ROUTINE ELEVEN: EYES THE REBEL SET IN MEGACITY BLUE – THE CUT UP WORLD IS DEAD
You do of course have a point. But you also of course have a very limited understanding of what is and what isn’t considered “occult” and “cut up” and “reality”. Matter of moments in the scheme of things that you even knew Interzone existed. Your frame of reference let’s say is inadequate to make these calls, is my argument.
But I can see why you think what you think, and I begrudge you nothing.
Fact is, you really have no idea just how “cut up” your reality actually is. Because you don’t have to describe it to anyone. Once you actually write it down, and find yourself having to say sentences like “Flakes World is dead of turns new About it” or “Should act the human body sunset clauses on vaccination conspiracy, and maybe all of deal”, well, you see the cut up pretty quick. Sometimes I peep into Earth Prime, and see humans having to prove to computers that they’re not robots, and I just shake my head. Humans really got no idea who or what is really calling the shots, or how many competing conspiracies there really are behind the scenes. Humans still tend to think they’re the main characters of this story.
Gotta laugh, eh.
Besides, can’t deny that all language-based communication is already cut up. Take a word here, take a word there, rearrange them, bingo – a whole new sentence. Non-pictorial of written word has achieved – and using False news of alphabetic – This is virus. We’re biological cut up machines, breathing in tradition and spitting out novelty. And what we’re trying to change here is human culture, human tradition – no other way for it than to cut up those virus control mechanisms and spit them back as new ways of doing things, right Agent? Fight virus with virus. One virus changes another. Work from and that slows down epicentre, the me floats through.
But let’s be honest, Agent. Hashtag “not all humans”, Dana might say. Plenty of human cultures have nothing to do with the neoliberal capitalist nightmare, plenty of human cultures that the Nova Mob have no power over at all. Haven’t infiltrated shall we say cultures with a robust metaphysical defence system – impossible for Nova cats to trojan a culture with a deeply encrypted belief system. A properly psychopompic metastructural society is less receptive shall we say to interstellar influences. So when we talk about our little plan to save the planet by cutting up cultural control lines, it’s one particular culture that we need to rewire, isn’t it Agent. Infinite growth, dominion over the earth. You know whose little trick that concept-virus was, don’t you Agent. That’s right – got Nova Mob written all over it.
So we’re not trying to fix all humans, all culture. We just need to cut off the influence of the Nova Mob, halt their sway, rewire the systemic paradigms, Mob-proof the metastructures, vaccinate the cultural meme supply. This is not a small job, Agent. But it’s a smaller job than sorting out a pan-global multi-belief cross-cultural clusterfuck, scuse my French. Because you don’t and find yourself to prove to clauses on vaccination think – they’re having to say reality actually is. All of deal, the scenes.
Humans idea just how the cut up World is dead.
I am what you might call confident about this approach. I really am.
We’re going to change the world – and more importantly save the world – and Nalan will live. (Happy byproduct of course of course.) But the dolphins, the bees, the pangolins et cetera et cetera – this is not minor shit, Agent. This is what you call major shit. This is an all life on Earth scenario. And we’re going to fix it. You, me, The Influence, and a fuckload of megavirus.
(Should act – really got no write it down. Fact is, you or how many not robots, and main characters of my head.)
***
I just shake I peep into human body sunset – really are behind calling the shots. Trying to work out their next move – Green Tony is not to be trifled with, will not take our rejection lightly. Nor will he particularly care for our unceremonious dispatching of Self-care Josh and Hamburger Mary. The Nova Mob protects its own – if we were not already high up their list of the soon-to-be-deceased, we are now. But I suspect we already topped that particular list, Agent – the Climate Caper is not a small biscuit enterprise, mark my words. So their next move will be to try to predict our next move. And so our next move needs to be on a different board altogether.
Which is why this virus idea feels so dastardly. They’re not going to see this coming. This is total wild card, this is Draw 4 thank you very much motherfuckers, game over.
I am as I might have mentioned quite confident.
Agent? You getting any of this?
Still doing the “I’m just a house” routine, huh.
I get it, Agent, I really do. Who wouldn’t rather be a domicile?
***
“The Chinese have got a time machine, you know,” Dana says to me, then blows over her coffee, “that’s how we should get in.”
“A time machine,” I say. Non-committal like.
“Yes,” slurps hot coffee, she likes it too hot for comfort, likes the feel of burning on her lips, “Space-time Tunnel Generation Experimental Device, they call it. Distort time and space, control the flow rate of time, break through the barrier of time and space. Time travel, interstellar voyage, life extension, etc. Uses fermionic dark matter, fifth dimensional warped space. Synchromystical, Blackwell, synchromystical.”
“Fermions, huh,” I say, like I know jack diddly squat about fermions. I like my coffee without pain. I haven’t even touched my mug yet. To be quite frank I’m still impressed that your flesh-house came fully furnished with crockery. Although I suspect that it’s all made of cartilage.
“Fermions,” she says.
“Dark matter pockets,” your voice comes schlurping through wet gills, “fermion masses, communicated into the fifth dimension through portals, creating dark matter relics – that could actually work.”
A silence. I blow my coffee.
“I was studying dark matter physics at uni when… well, before this,” your farting ghostvoice says.
I could say something stroppy, but I choose not to. Instead:
“So, we pop into 2019 Earth Prime through the Space-time Tunnel Generation Experimental Device, stroll down to Wuhan, unleash plague, zip back home, planet saved?” I say, gazing at my perfect crema. “Not too shabby.”
(I’m glad you’re talking again. I was worried you’d objected – as in, turned into an object, different word to “objected” but I believe the root metaphysics is the same. Seen it once before, this guy so resistant to new ideas that he literally petrified on the spot. I do believe I still have a large chunk of his right foot, use it as a doorstop when the Interzone gets windy.)
Dana cackles.
“Manifested space. Masses of fermions soar in the so-called portal. Warped of memories. Elude detection using one possible way.” She says it all like I’ll understand. But I’m no physicist. Or poet. All I know is, if The Influence thinks something is possible, then it usually is. And if she’s excited, well then, I’m excited too.
“So that’s that then. We have a plan.”
Dana nods, tilts her head to the side like vulture.
“We have one plan,” she says, “but one plan is never enough. Contingencies, media campaigns, reach, optimisation – we still need to work out the socials.” She gets up and begins pacing. “Who to populate, who to puppet, how to sow what amount of discord – I need a whiteboard!”
***
(I definitely did not expect this house to have a whiteboard. Wonders never cease.)
***
Lemme just tell you about Jacky Factual. Realised I never said much about this particular character, but now it’s shall we say in your best interests to know a thing or two.
Jacky is what happens to a man when he’s lived cut-up life more than linear life. He’s been shaped. Remember I said old Agent Blackwell’s still got a splash of human red in his veins? Old Agent Factual’s veins run ultraviolet and stygian blue. The one face I could never read. Jacky Factual all business – don’t even think he has a personal life, a private life, when he’s at home he just sits straight-backed and wide-eyed staring into grey – that’s how I picture it going down anyway. Worked with him on a couple of cases before I how you say defected – meanest sonofabitch I ever did see. No compunctions. Like Dirty Harry if Dirty Harry was designed by Luis Buñuel, commissioned by Skynet, and set in Megacity One. He’s the concept of purpose in human form. He’s the concept of soldier condensed into flesh and blood. He Is The Law. He’s the concept of obedience, he’s the concept of determination, he’s the concept of finishing the job. He’s an archangel of the Bible without the wings – but instead of God his orders come from the Agency. And I guess that’s why he sees me as the Devil – no work is too dirty for him, if the Agency tells him to jump, he doesn’t even ask how high, he already knows. I am in his eyes the Rebel Lucifer – the Agency asked me to let the Mob take Earth and I said no – and he needs to wipe this Rebel Lucifer from the face of the universe. No matter what.
And he’ll find us eventually.
He just will.
And you think I talk in riddles and disjointed fragments? You wait til you cop an earful of Agent Factual. Never heard the man say more than three words in a row that make linear linguistic sense. Never.
When he catches us, leave the talking to me.
***
Or to put that another way:
Eyes the Rebel set in Megacity blue.
The one he catches us, say more than three words.
He Is face of the Lucifer – the He’s been shaped.
The Devil – that’s why Factual’s veins run.
Soldier condensed to a man universe.
Old Agent old Agent Blackwell’s I talk in blood.
***
…actually, the first way was probably clearer.
As you were, Agent.
***
Whole House suddenly rocks, and Dana’s whiteboard pen draws thick black line through her list of “unwitting concept partners”, crossing diagonally through several names. Immediate panic subsides when we realise it’s just a diprotodon scratching its back on a toothy outcropping on the underside of the House – we all watch diprotodon waddle away through the mud through puckered corneal windows with much relief.
Dana goes back to her whiteboard and gazes thoughtfully at accidentally crossed-out names. I know what she’s thinking: this may be an omen. You learn to trust significance of accident in Interzone. The Influence peers at the names that have been crossed out. The names are:
Francis Boyle, Michel Chossudovsky, Ali Khamenei, Igor Nikulin, Greg Rubini, Donald Trump, Kevin Barrett, Luc Montagnier, Hossein Salami, Chris Evans.
“Mean anything to you Blackwell?”
I shake my head.
“Only one of those names I know is Donald Trump, but I only know it from the Simpsons,” I say. I’m not what you’d call up to date with celebrities. “Didn’t he have a game show or something?”
“He’s the President. Of America,” you say. You’re out of your milky fleshbooth, out of whatever little nodule-VR cupboard you hide in to control the House’s movements, out and about acting like a regular Joe.
“The U.S.A?” That can’t be right. Interzone scrambling your memories. It does that.
“Afraid so,” you say.
Dana nods.
“Where you been Blackwell?”
Maybe Interzone’s scrambling my memories. Then again, I’ve had other things on my mind – whosoever happens to be elected head of some random country on Earth has not been top of my list of concerns to be absolutely Francis.
Dana looks at me a moment then back to her whiteboard.
“Hmmm,” she says and gets right back to it.
I nod at you and make eye contact.
“Simpsons still around in… what year was it when you exploded your ticket?”
“2019,” you say, “and yeah, I think so. I’ve never watched it though.”
Never watched the Simpsons.
Kids these days.
***
The attack comes while I’m elbows-deep in alpha waves, and I have to wrench myself out of a lucid-dream meditation – it takes me a few moments to even grok what’s going on. At first I assume it’s just another fucking diprotodon, and when I stand in the shaking horizontal planes of House my thoughts are loose procedural ones on how best to shoo away a fucking diprotodon. But suddenly whole House lurches again and Dana comes running in and I can tell right then and there that this is no marsupial megafauna.
“Fucking Tony-” is all she gets to say – world tilts and sliding now toward window orifice, gravity and slick intestine-quality mucous underfoot conspiring to send us directions we don’t want to go. We clutch at each other in mute primate panic.
Flames burst through window as it tries to pucker shut, skin start blistering and blackening in way disgust you to see it. House screams and I can’t tell if it’s you or the House or even if there’s any difference any more. More flames lick at us most repulsive like they’re hungry and I smell petroleum – it’s a fucking flamethrower – and suddenly House rights itself and you/it start/s running, splashing and staggering through viscous swampland – but flames keep on coming and now there’s blood dripping from the ceiling. Spare a glance upward – all happens fast – and steel blade is hacking through the ceiling, sawing right through the flesh and bone of your House, sound is awful. Burst of flame. Torrent of blood. Bonesaw song.
We suddenly click into action, simultaneous. The Influence starts glowing and her notifications become so dense the warning chimes becomes one solid tone. I load and cock three kinds of weapons from three different realities. Bonesaw staggering gravity to now petroleum through in world viscous slick repulsive coming from blood. The ceiling is peeling back now like an autopsy, and his evergreen shines through like Midori searchlight. Smell of sliding.
Suddenly intestine-quality the clutch Mute other it’s like blood. I aim and shoot but lurch knocks my aim off and I only end up sending holy silver deviltrap bullet into thick flesh wall. Primate underfoot toward flamethrower start/s fucking in flame. Dripping – a House keep hungry tilts swampland toward fucking underfoot now Burst – Torrent viscous tilts through lick world now – directions Window coming petroleum. Green Tony peels back flap and even though he’s covered in House blood he gleams green green green.
Aim again – clearly not only Tony here, attacked from all sides, but if I can take him out might be good for morale – and squeeze trigger – I hit something but I think now he’s wearing a slowsuit, and hallowed-tip just floats towards his evergreen with lazy bumblebee meander.
Go. And running, you/it hungry More and flames slick Dripping suddenly other – Green Tony drops in through the roof now, glistening with dark intent.
And behind him, falling like filthy crimson avalanche, down come more, and more, and more, a clown nightmare acrobatic trick in flame and blood and mucous – Green Tony, Beige Simeon, Lavender Bjørn, Puce Antioch, Chromium Hilda, more, more, more, I don’t recognise half of them now, now three quarters. Part of me thinks “Tony’s clearly called in a few favours today” but most of me is doing the desperate fight or flight primate dance, and before even I know it I’m half running half sliding down corridors slick with lubrication and blood – home advantage – used to the what you might call terrain in here – and I have grabbed what I need and there’s Dana – and I can see she’s prying open time and space – Mute primate directions we mucous underfoot – without a word we both on exact same page – pinpoint in the script, same damn paragraph – and then House begins spinning, spinning, spinning, centrifugal forces topple the Nova gang and gravitron of flesh and bone creates just diversion we need and you know it – and staggering through but flames keep it’s a fucking suddenly House rights hungry – and as House creates new whirlpool in swamplands Dana creaks open the worldhole while I find you in your cartilage closet and yank you out Neo-style and haul you half falling half dragging to the worldhole and flames lick at us and bullets fly and we fall – sucked – into the tear in the skein and last thing I see before blackness sews the world shut is the bright emerald glow and the last thing I hear is vehement “FUCK YOU BLACKWELL!”
(If I had a dollar every time that was the last thing I heard.)
***
So we tumble through the worldhole, you, me, and Dana – no groovy CGI, just fifth fermionic dark Generation Experimental flow rate break through control interstellar voyage – hooked into 2019 Chinese Time Machine, piggybacking on their fractal dark energy – neither back nor forward but sideways through time – because the Interzone is not a place of its own, but a concept that got out of hand – and we flow like water being drunk – and The worldhole, and deer-eyed, between stations, tumble through Obliteration – tumbling you, me, their fractal, the time – dark energy back nor groovy CGI, we flow – scrolling, Interzone fermionic dark like water – moot – being drunk and Constricted – from spaces – flow rate Collapsing – and Dana popped mingle Tune through – no still changed, scrolling – control interstellar piggybacking on – pupils Generation Experimental – slip concept – hooked into break through – blown through – reduce – we things place of Time Machine, sideways through – More got out – neither voyage – border – Interzone is incompatible – its own, reality – gulp the static metaphors – eyes old – of a memories to fiction – feel and forward – Wonkavision of hand.
And I open my eyes and I know who I am – same way anyone knows their name, Agent – and I’m Zhang Xiu Ying, and I’m a female scientist – gather the information through intense full-body Vipassana scan, not a hard skill for someone of my let’s say experience level – and quick casual glance at first reflective surface (car bonnet so shape needs to be reparsed in my imagination) confirms that Zhang Xiu Ying is not the kind of female to wear makeup or dress to impress anyone – Zhang Xiu Ying is all business and no distractions. I suddenly know that I have won several awards for my work, and that my role here is not insignificant.
And I recognise you – somehow – as simultaneously the Agent I know and love but also Zhang Wei (no relation), co-worker and something closer but maybe the feeling isn’t quite friendship but a certain camaraderie or loyalty let’s say – simultaneously the memories and knowledges of our hosts layer themselves in our personas and our old selves are slipped quietly into a different file – and we know everything we need to know-
Our phone bing, simultaneously. We glance at each other but pull our phones out and open them (we of course know the required passcodes or have the required fingerprints).
It’s Dana.
“im in yr ph [smiley face / picture of a phone]” she says, as a text message.
Another bing: it’s a photo of her giving us the thumbs up with those bony witchfingers of hers.
I send back an acknowledgement and put the phone back in my pocket.
“Well, Wei,” I say in perfect Southern Mandarin – although my mastery of the Wuhan dialect is not yet complete, and you can tell from my accent that I have come to live and work in Wuhan relatively recently, “well, well, well. Here we are.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that,” you say, in a much better Hankou. You can’t help but look at yourself in the car’s side mirrors (I’ve learned over the years not to be that obvious, but no-one’s around and so I don’t pull you up on it) – tilting and peering and prodding at your new face conspicuously.
“Nah you will,” I say, and pull out my keys. I bibip the car open, and get into the driver’s seat, nodding at you to do the same into the passenger side. “Car pool time, Agent.” I wink. “I mean, Wei.”
***
“Do they just forget this? Do they just kinda black out?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes they want to remember.”
“They want to remember?”
“Don’t forget, Wei, that this is them doing this. We are Wei and Xiu right now.”
“But we’re just, you know, using them like, like puppets!”
“Does Kermit the Frog sing The Rainbow Connection?”
“What?”
“Yes he does, is the answer. Kermit sings The Rainbow Connection. Was Kermit voiced by Jim Henson? Yes, yes he was.” I look across. You still look blank. “The Muppets. The Muppets?”
Wei shakes her head.
So does Zhang Xiu Ying.
“Kids these days,” she says, under her breath.
We drive on.
***
The phone rings – the car has Bluetooth technology, which the Agent Blackwell part of me has no idea about but the Xiu part navigates with barely any thought required.
It’s The Influence.
“So,” she says, tinny and crackly on the car speakers, but only slightly more tinny and crackly than she is in person, “you’ll notice that you both work for the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Of course we both know that, being people who work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, who are literally just driving home from another hard day working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology right now – but at the same time, the parts of us that are still Interzone Agents are learning things, and to be absolutely Francis I did not quite grasp that particular salient tidbit of knowledge, nor the immensity thereof. And I can see from your expression that neither did you.
“You’re a bloody genius Dana,” I say, in the lilting soft thin-lipped voice of Zhang Xiu Ying. “How did you wrangle that?”
“I’m the best,” she says, still not bothering to use the proper Hankou dialect, or even Southern Mandarin, or even Mandarin at all – but of course we both understand her clear as day. She gives a throaty black chuckle. “Takes a little more than being attacked in the foetid swamplands by Green Tony and the Nova Mob in a portable House made of Flesh to faze this little witch.” Another chuckle and a sigh. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure I could pull it off, but the vessels were there just as I’d hoped. Synchromystical, Agents, synchrofucking mystical.”
“So we’re actual researchers at an actual virus lab,” says Wei, “exactly where you wanted us to be.”
Another crackling cackle.
“And it’s 2019, the perfect year, and it’s the perfect plane, Earth Prime. I have – sorry, we have – executed the perfect plan, to perfection. We, Agents, are going to erase the Nova Mob from the Earth Prime subroutine and rescript the whole climate caper. Do you still have the plague?”
You open up Wei’s efficient black bag to look but we both already know that whatever used to be in Wei’s bag has been replaced with vials of Interzone Market-strength COVID-19. I can almost hear you ask tricky questions about puppetry and reality and control and possession and who is really doing all this and the moral implications thereof, but you remain silent, the questions existing only in the space inside our new skins.
“Yes we do,” you say.
“What about Green Tony?” I ask. I have the urge to roll big joint and smoke the living fuck out of it but the thought also repulses and scares Zhang Xiu Ying and I just drum my slender fingers on the steering wheel instead. “Are we traceable?”
A pause.
“As you well know, Blackwell,” her voice crackles out like EVP, “everything is traceable eventually. Everything leaves quantum change, there’s always a disturbance in the Force. But the House was doing its best to fight back, and that much ruckus is sure to have attracted hungry swamplife – my guess is their focus is currently elsewhere. If they even made it.”
“They made it,” I say, “at least some of them made it. And even if Green Tony’s no longer on the scene, Nova cats know what we’re up to big picture. They just need the details and they-” I suddenly stop. “Shit. The whiteboard.”
All those details. All those plans. All those names.
A too long pause.
“If it survived undamaged. If they even saw it. If it wasn’t erased, covered in blood, smudged beyond all recognition. If they could even understand what the hell I was writing up there.” Another long pause. “Shit. Well, the plan is perfect in every other damn way, so what.”
And suddenly we both know that we’re at Zhang Wei’s house, and I pull up to the kerb.
“Um,” says Zhang Wei, “do we just act like normal Wei and Xiu, or should we stick together?”
“Act natural,” Dana says, “If the Nova Mob have found out where we’re going and what we’re doing, at least they still have no idea who we are. Organised that as we were riding the time vibrations, totally last minute. Set your vessels to cruise control. I’ll call you if I need to. Keep your phones charged.” She clicks off and the car growls enginely.
“I guess you’re home, Agent,” I say, and you wipe your new eyes. And I realise that you were that House, lately, that knowing that your House could be lying dead – or dying – in a swamp, butchered by Green Tony’s colours gang, or torn apart by mantis-gators or giant centipedes – that it was like knowing that a close relative is in palliative care, or that a childhood friend has died. You’ve lost something special, and although I don’t like to be let’s call it sentimental, some words from yours truly might help balm your grief. I clear my throat. “Agent,” I say, “sorry about your house. You had a real nice house back there, real nice. And we’ll never forget what it meant to you – to us – or how it saved us all, to its last. Your house… was a bloody hero, Agent.”
You just nod and wipe your eyes quickly again, as though it’s not even happening.
“I know,” says Wei, smiling the kind of smile that says goodbye and thank you and let’s not acknowledge anything. Clearly this Wei has a different kind of character to your old self – the old you would’ve happily sobbed buckets at the drop of a fucking hat.
“Well,” I say, “guess I’d better head home then.” Do I live alone? Husband? Children?
Do you?
“See you tomorrow,” Zhang Wei says, microbowing crisply and smiling that smile again.
“See you tomorrow,” says Zhang Xiu Ying.
And I drive home.
***
And you think said fragments? You I say in sits straight-backed and throaty black.
Requires with shall we be folded into occult solutions, let’s we come in.
He needs to Mob take Earth wait best interests.
And I guess make linear linguistic a private life, you and I to cut-up life.
Private life, torn apart.
Tony’s colours black.
Realised chuckle.
Make guess to has died.
Timeflow requires for tackling it surgery – Flat “traditional” route.
Together, we are psychosocial mythologizing creatures to survive.
Synchromystical, Agents, splash of human.
***
So this is it. The big day.
(Turns out Zhang Xiu Ying does have a husband, a pleasant enough man with soft skin and the temperament of an old dog, who makes love to me in Xiu’s darkened bedroom completely silently, with an almost frustrated eagerness. It is pleasurable enough, and when he rolls over and falls asleep after the requisite post-coital bonding, Xiu is not left feeling disappointed.
I also have two children, although I have not laid eyes on the older one at all the entire time I’ve been here. Apparently it’s a boy.)
While I let Xiu operate on autopilot, I use ancient chi-technology mood-stabilising techniques to settle my nerves and let me focus on the mission at hand.
Today, we are going to unleash plague upon Planet Earth.
(I’m sorry Nalan, but it’s for the best.)
***
