to me like a shitty boomerang, covered in a dog’s shit and bird’s shit and maybe some egg that wasnt’ cooked.  Just spinning and flinging all that eggy shit on me.  It was just horrible.

Finally, with a start, the man noticed me, defeating my plan, but beginning his own.  Apparently, he planned now to start telling me whether i was dead.  Little did he know, his plan played right into mine.  Fool…

to be continued.

“I’m calling from inside the house!”, said the voice. Just then, the operator broke in on the conversation.

“He’s calling from inside the house!” alerted the operator, who had until recently been the trainee.

But i wasnt’ convinced. I conducted a room by room search, many times walking past a man on a cell phone in the hallway, tall and strong with big mits that could K.O. a dinosaur. BUt i just played it cool…

Meanwhile, back in the novel…

Meanwhile, back at the University of Toronto….

Meanwhile, in this very paragraph, I sprung back as (name deleted) bounded to his feet, pushing off the Nerd like he were a lamentable lack of foresight, stringlamping him brightly, in string. All tied up, the nerd felt sudden shame, and the two of us were locked in mental suction again.

Why are you attacking me? I probed.

Quiet! Quiet!

This was getting me nowhere. Fortunately, the suit of mine had secrets yet unrevealed.

“Tyra, this is your suit speaking. I have detected that you are in an interesting situation. Do you mind if i watch?”

At last the suit’s true nature was revealed, at least as pertained to this interesting situation. A voyeur.

“By all means. I am basically just watching, myself. I have no idea how this will turn out. It’s like i can see my body from the outside, and i just sort of dissociate.”

It was a cleverly worded ruse. i wasn’t dissociating at all, I was deserpately searching for some solution to what was likely to become a pummeling.

If you won’t tell my why you’re trying to kill me, at least tell me where you dissapeared to back at the hospital.

No.

He was good. real good. I didn’t expect to have a chance matching wits with someone with 90 billion years of self help books advantage over me. Dammit! The shame-link was waning, the Nerd was regaining his composure, and i could sense another onslaught of inexplicable murder. I had to do the only thing i knew how to do. I asked my clothes to teleport me away. He agreed, but then reneged on the agreement moments later. I didnt’ want to press the issue, because it would make things awkward between us.

I pointed my arm at (name deleted), desperate, and bluffed.

“I have the ability to murder you, right now. This suit contains powers beyond your wildest imagination. More powerful even than your Ixtx!”

“Who is doing the talking here? You or your suit?”

“Me, obviously. It’s my mouth moving!”

“Irrelevant! I’ve seen this deception many times. YOU have to die, you dont’ understand! I have to kill you. It’s the only way!”

“only way? Why?! ”

“I’m sorry,” he said, then, producing an egg from i know not where, he pressed it hard against his chest, breaking the shell and releasing its liquid meat onto the front of his chest.

“Chestmate!” he said. It was a brilliant move, and i had walked right into it. in the game of weird futuristic chess, chestmate was the most powerful of all the egg gambits. If only my suit’s deterministic engine were functioning, it would tell me whether i was to escape alive, or dead. But it wasn’t forcing the issue, no conclusion was forthcoming, and our strange and futuristic dispute was without conclusion. Dammit.

“Look. You chestmated me. I conceed that point.” My only power now, the suit abstaining, was my ability to charm. Instinct drove me on more than anything else, and my scrawny body, within its not quite top end jeans, was flexing a variety of muscles in anxiety. But while i was charming, another man, a nerd, was preparing for his own solution to the deadlock. “I think that your move was at once brilliant and original. Certainly, i did not see it coming, and concurrently, did not hear it coming. A rueful combination.” that was it, his guard was beginning to drop, his egoistic lethargon was forming, the 12 sided polygon of conceit that all men of his era were forced to have foisted upon them for no practical reason. “In fact, i think, if i were to do everything differently, i woudl still walk directly into that one. Actually, my legs were so fooled, they themselves would carry me into basically any scneario you created, without my wanting them to.” That’s it, just a moment longer.

BLAMBARELL! A tae kwon do addled fist blambarelled its way into the face of (name deleted). “Totally forgive me, michael j fox.”

“Chestmake,” i intoned. You had to admit, Chestmake was better than Chestmate, by a factor of K.

And with that fateful phrase, another of my suit’s secrets was revealed.

“Chestmaker activated,” it squeeped. I lost control of my limbs, the suit controlling my motions. LIke a dangling marionette i was hoisted this way and that, an altogther unpleasant combionation of feelings flooding my stuff.

“God dammit! This is exactly what i was trying to avoid!” shouted (name deleted).

“I wasn’t consciously trying to avoid this, but i can imagine that a large part of my unconscious was tied up in trying to avoid being trapped inside a machine suit going haywire,” i commisserated.

“Chestmaker phase 1 active. Potentiation of chest, actuality field dispersed. Groatal splurples splurping at optimal efficiency.” The suit’s calm voice unnerved me, as what was going on was clearly not calm. Brilliant light shattered the night sky, luminous the suit raised into the air, myself within it, streaks of deafing eye-sound blaring in all directions. My floating body resembled a puffer fish, a million needles of bright white casting into the sky, an urchin of rays, no less terrified than an urchin of clays (dont’ ask, clay urchins are little cowards).

“Farts! I was trying to avoid this!”

“Why?” I shouted down to him.

“I dont’ want to say, i’m not comfortable opening up to people!”

“You may have an anxiety disorder!”

“That’s what people say, but i think its okay to be private!”

I didnt’ ahve time to answer, as the spirally beams of energetic photons coalesced into a single broad shaft, pointing towards the heart of the city. Growing above that heart were large arched structures, like tusks. No, ribs. The city was growing ribs, a hundred stories high. They urgently grew towards one another, like reunited lovers made of bone. Then between them a webbing appeared. Flesh! As the network of veins blazed into existence, a shroud of skin came down like a tarp on some old junk. But before the flesh had completed its coating, i saw what could only be lungs. They could not be anything but lungs.

Greater and greater the volume of the forming chest grew, and on its top, large glands appered with ducts, and fat deposits. At the tip of the ducts, which grew together stems of plants towards a pinprick of light, they formed a pink protruberance. As the flesh grew around, the protuberance grew darker, standing erect above the mound like a keep above a motte. Breasts. titanic breasts. Proportionally, the equivalent of maybe a D, or double D. Not disproportionate, unbalancing the figure, but certainly noticable and arousing.

“Hold on kids, it’s going to be a bumpy ride…” (that was me who said that)

to be continued…

Somehow, the suit had saved me, in a flash I had seen the world around me dissolve into an ambigious cloud. Swirls of color filled my vision and sense not unlike being asked to help your friend move from one house to another flooded my body. Why had (name deleted) decided to kill me? Did it have something to do with my confidence?

As it had vanished, the world combined, braids of color and sensation weaving themselves into a great cable of continuity, and I saw again that I was in Toronto, in that damned field where i had been shot. in fact, there was (name deleted), holding a gun, pointing it directly at me, but now he was many meters away. No, there was a whif of smoke in front of him… that must have been me. I had teleported only a few meters away. And still in the path of –

The bullet tore through not only my jeans, but also the jeans of The Suit, high end studded preworn denim marvels, not the jean machine house brand pants I slipped myself into on a dare. Both were ruined now.

“WTF!?” shouted the stupid nerd, shamed no longer as his slack trance had been whipped out of him by the sharp shock of the grizzly act played out in front of him. Imagine, being dumped. that would be horrible. Even worse is when you’re a dumb nerd, and then someone much more confident in some really decent, not high end, but decent, jeans gets shot into after a genuinely breathtaking teleportation.

Focusing on the nerd, i realized that i was still in link with (name deleted), both of us gaining power from our abuse of the nerd. My suit must still be functioning, still siphoning off self esteem atoms into its long and moist bladder. Thank god.

“CALL ALL THE POLICE YOU CAN FIND” i shouted. “IF YOU KNOW ANY POLICE, GIVE THEM A SHOUT!”.

The nerd was apparently one of those lung nerds, because he bellowed out a “hyap” and roundhouse kicked (name deleted) in the face.

“MICHAEL J FOX, YOU ARE NOT TO SHOOT ANYONE ANY LONGER, BRO! SPIN CITY WAS NOT A BAD SHOW, UNTIL CHARLIE SHEEN WAS CAST AS YOUR REPLACEMENT! I DON’T WATCH 2 AND A HALF MEN, HOWEVER, I HEARD THE OTHER GUY, DUCKIE, JUST GOT AN EMMY FOR IT. MY MOM LIKES IT, AND THAT PRECLUDES THE POSSIBILITY THAT I WOULD LIKE IT. THOUGH SHE DID LIKE ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. THAT WAS A GOOD SHOW. NOW LAY ON THE GROUND OR I WILL SNAP KICK YOU.”

The capslock was palpable between them. The shame evapourated, and the authoritative training of what can only be described as Tae Kwon Do took over. The shamelink was broken, and my suit’s guzzling days concluded with a lovely regret sunset, my battery now vaguely full. Like, full, to capacity, but, like, what capacty? Full capacity? Obviously, but, in a vague way?

The healing secretions of my suit permeated my wound, as calm taupe music played on the qualm disturber. i could feel my qualms aggitating, in a taupy-beige way, how calming. My calm qualms where just that, qualmy calm taupes. Taupe Misers in the grand Land of the Grope Wisers, a kind of whiskey that was grabby, used to procure for themsleves some really rigid taupes. These were nothing like that, these were really more beige.

Erectly i stood, and towards the crumpled body of one Michael J Fox lookalike i strode. The nerd’s face resolved under the dim light of the lamp. his face was a circus of features, his hair a relaxed car of touselment, and his shirt was the shirt equivalent of automation in the early 1960s. A shirt with many far reaching sociological consequences, to say the least. His small stature was augmented by apparently taught and rarely revealed potency, strength, and his taught musculature was suspended from rigid calcified bones, an endo skeleton, like a rack from which to hang fibrous organs of varying construction and to varying degrees “gross”, in that liberal sort of way that university students tended to have their organs suspended. Ahh, without an experience yet, but it was clear that as the world contributed to his experience folio his leanings would shift to the right, and his organ arrangement would become much more conservative. I guess because when you’re older, you have more to lose, and pragmatism dictated the organisation of function of some of your glands and ducts. He was not so old though, by my calculation he had not yet reached the permeation age, his normal (read white) skin was still without any indications of having been in a drive-by.

“I dont’ know how to thank you, ” i admitted, regretfully. “I’m sorry. I was never taught the appropriate method.”

“Never mind about that. What i need to know right now, doctor, is are you hurt?”

“Doctorly, sir, I can admit that I am not hurt, without losing face. The bullet you saw pass through me was probably just a construct of society to create a false dichotomy between those who have been shot, and those who have not. really, i think shootings exist on a continuum. Who is society to define who has and has not been shot? There are shades of gray.”

He gave his assent by standing still and saying nothing. Classic.

“So, I better doctor my way around now. I’m going to just doctor about for a while.”

The white coat i wore should obfuscate and personal thoughts he might have. he looked the type to merely acquiesce at the sight of such a coat as mine. It was the white that made it so, i wrote on a card, and read aloud to myself. He didn’t understand, but that’s the way it works. People just dont’ understand genius during its lifetime. Time to stroll, anyway. But (name deleted) had other plans. And they were like most plans: not revealed to you because no one wants you to show up.

to be continued…

Before me stood a white labcoat encrusted vision of awesomeness. His ignorance of my vanishing and my return meant he had no idea, no idea at all. He had walked directly into what clutches a man such as myself possessed, leathery and moist, and with gentle palpatations, fate was rubbing my facial features into a more pleased arrangement. If he thought me myself from an earlier time, then he would trust me, and i could isolate him, and slay him. This was too good to be true. Oh Tyra Banks, you are going to die. But how will that death affect me, and where was my Tyra Banks?

“Let’s get the Rock out of Here.” He was hip to my suggestion. Yep, still had it, my cool smoothness made it so basically no one could resist my suggestions. that and my magic amulet that made it impossible to resist my suggestions, or my hugs for that matter.

Thankfully, he complied with me, and unknowingly sealed his doom. He walked behind me, not realizing that that was my most dangerous side. This was going to be so easy. All i had to do was figure out where my past Me was, but alas, my memory was so foggy. I knew i had dissapeared… but to where. To be totally honest, the way this crazy universe works, I might nto even have returned from that vanishing. I, myself, might be merely a replicant, or some kind of avatar. I could be a backup. i could be anything. I wish i could remember.

But whwat was clear in my mind was that day, deep in earth’s future, when i decided I had to come back, had to derail my own adventure, destroy my own past, and thus, never be. Oh, for so many interesting reasons, but not reasons i will discuss at this time. Indeed, reasons that shan’t be discussed for some many thousands of words.

My torpidscraller was dark, no entries made during a large expanse of time, the blankness in the surface like a mote, a stain, on an otherwise shimmering sky. it was like looking at stars with a blasted dust cloud obscuring some of them, a hole in the sky. What lay beyond that cloud, what did the stars portend? I wished i knew.

The hospital behind me, I stood outside in the cool toronto air, the nights now growing colder as this ancient earth still experienced seasons, days and nights (of the formal variety, not of the artificial variety), weather, and salad. Oh to taste one of the delicious salads that earth had left behind, with so many other of her treasures. I was standing on land that, in my time, would be meters upon meters blow the surface, that some future archaeologist might dig up with hours of effort, to pick over the remnants. I wondered what he might find. I had a pen in my pocket, would he know what it was for? Would i have known what it was fore, during my first trip to this century? So many things i hadn’t known then. S o many flavors of life i had not tasted. So many colors, visions, so much to see with my eyes, my real real eyes. Such were the mysteries of time though, like an unfolding mist, they hide all but the mountaintops.

Lost in my conties, i awoke to find my old companion standing and waiting for me. There was a bond there, felt one way, but a bond nonetheless.

“You were lost in your conties, eh? Shouldn’t that be impossible? It’s so soon since your last conties.”

I suggested he drop the subject, and lo, he did. Amulet 1, Other people 0. On we walked around the corner to the campus of the lost university of toronto, many years hence it would sever all ties with the city and lift off into an artificial platform, hovering high above the metropolis below. Hanging there, it would one day vanish, to parts uinknown. legends speak of a flying university that landed on De Voor’s planet, who gave people degrees that didnt’ help them get jobs, infact, that made it harder to get jobs. History degrees, sociology degrees, semotics degrees. Everyone on De Voor’s planet, a planet known for its retail and hospitality economy, soon was peopled entirely by people who were overqualified for the jobs they had only days earlier had enjoyed. Everyone in the world was fired at once, because, claimed the prime minister, they would all quit soon to find better jobs because of the high rate of pay their university education’s entitled them too. There were no such jobs on De Voor’s planet, but that didnt’ matter. Soon the planet began relying on its mother planet, De Voor’s mother’s planet. Infusions of nutritional Sonnets were read aloud from an orbiting ship, and all below were bathed in the iambic protiens, absorbed through their mouthful skin.

Perhaps, just perhaps, this was that university, and I, one of the last humans to see it before its dissapearance. Either way, we rushed into its campus, towards a large circle of grass surrounded by a paved walkway for the RoundLegs to roll on. In one of the narrows between the buildings, i turned on my former partner. he stood, eyes ablaze, gazing back at me, as though somehow, impossibly, he knew what i had in mind. There’s no way he could know, its impossible. I had better not take any chances. I cleared my mind of any thoughts of harm, and returned to my previous course, towards the large ominous looking building, covered in ivy, hanging over the yard like an ogre.

As we strolled, we saw a man and woman, their postures indicating some tension, the man with his hands between the two, the woman with hers in her pockets. She shook her head, as if to say “nope”, and he entreated. It was clear, under the dim illumination of the lamps above, that he was begging her. She wasnt’ having any of it. Thw two, no more than larvae, continued in this way for some time, until finally she kissed him gingerly on the cheek, and turned away, rushing towards parts unknown in the dim cool canadian night. The man, standing watching her leave, shoulders slumped and mood clearly defeated, seemed to lose ocular fluid. Tears, i remembered. Tears. My instincts took over.

“hey nerd. Why didnt’ she want to date you?”

“Yeah,” chimed in my partner. “What did you do wrong that made her not love you, that’s what I’d like to know. It was probably something you said, you shoudl think back and figure out exactly where you went wrong. Want my help?”

“hey nerd,” i repeated, “don’t worry. Everyone wont’ know the bad details until a week or so, when she posts them on the little dog. The little white dog.”

My former colleague corrected me, “the dog doesnt’ exist yet. THey ahve the internet here.” Had i given myself away? The white dog didnt’ even exist in my time… could he conclude that I’d been to his? Would he piece it together? I redoubled my funny mocking to take my mind of things and put me at ease.

“hey nerd!”

“WHAT! Leave me alone!” What a funny nerd. He talked right to us, even though he was crying two streams of shameful tears down onto his shirt, which i assumed was his favourite shirt. I also assumed that tears are acidic and eat through clothes, because i wanted to assume he was a real loser.

“This is great,” mentioned my former partner. “My suit is almost at full power, this is amazing. his shame is absurdly high. That doesnt’ even make sense, he’s got all his limbs, nice clothes, a decent future, and apparently rich parents. Why would he feel shame? i guess that doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah” i responded, vocally.

“yeah what?”, he replied, also vocally.

Sweat shot out of my poors like guilt oozing out of a Screepatch. He hadn’t said anything, he was thinking it. We’re connected via Psychic Vampire link. And that link was laying eggs, Psychic Vampire eggs. When his eggs hatched in me, he heard my thoughts, and vice versa. Were his hatching yet? If they had, then, he would KNOW! he would know I meant him harm, that he was to die, that he HAD to die, he would know my resolve, my need! I had to act fast. I had mere moments. I grabed my magic amulet, which hid a small weapon, a kind of pistol that you swallowed and shot out of your slowly growing hair. Down it went, and my hair i tilted towards him. he seemed unaware. The growth continued, the pistol now weaving its keratinous form between my follicles. It would be mere moments now, perhas semi moments, perhaps fewer. Perhaps seimic moments, those transitory fleeting seconds that also caused shudders in people’s spines. No more time, his face had changed. He was aware. I had no more time, none. I fired, whether it would be premature i didnt’ know.

The hair gun squeezed out its projectile, and as it careened towards my prey, i saw it as though in slow motion. his primitive symmetrical body twisted to avoid the impending and mortal bullet, his face a tight contortion of fear and surprise. In my thorasic navel my two hearts pounded anxiety through my veins, my lungs and gills almost still, almost silent. I was hyperaware, my body sensing everything, seeing everything, in all directions, its strange shape a product of that wonderful deterministic suit’s ingenuity, all those years ago, yet only hours ago here, in this bygone age. My body’s assimilation of all this sensory information, these smells, sights, the puffs of my charmsack, the secretions of my olfactory globe, and the vision, glorious ocular vision, in all directions, it all converged into a single vivid impression. As the bullet touched the skin of Tyra Banks it vanished, and with it, Tyra.

“Now who’s the nerd?”

“Beep beep,” i beeped, sullen, lost, and a failure.

to be continued…

Shame. Shame. I had to find someone to shame. The suit’s power was running low, and if it ran out in its present invisible state, it would be stuck invisible forever. IT was not entirely a terrible proespect, but it meant that people would probably never understand how it was i was able to do all the marvellous things i could do, as they could not see the apparent explanation of the suit. Needless to say, taking credit for the work of a funny sci fi type suit was essentially one of the worst Sharms.

I scanned the waiting-room for anyone presenting signs of even minor shame. Numb faces and bored bodies slumped in uncomfortable chairs, ocasionally reaching up to distract a nurse long enough to find out where some loved one was on the Ronson-Hildegaard Wellness-Sickness scale. “Like, mondo a 4.8,” one of the nurses intoned. Poor bastard. No shame here. The nurses seemed totally inured to their own laziness and lack of quality customer service; making them embarassed for their shoddy work was unlikely. Think, man, think. What would a normal man of the past, such as yourself, do that would make them feel ashamed?

my answer came in, escorted by two copofficers, urban blue-men, soldiers of the local constabulary. “We utterly ravaged this bro while he throttled up the rage-jets to extreme Gs. He’s gotta get mega checked out, doctoroids.” Moments later, a rolling flatty came in with a lady all over its face. She was practicing blood spurting i guess. but the suit knew better. “she’s been injured by the captured man, the captured man.” Guilt?

I walked over to the two police misters and introduced myself cordially, bowing and curtsying. “How do? My name is Ms. Tyra Banks, and i want to shame your captive so that I can.. err…” I needed a plausible excuse; these men had no concept of deterministic time suits, set aside form the recent Spielberg film “Deterministic Time Suit Friends”, apparently quite a jolly romp. “I need to shame him in order to fill certain ambiguous power packs. Certain FUTURISTIC power packs.”

From my cell in the mental illness prison, in the west wing of the hospital, I was able to reevaluate my strategy. Apparently, officers of the law did not like power packs. Nuts to them. Still, now myself an inmate, my mood began its meteoric rise into sadness. One might even say, its Mesotoric Rise, the great rise of Mesotor’s mood. The mood that makes us sad, though not sadness. It’s an external mood, one we feel in the faces of other people, and allow ourselves to feel nothing. that way, everyone’s face is messed up. It’s a win win win win win win win situation.

“Hey guys of the hospital. It’s me, i’m in here. I was just thinking about how nice it would be to be let out of here.” The approach of a burly endoctored fellow proved that my strategems-bulb was full to “le maxe” with noble strategems, contained with in the strati-gems of the ruby raspberry i wore around my neck. What a lovely gift! Love had its benefits. i was in love, if i didnt’ mentoin that. In love with my ruby raspberry, in which i placed my strati-gems. Did i not mention that?

As the doctor came into the cell, i reminded him that he was under oath, and then that he was hypnotized. Whether or not he believed me is irrelevant, because he believed my fist when it said that it had hit him in the face. Belief is a funny thing, it can LITERALLY change you rbody. if you believe you dont’ ahve cancer, then the cancer doesn’t kill you, instead, it takes out a lot of loans and ruins your credit. but that’s better than dying. In this case, the doctor was convinced he had been punched upon a face, not just any face, his face. All because my first told him so, in fist-speak. Of course, fists speak by every so roughly rapping upon a face, so again, it was a win^6 situation. It was even a f(x)=2x^3 situation. “Line around” i said, to the function i was contemplating.

Scooping out my body from the inside of the cell, i sauntered jauntily through the halls, using my jaunters to saunt about, in a most casual and unsuspicious way. Perhaps it was my sauntiness that didn’t arouse suspicion, or perhaps it was the magic coat i took from the sleeping doctor in my former cell. Ah, at last, a nice white coat, with the power to tame the minds of even the great scrutinizers of the Outer Outer Outer Hebrides, in space (the outer outer Hebrides were the ones in the Earth’s core, whence, a few millenia from now, the Lava-Boys would launch their devastating PR campaign against the Rubik’s Empire (yes, an empire that was basically unsolvable, even by the Will Smith armada!)).

“Grant me your leave!” i entreated the doctors. And they genearlly granted it, as a kind of silent consensus. With that leave i begin my exit from the clutches of this primitive medical drome, sauntily jauntering my way doorwise, considering the dissapearance of old (name deleted), the friend i have in the world. Though, not technically in the world anymore. I guess he’s my only friend not in the world. Scooping out the main way, i heard a noisy boy shouting his noisy boy shouts. “Stop, one of the mental patients has blown the roost! He’s like, waaaay escaping!”

“i’m not that guy!” I shouted into a police, and then walked by, chuffed to the core with my declamation of my former life as a mental patient. i was a changed man, and awarded myself a trophy. But when a police began to say “hey what? What a minute!” i jumped into what can only be described as a room. And there, before me, sat someone I was to recognize for the rest of my life.

“Hey, buddy, what happened to you? did they give you those new clothes?” He asked, gaseously.

“Who cares about my clothes,” I replied in this room with him, “I just cant’ believe you are here. they think you’ve vanished. i should have known you’d be okay.”

< >

to be continued….

Having waited for some time in the oubliet where the families of patients were abandoned, I decided to sing some more tunes to my fellow inmates. Numerous professionals of the hospital attempted to crush my burgeoning musical spirit, but I was resolute. I flashed my index finger and told them that they didn’t own me, that I was my own man, that I could do what I liked, and that I was a being composed of elements no heavier than iron. They were aware of all those facts, they told me, and wanted to see me in private. This was good news. I had probably won a prize.

I walked with two large men, both named Security Man (as far as i was concerned) to a small enclave near the emergency entrance of the hospital. I knew i recognized this hospital, i’d seen it before. THe torpidscraller I was using to track down my victims had it displayed on the packaging actually, as an indication of the kind of flashy memory you might be able to read if only you purchased this brand of torpidscraller.

There, at the entrance, I was enthroned in a regal chair with stately handcuffs attached to an imperious metal clasp. Restrained in grandeur befitting my status, I was again abandoned by lesser primitives of this backward world to consider my own nutrients in private. Good old Glucose, master of the blood.

The truth was that nomatter how many nutrients I considered, (excluding ghost-calcium) I could only think about my buddy. Somewhere inside the hospital he lay, vomiting and asking for change, deep in his flashback to his time spent in hobo-nam. Ye shall be avenged, I pretended. They were probably tubing him up and down with their primitive tubes. And where was I? In some little office spot, with all the nutrients i coudl think of, just mentally enjoying the cycles and rhythms of my body (and any lady’s body too, you know what I mean?).

The waiting was killing me. I took invintory of the items i could see with my eyes wide open, visually scanning with actual real working eyes. I saw the table, the cuffs, the clasp. the clock on the wall that looked like the face of Sir Numberface, who sold me the magic cloak that let me pass through wisconsin undetected. But based on my knowledge of this time period, i knew that the security boys were probably calling the police boys. They woudl totally bust me! Nats!

This was the kind of situation where ordinarily i might give up hope, but ordinarily, I didn’t have exactly the person i was waiting for come into the room i was in, dressed as a doctor, and hugging my body and kissing my face.

“Hey, buddy, what happened to you? did they give you those new clothes?”

“Who cares about my clothes,” he replied in this room with me, “I just cant’ beelive you are here. they think you’ve vanished. i should have known you’d be okay.”

“Vanished? Vanished? OOOH NO.” It was the kind of meaningful realization that I get to have where you dont’ get to know the details until later in the book. It was that kind of realization that only happens to me, and then later, you know, you go back and say “OF COURSE”. Suffice it to say, I “magically got out of my handcuffs and zapped the guy and escaped”.

to be continued…