I bet we could turn this world into a 6 part sci fi web series with some green screens and some tinfoil. What say you?

A journalist walks with a scientist through his lab, inspecting various objects, finally stopping in front of a large box with a door on the front.

Interviewer: What is this?

Dr: This is my onion deprivation tank.

Interviewer: Interesting. how does it work.

Dr: I close these doors, the person in the tank is totally deprived of contact with onions.

Interviewer: I gotta say, it smells a lot like onions.

Dr: Well, it is full of onions. It’s also made of onions.

Interviewer: In what way is that an onion deprivation tank?

Dr has no answer.

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…

THE BITTER END – EPISODE 2: Second Chances from The Bitter End on Vimeo.

I laughed and someone heard it, so it must have been out loud.

“I think Obama’s honey-moon is over.”

The firmament arched like a vast emptiness like the emptiness between Matrimonions, the married onions that act as surrogate married couples for people in love who dont’ want to ruin that good feeling. My plan wasn’t working. banality might be insufficient, like a clown with an egg. Yet I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

The Frown-life was dissolving my ever-intelli-jaunts, the little trips you take in your mind that provide you answers as if by magic. Hypo-cognizance was creeping up on me, and yet without succumbing to this “totally meta” situation, I was likely to be destroyed by the Frown, like some invading parasite. It was exactly the type of no-win environment where those naturally occuring CEO’s on Vega Beta would relish.

Funny little guys, those CEOs. They hatch from rock niches in Armani suits, and develop mission statements preternaturally. Before they recognize the usefulness of fire, or utter their first vocables, they can browbeat an underling and defraud a press conference at over 60 universilad ™ microlengths per pleasant secondulus. That’s extremely fast! If i had one here, he would be quite the formidable ally. No doubt he’d already be ordering me to do all kinds of things that I would perceive to be in some way helping me, but ultimately, would only serve his own goals and interests. GOD i wish i had one.

Again I tried: “I think the Leafs have a shot at the cup this year.” But the abridgement of my personal universe did not abate.

I went into frantictown, and fled my hospital room, throwing off my warm blankies and racing into the hallway. No one. Each corridor a perfect replica of the 21st century world i had abandoned, all for my benefit, to keep me unsuspectingly self-reducing, but it was not my time. Could the Grand Old Frown of Frown Hall possibly have known that I was a man of centuries yet unnumbered by the ordinal impulse of man’s inner bookkeeper? If it didn’t, it was not perfect. It could make mistakes. perhaps, much later, i could tell it “You made a mistake”, and my gloat-hope composite would shear a rift out of which I might find escape. But for now, my choice was between equally unpopulated corridors to find any person at all to which i could say “cold enough for you? Brrr. You’d think they’d turn of the AC once in a while” to.

If i had been in my natural form, with all my legs and slurpsliders intact, i could have traversed all options within a matter of moments(tm). But the changes made the Suit could only be unchanged by the Suit, or at least, that is what was written on the literature given to me by the Suit, entitled “So, your body is gone…”

Without a moment to spare, I chose left. As i processed down the tunnel, pattern of tiles and lamps became a pattern of tiles and flickering lamps. Then of no lamps at all. The frowniverse had already reached whatever facility powered this building. I was doomed.

Perhaps if i ran a bit faster, i could outpace the hopelessness i felt encroaching on me. So faster I ran. A large orange door marked “Total Exit, Man” lay at the end of the hall, dimly illuminated by the infrared my body gave off. At least my luminous tasters and sniffers were still functioning, despite my body’s unsightly assemblage of bilaterally symmetrical appendages and single-head. I gripped the cold metal handle and turned. Locked.

There was a window fortunately to my left. I tried to break it, perhaps i could climb or jump down, I hoped. But it was no use, it was unbreakable by the feeble means this body possessed. The grips of panic grippled me down. Without hope, I had only one place to turn: crime. My poverty of options lead me to an inability to expect a middle class life, and all its recumbant bycicles. Instead, i felt the urge to deal drugs and rob. And as if by magic, the frown provided me with drug paraphernalia. The classic diamond tipped crack pipe was among them. But would it be enough?

Scratching a rough circle on the window i ran my hands round and round, digging ever deeper into the reenforced gazing-space. There wasn’t enough body head to tasterape into the distance, and I was out of options. I had to use my bodymass to shovel through the window’s increasingly impermanent solidness. How high up was I? how strong are contemporary bones? I was out of options. With a final pause to contemplate how much I could get for a stolen X-Box 360, i heaved with all of my strength, and with apparently a bit extra i didn’t know I had.

The sensation of falling was peculiar, given the inner ears I was cursed with. An almost giddy weightlessness, a rush of heretofore unsuspected stomach blushing, and my cardio bulb palpatitating wildly. it was, for the moment it lasted, the first time I ever felt like a lady. But like most ladies, it was not to last.

Wet grass broke my fall, but ineffectively. It was the ground that finally finished the job the lazy grass had started. In the cool night air, I was now both nearly incapacitated by numerous insurmountable pains, and by a total lack of light with which to spray or gleanfuck a direction. Ever the optimist, I squeeled out a squeal.

“Halp! Halp!”

But it was no use. I was utterly alone in a collapsing tinyverse created to drain my individuality and then digest my fibrous organs. And yet, there must have been people at one point, or I would not have been able to banalify myself. Against what grinding averageness was i meant to bore my soul out, if not more people? Think! Think!

I could now hear the collapsing of buildings as their structures destabilized at the cusp of the frowniverse. It was only moments away. What did it want from me? What did it expect me to do? It was then that I smelled a faint glint of light, under my badly shatter legs. Without thought to pain, i reached for it, and felt a smooth plastic surface. With a touch it was illuminated, prompting my with a simple graphic to slide a slider to unlock it. Aquiescing to the domineering electronic, I used my thumb to slide the slider. At once, I was presented numerous genial icons in colors unnumbered and bright. Randomly, I depressed on, and the screen provided a small space and the words “140 characters left”. A keyboard interface was simulated at the bottom of the screen. I didn’t know wht to do. I could feel a hot wind as the cusp of the universe, now only meters away, digested the atmosphere. Panicked, I entered the first thing that seemed boring enough. I wrote exactly what I was doing right then.

“Lying on grass outside hospital” and hit send.

Something called a “twitter” occurred and my “status” was updated. The breeze blew hot and fast now, and a deafening roar of digestion was imbibed by my earthroats. The screen displayed a picture of me but with a funny 2d cartoony quality, and the words “Lying on grass outside hostpital” and in smaller text “less than 1 minute ago, from mobile.”

The tips of my hairs were vanishing, I curled my body into a ball, but all around me I felt blasts of streaming hotness, my flesh in pain and my bones diverted in strange ways they were not meant to be. I just sniffed that screen. Over and over. “Lying on grass outside hospital.” I couldn’t look away. I appreciated it. I wanted others to appreciate it. I fired off another.

“Appreciating own message, on grass.”

Twunt.

Then silence…

To be continued…

“These are my snaps. I can just tear these pants away at any time. These snaps will undo.”

“My god, that’s amazing.”

“I know. For instance, let’s say we’re running from something, say, a galgravolt, and it’s like ‘oh no, we’re running so fast, and I’m sweating too much, what am I going to do’, you know? Probably get eaten by the galgravolt. But me? I just go ‘later, suckers,’ and with a quick tug of my pants, they just tear away. Then I’m running with all sorts of bare legs. Also, check this out.” He reached down towards his feet, which were all leathery and marked with the word REBOK. A flap of skin protruded from the top, out of a patch of lacework which seemed to hold his feet tightly together, and at its apex was a small circular blister. He pinched the blister between his thumb and forefinger, and I cringed. “You just pump this up, right here, and your shoes get all pumped up. And you run way faster. So I’m like ‘oh no!’, tear tear, pump pump, ‘see ya later, ass-holes!’” He began motionining like he was shooting a weapon over his shoulder, and mimed running for a while, then he was struck by a temporal displacement field! Apparently, he was stuck in an eddy in time that ran much slower than the rest of the flow of time around us, as his motions became quite slow, and even though he rolled across the ground and took cover behind a garbage can, shooting his invisible weapon and saying “goosh, goosh, goosh, BRWAAAAAA, oooh nooo, heeee’s gooot a guuuuun,” in a deep pitched and slow voice, he appeared not to notice.

I raced over to him and grasped the arms of his body with my handlers, yanking him out of the current. “YOU ARE EXPERIENCING DANGER!” I tried to alert him with a warning kiss, but my extruder had been replaced by some form of monotreme, a single mouth that I realized I was breathing out of, talking out of, and now, French kissing out of. How did men of this era live like this? With all their functions agglomerated into single holes! I didnt’ even want to GUESS what anus i was meant to sing from! A quick smear of my face with my hands illustrated that, at least, I had two nose holes: one likely for smelling, the other likely for receiving accolades.

My companion now resumed his normal speed of existence, fortunately, and we did a classic “stroll about” in the town. We weren’t certain what we were looking for, but The Suit was still in communication with him, indicating things and then he convayed them to me in turn. “Over on our right is the historic Royal York hotel, first opened on June 11, 1929, Jesus Years, and was for a time the tallest building in the England Global Domination Zone, until replaced by the Canadian Bank of Commerce tower. On our left, is historic Union Station, first opened on August 6, 1927, in a lavish ribbon severing occultation. The royal offspring of the England Global Dominators used a pair of valuable slicers to sever the ribbon. That ribbon was later preserved in memory, and passed down through the ages until the epoch of the Cognators, who revived the ribbon, coaxing it out of memory, and reincarnating it. They later considered that ribbon to be their king, but after a regicidal plague killed all the kings that were ribbons, they swore never to avenge its death, a custom that still persists today.”

I could not have been less interested in this boring, almost dadlike explanation of non-pertinence. Though, fortunately, I was to be spared further pain by my own ingenuity.
“So, what is your name?” I asked.

“Oh. It’s Banks.”

“Just banks?”

“Well. Tyra Banks. What’s yours?”

“Oh, its (name deleted).’

“Huh.”

“What…”

“Nothing, just, that’s a girl’s name,” he said.

“it’s a man’s name in my time,” I retorted. It was a retort I would regret for the rest of my life, as it was, as we say in the biz, the sort of retort that opens a locator array which vast and crucial enemies use to home in on your present location. Before we could continue our witty banter, one of these primitives blustered into our face with a pistol drawn. We weren’t scared, because it was drawn on a piece of paper, but it was a picture of the gun he had in his other hand, which we only then just noticed. What a bunch of guns’n’papers it was!

“Totally fork over all your mondo cash, broseph and broseph! These days of you having your own rad cash are WAY over, dwaynes!” He shoveled that gun into our pugs, and we reacted instinctively. I reached forward, and seized his gun, pressing it against my chest and began shooting, hoping to fire off all his bullets into me so that I could take control of the situation. If I fired all the bullets into myself, then it would rob him of his initiative, and take the wind out of his sails. It was a brilliant plan. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, I shouted, to muffle the sound of the gun firing bullets into my soft body. Triumphantly I collapsed on the ground in a bloody heap, laughing and going into victory shock.

“Now what are you going to do, eh tough guy?” This guy was a total amateur. I showed him how committed I was, now he’s got nothing. What’s he going to do, pull the bullets out and shoot me with them again? He’s got NOTHING. “Yeah, I thought so. Got no more bullets left eh? Ooh, what’s wrong? They’re all in my body, THAT’s whats wrong. Huh? Huh? Yeah, i thought so.” And I really did think so. That, I might later realize, was my greatest strength, the ability to say I thought so, and to actually think so. It was the deftest type of lie, the type that even I was unaware of, because of how much the truth it turned out to be.
Screaming and running away, I watched this total amateur flee from our scene of triumph, as I victoriously coughed up a litre of blood and proudly felt cold and saw the world turning dark. Then, my life flashed before my eyes, froze still, and turned into a synaptic cube, as was our custom in my time to do just before dying. The little white cube of sweet tasting memories tumbled to the ground beside me like a bear rewinding a tape. “Uh oh, “ I thought privately, maintaining my smug facial expression, “that’s not a good sign.”
Tyra Banks shouted to the men and women who walked past, “Like, mega get this man a total ambulance, niggas!” Then such a frenzy did I observe, of circular forming crowds hanging overhead, of shouting and advice giving.

“You have to suck the poison out!” one said, “let me do it!” said a particularly effete man with pursed lips. Another took off his shirt and bewailed the rising tide of violence that modern life was cursed with, and shouted that he would retire to the forest, and no longer participate in a global economic culture that ravaged the individual human spirit and repressed personal expression, which I felt was an appropriate response. If you were retarded.

Ultimately, the amateurs and their medical thoughts were silenced by the arrival of some real pros, these ambulance men, these boys of summer, these sweaty lad lads that so feverishly forced tubes into me. They wanted me, I could smell it in their eyes. “Easy there, big guy, I don’t’ fuck on the first date, “ I said, totally playing hard to get in a major way. I could tell it was working, because he then inserted more tubes into me with some sweet salty vein water. Yeah, I was going to be just fine, and to prove it, I decided to lose consciousness, but really casually and still clearly gloating from my deft handling of the whole gun situation. What a babe I must appear to be, full of pipes and tubes and oozing holes. Just like J-Lo.

to be continued?