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STARING OF STORS
Beautiful, automatic, beautifully automatic, & reveling, solo in the beauties of his variegated automaticities, Qert the Botic went from stor to stor, scanninggninnacs eachhcae oneeno. His instruments spread amazingly like oriental fans & gathered & gauged & measured, & compared, & collated, & stored & redacted&enspressed & ceptulated & sussed, & intrapolated the faces, perstornalities & stormanamolies, MMSI parameters, SQs, & genetic trees of each sun. Or sunlike thing. Studying his script, Qert would Qert would then turn to the next stor, which like a small child before a photograph would perk up just then & smile‑‑beamish awkwardly, as Qert would put it (but was forced to store it, as they had given him thoughts, even words existing in glorious golden ik=mage files, but no means for speaking them. There was no one to speak to in the universe, in any case. Qert deliberately suprapressed, by the way, a rather ingenious & complex modality whereby he might write words down. He had figured this himself. I think Qert was a genius, though there are those assholes who differ with me on this or that as the case may asshole be whereupon Qert would flash the thing, & fold up his information & tash it in his spack & turn to the next stor, which would shift oafishly in its lil spaceseat & run its little finger under the collar it had donned for the occasion‑‑though Qert didn't care...what did it matter to Qert, huh, what though he (Qert) loved the little bastards that were bigger by him than far. Huh?‑‑& sweat, sort‑of, whereupon SNAP! would quip, & another stor captured in that pack of holik=mages. On Qert went, turning to stors, reading an mimeasurin, workin hard anda havin funs, & storing a whale off a lotta bon mots in this cute Leatherette Pak™ of his d‑noted IK=MAGE PHIALS. He But turned, & there were ButStors, walls of 'em smiling obsequiously at that. They each stors they each had a specifical special charactheuristic smile, which was a part of Qert's perceptivacs that did not fit into the ik=mage phile but which did (& this is important) fit into words. He enjoyed describing the stors in personal & generally contemptuous terms. He liked it. He may have had a touch of botic bile‑‑I'm not disputing that. But is this not too a characteris‑tic of genius, not what haat? So there was getting to be a lot of dope on these stors stuck in Qert's ik=mage file zaway. Expect might-you as-now, this staring of stors involved a lot of travel, & this travel involved unfathomable fathombs of time, or what passed as time through the time between the stors, which was the intraverx. Qert's beautiful selfregardingly beautiful mind was so fashioned (as you & my mind(s)s are so‑fashioned, only so differently) as to cut so‑out between sostors, so to Qert he was not lying dormant dormant dormant for millennia, but was constantly active. He even had a place for peace, but he didn't know that yet. Yes the sense he had of his various components wearing out, discoloring, shifting tensile spengths & viscosities in a flash, was this time round part of Qert's roundsense of the intraverx. It was just that the xrevrtna went like that, as you stepped from stor to stor, throwing up your skin, looking at the insides of these sundry stors, focusing their energy flows in timespan, so that what you end up tucking in your handy little pack, slung from your shoulder(so strangely different from the last time you popped the crystallization of a stor inside)'s this exquisite, perfectly‑made, endless I mean endless detailed model of the stor as it would exist many billenia hench. THE AFTERTHOUGHT OF LANTHORN or THE ETERNAL SHAPE OF BEAUTY PERPLEXT From one of those futures he developed a note. He received a message, but it felt like he developed it. At first it felt queer, but good. Queer but good. The note come in the digital fluorm of a skyroll, complex, indecipherable. O but it felt legal, like a summons from long ago still in its puffless envelope. Qert rose to the challenge and‑‑stopped between stops‑‑focused the full pattern of endlets billemnia onto the note. It caught right fire it did, whereupin Qert leaned back, yes he did, & let me tell you, you might have felt the heat from Qert's big grin. This botic was confident! He was deluced; he was made for this sort of thing... He fabricated the code‑‑meaning he reworked the code endlessly, in an intraverxic snuff onno time, & only but this once upin a time did the letters come right. They went like this: 100.0101101001 V'BFOOTIY:EW SW'S, TIYE DEUWBSM JUB/, 100.0101101010 B'BFO‑TIY:RW SWAS, TOYE DRUWBS, JUBZ, 100.0101101011 BABF‑‑TOY:RE SEAS. TOUE FREUBS, QUBZ. 100.0101101100 BANF‑‑YOY:RE DEAS. YOUE FRIENS, QIBZ. 100.0101101101 BANG‑‑YOU:RE DEAS. YOUR FRIENS, QINZ. 100.0101101111 BANG‑‑YOU'RE DEAD. YOUR FRIEND, QINZ. 100.0101110000 NANH==UOIARE FESF/ YPUT GTIEMD. QOMZ/ 100.0101110001 NSMH==UPIAIR FRSF/ UPIT GTORMF. WOMX/ and so on. This doesn't make any sense. But what's this string #100.0101101111? For several hours Qert stand there, leaning over his intracomm. His face had the eternal shape of Beauty Perplext, which was the only thing the poets of the antique, early stors wrote about wrote about wrote about & wrote. About his face had this beauty as your dingy street has its beauty, briefly, when the pales of summer rain keep sweeping & sweeping in repetitive capes across, if as wishing the light fum the old lamp acrosshiff the windows where ipswill worp magic in the morning. But the morning never comes‑‑you know? Well, ol' Qert's suffused face was sfffused face was sfffsst with this aforementioned beauty, also known as this beauty, also known inside even in the tiny workings of the invisible guts of the smallest unborn child‑‑the one who was beaten nothingness in to by the force of perception you. To speak plainly, the botic was puzzled because he couldn't make the signal. I mean he couldn't make it out, he couldn't suss it, scan it, get it to cohere. It stayed a drizzworld liquold in his weepy eyes & dissoilute in his reery tears & a fuzz in his fuff nophe. He couldn't gestalt the patterns. It was as if there were no patterns to gestalt, you know? Here he was hearing perfect instructions from what might be the Perfect God, & all he was getting was that specifically mocking static that was built up over several storic nullinia as a sort of inside joke amongst the storic engineers, the storic engineers, who apparently saw laughter in the smoke I mean heard laughter in the static or felt those unseen babaies cry in the cosmic whisphs of that isolated street we spun on that swung away in space. "Little else & little other than static, here," Qert tried to report‑‑but the very twust of his face, that untoward beauty, see, cramb‑dupt the signal, so he was sure they couldn't hear. (& who also were they, & what was #100.0101101111 toom?) Again bent he down in the static, then glanced up but briefly to grimace at the streetlamp over head which the Uthor of Olbing had not thought to put there before, & Qert called it (the lanthyrn) in his mind (the windwoo) the Afterthought Lanthorn (the rain), & thought to himself that this would make a good title ("The Eternal Shape of Beauty Perplext") for this piece, if piece it be, & then he looked down & made a sort of a gargoyle face, yes a gargoyle face he made out of the face of beauty tishade, & this gargoyle's face parenthesies (parenthesis mined!) mimed his difficulties with the cheap little plastic control knob with which he tried fruitlessly envein edly to TUNE IN THE GOD, the old gameshow, so Qert looks disgustingly like The Idiot of the Fable Adjusting His Radio To Hear The Voiceoveur Zufgod, eyebrows raised in hopeful inanity‑‑or hopefulnanity‑‑tongue sticking out, when Uthrhor Et hadn't even given him a tongue until now‑‑but there it is. Know this: Is. & Know This: Too. & This: Too Too. Part of that ugly face mayavben the reificiation of the static, which is a religious event if there other was ome, such that Qert the Idiot has these spokkles o static beatifically luminous round him like fine particles of a special snow. The static's now falling in silver swoa round his ears, whirling in meaningfully articulated patterns round & round his stupid caulifloriberes, & he just can't make it out. Yes, connections between levels alwrys bad. "What do you make of it?" "It look bad. We put him in these scenes and‑‑" "And he's still the young dolt. Sad." "Bad." "He thinks he's talking to the very top god?" "Well of course not. He think he not talking to the very top God." "Ah." "There is this very big difference." "Mm." "I mean‑‑have you ever thought you were gnottalking to the very top God?" "Never." "Of course not!" "I have never not thought I was talking aught to the very top God." "Yes well, the point is he has lost the stor." "But he doesn't remember‑‑he's not admitting to it." "Yas. Sad." "Yas." Pause. Reflex. Gauze. "I did once think that I was talping off the very tock of God." Pause. "Or was it taking oolgh the veroy top of God?" "That's vere diffrents, ver, butand by the way, what did you just say about 'gauze'?" "This was narration." "Narration, aye. Then who be we?" "We‑be static repartetion." "Tou‑Touché! EAT‑ONE‑EAT or THOUGHT‑PAST FLOWERS OF MY SELF The one time a botic needs repairs is when he thinks he's in disrepair. Qert Bottotic thought so. "I felt woozy," he thought later thought, "and I felt a distinct weakness in my perambulatory mechanisms {nice phrase, that}. I was conscious of moving, & there was this pain in my chest. I limped & hobbled & pulled my way through empty space, a not‑nice phase that, & a difficulty in empty space. I was to have difficulties in empty space, I understood, & here I was in fact having actual difficulties in intra space. Nor did it fee like intra space, I thought, as I sighed. Nor did I move in the manner you move through intra space. No, I was definitely walking, semiconscious & sick & sick though I was. I was limping, below my cute little limping legs was a black surface like velvet‑‑not vacuum of space but ordinary of floor, you see. I must be still inside the stor, I say. I how ever had a feverever & did could not assay. "'Wow!' thought I later to myself. 'I had a real fever. I had a real forehead with real sweatpores pouring forth their sweatpoor wares ro wores. Big lesions of it schlep tacross mineyes, burning mynize, & I was shaking my head a lot to shake off the sweat & to clear it, & also because when you see movies of cowboys or soldiers sweating they always like shake off their sweat. It is actors shaking off unactual sweat, but you always see it, in the movies, & it always moves,and you always move into the movie at that point, so I figure it must be some deep ik=magical point, some utterly deep ik=magical point & not just the ticks of a thousand actors (think: The Tix of a000 Actors) imitating thothers indemselves (thick: Intimading Thyuthers Emthomzelves!). O I shook sweat. So I mutofben an actor, shaking off sweat with a million little sweaty me's inside & tossed a side ndaridin down in those ol beamzoswet, right? "'"Well, possibly," I past thought myself. "But there was this fever station, I mean power station, I mean beaver staytium, I mean roadside inn, I mean motel, I mean EAT, I mean REPAIRS, it said, & I thought fever passed, 'Well, this was the place to get fixed, & so I walked in. I walked right in, I walked right into heaven‑‑known from the title as the first false heaven or The Thirst False Heaven or REPAIRS or EAT or EAT‑ONE‑EAT‑‑& I walked right into this goddam trap with my eye zwide open. I tell you, I was sick. I am aware of what the ultra‑unquoted narrator said up there‑‑about a botic never being sick except etcet‑‑& I urge you to think on how a narrator ain't no Uthor of Olbing, OK? So I wouldn't know. I was sick. I mean to say I was sick. "'"'"I was sick," thought‑past flowers of myself, whereupon the carpet I was walking on turned white, whereupon I went mad‑‑witch comeill tell you a botic snever due, others if not Uthor stell you that's only what a botic salways zis, so you can take it, sift it, sort it out your sordiself itut unthought."'"'" THE CONCEPT OF MOVEMENT STARRING QERT or THE JOLLY WHITE DOCK OF THE K‑HEXATOLE The first thing Qert noticed when he first fell into this sfirst of the Seven False Heavens was that he was aware that he was traveling! That was enough to frighten any botic in this vast & botic‑ridden universe, but I remember tuning in to this awakening creature & noting his strange sense of wonder. Qert noted he was flying through space. He had velocitometers, but they weren't jooked up to his conscious mind, since only his servomechanisms acted while he moved, & slept, & so Qert had to dig in to the old, soft, goldish ik=mage files & describe to himself this new sensation, this new concept: the concept of movement. He was a very young & egotistical botic, Qert, what though he'd existed for nunefallion xiers (wherefore most of this time was spent unconscious & gathering O that rarest dust, in mind), & he immediately & instinctively put himself at the center of the Comcept o Vlocity, so it came out rather like one of your dilmsklipts: ***The Concept of Movement*** skarring Qerk. & he lookta roun din wonder, for he was indeed traveling, but not through empty space‑‑which might have bored him just as much as the old neurollow Tongue gov Cloir would be bored by the hollow‑molecule Spices of Arr‑‑but rather through a field of diaphanous webs that he felt against a big face he was projecting compulsively with all his considerable sleep‑might sleepmight sleepmight sleepmight into the illuminate/region space out hyarr. ***He was lost in a stor!*** Lookatim: swishing through cool web after cool web, still having trouble umpucing this movement business, this velocity game, the old travel modality, that inimitable speed trip, your basic spip spinnalidee, but he was somewhere noting he was in storic space (another new concept there, but one he'd writ of often of, fo netfo fo, & as the stors had told him of, for your stors be sorely frighted by your nexus‑entxus offo stoorroots spaceecaps) & somewhere zelse noting toooot that he was slowing down, he was being dragged down by these wonderful nets which felt less than a storflore thicks, he was decelerating, & the thoughts behind the brightly innoxent flace out there projected with such mighty‑might in splace were splacewore splacewor hurting what's left of his highflying botic head. He was being brought in by something (for repairs? was this home? no one had saw fit to givim enaemory of home, so he could only guess from the ache you & I know so deeply well that this was home. But it was not home. That's another ache, & please understand our little guy that that he couldn't under standthat K?)‑‑actually being haulked in & dragged to a stop on his trip to the stors. Cautiously, & with real fear this time, Qert the Botic stuffed his handy STOR‑PAK© back in his sash & zipped the sash & straightened his tunic & smoothed down his jair‑‑even to the point where this illusory‑blue sort‑of Superman‑hair looked, well, sort of tacky, know mussed you‑if, sort of Franzy Goto Oilywood, sort of 80's dorkish mush‑u‑no, sort of slick n sticky n all tacked down. He was so awot wiph nervushness that the ether spangled up with presions of sweat, with presions o sweat, with pressions‑a presionza sweat, yessir‑‑& tried to look cool though he dint know how nor nor what nor was happening. He was hauled in to a ship better left described than magimbel (this the space‑dream part imaginal), laid to rest on the Perfect Central Dot of a Perfect White Oval Dock, finest beams atingle with high emotions focused right on him (so:), talked down, synthecalmed, debebriefed, air brought autoin, & the most minuscule figures you ever saw walking towards him. Keep mind‑in poor Qert's used to eyeballin' stors. Whole stors. Poor Qert's not used to small stuff like creagatores‑‑which is what he was in fact "seeing" at this time, smiling high as a dilly by this time time time, if you grant that the concept "seeing" has any validioty for some one‑‑such as this figure Qert here‑‑who donknow fully no what he's "seeing" "here." He's uh pretty flipped out‑‑not only because of strangeness‑‑which might not always flip yout, y'know‑‑bu because he was straining not to remember stuff, like this stuff, which was however straining to enter his mind YAAAAAAA! A‑yes, for ensamplee doesn't have to struggle with the concept of "walking," which might be expected to be expected to be expected to be rather radical for him. But no. To save dimensions of the plot, we note that Qert's major difficulty observing the creagatores walking across the perfectly smooth reflevitcelferective & rather jolly white dock (The Jolly White Dock of the K‑Hexatole, the storship we are in we are om) is his realization that he knows what the dock is & what walking is & what these goddam creatures are. Now this upset zim, but we will let him rest & recover here byby assiduously not dezgribin gim... The creagatores fall into seven pastel sociologically structured groups: Ule, Falbagom, Brees, Mneumnteem, Pempito, Naze, & Gra. Dressed quite niftily, as Qertomself describes mumbling gina cup, they have a leader in gra yes a leader in gra, who smile familiarlies, & a bunch of workmen types in red who do not smile. Qert sniffs. 'Stypical... O‑Host, a grahored beautibot in a gragored suit (so that Qert knew it was false) smarmily directed some red‑tuniced muscular humanoid menrobuic types to strip off Qert's layerjings‑‑a thought what shock Qert to the end of no end of laughjing off his very sanes of self this time. So he'd seem to be standin there stripped of his crystalry, his servsmachs, his bufflenims, his electriyins, STANDING THERE ON THE DOCK JUST AS NAKED & poorly FORKED AS THEY!‑‑only moreso‑‑muchuch moreso o! THE HEAVEN OF LAYERS AT THE LEVEL OF SMILES "My, what a handsome botic you are," thee falbagom angoles said. They said it with variations, back & forth in time, & clever, wry, smug, condescending Qert couldn't help but notice that they flowed pempitos honey at him as he said it. He perceived they were working very hard at honeying him, at sweetening some message inside the message of his beauty they were humming hum. He smiled beneath his first layer‑‑for this was a heaven of layers‑‑knowing they were trying to trip him, I mean trick him, into droopinis guards. "OK, that 'snough," said the gra grill spargent, & the amgels spattered. They spattered like white birdshit. They splattered, like milkwhite shit. They shattered like shit. They smattered, but it didn't mattered. "Drop your guard, Qert," he ord red. & Qert, still with that dumb smuck snile on his flace, commence to peeling off the many onion heavenly layers that normally & supposedly always protect your botic. From attack. From intraversic fears. From exottack. From False Havens Evidently, that's "Heavenge Evidemptly." He p e e led o ff h is l ayers like so much underwear, like a foolish man, a stupid man, a simpleton forsooth, who strips off the many layers of clothes he is wont to wear to cower his nupidmeff, smiling uncomprehendingly as the torturers grease up & sharpen up & juice up their wares yessure. Mustobena potent enough message, enh Qert? But Qert's gnot gnistening, the little sgnot, & the drill sergeant 'swhistling 'sternly through his nose nase as he step frowd to peel off the smile which‑‑now that Layer One hath been removed‑‑hang like a poor melodramatic stache from Q what's left off Qert's zupper ilp. Sans smile, but still with that selfsame stupid stupidity huneyed on, Qert strips off Layer Two, the Layer Three, then Four Five Six Seventh Vector Seventh Vector Devector Senevth Sector Veneth Veight Eight Nine Xextor X Z‑Sec Dector Eff Ex Ex Ex‑Ex Ten Ben Ventor Bex, & so on, down through the intricacies which were made to make it impossible even for the goddam botic self to undress. But the sergeant's working on it. Now naturally Qert can't handle himself. Correctly can't he hamber imzelf. Truly can he naught deandle dimxulph. He just keep umbressing, for these heavenly folkave flummoxim pretty good. He's in deep trouble, he know, though would still be smiling if he still had Layer Two (that's the level of smiles) to cover him, for it won't be long till these brilliant marines er probin an pokin into his intimate depths. Qert'll be fucked then; the gods themselves'll be in dutch at that out intrime, as the whole secrets of the botics & the entire premise of the novel‑‑not to mention some of the deep underlying depth psychology opurating in this outhor's mented mind‑‑will be unraveled. Hell, we've write ourseols into a real hole, men. "Rill‑hole, men!" shrooks the sergeant, & the "men"‑‑rather smaller, frailer, still‑white but frilly, rarthur silly, marines‑‑start unwrapping some of the layers so golly deep that even Qert's emergency subconscious memory files philes can't handle it, cannot ik=mage it, & have never seen the likes of a flay so flayso deep as this... MODIFIED MORBIDITY This word ik=mage... Qert lay beneath the soft gauze of what‑would said to be hospital bed. He would have smiled except his smile was dead. Just about everything was dead in this stor, except for those few pulseform maintain by the Gentle Machines, which loved Qert endlessly‑‑right to the endless end of the goddam stor, layer upon layer of these fine things clickin in disrhymix & mixin the light colors of their lithe plasticaires unto the maintenance of those skeletal ashpex of life that lit there, right from the center, representing the heart, which is where Qert unsmiling lay. But his soul was full of glee. I'll have to tell you that, for it is not something which occurred "inside" the stor or which could thereby be measured there me measured there be me beasauredere. That had to do with Qert's desire that he be perfectly protected in this stor. It seems a little morbid, I guess, but I can't spend my time & energy‑‑such as it is‑‑explaining or apologizing for the morbidity of a stor made by a creature or thing or entity, none of it having yet been very well‑defined, who have somehow contracted with another, similar (hey‑‑for all practicalc purepose's identical) creature man ding or thing orthing thin gorthing to keep on shooting him, in universe after universe, just to see it can be done. I can't keep apologauzing for what might strike your doubtless‑dis‑eas‑ed mind as "morbiod" or "eerie" or "creepoy" or whatever whatever, OK OK? Let's say anyway it had a certain modified morbidity, inasmuch as Qert saw to it that anyone entering this stor was immediately & instantly & irredeemably on his deathbed, see, surrounded not by starry feys but by pulsating machines known as Starry Feys™ which kept just the minimal thing zalive. This was Qert's little Deathbed Stor, the slangory Croakoerystoer, hor‑hor, & you can bet his real actual strongly‑pult‑zingheart was out there somewhere, in the storic anteroom no doubt, absolutely pulpshwing wiph glee, to thingk that no one (which was how, by contract, he was amnesiacly obliged to think of Qert in these his various ceptualorz) could possibly get to him to kill him here. Yea, Qert was comfy in his bed & dying rather endlessly, & the machines thrulled him with love, all of which daccorded with the manner in which this strange stor had been set up, & worked on endlessly, by him. He thought his friend Qinz would never think of this (this he thought between storts, whilst a workin' on stors, onstor, whenin he was allowed of course to think about Qinz as someone other than no one see) & wouldn't be able to kill him, & he, Qert, would win the stor & doudouble the score & jubble the score & bubble the scroer yousee. Heh‑heh‑heh, is a reasonable simulacrum of what he dthought. This botic Qinz sook one took at the Deathbed Stor & laughed. He entered, lay sighing on his own deathbed in the absolute same circumstance as Qert‑‑which was by design‑‑& surely there was no way he could kill his friend in there. No way? He smiled his last smile, did Qinz (not accounted for in Qert's design, by the way). I have tried my self purple trying to discern just where this fucking last smile comes from comes from fomes crum butIcan't. I azzume it was just a flicker of joy so murderously great twa zallowed by the gods, who must've filliped a dollop of suspension as they'd often do for Qinz of the lores of storsics & made possible this laugh like a glint off the Towereeth of Speel as it glimps in the zun of Tangorpeantipe‑Eeoolipann) & gently pluck twono the servopumps from his arm‑‑which as you already expect was the white of the perfect death o the ghostly whale, perfect juiceless lifeless light, thin white, ghastly but eerily manic white, joyewhite in a sense, in a shape of white that grows without shape in a timeframe existent outside shape. Pretty pale arm out of which he beautiful beautiful cord keeping him live. Whereupon he dies & Qert inherits his ghostly smile discust tubuv, except that & things commence to die & things astart to die & one by one the pieces of this massive stor‑‑in which we gather (quickly gather!) that everything's connected‑‑die! They die like this: d1e d2e d3e d4e d5e: nntnl thn nnmbnrs bnur. Until the wave of death blossoms intverxal in‑‑to Qert lying on his bed in the center of the stor‑‑& he dies, sucked in by That Very Grin. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! THE DOCTORS' MILLENI ALREPORT or QERT NOR HERT NOR HURD "You're a sick man, Mr. Botic," de Doctor D declared. "Sick? Man?" declaration queryqerg was not hert nor hurd, & he himself (Qert) was (Qert) was filled with nothing but this oleaginous greyish putrid sordolf half‑thought thought‑haph awareness that they had gotten his name wrong, but he could tell there was some External Force (actually it was the Internal Force of one of the Corek=mages of Qert's much‑tooted little nub, but he didn't know that & he didn't know that) that was making him forget imsef rapidly at‑that. For by this time or that time they had fed him into a tube, & the tube had turned translaprent, so they could observe whilst Qert was sucked to the edges of the glass, that is sucked to the edges of the glass he was sucked inin & stretched more or less into a tuba shape. A tuba shape. There were reasons for this, as came out in that section call‑ed "Reasons for This" in the creamwhite document known as The Doctors' Milleni Alreport‑‑but this report, as its name implies, comes out once per millennia, this being a very healthy if unseemly universe 1) healthy seamy universe, 2) healthy seeming universe, 3) healthily steaming univlursh, 4) helph ebeaming woony verx, 5) wealthy xiimnimng goon‑oui‑worts, 6) helky‑sweeming soonin‑vorsch)‑‑& so Qert did not get to peruse it, at least not for a long a while, a long long whilst I de cide if he lasts that long. I can tell you that, if I have him last that long, Qertillbe most enamored of the document, which given the time & the cutted‑idge enxporteesch of its priparatium was as you might given the c‑i e of its p expepct a massive & gorgeous multilinear affair. It was the cream that got him‑‑that & his own tuba‑waped face TUBAWAPEDFACE!! right in the middle of the centremost cube of the clear lozewnge of liquid crystal living light at the heart of the huge structure which was despite its vast size & strucuture But The Size Of A Magazine, which is an impossible lie & paradox & lie & paradox & nya‑nya‑nya ha‑ha. Nothing lasts forever‑‑what do you care. Or then again, everything lasts forever, Qert was thinking (remember Qert? Thinking?) as they examined him & worked on him. They'd said he was a "man." This is not what the botic thinks I am. He may think he's a god. He may think he's a workman. He may thing he's some sort of erbodic angel wisping on the power of his Central Whim, also known as the Sintrol Whing, a.k.a. the Impkrul Rimg or the Pimkurl Ik=Mag=Ing. But he sure as hevik don't think he am a mam. LITTLE‑GNOME EDWISDOM The vivisection begins. They're chuckling & pulling out the ik=mages. It's unusual to see a chuckle in this sector, as even mouths in the various Intraverx, stors, megastors, stor‑"cities," & heavens‑true & heavens‑false are a rarity, usually having been omitted like mouths omitted‑‑but these technicians, rather an awkward & frisky lot, I'd say, not only chuckle, they prance & shake their heads, the chuckle forming more or less as an imaginary radiant in the palefield of thought we know as the mouth area. Nothing here, readers, but a big soft phoney upper "lip" exuding that magnetory call‑ed PHONINESS ah, & in the midst of it a liquid, animated sort of glowing grin of such wrong colors rong qulurs you'd swear this ik=mage (like this passage like this memory) comes from c. 1950 when your mother was just initially wriggling out of dearth unto the dazzle‑spacies of the sky out of Outher Burth. & indeed, this is where all=mages come from. This is little known. Such knowledge is call edwisdom, little‑gnome. They chortle their glee, & I will not get off on a tangent of chortles here, which can kill you with its glee, chortles being quite unlike chuckles despite the similarity of words, despite Looshe Carooll, despite all the little girls he slid the long lie of his camera upinto (lucky Loo!). No, it's well worth avoiding avoiding digressiums on chortles, for the average intraverx‑brand chortle is well‑night big as a star, big as a blue giant of a star, big as an unusually tough & bullying blue giant of a hot hot fucking star‑‑not stor, but star, I say star, not stor, knotstor, noxtor, or or or or or 1‑5, & we don't want to get beat up & singed by a chortle here. But chortle, by God, is just what they do. & they pull out mage after mage from the ik=mage phylof Qert. O! Reader! O, but I cry at this point, just to let you know I'm sincere, for not only smiles but sincerity have been long‑banned here, & this is why I'm in one of those kinda timewarp prisongs that wrap you up even before you commit your crime, ere your crime, to save on time, to get you jailed on time the judge told me as she capered & jortled with glee. You ask about Jortled & Glee. I am glad you asked. Their act disbanded c. 199550.500150/4800.0 for Unauthorized Employ of Smiles Sincerity, "nor qualities to that effect," in the judge jolting ords (see ORDS c‑ords opening:K/Ords‑C). They are in a prison, but not with me. No, not with me. No. I spin round alone in mine crystal, I assume this be just like thee. Anyway, those engineers they keep slixxing from our grax (see GRAX, SLIPFUM) pulling poor detruit Qoit's ik=mages out from his heart as it were (digression here *) with chortlers, etc., of glee, & not only with these rare emotions‑‑indicating proximity of God? indicating intensity of botsecting‑vent? indicating X?‑‑but with these enormous wooden calipers, the sort used for hauling nine‑by‑five feetpronts from the pool of their chemicals, really big thangs, rechoiring a lot of invisible paranoid servomechanisms to park em into action, & to haul what are really absurdly minuscule day=mages from the also‑small qert of Gut. I can't explain the discrepancy in size, unless the fat, blunt‑tipped wooden tweezers zare some sort of weirdr dream sort of symbol of the excessive emotions (not to mention digressions: "Digressions") autoquipped in this while authorial seen here eer. I can't explain the discrepancy in like size, but I'm sure you can if you just smuck you smirk with gryy, if you simply uk your erk with zee, if you only tuck your skirts whiff V, if you but ut yur ur with thyy, elkcuhc‑elkcuhc. But underneath all the nonsense, you can see or perhaps feel, or goddam it at least imagine their heads shaking with something much deeper, much more an actual shaking, not of the head, not of the brain, not even of the ether of the brain, but of the illegal ik=mage of brain that is clear & deptht, pellucid, limpid & yet very keenly hued. This inner self shake with a deep sincerity of admiration for the being who is being destroyed. Always we see, in our works, this deep admiration for the thing we are they are torturing. Thus it is in this case in is it, for these mage're like something never seen. These are, or were intended, to be products of the gods, to be savored by their special eyes only, real eyes, not just imaginary allseeing godly‑tis, neither nur, I'd say...and even the owner & "maker" of those mages (this is Qert we are not speaking of of hear!) has never seenemeer. So inside all their capering & their silly expressions, sounds, n' calipers as I so quaintly call them, behind all the authorial self‑ruff‑rentches of prisms & etcetera, we have porofound & true amtoinos, I'm straining to let you see, straining to erase through jiggling I guess my uh "personality" just for the instant long enough to let you see, see!, those ik=mages of life swaying with moved sincerity indepth at lay=mages just vivisected from our dear (Qert) heer, & they are humming om with admiration of these mages of life they've stolen from the death of the life of the world they inhere. Too bad. They go of course instantly blind‑‑which is what happens when you torture your babies, & which may explain all that capering up there, if anything explains the blindness & the torturing of babies & the capering up here, hear me‑‑here. "I stared madly at the scalpel," Qert recall, "which wasn't really a scalpel, of course, but a sort of light beam, except that it was not a light beam either, but a manner of semantic dislocator, except that it was very grey. Once you strip away enough layers you get grey. But this wasn't a clear or clean grey, such as the beautiful cartoonist might ink across the dray. No, it was dirty. It looked greasy or dusty, possibly mildewed, probably soiled. "And it must have affected my eyes, too, for everything had that paifnul soiled & mutsy look‑‑not healthy aging into beauteous ivory or gritty mechanisticality, no. No, it was definitely something sick & painful, like that overexposed porno movie your father oersposed you to while he placed his penis in your tiny hand. That hand wasn't dirty before. "'My eyes weren't dirty before,' I commented to the doctororor. "'No,' he said, oping up the last shell around my precious phial. 'The life's gone out. The pain‑‑it's everything.' "'Well put,' I grunted, & the file was pulled out. & I thought this thought much too deeply aware: You've just plucked out the essence of me, the essence of Qert. In this deep form, the thought occurred in the mere form of kinaesthetic movements‑‑I humped the thought & it humped me. Down there at that depph we were one, entwangled qheought, but nextly the thought repeated itself a little closer to the surface, wherein it took the form of a gaudy lot of dream images like the ik=mage points that ik=mage points that hang on on like dew to the gravid sides of one of the cartoonisht's most pregnant plethic frames‑‑one of her fertility‑goddess frames to which your ik=mages your=mages attasch, & there the thought was a dream world I wander din. "A dream world I wandered in. & next it took the form of a very deep, guiltprone, deathridden subterranean thought that I was afraid to admit, & here the thought was a blackness all around like the mass that sits on your head as you wait, breathless for your torture, wait. "And then it came froth as a real thought, except for a moment there was pain & I could not utter it. "'You've just plucked out...'" "Pardonme? What's that, Qert?" "'...the essence of Qaqaqaqa.'" "Naw!" the scientist said, brightly but grimy. "No‑‑we han't 'pulk‑tout your essence,' Qert. You're still qaqaqaqa‑Qert. Your eyes're clearing, aren't they Qert? {And yes, my eyes'ere clearing & the goddam grime was going away!} We've healed you, young botic, yes we did! Your phile‑‑your precious 'essence of you'‑‑it was this." "And he held up a bullet‑‑a god damned bullet in my gut!" VOICES DIN & SLAND or EYES WHICH LOOKS ABSURD IN THIS WORDLESS WARD The creagator scientists in that thin & sheetlike way‑‑more like the surface of Oceania roused by the sensual winds of one of those sensual Mediterranean‑stylish ultraseas that we seas that we seas that we all wallultra have‑‑& rip off rubber masks revealing momentary SKULLS that however (that however) dim dunward like exhausted wings wings & shake their heads until sparkling lifelight hair flails gaily round with the false speculated gaiety of science, & they rip off gloves revealing momentary BONES then they make a lot of shuffling (exhaustion) exhaustion noise as they turn to the sleeping figure of Qert in his creagator form & they sigh... "He's totally withdrawn. I'd call it mad if we but called things mad anymore. Totally mad. But I shan't call it that, except there's nothing we can do." They pause & slide. The room goes through a small dimensional slide, whereby first one end, then in acceleration the entire room stretcheth sidewise with a slidewrise bending‑of‑down, whipping the minds of the two docreagors in apsychoanalogous manner, giving 'em pause... "Except dissect him." "I beg your pardon." "Sure. No problem. No sweat. Nothing to matter...er..." "No‑‑I mean, why did you just say 'Except dissect him'?" "I don't remember. I was hoping you'd remember. Must be dimensional slide." Now one of these two gets all of a saudden to looking really tough & know‑it‑all‑‑you know: cocky, full of himself, acting out adolescent‑borne false bravado, literally sticking his tongue in his cheek, strutting, standing in exaggerated contraposto in a body's voice that says I am afraid of fantasy... "Yea‑‑thassit. Yup," he says in tones ringing with harmonics of the voice of the tones I just got done so painfooly describibing. "Muss be onadem dimensnl slides! Yea, that's it...that's it...that's it it it..." They notice they're in the room with Qert. "Who the fuck is that?" Now the other one‑‑not the one who was looking like a punk a minute ago, which is a very common way of trying to "psychologically 'recover'" from imemsional slide, much noted in the heavy slide zones (O yea, them heavy slide zones you feel‑in‑yer heavy slibe bones, o yea o yea!)‑‑slaps the first one, well, in a low‑comedy, Three‑Stoopoogedy sorta manner, whopping him upside the head with the heel of a mighty, science‑elonggaaaated hand: WHOP! WHOP!, he go. WHOP! WHOP! WHOP! he crescendoze. & WHOP1 WHOP2 WHOP3 he scientifically throes n' goes. WHOPWHOPWHOP! Slaps him well. "That's Qert, you dummy‑‑Qert. Qert! Qert! Qert!" with a sweaty capital WHOPN at eachnevery twerm. "We'll have to dissect him." "Vivisect, I believe you mean," sayeth one of them‑‑I have lost track which. But they're both pretty peculiarly glad to be out of that lapse back there lapse back where lapseback air. "I see. We can dissect him later." "Hahahahahaha! Or put him back in his stor!" "Hehehehehehe! Except it might not work so well!" "Huhuhu! Look at him. He doesn't even have any color left. Can that happens?" "U‑u‑u‑u‑u! If it happen, yes. Let me go to D{ayyac} to get some fine opalades for the cutting. I mean for some really fine cutting, close & sweetly to the core, cutting right through those fat little cells, slicing it as it were right through their little smiles, their little hands wringing together, their organelloid hearts, the curses of their eyes, their eyebeams, their eyes, hyhyhyhy!" "Boy, you sure rubbing your hands & beaming your own little 'organellic' eyes & crossing & recrossing your eyes‑‑which looks absurd in this wordless ward, by the by‑‑& also I cannot help but note crossing your legs giving scruze n' squeeze n' screws n' screes to your genitals‑‑& making you walk rather funny, way the way‑‑& as I said again rubbing your hands, the cells falling in Absolute Despair & also dryly to the floor which is liquid here (I just notice: we have a liquid floor! Hey‑‑psst! Hey! Hey! Pssst! We have a..." "Yes, I...)" Voices din & Sland. (None of which affects Qert. He hears only the quiet dripping of the washwater, the orange‑red light of the darkroom wavering on the low roof, reflected off the big white trays of chemicals‑‑enormous trays, which lift like the skin of the sea revealing the handiwork of Uthor underneath. This being Qert's theory, anyway. He's developing sheet after sheet of the fine emulsion. It shows things about the (surprisingly dark) interiors of these stors you would never expect‑‑things no sort of cosmic opalades could sever. Now if you can see what's really going on under the forces of these stern stors, if you can just get all the data processed down here, with the darkroom timeclock ticking & letting off a humongous blazt of a buzz at intervals more regular than the periodic microstors & the acrid chemicals bringing out electrochemical memories in the subvoltages of your mind that you don't want or need any more than the False Heaven of the Broken Heart to bleed‑‑if you can only just manage to put the secrets together before that oplade comes cutting through the red vestige tadders of your consciousness, sending you doubtless up DOUBTLESS DOUBLOUPT to the False Heaven of the Saved or the Saaved or the Saaaved‑‑you can see the aesthetic by which this funny stor was put together, achoke on urlaughter & formless pain, you can see secrets they can never cut out, you can take off with your pure treasure with your egg of pleasure you can get free of this weightless feeling of wight in the False Heaven of the Endless Weight, OK? (If you can get these pictures developed on time... ou can get these pictures developed o an get these pictures develope et these picture ese pictu e pi .) PATTERNS ON THE PADS Qert trying to forget all these delusions hunkers down in his special chair & tries to get to work. He doesn't remember well his work, & when he looks up from his work he notices he's in a botic‑beaker, & that the hoards of the stoards are gawking at him. There was something he was supposed to remember, but he has gone too far... Qert couldn't help but notice that the faces outside the beaker were exceedingly grim. One of those faces was his longlost Qinz, & when Qert, pink & giggling inside the vax of stimulant gasses & gasses & steam, bobbed his head & nodded farcically by way of saying h'lo, Qinz just redoubled his grimness, moving his hands over the surface of the bulb, trying to find a flaw or something. Qert thought he saw a phlit swolling out of the corner of Qinz's eye or mouth (he missed that detail so I make it two detail details), as if his friend were saying "Shshsh! Quiet! Not now!" or somesuch, & he anxiously laid his head back... Qinz was surrounded by blue technicians‑‑& it seemed to baby Qert that Baby Qert that these fellows were at once direblue & threateningly too‑thin. Now did he like the way they were moving so quickly around the beaker, drawing an observable geometric pattern around the stolid Qinz. & hey‑‑if Qinz looked serious, you can well imagine you can well how these faceless jokers looked. They had no faces. I have given the detail(s) zaway. Still‑and‑yet‑though‑howver‑O, they were very likely bad technicians, possibly‑‑if I may "wing it," if you please; if I may "extrapolate" a mite here please; if I "might" please; if I "please"‑‑bad little technicians evenso, but they were dirty, anway, the way their fingers had some sort of marks or indentations in them, patterns on the pads that left dark greasy little spots on the heretofore pristine survax of the beaker‑ur. An alarmed & tiny Qert (really tiny, like!) furriously rubrubbed frotted on the squure, & a blue face blew faceup tiny‑to‑him‑nere & laughed out rageously. Had a face for a moment, here thought Qert. & meantime busy Qinz had gained a purchase on a crack in the surface of the bax, & like a coagulant blue liquid the Kruds strang their hangs onto the crack & were pulling‑‑some this way, some that, right along with the stronger & ostensibly more stronger Qinz‑‑& trying to crack the outer shell, the shell, & the glasses frurled in alarm yes‑they‑did, & Qert grew evermore alarmed, yers he ded, & it oqqurred to him that that phlit that that Qinz had had send might have a message in it‑‑& when I say might have a message in it I mean it might have a message in it other than the message Qert had thought that he'd sent that he said I meant. So Qert pulls back. He look like a baby in alarm. He look like your second baby looked when you first busted his defenses with your arm. He look like a baby looks when it finds out it's a baby in your world. But he was none of these exactly things. He was Qert Bottotic, using his servomechanisms yes to scan a phlit heregoes. "{Lot if his. Hurriedly made? Deliberately obscure‑‑I hate that!‑‑or bad phlixion in the ether‑net nexus of the yure? Sounds like hhhhsssssshshshshshhhhh} I'm gonna kill you really fast, this time, Qert. We're on a new campaign to get you fast. We figure the stors turn out better. I figure the guilt will be no more. I mean, I have thought long & hard‑‑while you were fucking sleeping between your term‑‑& decided the guilt I fell is a poison that comes from you, & I have, Qert, spoken to the gods regarding the possibility that this poison‑‑besides fucking up my killings & qillings of you, & thus interfering with my Professional Integrity‑‑may be infecting the stors you lay more & more, so that we are starting now to get these aborted monstrosities, these dead & distorted worlds, these partial & sick universes, borne doubtless from diseased ik=mage files defiled, if I may, by your own poisons, Qert‑‑that is, distorted in their essence by the poison of the guilt you are squirting to me whilst I try to pruify things by killing you, or squilling you, depends on which sector I am ing. "So {hhhhsssshshshshhh!} the gos says to me, they says they says, 'Well hey, man, you might be right be right, ol' Qinz ol; boy‑‑& we mean to say that you're our boy. But what do we do we do we do?' "And likehhhshshshhh I says to the goigs, 'Hey well‑‑don wory, K? Noq to freq. No sweaq‑‑hey. We've just gotta kill the fucker squick‑‑ere he gets to grow up in the worlds.' "And like the gods man the gods says to me, 'Qinz. We dig what you're sayin, K? But like, we cut a deal with Qert, man. It's like we have a deal.' 'And like what's the deal?' I says. & they sort of like reply, 'Well, man, we can't give out detaildetail details of the deal or deals, you can comprehend that am I sure amman,' & what can I say so I says yes, & they says, 'But like, it was part of the bargain‑‑& we need to mean too emphasize herein that it's quite a CENTRAL part of the goddam heheh bargain, man, that (ahewm!) "The aforementioned Qert Bottotoci, who will as aforeshed function as botic in this lurl (legal talk‑‑mumb‑go‑jung‑bworurl), getsa to like spend endless childhoods after childhoods in the worlds of his own creating, stipulating & devolved upon the following stipulations...blah‑bleh‑bluh," you see.' "And I like said, 'I see.' & we sats real silent for a whiles. "And what I'm tryin to say is, we all looked at some movies of the universes‑‑some of your best work, Qert, & it moved us to deep tears‑‑& these blue creatures you see (blue creatures you see on the outside of this dream) outside the beaker of this dreen are the results of these tears. They are the tears. "Because, Qert, man‑‑& I say this vivividly‑‑we thence looked at your most recent worlds. Hhhhshshshhh‑‑what more can I shay, ol Qert ol boy advisedly? Hhsshshshshsss‑‑we saw the Dead World & the Gob World & the Dud World & the Gub World & the Gobbet Woarld & the Egg Wurld & the Fucking Boxic World (clever‑clever, qute, self‑reflexive, mirriry, Qerl!) & the Blottic World & the Fug Gowoarl & the Guf Roarual & the Dot Blural‑‑pathetic stuff, Qert. 'Sathetic Smuff,' in the words of the words of the gods of the gods of worldshhsshshshhh. "So we checked over your contract & in essence said fuck it, man. 'Cause you weren't like delivering the googs, you see? You'd bruuched that suucher, we zided, long gago. & while certain deep legal arraingements mush B‑made in the ultraviolemp depths of the Legalurld, it was thought safe & seemly & OK & meet heyhey that I‑‑ahem!‑‑like begin to cut you out sooner, hear?‑‑contract notwithstanding, Qerththththhhh..." Blinking awake, Qert saw with alarm they were peeling back the outer shell. Now he had death to greet him the instant he awoke, & an existence, it seemed, of nothing but sleep & the work‑creation & just one viv*d fl*sh of light, followed by infanticide‑‑of him!‑‑& not the chain of childhoods he'd envisioned‑‑& negotiated‑‑for himself. Now it's true Qert remembered none of this‑‑none of what Qinz had said about contracts & gods & stors & universal deals. & it's true that Qinz was that worst of scuggs, the deluded liar, whose lies sometimes swung round back at you & got true because he was so inverted‑miroir‑yee! wrong you shee. So he couldn't utterly trust the total phlit. But he did. "YAAAA!" squeamed the Baby as they cut through the tubes. The gasses started to run about, & Qert was vivid with tears. He'd fool them a bit before he died‑‑this was his universe, after all, with the usual set of secret subrules meant to subvert his murderin' pal. But after that‑‑after Qinz, who was perfect with murders in his soul, succeeded as he must, as even the structure of the universe suggeusts, in killing him‑‑Qert had a bone to piq with the goddam gaugs... THE ONLY LEFT COHERIMP IN THESE or PHLIZZARDS OF PLASMA GASH & so the beaker, & with it the stor, shatter xeplosively, with a shardic vengeance of very nasty‑looking pieces, their shape antemorphed through shaped charges set in their clear capillaries & their tendons of glass & in the sonic stomes on their essences deeper than bomes. You can do that. If you have enough technicians helping you, & Qert has this unprecedented following of tiny little engineers, bucktoothed & nerdy, who will spend milliards of chronocyclic internities shaping those nasty shards to Qert's perfection. & these guys come up with ideas of their own as well. I mean, these are not mere venturers. These are not servomechanisms, if I may use the word {servomechanisms}. These are tiny, sycophantic, slavering, obsequious, unctuous vuvid little weasels, but they have free will, & they worship Qert. They worship Qert with their own peculiar energy, & it takes the form of living endless time doing drudgery for him, in order to make his stors what these {engineers} like to call "schitzofround," which means essentially really‑really‑reallyreally deep, insanely detailed, which is, or was, that which Qert's stors are or were noted for or fore or frore orefroar. & like I say, the engineers come up with their own ideas, which is something you can perceptively digress into even as this latest stor explobes with the morbor of Qorp, such that the slashed & slattered pieces & the slassed ensghlitterd pietzes & the sashed inzijjurd pleeces of Qert & Qinz's's cow'ring bodies envel‑ope onean‑other in a shower o' towrin' fear. "Fear. That's how you end a stor. Give 'em fear, lotsa fear." ‑‑Qert Bottotic & th' Engineers o' Fear. & whilst this is happening, you can notice‑‑underneath these blizzard‑like all‑gashing little nastards if I may of glass, which just keep raining down & whirling back up & reforming into various DEEP BLIZZARDS & variorous BEEP PLIZZARDS & forming again‑anew into yet‑other‑nouveau nations & barbaric "civilizations" if‑may of nastardalities, hee‑hee, so that you thing, what with one wind puf & the swelter of emotions & motions ong‑ga‑go like this, poor gravity will never have a chance & will neer get a purchase & this nightmare WILL NEVREND!‑‑the Severely Outré Wailing Sound. Note severely outré waiwing swound. That was invented by the tiny engineers abovallud edtoo who worshiqert, youwooal recaul, as a parallel to the exciting visual stuff & the shards flaying the essence right out of the twins up there. Cut apart like that & their faces‑‑what's left of em‑‑deadbabybloated by the farting, I mean wailing, sounds, they do look like twins. Their their bodies will be gone, soon. Looks like some of those clever little designers figured a way to make the sound actually enhance the cutting, so the soundwaves are loosening up the flesh, so we have these billions of Perfect Blades‑‑tightgineered knives hones & calculated endlessly in the stoptime ormation of the stor‑‑hacking with euphoric zoundz into what must cut to them like butter. Iiiiif we could get a microeye in there... oe oe oe But we can't. I tell you oel hell brokes louse when a stor ends‑‑& one of Qert's stors oer always designed like this to end so cataclysmically & with such apocalypse of thunder & with such sheer outblowing waves of antequantumenergy that no known recording device knowem too gnone has ever or will theorieticall and/or storically bable to write or crystallize or memzorize nor motherwise record the unstance of its happening. It's just impossible, like trying to draw the cosmic primordial ylem (though that's not a goob comparisonb, as many artists have tried to draw or represent the ylem‑‑so this is even worse), so no one remembers, no one draws word‑pictures, no one paints, & god knows no machinery or memcrystal can tape or track or wire or in anywise record what happens when a Qertic stor blows. It's not contractual. Au contraire‑‑the gods have it in the storic contrax that they have all intraverxic rights to the image of the stors. Only Qert‑‑together with those licey little engineers I hate alluding two‑‑has outfoxed them good‑and‑good with his Postexistence Terminator as he calls it as he thinks it as he dies. For Qert's dying, no doubt about it. More importantly‑‑& if I may, more friendlily‑‑Qinz dies too, & his gun is for a second the only left coherimp in these phlizzards of plasma gash, until it, too, too, too, too... After which the two buddies emerge in a blue euphoric shower full of laughter which for just an instant cuts the edge...and then settles down‑ellipsis‑down...down, & then, jolly & naked like the two buoyant athletes they are, they towel emselves vigoprously as they step into the antechamber, where we've been before, wheryin every venture endsy entrue nends. "Whew!" & "Gawd!" & "Woaw!" they intratwaing. Shape, I mean Shake they their heads & move with nerve‑rapidity. Now {somewhere in a hidden verge} the li'l engineers break open bottle after bottle of nerd champagne, which has its own tiny tacky appropriateness, given that this was The Bottle‑Surge or Stor de Bouteilles, asth Qert onaly now revealth. "Haaaawwww! Howdalike it? Huh? Huh?" screeches Qert, punching & pumping Qinz newly‑growm murderim garm. "Whooooa! Whoo‑AAA!" roars Qinz, throwing his head so farback back‑atroars. "Bottles, man‑‑what's with the bottles man," & such like that. They sure do luagh! Luaghs envelop. Yellowed emvelope luaghs. They are licked & sealed in these envelopes of luaghs‑‑or at least this is how some of the gods' peculiar recording vices desee it, detellit. Gods are very metaphorical. Gods exist in clear envelopes thirteen feet high. Some of them. We rip the seal & it LUAGHS! Golbutit LUAGHS! It just LUAGHS! & LUAGHS! & LUAGHS! & like Qert & Qinz‑‑clearly hyysterical, their mutual celebration ultracorded in Shamebless Intimacy by frustrated, surprised, & stunned gods everywhere, aching with the need to store‑‑also flow many liquids, with many bubbles, the scweaming & the straight‑time & the edges washing dges shing ff, ff, ff... THE BODY IN Shshshsh! The artist at work, laties & gendlemum, on his ulatest Extravaganzic Stor. Just who looks at these stor, zanyhow? I mean, who goes in to them? Does anyone really live in them? What are they here for? This place is hard to find. I never see never see anyone here, except for those little specks‑‑ Beg pardumb? little teeny silver specks, like, that sort of, uh, form the outline, rather, of a beast, or form, or whatever. Well, that clarifies. That. Shshshs, pleashshshe! We enter the stori carea, or stormic arima‑‑so‑called because it is so called, I mean, so coloured, with the sweepings of stourm, for the pourtions of a stour that do not get incourporated into the stor, or unto the stor, or undue la slor, become like the sweepings of storm, take on the swume & the swuum & the coloration zweum of a goddam storm, man, & fill what we are wont to call the STORMIC ARENA, inwherech the leavings of the stor‑‑those stor portions never to be stord‑‑cut up some touches & act like a storm. We enter the sotrmic or Storicke Arena in plush zeroless shopes, beautifully designed, not cheapjack, plusch solmic veneton encormanink plasthagoriasiaphic axakaxtic indoshkosho‑agozhnic shopes that flatter enflater our fleer, for our fleet due knot touch the ground, there being very little in the way o groun din here. See, this vast & STORMIC area ARENA is a partually‑fuormed space. It has just enough "stretch" (I like to say "stretch" & to hear myself say "'stretch'" & to say "say '"stretch"'" & to say) stretch of dimensions to fit a body in‑‑a body in without killing it‑‑the body in. & even there herein he doesn't loop, I ming look, too goob, I meem good, what with that gas mask he has, making him look like a stork, or a stormstork, or a pigeon, or one of those glottal arpeggios what formulate themselps unto the thick, thick, hyperthickened atmosphaire of Laingdeneuwibough after Laingdeneuwibough Lain-gde-neuw-ibo-ugh under Laingdeneuwibough in Laingdeneuwibough of Lain-geg-eden-nen-enne-nba-wugh!, wherein vocals sculp, voiphls "sculpt" like they love to hearmzelves sculp, & they form structures muchlike whatever the fuck I was talking about up there. O yeh‑‑Qert's fukkin face. I think part of it comes from his desire to repulse. I also think he is in a trance‑‑& your botic don' look pritty when he's in a trance. Certainly Qert doesn't. & indeed, he is also working with this recalcitrant material, this "protocoagulant ylem" (I love to hear myself stretch "proogoo anuplastulenk yoolyyem" mumem!), this highly toxic, stormworthy stuff, which some say is the very stuff of weaponry, the very power sortce, foromstampce, of the Vwah Greduxor, nthe selfsame nettles of the tanglenet, nthe absolute shuttles of the bangoplet. It's that bad, that serious. It's dangerous, lethal, & tragic stuff to work with. I'd rather stick my psychic fingers in to heal the brain ein painoddix Pon than endure the inevitable, slow, morbid, deathly, suicidal, nightmarish twanging of the guitar springs of the disease known in circles of knome as storg. Yea. Qert's got storg, you can bep. Andime arfraid to mention that one of the symbombs of storg is the tendency to work ever‑harder at your stor, locked timeless & wellnigh spaceless in that aremna of storng, more & more truly inspired, whilst that very pierce of inspiration pings deeper to your heart in fex you morean dmore. Dmore. We can't get sick. We have our shopes‑‑our plusch solmic veneton encormanink plasthagoriasiaphic axakaxtic indoshkosho‑agozhnic shopes, remember? So we can watch him (his muscles do look swollen, don't they?)‑‑those aren't muscles, those are dust (those aren't dust; that is death)‑‑death is dust, OK? (OK, but I whisper hear the whisper of the stormic hush)‑‑Hush! Not only can't we get sick, but Qert can ot e en s e us. Is it his trance? No. Is it his storg? Naw. Is it our shopes? Not altogether. It haf to do more with saranwrappish warpage of the space. He can't see us for his chopping at the plastor‑strace. Ah‑‑you are thurprithed he useth chithel, ay? He chisel off piece after piece of infinity till he gets him right well down unto the rhythmic nothing, that near nothing nesh we known as stor, poor storg! MOLECULESMOL In a move that would have been bold had it been made a thousand yur zago, Qert decided to use his latest stor to contact his father. Intresting premise. "Dearest Dad," Qert wrote. Actually, he wrote Dear Daddums, but then delete the Qert‑wrote & then truend about again, his heart spinning on that perfect knot of glass your heart always spings on long nom nas on you feel the beauty of illusion truth of beauty sooth of same, & added the est & paused. He sighed: whmph. & just to think how all of this was being recorded! "I've been sick lately," he wrote patiently on, etching queer words in the qveer of crystal that was the substratum of his stor. "They've got me making stor after stor, & well, heck, Dad {"Daddums" ‑‑Ed.}, I've been starting to forget what I was doing. In fact, I can't remember even now what I am doing, except that Qinz could show up anyplace anytime. This fellow Qinz‑‑a botic like me, but Exxentially Different, you understand, Dad {whereas amatter fact, there was no Daddums to understand, inasmuck as botics don't have daddums. ‑‑Zes.}‑‑shows up to kill me every time, in every stor. I think it's a game, Pop. {Read Daddums for lacunic lunar‑pop, pop pop pop!, whenas he was totally wrong; this was no game; nossir; not by the gods, nossir! ‑‑Edzes.} Anyway, I'm losing. I'm all mixed up because I sincerely believbe that something went wrong with the mix {as it were, ‑‑Pop}, & it's gotten out of hand. Hell, this letter may be part of a stor‑‑possibly my own ddead stor‑‑& not me working on creating stors at all, & so this Qinz'll show up any time like Dad{dumsed}ytime. His father appeared blue in the cloud of his mind. "Take comfort, son," he said, "and remember: son." "Yes‑Dad‑I‑re member that," gasp sQert as the poet Phluorib put the lozenge back in its seal & the seal slipped herself O! so easily back into the painfoeld & the painfoeld slipped into something vague & purple plose & the infinisnesinil (acause 1) there 2) now 3) much 4) room for clicks anymore) click of the Vuor Reducer, making it moleculesmol. This Phluorib mabe gextears witrh hiv hombs. "Stop calling me Daddums, Qert. You botics are poet‑mad. But anyway, & as I was recalling, there were in fact these days‑‑before the killings, before the stors. You had a father back then. I mean, it wasn't all Qinz." Qert nob knowigly. (I must rewrite that letter to say Dear Qinz, he thought, then shook him out of it. Poems were strong that way.) "You had a shirt, I remember," Phluorib said, & here Qert's "face" (ha ha!) folds up rather like the lozngnto its com po nent parthsh with disapproval, on account of he don't like to be reminded of the poet's special access to it all. I mean, it hurts‑‑even for a goddam verxtacurzic botic it hurURTs‑‑to think of all these special intimate things that a greaseball like Phluorib knows. "Why are you such a 'greaseball'?" Qer tinquires, at wishbe hind his back a foil wall o vinfinite arabesphiligree ascend, convoolving oer his back so that suddenly Qert looks like a body bouncing on a waterbed of gold in the endguld husks of Waterwoad as if in the deepest sleep cutting free of concepts once for all. The poe tignore zit. He waxeth eloquent about Qertses shirt, which was loose & plain white, of an exquisite sentient silkaterial, not tailor cut at all, & really several times too big, inasmuch as big hag any meaning in the mentionless dimouph of the Zero Mouf, & somewhat unbottoned & I guessic showing the hard contours of Qert's tens‑edback to the sort advantage you recall in your Byroneams resemes e‑zeems & like Qert spainfully ware that Phluorib's really veilpressing his (Qert's (ha ha! (ha ha!) ah ah) body) ah body, really just the halide sheathe of body which is the functional modality of bodies here in the Haulo Worgs, but evidently & neverthelesh much benamored by Phluoribteeheehee. Being a poet, he can make it sound like the fucking shirt's symbolic, but mainly it's just another way to painfully show this uppity goddam bot, after all, that he's got access to full & naked views of his complete & vulnerable body, that he can set these those vulnerbilibees to motzium, that he can accelerate the aging of the body & stor it & its myriad gossameres liquidly back, liquidly back unto the liquid black that lies <beneath> behind that waterbed of noise discorting herz elf be hindim indimim. Heasa greaseball, though, oblivious though he mough. In fact, I think oblivity's a characteristic‑‑aqualality if you will, or even equalaliquilidiilty‑‑of greaseballs everywore. But he is grey, glistening, walking a bit ahead of Qert, on to the next lozenge, is it were, & definitely oleogendic, soft, disgustin a jollyolly way... ESOTERINGEERED LORES O PHYJIQS Qert's early works were good‑‑they really were. They were, in the words of critic‑o‑stors Nen Fegfchii, "brimful of brittle good moods, or, in the words of also‑stora‑critic Gyynyys Zaza, 'abristle with good moves, or, in the words of also‑stora‑criticOddonteezker Gim, "full of little rudes, or, in the words of also‑stora‑critic Beechee 3, 'felt with bitter ludes, or, in the words of also‑stora‑critic Gadja Ajdag, "gilt with glitter dudes, or, in the words of also‑stora‑critic Twolp nyimGim (no realation), 'atilt with flitter nudes, & or, in the words of also‑stora‑critic Oo‑1‑oO OOaOO, "alilt with jitterrunes."'"'"'" Here's one such small move, or mood (or rude or lude or dudes) in runes: Qinz arrives at this broad, concave swamp sort of place. It's colored a light blue, & up clutes you can see subtle variations in its color & texture‑‑variations not characteristic of swamp, which should give you a clue, as should the very heavy air which fills the cupped part of the swamp, & the soft sound of liquids, soft sounds of liquids, sounds of the liquids, siflids, ounds. Everything about this place seems fishy, Qinz thinks. Qinz is built to think the wrong sort of thoughts. At the annual Botic Verxmas Party, Qinz ends conversations when he enters them. He lies like grey fluid in a bag within them. His words disrupt. He's a killer‑‑what do you expect? Then he just gives up. & they always find him crying under the tinsel after the bash, curled & incredibly tiny, with his murderer's ability I say "murderer's ability" to get really small, with his knees pulled up & his arms around his knees & his still‑big, sniffy face against the softness of his arms just like the hurt child he will always be (& me) & have to be taken home aboard special transports. & there are no transports home. Might be this party is another stor. Still, Qinz is right is Qinz right is is as he walk cautiously (but not cautiously enough, I'll bet!) not directly in but along the perimeter of the swamp but slowly spiraling in but curving a little more directly in but sniffing suspiciously as he goes in‑‑there is something awfully fishy here. He's so damned scared Qert is gonna defeat him. This is what givthe god spleasure, this ambility (of Qert's) to to to to flummox n hornswoggle Qinz (back in the early days, the early stors, wayways) & make him fear. It's good, the gos say, that this Qert person‑‑preprogrammed & destined as he is to be be killed‑‑can create such a world of such distortive complexities that he scare the guy who's destined to kill him‑‑gol! So they say. Anyway, Qinz's holding the contractual "Big Ugly Gun" in one hand, & against the vast & intricate‑‑truly sleep‑imprussif‑‑texcheers of this swamp, he looks ridiculous. His brown boots & space‑pants of leather look stupid, too‑‑as they would not, say, on the glo‑struts of a big old town, but which Qert has not created here, or the lo‑strux of a megafluorm, which Qert has not hinted here, or anywhere dry & ordinarily storestrial‑‑but Qert hashe naught oblig edhere‑‑& the duds looks stupider as old Qinz starts to think, & the gods rollick & laugh at the thought, glub, I am sinking oooo this swamp, glub o ! o o o o o Which he does, & then it's arranged through certain esoteringeered lores o phyjiqs that we shall draw back from the scene of poor Qinz sinking (& firing his Gun!) & sinking in as the thought sinks in that‑‑while he's contractually like guaranteed to be able to kill Qert & thus posit him out of his world, positimouahisworld‑‑he shall be trapped & humiliated himself, poor guilt‑ridden bastard, to observe this swamp from high up. The swamp from higher up: clouds. Puzzled gouds. The clouds DRAIN into THE FACE OF QERT, smiling beneficently, kindly, sillily‑‑just the face to put sinking Qinz off. & Qinz sees it, yes he does: he sees the face all right, on his little uoto‑oye which Qert hasn't got but which 'nable Qinz, 'no 'natter what, to obtain a gosoye voo of everything that transpire in the story of the sorta‑stor (& come to think of it, does Qert know Qinz's got this thing? Does Qert even know such a thing exists? I don'k thin't so...). So Qinz feels great humiliation, as he sink into the actual face of the artist, who hurts him all but endlessly with his kindness & his smiles, & the elongate, light‑blue distortiveness of that face, & the smoke puffs uph. In case you were worried: the swamp does die. Qert must die. Hell, Qert has agreed to die‑‑again & again (agreed & died) again again‑‑& so he dies, the swamp drying & becoming rather like the brown scum on the surgfatch of cookied milch & wrapping itself tightly around the skeleton of Qinz‑‑Oyea, the skeleton of Qinz wrapped up in Qert. God, you see all those Good Moves? Doublegood Moves‑‑& if you stayed tuned in (as many people did stay tune edin to those early werks o Qurt), you could even watch a laconic crew of workmem drudging the swump‑‑or what's left of the swemp, which zembles wrust a small qoquum‑‑& lofting it up like a bundle on one of their swampcrane, swompcraines, swemmvkraighngnes, & plopping the dry little nigard down, & tearing it open, coughing ot the sust, & revealing the skeleton of Qinz. "What's that gun he's got?" POSSESSION OF FRIENDS ALLOWED Yea, Bottotic's stors started out as small jokes, like those clear globes of fruit, crimson melons, & bunches of twitzors you used to plant in the wet garden, just where the verge of the boggy veer go bog‑‑where your mother says don't go. The yellow lizards have DON'T KNOW written into them‑‑they display this on their backs as they make tonguelings ackyou. You yu-youyouyou-ou used to plant those Prince Drupert Dops right where they would take possession of friends, back when Possession of Friends was not only allowed at the first queer singes of dawn, but were welcomed, positively hooted in by the selfsame jolly‑russet son the son the sun that still burneth thine hair uninto qurls. These are the fruits of lucination, prestoric folds. All very light. Only later came that hopeless romantic period, which the botic kept ascribing to the inspiration of the one May Beam‑‑a love known not to have ever subsisted outside her selfdrawn cosmic strip‑‑a portion of either Qert or his "friend" (also nonsubxixtents) Qinz, but in any event unreal...and when I say unreal I mean two or three soft dreambursts outer here is what I mean when I say real is just a dreamprod into here her he h...and the boxes {God spare us from his boxes! ‑‑Ed. Boxes. ‑‑Ed. Boxes. ‑‑Zed. Boxezzedd oxes ded ded ded} & of course the snowstorms & that qilly bip withe teef & the awful clackering, & the fluorescent Phluorib poet or what tweveree whass, & of course, after that, down a long expanse of time pseudo time in the forms of a hall of perefect back, the dead period of the deadness of the storness of the stors‑‑a time of qualities. THE CUSTORMARY LOOPS Again, once upon an hur Qert made a little stor, apparently harmless‑‑a mere divertissement‑‑in which the squeeging out of just one tear destroys the universe. This be fore the stors came murder‑suicide device. The aim was to capture Qinz within his own tears‑‑always the goal of lover friends, don't you see‑‑& to have him face the choice of scruzing the rest of that goddam tear out & be destroyed or of holding the cheer forever, dangling, on that cheek. Qert bet Qinz would hold oubt. He designed the stor as you would design a dream for a dream friend, see. The tear would start time going in the customary loops, so his paloops could cry forever. Qert could hardly sleep that night, his cheek pressed fresh against the rimey bluish sheets in the ICE would heslep within (Qert had to sleep in an ice world, in his custormary blue, so as not to create billions & billions of stors from the frostings of his sleep), his breath forming solid, eerie‑white statues of statues of white which were gently moved over‑‑by servomechanisms, I hasten twad, & not by living, semisentient technicians of any sort or kind‑‑to take their place on pedestals of clear glass with a queer gloss as of drear dross in a tear's toss unto merest moss, disc‑shaped pedestals, I say disc‑shaped pedestals, I say disc, shaped pedestals‑I‑say‑I say. & when he did sleep, this excitable, because always a child outside his stors, Qert I say disc‑shaped pedestals thought (& NOT‑DREAMT‑‑OK? OK? OK? OK? OK?) of entering the stor in which his friend was caught, in the form of a precious tear‑‑which you see you would‑must understand. in the circuiages of time stor‑time stortime reduce that which was "Qinz" more & more into the tear, which was, you see, the imagistic fulcrum of the stor on a disc‑shaped pedestal‑‑where he, the Qert‑shape in the center of the stor, a red shape, just visiting (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!), might gently sigh & like touch that stor & inadvertently (because your to your stors'll always superise you) dissolve all his blood in his tear. l his blood inis tear l his blood inistear lis bloodinistear alisblodinistir lbldinstir lbltr albr alb l a This happen here & also here & here & here. Remember, that goddam tear's been round the loop o time for‑an‑ever MetaTime™. It did their friendship, if you can call it that, no good, this teary stor. It was dubbed "corny" by critics, & the selfsame thought must've occurred to Qinz as well, for of course he barely went round with this "self‑pitying, sappy, droopy, drippy, dreemy, sentimental stoeur‑without‑a‑coeure," as he later said he said, one time when he crushed out the tear out the tear out out, which smoked & dissolved the entire universe whereupon Qinz‑‑this is inevitable, folks‑‑stands smoking & dripping at the same time right in front of the soft, sleeping Qert (!) whose excited breaths (!!) as he realize this is "real" come out now in the shape of red molten statues of aliens (!!!) which melt the disk‑shaped pedestals repeated heretofore & sits up astonied cries, "Qinz!" Qinz's fists loose just a little bit, & he starts to pace. He is of course very nervous. He is effecitually dead for the nonce, & mad as a demon at Qert. Just think: Mad as a Demon at Qert. Just think: That set off the cycle of stors known as the Real or the True Murder Sories. & just to think‑‑it all started with that goddam tear. GUX OK, first of the Real Murther Speries or the True: Fairy musics in the background. An exceedingly light heaven, this. The technician (some tubey swemm as‑may May Beam) who worked & worked & worked & worked on him & in him & on into him was him‑ or her‑ orself elongated to a degree that Qert's softly objective mind considered ridiculous. Absurd, Qert thought. It went against some principle. Or principles. He‑‑no she, it was definitely a she‑‑was pastel colored alzo. Now that's absurd. Looks uttertwo frail, uttertwo frail, to be fixing him, to be stickering her intensely‑lit (almost warsching grout that pastel‑‑haah) forearms‑‑for the forearms was all you could see‑‑into his Leaden Grouted Gux. Yet she did it with gusto, refluxx Qert, & noticed that he was refluxxing with eerie calmy, aloof & distant, for they had his mind fixed up to a flat disk which rotated round & round. It was from this that it was from that came forth from his that it was coming up the so‑called "fairy music" sup‑for‑thup. "I like your amnesia," May beam, dit seem, din key & she moving in key, with the fairy music snow revealed to be utterling frorth like sweam from the lips of Qert as he rotated round & round. "You have 95% amnesia, Qert." "Qert," Qert qert leadenly. "That's right," she said, leaning in‑‑which for this babe was one hell of a long lean in!‑‑to get a look at something golden in his guts. "Looking for some‑uh!‑thing?" "I think we can get you your friend 'Qinz' back," beammay, laughing, "if you want him back!" her voice muffoed from under the hood, speaking slowly, Qert rotating constantly, falling deeper inspirals of love with that pale & breathing trunk‑‑which he could not see breathing, and, having seen breathing, could not but help but start turning the slender breathing over & over in his mind, his mind roving over & over atat that so he couldsndent helps zimzelphls‑‑& with each turn she got more & more wonderful, & Qert did thought he thought, Verily, she is a creature of the fairest heaven. Verily will she bring my memories back‑‑including this familiar‑sounding friend I have not got, have not got, have not got... "Woops," she said, popping her head back out. "Sound like your song is through, ol Qert." Old, he thought, then smiled like an old botic & possibly the author died before finishing this sentence. Or this notice of the author;s dying. Or this one. Or this. It's lioke predicting the end of the world. Sooner or later, you'll be right. Now back to our story. NIGHTMARE HURT THE EYES What is this shit? Now back to our story. Start of new section. Start. "Hey‑‑Qert," come Qinz's voice, & Qert froze. The lovesmake was hurting. Make note: Smake hurting here, he thought automatically. He felt his back muscles hardening, as if with the cold smakegraze. You could tell it was the first hit of blue smake for the era, but the muscles were actually tightening in response to Qinz's weapon. (My God! But he hadn't even I mean Qert hadn't even thought to investiagte what kind of weapons they had here in Hexx! & some of the universes had mean, nasty, sad, overpowering weapons just to see an ik=mage of would make your onions cry. He was losing control. He Was Losing Control. There Was NO Control. NO CONtrol. CONTrol. CONTRol. CONTROl. O!) He could hear Qinz breathing, & you had to admire the way Qinz somehow got a charge of hatred into even his breath. What he did to Qert's name when he called it was a nightmare‑‑an actual nightmare of a ghastly brilliant blue, like the blue of some inconceivably poisonous dye, tinged with a red somewhere caught between somewhere caught between blood & rust and. Nightmare hurt the eyes, was thought as the bullet said. He was sipping very hauchagoglot‑‑made with plain water, pas de milq, known as "pas‑de‑milch hauchagoglot" in these parts, heavy with rougue midstummer slakey smake, but he reserved for future reverence the Question: What Parts Are We IN & how‑did‑the‑scenechange howditchng..?quick?‑‑& making hideous faces from the nightmare in the scene before the bullet hut (ruffle through your scrips..?quick?), but no one in the immediate vicinity, which is to say the immediate family, was noticing, possibly because the illusion was his, pozzibly because he could feel the bullet hit. Fine think, he things. I cleverly escape to this place, only to have the bullet cleverlier follow me & blast my back into clay wright hear... Which it did. Qinz's vullet hits the protective field of the back, & the protective f.o.t.b. tries like hell to pull Qert out of the fix, but it's clearly a qlearly an Interval Bullet‑‑Gog!‑‑& it hits right through to the very smuiff of whusch Qert tis mage, & he splats. I mean, his back‑thing splatters like very wet, almost silty, virtually vet, clay clay clay clay & forms a small volcano‑shape where the bullet rivets right in, & the illusory Qert they had thought to have formed yet another life in the Hills o' Hexx turns briefly into a stor‑‑into the composte ik=mage'd stor he had posted immis hort, & the father in the scene goes "Huup!?" & never expresses himself again. The entire "family (if we may)" falls into Qert's sudlyeqnergized ik=mage phials (your bullets'll do'll tha'll't: they'll takeover everything a'that for a' that a't), mouths wide open the whole time, & the small area around the small false false‑Qert (doubly false by the maqorz zinopes of "fooling" Qinz or at least his bullet X) BLOOWPS! into utter nothingness‑‑actually the warp & woof of Intraverse "Space (if‑famlay)," but a‑lookin' pretty "nonthin'" hyere as the original moqbody that Qinz shot croaks its shock & dies. shot croaks its shock & dies. & I mean really dies. Qert was apparently loaded with deaths, ik=mages & representationages of death. This was quite a novelty, & must be a function of his experimental ik=mage phile modality‑‑which the other botics‑‑certainly Qinz, we believe‑‑didn't have. & judging from the grotesque thorws of ik=magery (ick ik=magery!) that flowwowpong Qertick's deaph, we won't be seeing very more of these newfanedaddled ik=mage file inserts in the near intravuture no. For Qert goes into some mightyumgous throes! He throws for example‑out spewters of bloog, filleps o' gutz, sillooz‑o'‑slime, grisly furrows o' smapeengfexted glyme. He fill the goddam air with magnified ik=mages of What Death Means to the Body when you're in a body. & Qinz is in a body. He's in a body, too‑‑a moqbody‑‑isn't he? So are his henchbots, Quuf & Qet, & Quadiackinoawn & Qthee & Qo‑oQador, too & as well‑‑are they not? Someone is not. Yes, but they (the ones I mentioned) are‑‑not? Yes they are. So now what happens to thhem? Well, the ultraik=mages of death throw off their bodies, reactivate boggy memories o' what 'slike, etc. The sort of memories that cannot be repretsed, hidden, flinched from, run fum, nor in any way denied‑‑no, not even by habitants of the ultrainter‑verx‑‑not even by botics...not so long as they're bodies, heh. So Qinz dies ha. Seeing the ik=mage thrown out by Qert's death, Qinz's body creshes in its chups, falls away, wrenches into convulsions & dies heh & inside, at the minuscule sweet diaphanous almost‑massless al‑most‑mass‑less controls, Qinz has time to croak only "Wha‑?," because you see he is stuck inside, hah as similarly in this mess do bodies of Quff & Qumpany (even Qo‑oQador, yes). Now I'll admit that somebody unwrittenun thus sceune is not in a body. Someone is watching us. Botics've always felt someone was waschgigng guss‑‑& they are right, or were right, ere they die(d)haha. That someone doesn't die. But pritineer everyone else diezoribly. Make note, there is no:one to shay, ik=mage file ik=mage of death good doomsday device, released pon dydying, & even the note‑‑containing as she does, mass‑‑dies. Now there has to be someone in the realm of existence to clean up this mesh. But not for a while. AIR OF TOOT or PILATE CORRECTION A or INCLUSION IN THEIR FOOLRY The two botics made an early attempt to give up the game. Together they wandered some of the lesser stors, feeling utterly safe there, feeling that they knew in their hearts that they really knew the gods couldn't find them‑‑not without what Qinz kept calling & calling "that chemicollusion" between them. Qert was the wounded one, we must remember; we must remember, in order to excuse the rather pangy dark fucking goddam sonofabitch‑ing thought that he Qert thought when Qinz kept saying that, such that the thought ("Your collusion, you mean.") became as solid as the musical instruments they were walkin in in this airless mewsicle or, more precisely, instrumental world that Qert had hey in his private collection hey his primate connection ey his pilate correction A, & Qert, shame dove his own suspicions & inhurt of his friend, quietly puts the thought down amongst the myriad instruments & sails into a rap foiling like the spatial layers of a topogrophilupe. Then Qinz turned with his usual neat formularity, his neat blue tunic at the heighth of a style in a stor of style in which the style height was perfectly high: "These are the most exquisite musical instruments I have ever seen‑‑so narrow & intricately coiled. & their colors! They look like sweet, dark snakes or kolucobbras gathered in, not to strike, but to let their own beauty strike the colorless sun." Upon hearing this, now Qert rolls his eyes to the hidden camera which was talping the filmic pisions of his mid, for future prilate miewing, & he draws a breath in that ragged qurly wray we have gowen too lubve, & he scratches his curly blond vonnehair & pats his wellesome tummy & leans deanback flexing the medial vertebra of the psychic spime & sez "You wax eloquent. But you're right. Heft one‑‑note its weightlessnessness. It has both weightlessness & heft, that one. & here‑‑you can hold any number of them in any bumber of limbs. They accommodate themselves to you, like accommodations of dream. Look at the valves..." "Yea, I was just looking at the valves. They also shift, don't they? I'd say they shift with the light, except that you seem to've made the light in this place so as not to shift." Qert smiles, & not benignly. "O, it'll shift all right, old boy. It will shift all right, come time." & he thought, How did he know I made the light? & somewhere Qinz thought back, You always make the light to be killdupin, friend. Qinz clearly, does not want to deal with Qert's continued qerts continuid compilexities, & so he stiffly aboids the eye & just keeps taking up instrument after instrument until he has an infinite number of instruments in his arms‑loving arms & he beam like a child at Qert, who falls in love, gets flustered, has to stop time, go to the potty, come back to his screen & examine the image, shake his head, fume emotions through his system, livid with emotions cascading through his body supple with the loss of time rigid in the air like a crystal of the splace, puffs out his cheeks & sets back into stor. Qinz picks up the musical instrument which is the solidification of the thought srtument above, whereupon Qert agains stops time ytakes a cold shower & has a bite to eat & sits around panicking & creating fumey snells that, however, can't get loose in the deadtime of the intrastor of Qert's hideout here & chastises himself for the thought & tortures himself for six (6) eternities with the thourt & jumps violently back into storathoup... "You all right?" ask Qinz with apparent innocence, licking his lips, clearly with the intention‑‑clearly & visibly suspended above his head for filming, like an image on a taroT card righT there‑‑of totting a biT on taT one disastrous instrumeT. "You can't!" "Can't what? Qeret, have you‑‑" "You can't play that instrument here! I mean, there's no air in here, no airinhere, no..." Qinz blinks his look at Qert. The look‑‑as solid as the thought which has become the instrument in this scene which has become the thought in the instrumental dream of another star, God, stor, gad‑‑tells Qert Qinz knows Qert's fooling Qinzahim. So Qinzeth givesa toot... & the air becomes & Aire of Toot. & of course the toot‑‑free to manifest itself in fullform personality on account of this unfinished private stor's absence of parameter‑solidities‑‑takes on the formations & history‑‑complete with tangential anecdotary‑‑of both the thought Qert thought & the look Qinz looked. The sound stops. By this time no one remembers anything‑‑who they are, the story, etc. The two blown‑out botics improvise, pursing their lips appreciatively at the music, they look at one another with the understanding they are inclusion in their foolery (which you'll notice was the harmonic just hot by the note just hit which has just eliminated them as coherent selves in the story in coherent selves the stor e yin) & they want to agree that the note was very good, but there is no language. Silly old Qert forgot to put the language lozenge in! That Qert! DLUSIONS OF MIRTH I think we all first began to suspect that the friendship between Qinz & Qert (they were contracted together, after wer) wur beginning TERMINAL sour or suor or seor or soror when Qert created his "Joke Stor," which he often liked to call (when allow edto re call) "The Bigol' Stor o Jopes!," excalabation poingt his. This place was sometimes known also as The Clown Stor & The Balloon Stor. No, it wasn't the bold stupidity of the place‑‑by this time this flirting with danger (in the form of eternal torture of the gods, see Storal Contract 4.29357) was a Qert signature‑‑that tipped us off. Nor the blowsy gag of having everyone who entered the stor behave themselves like balloons, squerky & woiboling & likewise full of squerkies & roiboroings. Again, it was like Qert it was like Qert to create, how shall I say Qert to create humiliating rules n laws. Qert: oft knowen as "the scop of humiliatin' rulesinlaws. So, shee, sho poor Qinz enters by pushing himself through the usual stretchdoor, & discovers many things, all at once. That's what happens to you when you enter a stor what happens when you enter a stor what you happenzenter stor you what happenstor you happenstyanzicstor: you be many thangs at zunce, as they saynotsay. That's certainly what happened to Qinz, who with the usual layer of amnesia (not total, of course, but a degree birth degree of amnesia suffulgent to make the game a game & to give Qert the blody childhod he deserve. ("Hey fellows," laughs one handsome blond upper‑class godade, "Let's give old Qert the childhod he deserve." "Yes, stringem on, astwere," snawer another unknown gog looking ungawdlipe like a viper in plates covered with a light‑absorbent sheet, o yea, coverd witha light‑absorbent sheet, uh‑huh, cu VERD witha LIGHTABsorBANTSHEET, mm‑hmm, as the other gods‑‑known henchforth as The Gother Obs‑‑look on askance & askew & akimbole fearfoly, for this is the fdark god the lizard god the longue tonged gob the god of the fear cuorsang through the switty pabjes of this novel after that & that & that, what can I say?) finds he is now named Quoanjje, which is a fearfully silly name, & so the last thought, O the very last thought, that the heroic powerbot Qinz think that Qinz think that Qinjk thinjk as he billow‑zim is Golly whatta fearra fuella silla namanamaname & then he dies, squalling in his mother's arms. & need I describe this great inflated ma? Qert was never known for his women inasmuch as he was ever not‑known for nothing and/nor nanything's or or. & like everyone else instor, Qert, not Quoanjje, has to endure the long & painful process of blowing up, & the agony of rumping & bubbling against the other loons at schalool, & the dange rof puncture‑‑wellnigh a storal phobya here as swell it might itnigh‑and the quintessential xitement of your first inderflo with the parodic joke‑monstrosities known in this stor in this known in this stor as FEMALES (sex being everywhere: here * for example, & here * & here * & here * & *) & naturally ewnough & saad to say, the first crinkles toopeer. You know, the sort of skim that tights saround your pad when you touch it there. Balloon is dying (your father said) tough it there, & you can feel it dying & the death clings to you there. Certainly you can look at this that way *. & of course‑‑stipulated in the contract as it uz‑‑Qert & Qinz‑‑excuse me, Quoanjje‑‑come to meet & strike up this friendship the most dangerously lovey of any in the stor (this in the contract 2), & we sit back to observe how the killing comebadout this time..it's always different & unpredictable, a product of the rules of the stor & the superrules of the contract & the supersuperrules of this odd interverxial friendship that yuks acrox la bunds of dimension‑stors everywhere & of course the overriding godrules that can hit you SO AS TO TORTURE YOU anytime, reading, right where you sit, now, anytime eternity, & the transcendent rules of the love that makes things so silly & blows them upbyond their triple capatchity toobabaLOONs. & here's where we see the friendship start to fail. Too much killing, we refluct, nodding with our mouths fished down at the edges utter‑sanctonominy. For in the Joke Stor, or Clown Stor anyway, or what yenyyay, the two pals engadge in a fatal repartwee. They toss lousy jokes back & forth. They torture each other with their gags‑‑sometimes yes‑literal gagas, sometimes not, YUKYUK‑‑until their mutual brains (balloon‑brains, let's not think!) blow up into hallucinations not unlike the breaking of those in those Spanish festivals in your glued‑up univerts dying away without gods, for Qert's fipped the bloons of his Joke Stor with nothing but dlusions of mirth, so they both die mukking. "I'd certainly give that one to Qert," says one god. "Yea but them japes‑‑so flimsy & loud!" "They were a bit loud, weren't they?" screams D, who's flat as a jay, evidently cwumboled by the sound. "Anyway, but Qert got Qinz killed whilst he was atryin' to kill him (Qert). So it goes to Qert, does it not?" "No," thunders the dark god, rustling his dark sheets. One cannot help but think that mirth is not foree. "This death goes against them both‑‑you see?" Mandrake jextures hypotically. & by gods they do see‑‑they really see. I mean, suddenly with a blackwave & a wackblave they see, they really see... RE ITERATE ED The Joke Stor dies down like a flapsed ballwoom. They watch it, suffin siccorekkes, & consider not going on with it. You will not this consideration appeared & rappeard (illegally) many times. They consider calling it a draw & sit down on a Plain Rock‑‑one of those Plain Rocks made out of black & white. "You won't believe this," Quoanjje gestures in an incredibly hypnopompic & self‑pitying way. His hooded eyes stare blearily‑‑yes, & this odious self‑pitiness‑‑as he sucks a big fat toke on a black cigarette in the shape of a rocket, a perfect shape mathematical. "I'm grown up now, here," he says, the snawer to which inanity, in my opinion, can be but a sigh of disgust. So, well in the mood of this piece, which critic Quoanjje remand me to killim when I get out), I draw an even sillier (did I say SILLIER?) or was it sillier? or what?) toke off either the same cigarette or a precise & exactsame duplicate of Qert's rangy, big‑boned, Western, self‑pididying cigorept. The smoke‑‑I say, the smoke‑‑the smoke us full of felt pty. With saltdew in mine eyes & soft pearls that will explode into sobs in my throat & an alien that will eat his way out of my gut, I attend to him. (I believe we are on the front stoop of some flat in NYC or one of the lesser grub‑cities in the planes of Universe One. I am not sure. I take no responsibility for Universe One.) I recall Qert's customary & evident‑favorite yellow of the bricks n stone n concrete n stuff, but I am not sire (see parentheses). In this self‑pitying, framed stor, the environment is not blown up to much too much. It is but a small, smoggy, wrinkled old balloon, if you will pardon me O! PARDON ME! O! O! PARDON ME‑‑PLEASE!! of a stor...like I say SAY! not blown up very O! far OK? "You won't believe this," re iterate Ed, "but I was a well‑liked child once." I didn't believe it‑‑it was set in amber that I wouldn't‑‑but I'll spare you additional frames, O yea!, I will spare yez additional frame, uh‑huh, OYEH! I‑willa SPAREYES a DITION al FRAME, mm‑hm. "My sixth birthday was full of kids. They all had presents‑‑really big ones, stwo‑‑& were dressed in the height of fashion for a kid. The height of like fashion then was Acute Discomfort, & that's how all my many many presented friends was dressed. I'd threatened each one of them, had bloddied many of the girls, knocked out some of the teeth HA! HA! HA! HA! of the lesser ones, had threatened the bigger, smarter, more experienced, tougher ones‑‑the tiny marines I liked to call them when they ripped my bones to shreds‑‑had threatened even them with expulsion. Which meant that they couldn't come to my parties anymore. Yet here they was! & the little girls I'd tried to make suck my cock. & their mothers, whom's I'd tried to fuck up the butt, droped the kids off on the street, & my mother (unseen in this print this print this print this print) who scooped their spattered flesh up (there is no blood in this print) & would bring them in, & so we had this enormous, boxlike cake (get it? boxlike cape? get it yet? cake?), & the mangles of well‑dressed, tortured flesh were molded onto chairs all around, & I presided with a great big knife. (Chuckles.) It was a great big ol knife, I can tell you that! Man, was it big! It was big, man! & man‑o‑man! Talk about big knives‑‑whew! But the knife was merely a precaution‑‑not for the cake, but for my mom should she try to broach the print wither funny stuff. & all at once the air if you call it air of the room if you air it that filled with a spray as of water that, & I therefore flung the flung the cycling knife the knife‑‑for it was not just big...not only a big knife...nossir...it was also & more particularly & evident‑particularly a cycling goddam knive‑‑aside‑flung‑I‑the‑knipe & dug with both fists into the outer box. With the rip, an outer friend died‑‑a scream burst from the fart of flosch on the seat to my immediate right right right right right (there are many dimensions here here here here here & here) & it blew up, & I ripped the second box‑‑with even much more gorfeous wrapzinkx‑‑Kandansky waps, I swear!‑‑& my secondary friend ript up et cetera, small well formed (be cause form edby my mum!) flesches poughed & blough, & I screamed an a sort of pardoyay‑ecechoo, a kinind of sarcastic‑sarcoplast, a manner of roni eironeer, a bit of a comic cosmic smear, a diddle of a dormic shnier, a boddle o bloggy sweeres, you see you see you see, after my dead‑second in deconds "friend" (if you). Here Qert draweth another snuck off hiv fag. "Ha ha! Very good‑‑'fag.' Yes‑‑'fag'‑‑very very good ingeed." Herein hwe draweth othwer smux suppon hif frag. "Hm.. 'Frag.' Don't like that‑‑don't follow that at all & all in all, infact. {Sighs.} Anyway. "I ripped through many a friend's gift‑rapt present that day. Ha. Ha. Through present after present I passed, & as I past, I saw gorgeous festoonery twimmings & tri‑dee‑foils. I saw endless ribbons in gold‑euphoric foilds. (Could this be the "euphoria" Critic Sobriquet in his talk was it what about?) Passed I through & through sheer bubbles o parentheses within mine very selfsame quotes within quotes within quotes. It was that sort of party. I was hot. I was on drugs. I ripped open every last friend back then‑‑& this was after my series of First Youthful Crimes, the ones that won't count‑‑& before stors eelike this one and. "When it ended my mother came in & cut up the cake." He interrupted his own quote, this time, to suck of the last little jiggle of the fag. In go the lips. He lapped the driplet of cream with his slubby tongue. "Yea. She shut up, I mean cut up, the cake. You should of seen what that did to me!" Thank you, Quoanjje. @@@@ TEEF Qinz is chewing his lip. He is clearly displeased at Qert's reaction to his memory. Qert is not reacting at all, but is mumbling, slipping off his stiil in the big glassed‑garden, & is probing the earth, as if seeking a lost contact somewhere lense. Qinz is hurt‑‑murderously hurt‑‑& he chews his lip. I wonder, he thinks, if this isn't another stor. Qert is mumbling to a great blue hooing sound‑‑something madly electronic, or the wails of a longlost world. "What are you doing?" demands Qinz, standing up. He notices the feels of having his name‑‑his own, god‑name‑‑back, but that's not going to deterreted mihhim. He frisk himself himself, looking for the gun. That would be a clue that this was another of Qert's illusions, in which case killing would be so fine. "Mime rookplim fur my teef," Qert mutters. His crawling gets more frenzied‑‑see how he sweats right through that soft Grecian cloak he's muddying yup. "Teef...Lost you teeth?" mutters Qinz, though, possessed by the mesmeric belief‑verxtems of the stor, he has started to crawling round. It's this sort of humiliation, he thinks he thinks, that is ruining everything. I'd shoot him if I could. I'd shoot him if I were certain this were a stor & not werelives. Fuck, man. See. So he crawls around looking. Next thing come the sun up‑‑a cheeky feller, electric pink & beamwingyeller. He didn't really think Fuck, man. I just thought he thought it, just like I thought this New Voice of Reality qeq "Well what do you know. Our Qert hath mithplath't his teeth." Yes, & misplaced, they become what is known in this charming little interstoric village as teef. So anyway, "I hab mifplaft mime teef," he says again, but he seems rather to be enjoying himself‑‑& that indicates something about the character of this character. I think it says some pretty darned profound things about Qert, some very powerful primal symbols burning like ice into us here, burning like ice memories into us here. other lesser symbols dancing & gamboling eound I mean round, diaphanously implied in unbertomes as of imunerable Umdortomnic Bees, which refract prisms zat you at the verimost speeds o high, i.e., they hit you aire the name out what have hit you hit you sright. Qinz: lost in the thunderblush. Now one indication that Qert likes having his damned teeth gone is the way he keeps making chewy sounds, gumming his mouth, pronouncing teef. He apparently likes his mouf wivout teef. Andother important facet that any junior‑high‑school kiddo could write in her little report (yumyum) is that this absence of actual, real, organically‑working teetheehee would seem to indicate, if she correctly surmurise, that Qert is very old. Botics‑lose‑their‑teeth‑withage just like anybody in the genepule elts. & this phenomenom that we are noting here here here here here here here indicalsoates the perferbid rationale like behind Qert's losing his teeth‑‑somewheres in the garden of seeded stors, if his chumbling's any invication pike‑‑which rationale goeth somefing lied thix: The blond schoolgirl who is writing this very, selfsame report that we have quoaging hier is none other than Cartoonipst May deBeam As A Little Girl. Foxy old Qert‑‑just as nasty as deaf‑‑knows the lucid plane her perceptions beam across on their way to becoming words through the electrosensitif crenulations of her youthful schoolgirl's brain. He knows this crystal window will be focused on him, & that's all it takes for this smitted smuden old fuddyuddy‑‑sacrificing honor, position, place, fine friends on wine, faces on the vine, captured boys in the cellar, skins to stretch, & earthen drupes‑‑to waste our Investifricative Timehere combing the goddamned garblem for his teef. Muttryng impalseys, he sweeps dewy blurp after blurp, & blurb never‑to‑be‑stors. Yea. Destructive old gent. Crusty old grump. Gusty ol gemp. Tusty olemp. Rusty whole grunt. Dusty holepemp. Pustyoalempt. Uftyimp. Vimp. Imp. M! TUNNELS OF GLOBULE We involve too deepily in the search & are now tunneling down these various Tunnels of Globule. We speed past lost things. We see a se of chattering teef, & those are Qert's teef reverted to a smaller globule. They were evidently needed there (far far lost to us & far far better than us by now), to form constituents of the nutrient globules feeding the Herculean Forest of the Gods. We are passing "through" (though prepositions here or meaningless, we don't have the time nor the inclination nor anything near to the magnitude to rent some of the special interstoric preps you can intersporiget sometimes ometimes memes ees e) the great Forest of the Gods. It would seem from this vantage that all of these stors‑‑all those images, or as the botics say in their everqute botois, ik=mages (ah! les ik=mages!) are rendered unto distilled liquid purls which are then reduced into b\globules (sometimes at a...loss of...real=ikity heehee...) for the feeding of the trees. They are then reduced to globules for the feeding of the trees. Reglofeetwee, aziftwor. You can hardly describe the forest therefore, growing in magnitude as it are from our briempf perspicative, by quantum bleaps, but it would appear to be some sorta paint‑binumbros amalglim o redwoods trees & flowers. Redwoodsized flours? Can't seek, canno C... But wait a minute. Wait. There is yet more chattering straight onhead. That would argue more teeth (for pon mine honour, Sir, ye cannot argue lessteef, heeHEE!), only I think these are more your cubes of color arran ged by the natural forces what prevail betwixt th'stars (if ye mat call that natural, Sir!), & these are like Dwuid Tempoles or stones among the watchets of the stars. Yessir‑‑these are more like stories cryustallized & with a bite of the very cold‑‑WHINGD! & there one just goe sby & WHIMBD! WHINDG! WHMBG! more teef WHMM! WMN! WN! N! acootabye, for we are riding the Insane Mighty High of The Highe of the Highee of the Teef, yessir, & yet still & yetso hear we mynchung chattyrs nygh (yf y'cangst qoll thate "nye," Syrrah?), as of more & evern greater tee thahead. But for the moment‑‑bear with me, please‑‑there is nothing but whiteness, nothing but this insane purity yfy'c'n quole, & the chattering growing brittle‑brilliants in meyenigh, bristol‑billiants imimeye, brikkle‑bitiole mememaye, & the whiteness discarding her aeons‑laeong saeolidity & raeosaeolving zintaeo snaeow...snaeow, snaeow, snaeow... @@ THE GAME OF OF COURSE or FRIENDS GET MAD LIKE THAT Yup‑‑nothing but snow‑‑a hard powder of segments with a deepdue glint. You have to shade your eyes from below, & there is no use to it. It gives even dying men a glint. Qinz has this glint, as his funny feet swaddled in feet make chirping sounds in the snow. Qert has filled this stor with despair. He must be insane, he thinks Qinz thinks. What kind of game is this, he quinks, the thedges of his oughts as numb as his faces, each difficult form falls behind him as it freeze to the ground‑‑chips‑o‑Qinz all down the bockword pafh. Qert have done something vunny to time in this ah stor. It is despair time, marked with its Nasty Little Squeaks, but you have to keep walking through despair, & Qinz would know if his neorns were snapsing that Qert has also juiled this stor with a superfine mockery. It's under the snow, right where your right where your heels do hit it right there... Of course Qinz can express nothing with his face. That's part of the game of course the game Of Course of course‑‑his cheekbones form crenulant ridges of rime besides his eyes, still in sockets, their hate‑red redinside. Qinz curl zup n wamr zimself in hare. He sniff, which is a mistake, with a smuffplug up his nose. Disgusting. His hands form little paws, Awwwww... It dnot look that way. You lose when you lose track of the whole game, not just the episode. That is the technical definition in the Book of Definition that is so snowy, uh, now. He is mad. Their two madnesses have always all but saved the two of friends, trapped as they are in the trapping games within. This is no fair, Qinz is thinking, noticing the tender delicacy of flakes when he akes when he breathe. Little wadsbref falls to the ground. "Difficult forms," he says, "Look like you lose the stor." It's like being embalmed perfectly. But the gun‑‑remember the gun, Qinz, & the hatered. The gun hops into his hands & nestles there. & soon‑‑& very soon indeed, as says the hypnotist‑‑the snows form vucking slush & the lucky slush form to the vazes o puling voices are the stuff that froze. Soon everything will be on fire. So Qinz undoes another stor & shoots his friend (in the face) again. Qinz on fire with his friend. Friends get mad like that. STOR TO QINZ! CARTOON BRAIN I forgot to explain‑‑it was an accident (even though we know that there are no accidents‑‑& nothing is forgiven, mm?): Qert likes to set out a few petites lozenges d'vlusion to entertain his guests‑‑chiefly Qinz. Speaking of which, there is a red plastic model of him‑‑possibly sculpted by May the beautiful cartoonist of these parts Beam, who loves to torture Qinz (& don't ask why), making it look like an accident (& don't ask how), or better yet‑‑when she can manage it with that pow'rful cartoon brain o hers!‑‑as if Qert‑dat‑didit hahaha, burning in the fires of his own hellvusium, with cheekbomes bomin' more prominents as their sheeno plasticeena riiplezoff, his mouth opfen as obsolete as any melting Pope frying embacond in the seething farso self‑im‑mo‑lasium. You canna hear the screaming for the scoarso roars, but you can indeed hear the ear he ar e slow wedown uh giggling of tiny little kids. These are Qinza & Qert as tiny boys together, a part of our progression out of fear. Here: THE I UNIVERSE 'S the story: a longue time ago, before there lusions, little baby Qert & Qinz were brothers, only they had different last names, see, & a different chromosum nombromome, & a difference in number of last last names, Qert having one sole one, Qinz weighing inwhiff the vicinity, in, of O, let's say, mm..., about, O, say, aa three to four vigntillions o' sobriquets (of which, just to give you the ache of relief you need to get when the poison shag rupts yertissueyou, the greatest was Sobriquet) three to four vigntillions aa. Anyway, except for this at‑the‑time‑a parently‑irr elevant (butom inous, don't you think?) discrepancy in their natures, at that time they were as twimbly little twins, with twin‑lisps, twin sci‑fi grims, twinly blondish hair, dust, dust, & and both first names as you may have noticed binow starting with Q, which in these universes passeth for Q, I mean startegh egerythig. So it started, I mean, that is how it did. Start, I mean. Ed. It started with the two of them, a good distants from a yellow house so clearly serene symbolic in the story that it was the blaring yellow of one of those old unzoftened zuns like they had in Universe One, not to be falseley mistrapekin fur Falts Heavens One, which we've all already allway zeems. That house so yellow it made the storyell "Ow!" That sun so hot it caused all houses‑‑as well as the toeheads of little boysoys‑‑turn the yellow. & that's why this story is so seldom told. You understand. They were twins‑‑so goes the version of the yellow tale that branch down the yellow hill‑‑"The Hill of the Dead Grass," you may recalm in the stortshories by that name‑‑& thus thought with the double intensity of twins, thinking their thoughts in perfect unison, the same yellow‑shaped bag of thought, filled with the same infusing gas, the same blinding bright, the same sun inside that that that represents only in this story the nature of the sun you have inside you when & when you are first born pop‑the‑bag‑and ‑sack‑and‑ must "swallow" (as they say in other stories only) the sin that you see. & thus for twins for thus for for. Right now‑‑at this point in this branch of this subtwig of this substory of the yellow which is now so high above us I am told‑‑they are not‑thinking the same thought, about their mother back there‑‑in ancredible distance away, in the yellow house which is rising to burning blindingly to look, thought each (of course) think that it grow personally oeris shoulder, as the approaching moon grow zover the hunched back of the last spacebotic crouched on the death of his planetoid‑‑something like that. They had no genders then. Genders were not invented down this impicular branches of the story here *. In any event, both were trying to keep down the buoyant face of their mom, not to mention the breast, not to mention the mother, who in this story is the same. For both of them I mean. It is here that they form small glopbes, filled with figures, in the neon‑blue imagery o the comic strips. They build alien sorts of houses (the precise opposites of their own‑‑for this is the universe in which the opposite of the strained memory erase smory, rather than, as it does back in good old Universe One, known as the I Universe, create smemory & lodge it quite in place, if you know what I mean), alien figures much thinner than you or I, & certainly assuredly thinner than thinner than mom. So it is at this juncture that the two small blondish lads form small round univerts‑‑the protopips of stors!‑‑between their fine small hands. & that in this edge of the story is where the madnessgin. You understand. We can, at somewhat a loss of resolution, like ZOOMIN on the little fine hands. Note the difference in hands. Do not notice the passages of time rumbling behind the backdrop like a shubwhy traum, nor the great star‑fulgd hands of the strfl‑gods, nor the clumsy subgod hands through which time slip sympfinitely through. Note instead instead the pudgy, grubby little hands of Qinz, who maketh only mudballs, mudballs, the better to bean his bruder wiff. Ha! Gotchya, Qert! NOTE that as little Qert fall unconscious, the crystal he has been forming with his clean, startiped, perfect, splendent artistino' handsm "handly lipple hanmds," as his mother calledem fore she torched the two, & see how Qertses mudball‑‑affecting as it does the hencefroth nature of his art, not to mention the endless sequence of murderous stors we are locking maerd nihtiw maerd within‑‑bobs on the streams of time as it goes on in. & note further how silly Qinz‑‑always easily abled too fool (ah‑‑but ever‑murderoux, neve ni maerd, ay Qert?)‑‑dump his potbellied bod unto the stream & gurglex, trying to catch the ball, now rolling big as a lunar housed. PLEASE WIPE FEET Welcomat says. Exhausted with gilly mubspops on his cheeks, Qinz obey, sliding like a mime. "What kept you? Qert always says, whereupon Qinz moans & shuts the door & leans on the door door door & rolls his eyes & begins, with sim guffacilty, to guffaw. Hey‑‑the two old pals guffaw! THEY'D LIE AROUND GROANING UNDERNEATH THE MEMORY So now‑‑almost certainly for real‑‑Qert & Qinzid actually sit around Qert's big house & share memory. They light up one of those big biff‑memories you can score from one of the pusher gods between gods between stors, & it turns the usual glowing turquoise, & they pass it bath & furck, ein big‑buff memory, till the goddam thing was simply (& I mean simply) too big to pass. They lie round groaroaning neath the memory, jest like the title says, yes they do. As you could guess, this was back before the friendship wore thin, I mean bad (& I mean simply), & the "house," big as she wa, was started leaking like balloons, was losing cohesion, was becoming, not a soft & willowy mansion of sublimated tears in the clouds of simple memory, but rather (& I think "rather") a superannuated equatorial hovel whose walls was begin not so much toooze as to slime, & not so much toslime as to greaze‑‑& little less of that than to gel, which were define hereon as as Equatorial Zomes, Commencing to Slide Unto Atrophy, Blurred Elisions of DisUse (I say MisBuse!), Mincing to Tranlutient Layoevres Untwo Yer Dreep‑Twears (& I Cry Dreeptweers Dreetweres Dreupdriers Driip!), & so thereon you stared. So of course & as usual, twas Qert alone who stared into his icky sluicing walls‑‑not downward‑sluicing, neither, but rather outward‑pultzing like the true ache of memory, when it is silterft through that feverdream like unto sluggish uh light & heads right toward your nose & make you falintch (withought breavving!) flinch & flinch. It just wasn't the same. Qert could hardly git roun the place, what with his feet sticking in the mollicky mire & the panicky pire & the laughter of his frhahahiend farend in sluggish musics as of a Michigan bog teeming, big teeming, remind you what was loxt without real ytelling you. And, needless two, really in this sphere's a blank, & when I may _____ I means laugh & when I say laugh I mean stime & time I blast & mean murder means fratricide self‑death self‑hate suicide suicide suicide suicide suicide because that's what's this's story's really's about's about about I mean about & I mean mean. That was no house in the first, place, Qert, realize. That was no house of mine, because there was never time, & this was ever mine, & he left that house, leaving footprinks in the ouse, dense & red‑sweept, which exist in tiny, nuclear form zin the Houses of the Gods, where the gods have always watched. ASTORIC PIGMENTS That night, Qert has a nightmare (& this is dangerous) in which, not only do the loops move slowly & slowly through with the increrepetitive sprose, but also character & creatore stored in his stors drip out‑‑cumdripping swith the colors germane only to the stors, each stor having her own store of pugments pigmentally alated to the that particular a stor (astoric pigments, they calldar. I am not just making this up) & this up & this up & this up & this up too this up. Too. These pigments in liquid heat form to superheat by the croxtordic line so they fizz out actually onto the surface of skims bubbling like the faces of a dream (I said this was a dream. Or did I dreamt this of a dream? Huh?) & take on All Sorts Ex Pressions, the many emotive faces stored up, locked under the very hard plasticene inframagerial used by the original Intraphyxigiicks back in the G‑Wilik Erphunsied Ays to heatform the formative material for the fortions in the stors...so you see your just creations (think for example all those mothers of) just think. Think here: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . all those mothers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . All those mothers bl.n.g out‑‑actually feel about you. Then when the sublime pigments hit the corridor air‑‑real air & not that canister edhiss ingsyn syn thetic smuff‑‑they commence in the dream to drip to drim in the drimp. So Qert feels certain he has to deal with these escapees, unpigmented though they be, leeched & pretty much dried by the time they get close enough to contact Spezific Dremic Memori znough to scare him awake (but he doesn't awake! He too scared twake!). Their articulations are if anything even more wellformed fellmormed mellwormed than they were or seemed in the stor. There are technical reasons for this‑‑why things look, up close, actually blurrier in a stor (& feel softer too) than they a really re‑‑about which no one gives a shit. The aforementioned original Intraphyxigiicks knew, & probably cared. But they died‑‑& they died caring‑‑& for the same technical reasons which we don't care about (Qert don't care about anyway; personally, I am feeling the smidgens of a care, HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE!)‑‑& which are doubtless killing us. Ain't torpoture great? Anyway, they are colorless utterly, their features as if chiseled by the finest microtechs of the microworlds of Ducicvuor, with their fine micromoths mechanicool, & even a tad translucent just a tran tadslucent like a dollop o' honey, only hard, already scratched, & in that sense not like honey at all. Now sweet, either. Not like honey in that regard, eitheror. & they are definitely homing toward Qert, who ztuck in the hall in the dream, a very realistic nick o the dream, the anchorpoint of the dream, because he's always being locked out in the hall whilst Something Clears‑‑something always clearing out there in the Chambers o the Real, but never Qert neverqert clearingqert at all no allno all. O they are homing toward him & their breath smells (which is Pure Dream‑‑the utter ether‑zwoo of the swoo‑of‑the‑droom, the so‑called Dreamtnosphere, no spheres here, nossir ree ree) & they are obsequiously drawn to him. It seems they are lawfu big‑‑not enlarged from what they were in the stor, if memory memory serve, in every dmention, but rather extended in one or two domentions & normal the normal the rest of the way. Thus you have Mimwajosa, the qobblur from Goblure, who be normal short height but monstrou wide, extended side to side, & possible from fron to back asswell, but who can notice such details‑‑what is this hunger for you details, unh? Gimme a break‑I‑meam... OK. & in like manner, the Dinsol Eckhobadditinxs of the Aborakench of Stor Babo‑Trey definitely doubled in height, but not in width‑‑I am deg‑finite bout athat, nont nin windth nor ney naught nounloarged nessnessless, so there's a fruggin detail for you manm‑‑so they seem to lean & lunge from side to side. & many other funhouse sortsa gotesques from right out fo the Funhouse Boat o Gotexts, all quite colorless & semiliad as I semimimber shyng, & all quite honing un om Qert, who is coughing his everlovin guts out trying to awake, this one of those novels from you trying to a WAKE. But it's no good, for these are creatures with a mex=age. Hey, once in a while a mex=age poureth from the ol ik=mage viles‑‑that you tried to keep so seek‑a‑wrept‑‑andthis is as often as neither‑noaught the way they do it. In dreams, I mean. In dreams (yawn!) meem I mm...zz zzz zz zz zzz zz zz zzz zzz zz zz zzzz zzzz zz LIGHT Yea, & when he Woke Edup, Qert perceived that the Message of Light was Hight. Yea, & did he roll lup the slats & yon Tweedy Light came edinto the Room. & the Smilining Light sat down in Qinz's big overstuffed chair, crossed its legs & leaned on one elbow, puffing a cigarette. "The light has sat in your chair," Qinz‑who‑was‑woken woengerspack. exzcept the words were EDITED the words flowed into EDITOUT mode EDITOUT MODE editout & drew softly in to the cool air of the cigarettes. Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently & Light laughed gently. & "I'll have to say Qert's big heart was affected," wrote Qinz later on of this later yon. & he wrote "I'm writing this later on‑‑but goldarn it, that Light was so big & soft, & it had those big, impossibly friendly eyes, & it had my heart as it were like a sopping drit in its lifeleff hand, & you could hear the warm seashine zurfing where, & you could tell that the Light‑‑notstonding foct thot it wor Light‑‑knew the hopelessness of it all, could read & sense the hopelessness my single friend'nd put into this stor here, such that we were & are all subject to the hopelessness, so that, in this drifty seadrifty stor, even Light was hopeless: I mean Light, & besides (Light) it was a warm day, & I think it was a Being of Air as well as Light. "Yes, I'll offer that: I think it was a Being of Air & Light, warm air, bright Light‑‑vewy bwight‑‑& I say this & I offer this, no matter what the gods say what." & the gods say what? "Hell, I'm more than just a Being of Light," beam the Being of Light. "I'd say it's fair to say I'm Brilliant‑‑I am a Brilliant Light." "You are," says, Qert, who‑‑as a normal inhabitant of this stor, still a child albeit a large red child, full of bull of his own bruth fruth freath buff fuff‑‑is feeling left out even unto the wrinkle of the present tenx. "Yes‑‑you are a Brilliant Light. & you have air in you, & in you (in air) have I have I put in hope so that my best friend be wrong. Hee hee hee hee hee he hee hee hee! My friend! Tee‑hee! "He's always been very ill, & he ascributes his illness to others‑‑chiefly to me‑‑& this is why he has contracted to kill me again & again‑‑not to expiate anything, but to make rotten music to the core, to hurt something close to himself, I'm sure, but I'm not sure what is me nor me nor am I what‑it sure or what‑it's fer norscure. But I know I was right to put hope in this world into the air. The air is Light into the air. The Light is hope. It is in the air. You guys‑‑I put the hope in Lightforms in the air, OK? OK? Guys? Hey‑‑guys??" "A brilliant Light, I say‑‑& I'll put that to the gods myself," chuckled the palest frailo chile‑‑& he coolly walks to the window, as if to challenge any furpheraire aa to blow in through this body clad in those thin, Light‑bluush shirts with the pearl‑purple buttons that buttonx thax snap, O The Butooungs That Sna*p, & try to find some further furniture. You can see through EgoOscoOpe@ that Qinz is rather taken by the Light‑‑by the power implications of the Light & the clear fact that this Light sprobably either a god or an agent of a god or a program running in the heavyfiltered or "fulterin" mindofa gog or perhaps the unresolved childhood passion of a (gawd!) or the title of the unwrittun tragedy of a gaud (except he's so damned cheerful, this Wight!) or (& this is the true possiblidlity‑‑this is the Right one) a childgod childish in his owen‑d‑Wright. So Qinz is maltreating poor Qert, too, which Qert dimly recalls in the fast‑fading D‑level of his ik=mage files was not stipulated in his contract...but nei''er war at forbayd. They really got me on that one, reQerlts. & with that, the Light leaned back & posed its temple on the fingers of a hand & eyes Qert, & Qinz turns in fin ite ly slow to ob serve by the Light of the childgod seated in the chair, & they observe whilst Qert's heart's affected Qert's heart's affected Qert's heart's affected Qert's heart's affected Qert's heart's affected Qert's heart's affected Qert's heart's affected Qert's heart's affected Qert's heart's affected Qert's heart's affected Qert's heart's affected Qert's heart's affected Qert's heart's affected Qert's heart's affected Qert's heart's affected Qert's heart's affected Qert's heart's affected there. HOLDING THE HOLDER OF MEMORY IN HIS FINE FOUR ARMS or ILLUSORY MUSH AT THAT The point went to Qinz, by the way, & naturally, & of course, & Qert was sent back "home" (we believe) to rummage for more inspiration, so he could finally win a stor. You see how sour it's getting, & we in chapter B? "Well, there you are, you ol Memory." "'Lo, Qert. Wish I could say I was glad to see you." "No hurt‑‑wish I could say the same." They paused while a hissing was ocurd. Eccentric words, modal base of music, an ancient Northland air, & a very cold & headless air, it went ssssssssss & so on. The Memory blinked the one eye that still completely blinked & that still completely blinked & existence shut OUT for a second-and-a-half-hl-hf. It, or he, shifted its, or his, weight on what conceivably used to be pods & before that thighs & before that actual legs‑‑shapely man's legs, perhaps, with the muscular shape of a woman's, or something like that‑‑but were in this scene in the Memory Cave nothing but protoplasm, musch‑‑& illusory mush at that. Here Qeret ƒitƒ ƒhim down to weep, which is what the Memory wamp. I say This Is What The Memory Whamp cause it seemed to smile kindly on the hunch‑ed‑Qert‑‑muscles thin but ligamental slick, not thick but tough, the kind you wouldn't were you a monster even want to think tweat. & I say the Memory seemed to look kindly because there was so little left unstretched of its face: it was shaped like a lie or like an anthill like & was almost all like face, so it hunched like a little gooey mountain, kind of cute, with its face moving very mobilely is that a word but you know not too coordinated, not much fine expressiveness essiveness left essneft 'sa word & so I have to guessaward. "Yup. It's pretty saad," the monster sez, & here it's lucky Qert is abnsoplutelu cramped with glee, I mean griefy glee, I mean GRIEF I mean GRIEF, because the monster cracks a virtually toothless smile‑‑one loose bucker's all I see, & lots of streamers from one vast "lip" unto the "other" crammed with glee. Luckily, Qert doesn't see. The monster‑‑who's getting cuter by the sechur, like some long‑stor‑ed music edmusic released & winding itself up re LENT less ly‑‑seems to be looking around like for arms to maybe pat Qert on the back or maybe crush his back or snap his back like my mother did mine just kidding or maybe CRACK his skull like mine just makiong metaphors here folks, or maybe stuck out a long loose tongue (whilst aholding the squirming Holder of Memory in his fine fowor yarms) & lick up his brains dudum, you cammot say. Anyway, she shifts weight hither & thither, & there may indeed be arms‑‑certainly I would bet a small sum there are arms‑‑amongst all that material, but it's not so much dim in the cave as moist with a peculairly clear & perfect moisture‑‑not of water so much as of a volatile like‑liquid that might like‑light into like‑Memory fire at any instant‑like & this sweetness & Qert's crying make it very hard to focus on limbs, after all, & one hasn't even looked for arms in a longy long time zatawerd, & so it settles down to trying with cool frantically zrd to look concerned, erd... Qert thinks: This Memory is very kind, but it's only a servomechanism from another dimension. Got to remember this simple fact. Now what fact was that? What was that? This is where Qert goes crazy, like you didn't see it coming crazy, like you didn't hear it coming crazy, like you didn't think Qert's last thought when you read the thought, silly. Just look at this monster here. Its mind doesn't work inasmuch as it doesn't have a mind. & yet it's beautiful. Despite the cave & the murky zetting ana zataworpword foag the author zin, he's a very sunny thang, now observed, now cocommuned, now released. & it has my mind, in a manner of speaking. Not any more, of course, but it used to have my mind, in a manner of speaking. It used, whilse it wasa hidden, have power over the subtle powers beyond the awesome powerseven of gods, yessir it did. It really had my mind. It made for all those murders. Now it doesn't have my mind, & it looks smiley, crippule, botomized...awww... & like so many an explorer beforeyim, Qert herein doth giveway to Utter Pity, Pity that melth his thighs, melthtsthimin ththighthth, Pity that make him & this monster I mean Memory bamp qurl up & qerl away the night if you can call it night where the Memries sleep * here in one another's arms, bucking wildly. The other memories pound the wall as the heads beat the bed. This is sick but it beats shit out of death each thinks over & (unh!) overUNH!gain. THE ORIGINAL PSYCHOLOGICAL SNICK or QERT FANSCHED INTO THE LIQUID OF THE WORLD AS WELL Suffice it to say they‑‑Qert & the soi‑disant Memory‑‑got down to business, to brass tax, so to speak, & negotiated in an atmosphere of negotiatin' smoke the whole so‑disant nwit & finally came up with the idea for the Car Stor. They did not call this that; that was a designation came after the Memory Sleep (Remember That?). & the instant he entered his soft face in the soft urgoy sluff that made you entrance ein‑too stor, Qinz saw the car. Extra glossy & big big BIG. Qinz was so excited by the beauty Qert hadad halo‑dit (in the form of your superlumiary tangerine‑flape shallacky‑glothth) that he couldn't work on the car. Which he was, of course, contractually to‑do. Lookathat. You can tell the acid's got to him. Lookatim! He hadn't taken acid, but you can see in storic vision the cosmic creator, Qert, beaming self‑beatifically as he eyedrops drop after drop of this special Memory stuff‑‑the newly developed storic drug that acts like LSD or L.S.D. on the entire stor‑‑& the drops pulling themselves out the stropper & swolling huge, with huge muscles (you could tell they'd been working onem, tell) & determined ogrelike faces, stupid muscular jocklike lifelithe litheless gumbroiid faces looking to & from as if deciding where to go, ha!, as if deciding on their "mission," "ha!," so ol Qert, with a suave Qerty waggle onis head, shakes these droplets off, & they go "Yaaaaa!" with the huge cries of athletes as they fall into the swooshblooey euer of the euer of the stor o stor. Butcept Qert wants more & more, & soon the athletic drops lose their individuality & pour forth as these ooz‑dropdrop‑monstruopcities, nothing but daliesque arms & legs acluthin & a grabbin one anorthors, & falling into the stew with a stew witha murkush cruyoieyg of "ygagagaga?" but it all the same. Finally Qert dump the bottle in. "What the fuck," he thinks, then dives in to him self... So needless to say too needless to say the usually victim (Qinz: The Usual Victim) of this trip gets to see something that is Anything But An Ordinary Car (its Memoryname (its Lightname)). Such the trix that friends in charge of multiple univerts plays ton wunganovor. He knows he "mechanic" but can't get over the cripseness of the coveralls, & their perfect cleanness‑‑Qert having foregone the routine "aging" of the stor‑‑complete with a little retrofitive dirt & grease & all‑‑in order to avoid May Beam, & and & and & get clearance for the drug. They didn't give him clearance for the drug, but he used the drugde spite clearance‑‑his genius was that smarg, I mean lordge, & his soul was that smorg, I mean small‑‑& so he had a psychedelic, spanking‑new, crisp, shiny sort of world here. Which be blowing ol Qin zaway. He keep rubbing his hands with the excitement borne of this infinite‑rhythamic knowledge that he knowledge that he has he has of cars. He knows these motors as infinitely as you knows the hearts of your loves‑‑espepcially after the special GOLD LIGHT has DISSOLVED the HEART of your LOVEDS especially especially‑‑but he's too excited by the Drug Over Dose that the Drug Over Qert has given & givnoer‑‑not to mention thatthat Qert thatqert hasas fansched im(h)elf(s) into the liquid of the world as well as well. I repeat myself. Hey‑‑you can tell this engine's made o glass, only not glass but that exquisite, cutting gold stuff‑‑what‑it‑called‑‑they used on machines just before machines became obsolete & before they became illegal & before they became impossible the gods machines themselves o ob‑swoll‑eat. Soon as he calms down he's going to lean his upper body right in‑‑the upper body will strelongaetch, one is sure, to accommodate the fantastic length of this beast, its gold metropolitans reaching in interrivenbyways & intraluxting throughfares & luminous centres of "luck," gold balls of "luck," not to mention the descalators carrying the grinning Populace of Sparks down, never up, but down into the reaches of the cools netherliquid zurge of the undertubules, & CERTAINLY NOT TO MENTION such madders as the small, tiny, exquisite, ear‑complex little "armomatomers," for this machine runs on luck, on smells & luck, not chance, it's a solid machine .Qinz's mantra‑‑"It's a SOLID machine, It's a SOLID machine It's a SOLID mAchine, It's AH!"‑‑artnam s'zniQ. & he knows quite a few operations he's gonna perform just for the hell of it. & he knows the Original Psychological Snick that Qert put in‑‑often Qinz is (unfairly, I believe) brief edby the god on the O.P.S. of Qert's stors‑‑to give Qinz the favor on the advantage, don't you know‑‑but it doesn't always help to know when you're in the grip. & of course know won counted on the drug 'cept grinning Qerz‑orro‑zreQ. The original psycjoplogical snick that Qert put zin was that of course Qinz would be in love with the machine, & itching & plethoric & aching to fix the machine‑‑but the machine, gold & luxuriant & snooty as kwam‑B‑‑would be much too perfect to fix. I mean, nothing wong withit. & Qreative Qinz, who knows & we can see is knowin by his friend, figures to run some techniques on it, just to glory & revel in its perfection, & thus somehow get free of this powerful snickety‑smobell that Qert's sput on him, & somehow thereby improvise his way up to finding and‑‑as per contract‑‑killing Qert. Killing him for making the stors, Qinz thinks he thought (& thinks he sees the leftover glimt of that thought in the thought in the engine‑‑just under thar! DIVE IN AFTRER WITH YOUR LOVE WRENCH, QINZ‑‑DO IT NOW!...), but that's getting away head of himself, so shrewd Qinz swallow that phantasm with one of a billion throats‑‑I said one of a billion throats‑‑& turns on his heel & paces some more (some say he paced that way for a trillion enginyears) & waits for the breath of punctuation to relieve him. It's golden & hot as the molgen of sums: no one counted on the drug. So as Qinz rub his hands together stalking round the open hood of this greathooded goldengineed heroius car, his hands turn into heads that rub together, & he thinks "This is all I need," & so does the other head, & he stares with excited helplessness into the infinitely intricate gold enworkings of the car‑‑more a god than a car‑‑more a running face of Qert that bastard than a god‑‑& he thus shoots the engine & wins. The fresh euer of the exploded stor clears his head. "How did you do it‑‑& so quickly?" asks the interviewer, fairly cowering with admiration. "Huh? O, you know some say I paced that way for a trillion enginyears." "Yes, I know." "Then isn't your question meaningless? "Yo." "OK‑‑well, Qert's own trick backfired, I guess. I was so hop‑tup twerk on that car, but Qert fixes it so I can't hit the car‑‑so I shot the car. So I guets I shot sQert." "What is your opinino of the illegality of the stor‑‑the fact that Qert use unauthorized dopes to wum it up‑‑hmm?" "I dunno. I think he wants to get shot. Its no fun anymore. There's this awful sort of love‑‑you wouldn't know, you sonofbitch. Let me go away now." "OK." & he went away. Qert was lying cryling in his room, & they were both pretty exawitiyed & upset at lights out, & there were constant bubbles in the euer at night that night hat night. TRUTH IS THE COLOR OF WHITE Still woozy, & with beautiful paisley cargrease on his shirt, Qinz steps into the confessional‑‑& as usual is hypnotized into utter truthfulness by the convolute screen, its arabesques brightening across the blue threshold to white. Truth is the color of white. Yes it is. Is. Is so. Is too. Yes it is! IT IS! IT REALLY REALLY IS! IS! EVERYTIME YOU SAY IT ISN'T MAKES IT IS A THOUSAND TIMES! Qinz's looking quite handsome, isn't he? I think it's his posture, which is controlled, virtually still, without showing the slightest degree of subservience. I mean, he really looks the hero vividly now, the way his blue shirt reveals the chest just where a few fine strands of chestnut hairs starts, or chesthairs starts, or ches thairs tarts, or che stshai rsstar ts, & the manner in which his arm‑‑strong but not beefy, not meaty of oermuscled or oermuscl'd dor much'l'dor‑‑braceth hith weight againtht the wall while the screen that was white washed white cools (on back down to limes too lies) & the Suppos Ed Listener comes in, here *. We must admit, of course, that despite his gorgeous appearance & timewarm tine‑‑Qinz Sobriquet is in fact most queasily subservient. I have used the phrase utter truthfulness (a statement which you may verify as true, thus augmenting my credibility in the present instance, & adding I believe somewhat weight to the following outflorwing out‑parthetical claim:) a while back, & reiterate it at this moment carefully squint that this phlase was chosen carefully. That's C‑A‑R‑E‑F‑U‑L‑L‑Y, OK? It took hours. This was no phogphrase just youknow tumbling out my metaphorical mouth. This was true. So you can well perceive that anyone‑‑anyone‑‑brought unto a spate of utter truthfulness is nothing less than a nomcongboolp...a fool...and therebye juste as fucking subservient as its (subservients) get. So well then now then. Another thing is this confessor. Is there anyone in there, truthfully, on the other side? We could ask Qinz‑‑who has to be truthful, we suppose‑‑but he would just tell just what he believed, which is just as follows just‑‑ WHAT QINZ BELIEVE, AS FOLLOWS: "'What I Believe as Follows,' by Qinz Sobriquet. "I think he's trying to hurt me. I mean, he isn't acting as my friend anymore. Granted, I've pulled a deal with you guys to drive him mad, but he shouldn't have no knowledge of that, right?, therefrore no weason to tweat me other than as his fwiend, in disguise right. "But his disguises are getting‑‑I don't know‑‑icy. What? Did you pant just then? Easy sigh? Are you there? Am I in there? You? You‑‑is this true? "Well, as I was saying‑‑er, 'God'‑‑he has begin for instants burying his face in wholescale continents of snow, like the continent of lies, only white. Like this white only lies. & that just to get in his door‑‑between stors! Is it OK I touch this screen? Is dangerous? Will be hurt {babe's first question} WILL I BE HURT." "Yes, babe," some thing in the background of utterm screens says, or he thinks she says. Qinz spend several hours‑‑more properly urzs‑‑begging to see the confessor, for he believes this is his contact with utter God, & they have convinced this poor dupey botic that his salvation depends on his seeping see screen & destroying Qert, although as in a dream they have given him no names but the understandings of the names. As in a dream, my last phrase, as in a dream. DEFINITE AIRBRUSH HERE Qinz push the mesh down‑‑it bend like gum‑‑& fall into the party‑goingon & ring the partygoing gong & perceive he have flaked overparty in much the manner same that the small same spectral Parasites of Yiem melt you down, till you hootscon taining in yourself. Where the hell is Qert? Q windrinz justa go. "Qert, you old dog!" hooted this big, wide, overfriendly creature who looked like an organicized botic as tooled from the Whitest Priest. Along with his fulsome words & somewhat sweaty attitude (or sweaty worlds & somewhat fulsome attitude), this greeting thing (see he kiss he ring!) looked smoothed out‑‑definite airbrush here‑‑except for a vast number of little tendril things which had a certain inherent ugliness, spite d'artist's efforts to cutesifyyem, as forezample wiph‑pinkish furtufts long the upper‑outer ridge‑‑some few still snow‑yspukt‑‑little yellow smiley faces rotating in barberpole fashion up the thick elements of the root, lots of extremely warm (107o Q) vibes, & A Feminine Goodhumored Selfeffacing Waviness (I like Self‑Effacing Waviness, & my mother liked it, as did the long line into that purple pool of past turning into very tiny versions of my mom & my mom's mom, et cetera, tiny little smiley faces edging into airbrush of ghostly space, only pale, not yellow, very bloodlets pale, not yellow at all at all) effacing self‑‑but it just doen't warsch. It don't scan. It goddam doesn't work. (You can tell these are mechanisms planted in this cheesy heaven, this lousy heaven, to pretend & act like they have memories of Qert.) So the powerful botic waste no time in hiding & hurting to hell these friendly wimp. He bust shim‑self right through the party vector SHWOOM!‑‑something which I & my mothers always do‑‑& burns the outstretched hand of the fantasy creature. Yes, he burns the outstretched hand of the fantasy creature. & of course he fuck sup. I mean, this seemingly heroic action be orather come via the TRAP O CIRCUMSTANCE‑‑Eine Ficht‑Auf, if I mean it right & if memory serves & if I'm not too unmistaken & if you catch my visiondrift visionrift visionift ionif & if you quite care. For of course the creatures made to inhabit this heaven are utterly & completely sincaire. O they really feel this love for Qinz, and, suspiciously, even, more, love, for Qert. To the partieres, their best pals, their buddys. they guys who'responsible for virtu all y they tall good times, have final ycomeback‑‑only to burn their hands as they reach‑‑quite lovingly‑‑for thim. Do you see what someone is doing? Do you see? Qinz, always struggling for his gun, doesn't...but Qert sees. & I see as I right it & my mother's overseeing see. It isn't so much a matter of trapping a master of stors in a stranges stor, known for technical reasons as a False Heaven, titular obligations here. You might could do that; prob'ly not. But you can hurt himn 'gain & a'ain, as his very necessitated, inimibotical efforts to escape these heavens caus some bonedeep hurts, some bone deep hurts, to image right into the ik=mage (that word) files of Qert (that name), just as surely as that endless line of mothers mothers (that hurt) hurt me that mothers morthers hurt. For reasons which remain but painfully obscure but which I entruxt'll come up hideously clear‑in‑time, clearintime, clear, the builder of these various soft, translucent traps, these manifestia, is in actuality causing soft little emotive traps to be formed inside Qert‑‑inside him, see‑‑not in spite of the foolish heavens but becausedem. See. As for Qinz, he's just along for the kills within the stors that Qert escaping toos, unless he's causing it all. So you can see our heroes swinging out haha "safely" into intraspace, but every sensor they's got focused on the faces of those longlost friends, said faces of those longlost friends, looking hurt in their ugliness, & frozen, having lost their accounts & pattrims of moomeant & their hearts that‑‑so far as the plan of this universe contrains‑‑halfbreat forever for this cruel turn, beating unto a perfect hysteric tenderness for this return, mostly Qert's return, your re turn, Qert'sre turn, your goddam return. "Well done, Wert," says that parody voice from the ik=mage phials that always calls hum iliate Wert. "You've killed them all now, haven't you? You really know how to hurt, now don't you?" Whereupon Qert know who's putting him through all this. "Knock it off," he says, casually, attempting a grin which, unlike the average human grin the aver‑age hu‑man gri‑in echoes lost in lost in deeper layers of emptiness that sp ce pa e s ce s ace spa e. "I know what you're up to, Qinz. Come on out of there & stop with the cutting tock tick tock & stop with the frying solarflares & stop with the words of madness & the words, madness, & the word's madness & the words Qert‑Qert‑Qert." But, despite this harangue (which makes perfect sense to a botic‑‑you just have to be there) abot‑‑where, our friend the boticware get no sense of his self. He go mad for a time & dont no y. So. The hurt of his friends keep him company. Al of courses the hurts of his true friend, his murdering friend, the One Absent Friend & the ache of the one absent friend who is burning insides. O, it's Qinz all right‑‑even mad Qert‑‑who be considerable mad‑‑probly know that. Hard to say with the beautiful static attracting star after star creatures of star of their elemental tiers of hur who merge with the opalescent pixels hee of the static Qert's & become the particles wild creatures of a mind. These things can happen long‑the‑line. I've opened, I mean seen them happen (MOMMA'S BOY) & have died, along‑with‑them, have died. I have, certainly. But what poor victim Qert couldn't Qert couldn't see see was that even his friend couldn't be there. This is a much higher form of murder we have going here: Qinz can't be there for it. & of course, with our vast made‑up knowledge of botics, their behavior, physiolohshagee, & ppsychologagajee, we knew that Qinz could never vabsented himself from Qert‑‑not for the hurt, not for the murder, not for a long long times. So you figure as the passage end: who's doing it. Not our Qinz hint, but some thing much lar gr than he. Some hand behind the muscles works the faces that destroy. DIRE DISPRUVAL After the party, Qert got sick. He staggered into the deep blue starry air, knowing it all was all was false, & bump tizzy as pea stew against the tlunk of that tlee you crutched once in agony, the white bark spreading to your hands, moles vomiting into knowholes, craters, unholy moons. "Sometimes that happens," the smiling host points out, & his smile is because, not despite, Qert's misery. This is Qinz, of course. Having shot his best friend‑‑with, as we some‑see, illegial godlior helelp‑‑he pulls on that lean, fineprint skin ticket dispensation from the Self Repository (not to be mistaken, as it unfortunately often is, for the Welf Suppository, a dark worldin deead) at cutrate throtes, & picks up a rubber martinin (think of that: a rubber martini!) & leans back to laurfinjoi Qert's sick madness. "He is sick from to many stors," opines a customer. The host turns RED & burns UP. The FLAME in the form of QINZ beats the SKIN off of his FACE OFF OF. "Goat‑drob! Pig‑gop! Smake!" he blathers at the red & latheirng face this is violent, "Don't you EVER talk like that AGAIN!" Dead, the guest is forewarned. Christ is the dead guest, forewarned. The Dead Guest Forewarned riseth & maketh of hymselfe an integral parte of the yarn, anintegral partada yarn, antegrl pardayarn, angparyrn, ngprn, ng. After many such epiphanies‑‑flowing I might say lush as the prescient dew on the flowing dawn‑‑epiphs violent & dreary, grey yes & multinode, they look roun n see Qert is gone. "Gone!" cryeth the Dead Guest Forewardned, & gets his ears ripped off by a madly‑chewing Qinzly‑chewing Mad Chewingly‑Qinzly Choo (health). We CLOSE IN on the SNEERING FACE of QINZ {this face oughtsa be livid, Bob} with a knopwitall manner. He sip his DRINK & SPITZIT, wipeshis MOUPH‑‑like a cowboy & SCOWL scowl scowl scowl down to his bowel. "I'll git im," he DRAWL (bawl). "Varmint's snuck off to his zbox." "Zbox?" squeak the Meek One, the Un Invited One, that good Dr. D.G. Forewormed (funny name agains), & this time Qinz jus apull zback his HAT & pats what's left little off his cheek as the pieces of cheek fall grown. "Zbox he go to when he sick," he says, copulatives dropin lak flahs. EYEBROWS When he got this sick, Qert Thobject would crawl into a rawl into a series of cardboard zbox‑‑one within the other, some of them warehouse‑sized & with whole neighborhoods of house‑sized zbox inside, & those with truck‑sized zbox‑‑often side by side in unkempt rows‑‑& onward & darkward, too, until he could hide his aches & cower. Boy, it got pretty dark & board‑smelling in those zbox, but this particular universe had zbox everywhere. It was just a motif of the universe, but it fit in with their regarding Qert as an object. He was very sick & very upset at this, & he was sensitized all the more by having just been to a party where he thought they gerarded him as gog & before that to a place where they regarded him as a white sensibility, a goglike rekorger, in the confessional. ZBOXFGOD Now this place, Doubtless another false heaven. He did not know what these were, but the instant he rived he saw nothing but looks of displeasure, which seemed to be the highest good round here. There was going to be no coddling in this stor! Some‑ow they gave him edges & corners to make him look more "objective" & angular, & Qert almost immediately fell into disfavor by liking the new disguise. He was still being sensitive & omniscient, you see, & so his intensely aesthetic reponse at the way the synthetic lights bounced off his new corners created rustling ripples of dire dispruval through the zboxilly corridors of the zbox cities, zbox states, zbox countries, & zbox continents of Zbox. It was a dry & hicky sort of embarrassment, & it swept back & made Qert feel sick. His face fell. Things went swiftly beyond dispruval then, & this was no joke. It oqqertd to him this might be some party game involving boat‑shaped paper hats in flame, but that sounded like Qinz's childhood, so‑‑secretly working swiftly & dangerouxly deeep inside him‑‑selfqert discqerted that poggibilidy, nice flip into the chequertd hat, ha!, & also furthermoresomore, if this was a place to be sick, it was awful private, I mean awful public, ++unPRIV, see, & it resembled in some slight, small, inconsequential‑to‑any‑but‑thy‑train‑ed‑I way the hospital. Only made out of paper. Small‑dimensioned. Like a cartoon, singed round the edges. (See how Qert suppress that thought that tht tha !) See. & these creatures (angry doctors? miffed & ruffused guests? icons of the Qinz juvinilium? Huh?) accused him of faking both his sickness & his upset. Illogically, they wanted to punish him for showing these signs of life. Now he was most sick & he didn't want to talk to anybody. So he san kinto the Fog Room, which is like a steamrune only dark & chilly. Seems you can get away that way. That's the getaways work‑‑like all the rules, they hang invisle imfladead space to be sensed when you like walked through em. Makes sense to me, Qert thought. FALLING INTO THE TEXT FROM DIFFRENTIAL HEIGHTS In this Fog Room, Private Qert found series of zbox. ++PRIV! Now keep in mindee couldn't help himself. He was uh ik=maged for certain things. He was not a person; he was not a characters in some fantasy; he was a botic, damn it, & a botic deals in universes, damn it. It's a botic's damnitjob damnit to explore & gather information, all right? A botic needs to look into things, OK? & you know if you've been paying attention & not just falling into the text from diffrential heights that Qert was speshlin this regard, oright? So he start ripping zbox after zbox open. Sounds stupid. Qert here enters False Heaven Enter Three I'm Told, & is by now clearly subject all sorts to punishment. & what to do‑e‑do? He rip upfen zbox after zbox in the Fog Room, releasin dese diffrent fogcolors zvog, many a zboxfgog, much musch ffogg rerereleasssht with a goofy hish, or a goofy zisch, I forget whish wam. I have already exo‑planed why. But he could also tell these were bum univerts, fermented stors. These were expediments, & in truth (thought Qert Bottotic could never tell this truth nor tell you this nor truth untruth) they were not yet what you could class as "by any nature 'stors.'" They were just fantasies in zbox, OK? They had not yet been stretched, OK? But foolitsch Qert didn't notice, & he just kept (compulsively) ripping into zbox after zbox after zbox. He found many dumb conceptions here‑‑many a universe that would never get to stretch its dimensional wings into the multiversal‑megatersa; yings. There were mirrorverx, for xample, in which you could go mad reversing your every thought unto subinterconscial mab. No good. Qert's nose alone snufe daroundere, & quickly ylkciuq disappeared deraeppasid into otni that taht confusing gnisufnoc worldadilrew drow. The rest of the story recurs without his having a nose. But look at this it way yaw: That nose has a universe all its own & that not a Universe of Solitude, noror. There would be Infinite Time‑Lag Intreversal Nobes‑‑& this is why this particular stor had the red stamp JECT edre‑philed. Other universes seemed sketchy n' unfinish ed. Some consisted of endless straight lines in the form of Galactic Pick‑Up Stix. "You mean that's it?" quertied Qurp, unable to berlieve, & the airbubbly rais‑ed brows that he rais edinto the plane of the soft meniscus covring this place Becama A Part of This Unfinished Unstrutch Eduniverts, & so they move, raising & lowering, lising & lowering, guising n' glowering, at all the sticks (which had a lovely color effect, whereby they shifted through their own special‑made spectrums sppcll‑mmdd spxxtms endless‑slowily, a marvelous effect, clearly the ether the whole aesthetique of this plaeque, & you quaeould saeae the andless skoo‑receding of the lines, to, & that was as nice as parentheses that neve)r have to nd. So the remainder of this story concurs without eyebrows, see below. Below: Qert pokend around wildilly, possibly looking for some clew as to why Qinz always beat him. Nor did he show seemly restraint nor comely uppance ner basal commong stence neitheror, but rather tore each zbox apart with powerful & heretofrore Unrealized bottotic‑"hands" that made mincemeat of the packaging‑‑appropriately exquisiqe in a giglike ray surrounded by auras n' godlike rays AURAS N‑GODLITHWAYS. & came Qert thereon thereupnn a universe o vwales, which he didn't recognize, diaphanous starbright nebulosia whales (Whalus Nebulosa whales wrales wails rales rraylz), & "Wwoww!" h breatht contini story wthou brth. Also did he gape his mouf at one small blaxk neat little zbox which was an attempted storzbok o snell, black sleepness & snells onxixted it of, snells carrying you down them ol' snellor‑ridors towurd nnthngnss. But poor Qert had doe dose, & he frowned, & muxt thxfrx contnue the strry without frowns. On on they went, until the intelligent wreater realithe that this Fog Room here za trap. KIDS‑‑ALERT QERT TO THE TRAP! QUICK‑QUICK! A TRAP! It's made to whittle down interlopers down to whittlesize to down... So a much lesser Qert finally come pon the title of this section in the title phial‑‑after going through the univertsorstor olines & the universe of subtle rays & the universe of gods, which is interesting, & the universe of uniteresting eniverts which is disgusting, & the universe of titles & the universal minds & the universe of yings & yans & the universe of eyefried yeggs & the universe of sighs & the universe of beaten child's blighted lives & the universe of cries, all the while & in each instance losing some of Qert, becoming as it were debotticize sighs ighs ize Iyes... Just think: he might've made any of them, or all, & lost all any ever in a swea of deems... UNIVERSAL FOOD or UNIVERSAL FOODS He comethen to what he war looking four: a box of food. Not a zbox, nothing fancy‑‑just one of those plainwhite papery boits that carry the grease out to you, forming grease‑faces of the sides of the white walls he is rooming in. Qert is on the lam, taking one of his retreats, too frequent these days, to let his lang cool off, the neologues sift to the settle of the bed, the subtle bed he wake up sweating too. & he hear he sea resortside shee. This salt air make you sweat, but at least he can reach his mother, say, or someotherthing moonelz‑‑to go for that box of food. He of course uses both arms‑‑both arms go black in this procets‑‑& Thank Heaven I am dealing with Plain Boxes now! no sooner he thinks than... & you have to understand what happens next as invololving not the inherent weaknesses programmed unto the very yessences of bots‑like‑I‑said‑before‑O no. Not this time. This time you have to understand that what happens, what goes wrong, what miscurs, is entirely Qert's personal fault. OK? OK? I mean, I want you to read what Qert is about too‑done in the nexnexnex paragraph as Qert's Personal Sin. This is a moral wrong we are bout to requr. This is not botic in nature, but have to do with Qert & his evil "ik=mage" philes: n his Evil Prehensity for Words enhis Disgusting Fantastic Selfendulgents nis Foolish Wise & Wrays and is in no wise a product of, say, fantasy‑stress nor repetitious deaths nor recidivistic breaths nor the whittledown factor which has, per your Fog Room As Trap, occurd OK? occurrd. In no wise, & no exchapped rays from some of the more raylike zbox (universes) neither, K? K. These were nice rooms, by the way‑‑streets, dust‑‑& no gods. It wasn't home‑‑& he liked that in a home. Qert scratched his head looked around. He smelled coffee brewing. He stamped his head. He found the coffeepot steaming thereaway‑‑& those exactsame gods weren't there also thereaway orwell. & more zbox. Empty zbox. These must be where the unstablors orkept, Qert thought, or else the thoughts of the universes, like I am thinking. Sort of like ik=mage phials for univerts. Or guess. He knew he'd staggered into one remotest region as of Regions Quite Remote when he, botic‑style, peeped justly in & saw these zbox were as empty as could be‑‑they had nothing‑‑not even vacuums‑‑inside. No light, no color, no feeling. Like nor. Qert stuck his arm in & pulled back an empty arm, an empty joke dreaming of an arm, & he howled, & the howl went into the zbox creating The Univerx of Zbox, which we will "see" "later." Gee, he thinks. I am a real universe maker, but he's not. "Gods? Qinz‑o? Hello? Are we in the box? Hell‑O?" Nothing. Then Qert found a storroom of zbox with labels. They all said in that fine light prate‑blue tracery as of inks of aldyolde, TASTE OF OF VU ? He still smelt the coffee brewing, & he still smelled mint & meant minp, but he heard giant footsteps coming & he tore into the top bluermost zbox and It was a zbox of food! Qert here enter a Universe of Food! Taffy air. Breadsmolling ether. Huge crandly culustres. Galaxies sweet. Strawberrytopping planetoids. Asterinds. Pale green sheets of synthchu. Howling dragoms of tang. A vacuum of hunger everywhere. "Well, he wont last there!" a god said but he did. "You forget this is no Ordinary Botic," says another god musch stweeter. Yea, & then we have to go after him, they thought & no sooner was it than it was & Qert enter naked to deuniversal food. Wellsir, Qert loxcantrol. Qert as it were immolatimimself. Denying his essence, his existence, he lost track of moral duty & right. He panicked, in a repressed, dreamlike arche‑Frungean jubconscious way. Typially, he fell in. He sighed, pretended to faint to feint toofaynt & fell right ing. He later said as he later said he heard "godsteps in the halls" about to folgin to the wrum & cratch him. But recall this was a lie. A lie. For Qert Bottotic, professional botic & maker of universe by Method Martyr One, JUST HAD TO PORK OUT, ok?ay? GOD REALMS ADORE He look up from his eating, pieces of chicken everywhere, pork & beans dripping from his big beautiful gurlisque chops. He checkis berrings‑‑he was near a certain outer stor whose data Qinz had stored megayur zago. He checked the number much as you would check your watch if you would but & found himself near it‑‑Stor #6389279‑‑all right, but like all stors other than those pesky Falts Heavens this was Qinz's stor‑‑it was made for Qinz, like those big glove houses they stretch oryou night & days, & so where was Qinz? "Psst! Qert! Over here!" Qinz hissed through the brilliantine floss that Qert heard through. Even in this situation‑‑when they might you know presumably stop killing each other & work together‑‑Qinz's voice added a spin to Qert's name when he said it, such that (& this can happen Intraverse) Qert's name when spinjling off sidewise worrapping a ribbony qurl off into unknown trejions of Int raspace versa ace ers ah. Qert slipped his drive to SENTIENCE‑‑at which setting of course he could only go slowly‑‑& toddled toward Qinz, who was hiding off the lower left edge of the stor at Qertreading 795/331/057. Here hilariourious Qinz form his mouth into grotesqueness of the words NO GODS & tiptooph froward. "Why'd you leave the party, mann?" qerinzt. Finely he whined. "'Stop whining,'" was what the machines finally said Qert said, so full was his mouf wifoods. "Yea well," says Qinz, with the arch, inevitable awkwords Is All Forgiven Then? of the fastest friend who killed you countless times, "erfood looks good." Merciful, loving, scarfing Qert the Scar Fing Qert makes the universal "high" sign to eat‑‑go ahead. "I believe I will," said faithful Qinz. His clothes didn't even show a guin, but that's not necessary. & so, unhesitant, they ate, as the poet sate, Into God realms adore. god realms adore O Mortal! adore o mortal these luminous superbotic realms these realms adore oomurt l these a aa aa aaaa aaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaa! dore! MAY'S FORMIDABLE ARRAYS The cartoonist slides into her sooccular room. She slides because‑‑except for her smile‑‑sheezalmost as two‑dimensional as them. Her smile sticks out & sidles & sways sexily in the third dimension, quite freely, as he callypygous hips sashay in their du dimensions. It makes very sexy, but it's hard to slit through the door. You can't be sexy when you're slitting through a door. But shehahaha smiles, anyway. The room isn't really circular, either. It's formed from a sheets of paper with itsedges joined to itsedges. On the walls are May's Formidable Arrays of ormidablays cutting tools. Cutting tools May Beam calls them, or to put it another way, May Beam calls them cutting tools or to put it another way, but they're like giant cartoonist's pens or spears, with tips of many types, molecularthin & globular fat & eyebrow rounded & handpat flat, along with a good deal of special patterns & tips made of special materials that one is tempted to describe as Mere Ornamentation albeit Ornamentation albeit of a Singularly Albeit Type, I mean a Notably Perverse Type, as if (heh he heh) sheha drew & sheha draws in sheha drew some very kinky comix in her spare time when time tins off the walls of her circular room & whoa zoff into itsthin dimensions while sheha sleeps (inside her thought balloon: see) with her smile following the wind & benefiting infinitely from its show, pleasuring ifinitely in it show. With these here pens draws May her arraze of §pecial haracters draw her away such as Hanpat Flats & his successful sidequip Kak & the grapey Tow Oomemgulak & the shades‑of‑red Ryal Family‑‑consisting of father Ced & mother Rehrentu & the children Dend & Buonini & Sitchow & Qinqy & Qinkbibi & Qinnie & Yee‑yeeyee & Ninfin & Enedfipt & the Wegd Twegns & the dark, one‑dimensional Dosh & Aefobeit & Rotter & Skeu. And, of course, Qert Bottotic. She sits down & pulls off the wall one of her most mighty‑looking pens. Look like you could slit Champion up a treat with this one; could carve deeper S's in Superman's pecs; could skewer Krull like a kumquat, splay Tuniufollkifinho in a rukking trice or thrice or fice arphyce sothere. & she's just gonna focus it all on Qert, uhuh? Looks like Qert is in for it now. "Fucking botic," May B. hisses, still smiling but with a mixed effect as of someone who flaShehas a smile for one instant then resumes his dour dopnalidy, you see, & sheha probes n pokes & thrusts that goodum pen right inintoto the page & gets to sorta messing with Qert's guts, see, & the smile closeth to a grin in which a tongue hangs partially out, an ik=mage we have seen before, an ik=mage verily seem be four, an ik=mage warily Shehaen ye froran ik=magerely zeeny kor or r... LY MIFTF INFOLUNTRY "Whhee‑oo! Whee‑oo‑oo!" Qert feels her probing round in his guts, which feels very sexy to Qert. Botc's're strang thatawhey. It's like they're "suffused" (that's it: "'suffused'"!) in a Field of Something Like Sex, but ah without outlet, if I may be so cocksuckingly indelicate, unless you call the stretching out of these straing little worlds called Stors Sufficiently Sexual. But there are no genitals in that!!! Nor are there in this pen, but somehow the contact of this aforementioned KinkyLooping Pen™ pen through the Cartoon Meniscus into Qertie's guks here sceems to scause somewhat of a physical groundeng, rather an electrical DISCHARGE, if you get mah drift, fairly much a ZAP of pleasure, it would seem, for Qert aloadid wid foodsen tirely drifts, not only out of the conversation with Qinz who, inci‑dentally & for The Incidental Record, 5‑13, is required to DEANIMATE whenaire aenyone stops stops looking at him, & so in the frozen froodfame that Qert, soon's parenthesis close, deserts is left lone Qinz with mouth open‑‑at a ragged twerg too, & a ragged twerg too‑‑& finer drawn upwards, all filled in n colored in n full of the awesome joylike‑anathlete that Qinz's full of now but out of the frame as well & as promised as well as and‑promised well swell ell ell ell... Well. It was all a cartoon. Well well. Qert's off dancing in his own sexy dimension whilst everything stops right here *. But I want you to know Qert recognize ths. Ms. Bim's ds.rie here. Hey‑‑he knows she's trynacontrolim!!! He understand like even in the migst offiz egshtashee in Ly Miftf Infoluntry. He does, really. It's not involuntary. Just a powerful discharge, murdering, I mean blurdering, on the deep pain you hear coursing against the flexif flexif walls from the adventure next door, Adventure of Torture, next door, whew. Lotta gross cryings here. But Qert's mage‑ik=memorie stell him she's only‑‑or let's be fair & say mainly; she's doing it mainly‑‑to get this botic back under control. & it works. * She sleeps with a smile in her pen in her flat flotational bed, full of l o o s e r h y t h m s l i m i t l e s s i n s o f t c o m p l e x i t y, whilsqert goes back to work spoking to Qinz in his sleepless frame. Qinz tried to be mad & not continue talking, but the score is scored & the music play, no matter how much hate it sway. One simply must talk when these fucking bloons suck it out of it. (But all the swile, as we were wont toshay, Qert at least remember. He at least note what's going on, & the inward self‑styled Qert nods knowingly at us, hey.) CANCEL ANIMALS Qert wanted to know this woman so intimately he stopped work. He stopped making his stors & gedding kill tedby Qinz. Everyone was glad but Qinz, & there is no other. Anyway, Qert start hiding in her closet, so as to watch her sleep, eat, wake, piss, sleep, dream, wake, walk, & so on. The worm abased abased himself, lying under tender cloths which as we know were not clothes at all but the very skins this creature wore. Fool that he was, falling in love with his own technicians, Qert did not realize this fact, not even as he huddled lower & lower‑‑almost growing into the goddamned rug, so lo wa hee‑‑& pressed what he thought were underpants‑‑"panties," to use the technical term‑‑to what he thought were nose, but which were in fact actual crotches, some of them well‑used. Qert was literally wallowing & reveling in the very fuff he warso enamor-dove, but his mind was cloudy from too much death & he didn't at all realize allat. He even somehow managed to hide his realization when this greyish, grainy bone‑figurine groaned een its way to the closeteem & begeem ruffuleeng through the skeens, riffle eeng the selves, flipping the eerily thin pages of the pages of her selves, preparing her moirining quoiffure. TROUBLE! Qert had trouble. Qert had stuff. Qert's stuff wouldn't stay repressed. He got to burping‑‑first one or two strays, somewhat easily suppressed, then large, dour ones with Scottish rhythms, his identity preserved only by their dull repetitiveness. Then real belches, long & longer, which began in their crescendo to foreground themselves. They turned dark & hard, & Qert's consternation redoubled as he started to hiccup, then to doublefart redoublefart so that the interactions & intertwining of these wavefronts created not just cacophony but astounding shapes unlike anything that might not be unreproduced in that cartoonist's closet, filed as it was with the skins & the animals, who were hooting now & shouting at the shapes. Not to mention the planets. That's not the point. That was not mentioned before. Cancel animals. Cancel plants. Yea, he'd Certainly Humiliated Himself this time‑‑nor was this one of those stors where all the rules get suspended just at the moment of the maximum slightly‑white pain known as death. Nossirree. Horseshit, say I. This was acutls; this was real; an acutla semicolon period real. Certainly les belschés were real, & they became finally like the braying of many an actual ass, & his nose was also running (did I mention to say?), so he engaged in multifarious sniffings, sniffings, combined‑sniff even‑sniff more‑niff ultimately, iff!, withiff a seriesf of sharpf sneezesff ofiff the‑niff CHOW! sniff variety, snif, subspeciessni KJOU!, andsn alsos wassn hith‑thni thtomachthnif rumblingsniff & his veins to pulsatinghic, his kneescup to creahicingcup & his jointhic cupto complainihicgcup in distinchictly individual (& loud) voicupes voiceshic voicecups voices, & all his shudCHOO!dering was plainCHOOly visibleAH CHOObe!neath the damp masshic of crotchsniffes on the AHfloorCHOOsniuffhiccup, no matter how far down he hununkerered, aand hee wawas sso upupseset hhe gogot too weweepiping, sweeweet tetearrs, aand ththe tetearars (as they tend to doo) swepept awawayy thhe ununclcleaeann ststufuff, & the cartoonishict zippchooed upcup hersni crotffch CHOO! & swewewpt thethe clcloththeses asasasiasiidide...and found a small defenseless animal weeping chooto hide. Sniff. So she took him in. She pet him & guv him bowlsa cream, mm, & she groomed & bepolished him, gave him many a gratifying name‑‑"Tim" being chiefly the‑‑also many a "costume" or "pelt," if you "well," festooning Tim him with the wild sort of thornless roses she drew so constantly between endlessly hiccuping endless obseuqueously grateful, rosy pet. Also did she call him bub. A lesson here for those who would drop eaves. TIM BUB FERT PERT & PUP "Qert Bottotic went directly from innocence to degra‑dence," announces Qert's officious viograpper, Sir Sigue Sigue Sovrique. "When he became that soi‑disant 'cartoonist's' paltry pet, he became a heavy liquid made out of pure nuclear material, so low was he." Yeswell, what did he do that revealed him as So Low? "Better you should ask, 'What did he not do?'" OK‑‑what did he notdo to make him seem in your expert expert eyen as SO LOW? "Good question." Silence. "But I resume. That May Beam lady really ladyt all out. She really spread it on him. Son Qert the Fert, or Perp‑‑whom she called Quup when notcalling Tim or Bub after amany another old pet‑‑pets in a long sincesequence, Truth B. Nome, & helixed like a haploid deeinyay‑‑was all bebuttred oer with degrading oils (see OILS, DEGRADING oils, D.) grading oilsdy, grrr!, aid in oils, syrops, undulant‑aromic unguents & soothing chemicals. His pelt became as amber lucent down; eachinevery fine hair lay like spungy weave‑o perfrectestest goald; his cool nose glinted with a perfect pupil‑percant dottle of wh!te l!ght when he panted the air of the room he panted, pulsed like a tamborine, or that anvil‑in‑stirrups you have hammering in your brain low he crawled phwew & obsequiluschissly crept, his ground‑swillin belly arub on the carpetdown grinned he in unctuous mode, & queer driblepts o grease (see OILDY) flowed refined to xanthic rud in in in the scaldown medieval Castle of the Dog Castle of the Dog where he kept. Kept his peace like unto zombie till she came round, & then‑‑when this woman comes around‑‑sclunk‑ed down the dyke, I mean the moat, I mean the alligator‑bridge wherein stum‑bumbledee acrost. Aye. "Stumblumblee acrox & slavering (see SLAVERING) unto her, & pacing & beprancinghe arounder, & yipping warhey, & quick‑scouring paws arampt scritch harmless they up like thighher, & his tiny assh.le showed, snrk, & merry was she, this merrye Dame, this opulescent I said that Mystrexx, this pigkeping pigamager she, this sirserest, this car‑hah‑tunist ay." Qert spyograpper have reduce himself to shambles on the floor. Seem everyuns doth that inhere. He looks like a blueface sodden in sighs, & he gasp his confexium thuts: "I don't really know Qert at all! I just imagined it!" Looks at us with bloated puppy's eyes. "I‑I've never even seen him." Grapth mapels. "THEY WON'T EVEN LET ME SEE PICTURES OF HIM! NOT EVEN PICTURES, FOR GOD DAMNED SAKE!" & he bawls like a flungbaby, like a fowldawn drunk. Lots of good heaves, some puke, vomit, spittle, some cookies, glass of milk, glass, then, wiping his foam & asquintin zer foxylyce. "But I I I I speak whereof I know, you ant. I mean I know what it must of been like, to be so treated. It must of made up for the absence he felt in his trixky stors, thabsents that couldn't be wellawell kilt by the prescents of his qilling friend, RIGHT THERE! RIGHT INSIDE OF HIM! Naw. Naw. It mustabem. Na... "A‑a-a-and he was locked, his love so low it just added to his shame, which for the poor mupp Tim Bub Fert Pert & Pup lacquered his poor ersatz glory see. He had fallnin, you see. Qert falldin the glory hole heehee." After that we shake imoph, aa & our heels go buck‑buck‑buck female fashion long the paverain. DROPPED PLEASURE & NETTLED SHAME Well, Qert's time as a pet had a deep influenz anim. It welled up in his secret artistic springs & burst gutsy out of his bloodily bellily. Consider those yeors, of drooped pleasure & nettled shame. Qert got to sit on her lap, licking & licking till his paws came of & she had to sketch like another one, innumerable times. He got to press his paws against those falsely‑ample thighs, got to be dottled like wax from a candle onto her breasts (shedodat). & he got to spend idle time‑‑during which the quartz hurs exist in little slits, crescent trimmings like a falling of finigernail, & Qert‑‑oft alone, if truth nevrever benome‑‑could spend that whole sliver of a sundrunched hur sliding on his tumma cross the waxy counters, drawing glaze, phosphoplanes observing like so the slow advance of brushes, monumental as redwoods, pricking a pad ricking a rad slicking a slad against the pintip ultrapip of a pen‑pen‑pen, smelling foamed the (see THE, FOAMED) chemicals, emolumints, mixers, bases, thinners, & blowsuers. He gots to consider the dense, corky matters of moon yplants as he slept on his nose in the thickets she would draw & just for him (for she would draw these thickets every day (thickets drawn deep in the morning (sketched denser thickets (& then thickerets colour din) thicker densed sketches) drawn in the morning‑deep thickets) in the thickets day lyshe drew. & most of all he gots to watch this May Beam work. Twas she, you see, who filled the lucent details of the stors‑‑any stors, everybody's stors, even the greater autostors but not, as implied, the fucking lesser goddam bleeting stors‑‑so you can forget that right away, quickly as the stroke of your brain gone out for light in the thick of night (night thickens (thickent the drear purplush light (she sworled so as to thicken the night (thicken therefore sweet) night‑thickend sworls) drear‑pure plush edlight) thickesh purple pure), if you get what I mean. with Requisite Detail which Qert requisition on the paiselypink furfection of Form 39.56:REQ, & she was durned good at that. I mean, she made it sem Simple. She'd draw details & narrowem down & use the drawn‑down details & molecules ovink, would therewhiph drarw morer detrails, then repeat the selfswame projexx drivenin thix o parentheses above..and you canmagine how dense it got to be. So Qert's stors, after that, had a lotta new stuff to boast, not to say bamboozle Qinz ywhipph. They had for example plants. Yes, several of the truly er monuomential mentalomon stors of the Latter Qert had nothing but sappy, sniffy Phorex Ample Plambs of the genus plampus forexemplepus of the family exemplumus of the order lampus of the class Plamberampulouf of the phylum Plamb. These were her plants, see, drawn out in loving bouquets to form the sort of love he got from her. & that is all he got. Which I mean to saypip, that this Endless Pet Business ended when the cartoonish drew him out. She did that. She does. She just like drew him out, bored & heartbroken he, so he scuggled back like a pup to his interstoric "mansion in the clouds," I think you calldit, whereupin the next thing you know come the powers that be, waving the bloody contract in his screaming hand (he reacts, see, to the blood word or bloody word‑‑part of the contract; he canna help that) andun/ or choiring what‑ups he'd been uptoo...All that time...Alladose urs they'd counted backup there becompt. They'd allhurs those time‑that‑all, you see, like as if he'd been possibly o "goofin garound" & not fulfilling contractual storic refureeze, I mean meanerees: yea, they went & wanted they yea‑to‑check, which they did to do, in with entire crew & filed & filed this (endless) flolloling report this endless (port): Report on Qert Bottotic's Refusal to Cooperate with God: We rolled into his interstoric village with his interstoric mansion of some hardwhite creamy sort of substance & found upon entering his famous foyer of caves, that he had as usual redecorate again. He'd been his usual, erratic self, in contradistinction to his oozueel paratid chelf or his view zhoo owl piradic pel nor hiss gruesewel narravic smelph more hiff foolzeeole myraddict delff, & gone & got smitted or bippen with another idea, & como siempre didn't use it in his stors. ("Gotta test it out first," he like to fey.) Yea well, Qert sin smoging jagget out of floralshept smope‑‑which is a Designated Storic Ftutf not to be used for japes & the liked‑‑suavely & smellowly swelcoming us. Smoakqueeq jocket undeed! Pardon our sarchasm ladies & Eightenth‑Cenyurey Genialmim, but it seem zwe can hardly restrain our smirps of Humor at this Upstart Poseurs's soi‑disant Tastes, if you understand, in Gross Affectations somethings rare! For, up andup overvupall abuplove his fine, kinetic, purled, & kingzyzoft "Joqqet" is this face carbunculourd in rifest dudorian mobe, compleat as we shay withe grey little valleys of wounds moist as with the sweats of illpureflict tears, combined with thesequally poortraits of loudbubbling bloods in posthumouƒ veinƒ & all manner of dialikelect in the pipeswilld garbunctious Aire. For this be no Good Fellow here. "You've been taking some rather long vacations, haven't you, Mr. Bot?" He pullff da pipe fumis mouf. "Bottotic, pronounced bawd‑DAH‑dick. Yes I have. Variations on vagations, I like to deem dem‑‑hm hm hm! Yes I have. I have," herein pacing deliberately uphill like, like‑‑O‑‑Hamlert in his conster nadyph culps. Here followeth one longue sigue‑sigue‑sillilykey, the blankness of which wee are naught pribby two. Some things get lost. Some get l st. S m g st. s "So like, are you working? I mean, have you got like something going here? Qert? Huh?" He jerk his heads birdswryse. "Hm? O, yea. Yesyes, of course. To be sure." Advance Q‑Sector Three‑Graph‑Vector‑Three Enhance‑Vance frowaord damaratinkly. "I‑i‑in fact I've been working on some some number of ideas. Did I say 'ideas'? I meant 'new ideas,' of course. Goddam good. Can I say 'that'? Good? Well then 'goddam good,' 'that.'" Gleeoff madness here: "Really quite awe some ly, as thathlepes sway go od!" Dammit gigolse. "Your shop is dark." Terror of his eyes! ZOOMUP INSIDE EYES... "To be certain. To be sure. Yes, yes‑‑it's dark now, isn't it? Many a murder have beem bedded there, ay? Ay? Many the souls trapt. Countless murders murders, atrocities, murder, victimizations, deafs, all in the back of mine mined." Indicated Vance‑Q Xector‑Inhamps‑Envance MACKOFF MIMED OK OK. "Here. & here, too. & here & here & here." Looks at eye & smeyels the kinda smyle of the nexus zixth just before his perfect hands cruxx yer skull. "I'm not afraid of death. Jusmurder‑‑just‑‑the darkness won't go back, fellas. Can you help me (sidle sidle up), huh? I need some like help, y'know?‑‑some one to push this darkness back. Just‑‑" Handpush Ingexercise Numbor Won‑Oh‑Thwee, "someone to push the darkness back...for me..." trail off into mimeres. "Sure, Mr. Qert. We'll get that bleeding parasitic slug call eddarkness pull dright back for you. Yessir. Just wait." "WAIT! BLEEDING? DID YOU SAY 'BLEEDING'" So it starts with eating & it ends with bleeding, etc. THE GODS STOP EATING "We've achieved an image, sir!" piped the young servitor. The gods are porking out, as always, possibly inspired by Qert's food stor. It's hard for them to admit that they are completely & utterly under the sway of this powerful botic, whom they are investigating (hence the appetites) but whom some other entity redesigned, adding a touch of genius, doubtless from the secret Gold Well of Genius, in the Dales of Overwhell in the District of Knight in the high county County Umplatt in the neverending Regions of Swurr & in the exact storologic fulcrum of the massive Magiplex of Lur, where the livid corowbeams fling from the thickets deep in the parenthetical's night, their bluebim zbounding goff the moons with a great hallollo halloo. Yea‑‑these gobblin' gogs'd give anything (& I'd mean anything) to have a cup of that ol gold. So, too hypnotized for comfrot, fraught mesmeric too toplite, they go on eating whilst the servitor get ready to repart. "How long have we lost him?" waves this chickembome. "For twenty milluns, m'lud," says the handsome blueswupi dlad. "Mmurgham," choiks a very large‑cheeked, windy sort of fever‑cloudpough god, swallowing, god, swallowing, god swallowing god. "How zit we's lossimagain?" The blue servitor he smiles, then, wagging his head into a thousand curioforms, "During the height of the preceding investigation (that's Investigation 1, m'luds), m'lub, which attainad‑‑ah, how shall ye shay‑‑O, 'too great a resolution,' perhaps," rubbing finefurs together, "too high a heigh of magnifications," stretching up his heads like telescoops again again, as if seeking Qert in Stars Seeking Qert In Stars eating god swallows gogs, "...such that..." "Such that we lost him, knuckleheads," growled a very good grizzly old mane of as hoary He. He would pass for the god of your fathers if here there were aught but moms eading gobs idding mubs. Swaggering on elbows with what look like nothing so much as a boarshead crasp in his grisp. "I don geddit," says a Very Stupid God. He is swattlet. "They lost him. They turned up the details too high." "So he got sky‑high?" "Yes. Fools amped his voice to the intraverx, sprad his lightweaves to the firmament of fumes. They bloody botdam fell into details." Silent & god‑rest paws. Slowly, munch ing clam berup a gain. "In any case, one of our, er, smaller I's has achieved a partial image of the botic Qert Bottotic 12735 in the act of shuffling down his dawn his howl." "Mbrnng," goodon. "Right. Well, it's from one of those teeny little crimeras you‑‑we bought cheap & I mean cheap, the ones that've never worked too, um, well, see, & and and..." His zands intrupted by adelbow in the slid. "Brrgk!" Continue. "Si. Here it is:" Here it is: The gods stop eating. By the ghodds they do! Their mouths drip opum in better‑lethy‑leaving‑than‑mangind, spoons ahonerin' in th'air, as the grainlight yes the grainlight fill their unit facely‑as‑desired. Qert mutter down the hall, kicking small platzes of dust & djuxted ruddle what half cumulpated or the eongs (sometimesome inin circirclecless ofof titimememe). Scweams of whole races scour upt the limpid liddle of the (impib) light. Boy, this is a cheap job. You get more grain than botic here, but you can see to the point that it make you stopop eatatining that Qert is mad. He's pissed about that bad report they turned in, & one might surmise he is heading to his shop full of hate full of hate, which is the one way an artist alls to shop which he wear heeze goinoing dow. His faces multiply into the grains of the seedy images & brukoupt. They busp, sp!‑‑sprangloils soils the goddis' dun. They can't see any more anymore, faces covered with paers covered with snow or torn snow covered with Qert's euphoric. Back in the backdrop of the gods, everyone is dancing on their food. THE BROTHER OF ED E‑3 or THIS CANVAS IF‑YOU‑WILL‑OF‑BLUE He knew thay was watching him, & he knew he was in dutch‑‑in dutch deepusts to his clotch! "I've gotta compensate for that love affgair," reasoned Qertre. "And Qinz's mad at me too. Gotta let him shoot me through & through. Hahahaha! Thas funny‑‑'Godda ledim shoot me through & threw'‑‑HAHAHA!" Qert laugh like that. Contempt. Nothing but dustduxydeutsch con TEMPT uff uff. "I know what," was what Qer‑ta‑thought to get in good withal again again. "I'll create me a beautiful, lovely, pastel, lilting sorta vastor‑‑a stor full of the absolute distilled acid of love, a stor electric with love, a psychedelic stor with a Delphic Original Score base don the Jokes o' Jo, a‑and I'll take Virtual Infitime with it {that's V.T. III! Gee! ‑‑ed E‑3.}, that's V.T. II I beloove, brackets notwithstanding {brackets nokwhiphspanging?} crafted blackets of fern How I have always so loved ferns! blue ferns‑‑blue!‑‑especially ferns with that mad ferns with that blue of mad fern blue known as Doolhamew on that most shimmering of seductive worlds in the Fantasy Sector just outside of V.T. I {Qert is all wrong about this. ‑‑The Brother of ed E‑3} which when I first encountered them, freshly drupling zas‑i‑wazh from the Frolics of Fantazree, made a most searingly emprehim on me, like one of those shimmer‑seels in the Lake‑Lagos o Lac, that I fairly burst my cheeks with buzzling‑‑like the famed pollemgursts of Uddle 3 {no relation ‑‑No Relation to edit E‑3 no relation} & so entire‑ly & unseemily bebustled my self about you would have thought I was one of the Amusing Bustle‑Bobs, not of reality, I mean, nor of any fantasy, but of the cartoons of the cartoonish I often hire, contractually, to help me weird the stors, as I like to say. "Weird the stors, 'Weird the stors, "Weird the stors, 'Weird the stors, "Weird the stors, 'Weird the stors, "Weird the stors, 'Weird the stors, "Weird the stors, 'Weird the stors, "Weird the stors, 'Weird the stors, "Weird the stors, 'Weird the stors, "Weird the stors, 'Weird the stors, "Weird the stors, 'Weird the stors, "Weird the stors, 'Weird the stors, "Weird the stors, 'Weird the stors, how I like to say."'"'"'"'"'"'"'"'"'"'"'"'"'"'"' "Yes well anyway, I'll have those absolutely lucent‑lush luciositoozitiesof ferns, if I may say, so this pretty stor will burn or fairly brun with blue. "Yes‑blue! Blue, I say! Blue‑blue‑the very tooest tublue! The quintessence of utterly blue, etc. I'll give the sucker a bluish sun {not dangerous ‑‑Ed.?} being first sure to get it claired with the powers in command‑‑not the gods (ha! the blue gogs!) mind you mind, but the powers structured into the material of the contract they assure my absent memory that I signed, the contract made from a material not wholly unreminiscent of the base material for stors which is not wholly unreminiscent of foundation matewial for Wingwowld, which is not whowwy unwelated to the ylem, not wholly prepared to ylem‑‑those powers intrinsicate with my own very warp & veriwhoof, beating like driunms in the temple of the Most Feverish Excuse For An Artist I becomes, I become, I become ‑come ‑come. "So. & against & in consideration of this powerful backdrop of blue‑‑which will give this projected "stor of love" a swoomy solibity & limpid sulicidy that will make that bastard pulting through, putling through‑‑with due clearance & consideration of the powers, not the gods, of course, but the goddam powrs in the contract of power that Qinz & I must've signed, else we'd simply be in love. "But this stor, this storell do it, enh? Am I right? Enh? Enh? Yes it wull, for I'll add onto this canvas if‑you‑will‑of‑blue, this crafted blanket of ferns forming thickets of subconsciously lulling & ensweepating balue‑woowoo, nothing but pastels, poastels, pasta‑postils, poestia‑peshtelves, peshel‑bresthelvus, breaphbleph froshfrelvs, if you will. It's to be a sweet nocturne of dusky eve pastels, an earlie mouranin of pain‑deniastels, soft colors, nothing harsh, nothing hard, a marsh of qulors, a rosy mist of colors brewed from the bellies of the dollops o night, OK? "A‑and for reality, in order to get more reality into my brain which is a metaphor for a stor, I'll get that god‑ged May Beam!!! twhelp. I'll try to get her to be serious though, & try to get her to keep from torturing me, & drawing me up in various TORTUROUS FLUORMIS & making me live out the cartoons of me, the cartoons of me‑in‑the‑torturous‑worms, & get her to stop like etching shit on me, & but use those shapes those etchy shapes she ziswont to dror on me, & have her put these paisleys & arabesques into the full florid fluidity of this upsest swor, I mean dupshest stor, aa‑and‑u so that (for instance) the air itself flow paisley, & the little imps (four impstants) that will must needs inhabit such a musty land {which is not to say cutesy land, which is not to say "cutesy lamp," which is not to play a small simfonietta of Basphel's which is so utterly utterly fluently arpegiodd that it disappaear like the Seven Lost Pianos of Kryk, croxsing the crick & falling in & dissolvwing in the cr!k ‑‑uped ER‑I.}" CONTRACTUALLY INGSPIRED Well, Qert calmed down & took V.T.‑III & went & created this finest of stors, & then hid in it‑‑which is to say went in to dwell in it (contractually ingspired) & to wait which is to say in love for Qinz... & wait he did. & enter contractually Qinz hinsried he ded. & Qinz note right away he was in love! He was passionately in love with Qert, & he was gonna find him & plug him with love! Hot as a teeger, Qinz floudabwout, in his own golden hotenoil lookin' steam‑i‑ly for Qert! Yer in big trouble now, Qert! You plyed this place with much too much love! He's gunnin' for ya in a new way now‑‑hamapamtaqert WINDS THAT WON'T EVEN TRY TO SEEM GENUINE The sun of Eden keeps on falling in love. It falls in love with beautiful 12735, lone inhabitant of this little grove, which current research reveals as a Carefully Disguised Trap, most craftily committed & set up so's to pear as 12735's owne idea, & with a diabolical end‑program that Cause Cert that Qause Qert to roundel back to roundel back to it to it again & and whenever he rise up a notch in his boticquest for gods. But it's not 12735's idea epines. Evil Sniggering Gods hide behind it. You might note that, in circling back to this idyllic pwisom he circles to in time to where the sun falls in love with him descending like a Grecian gold enbol, Qert actually does get closer to the gods. It's just that he can't see em, cowring like little kids with their Inkstamagickes© ready to take some crotch shots of their dad. He can't see the babyhand that pulls open the curtain to the stor‑‑'cause that's all it is, really: a stor‑‑that he falls into like the big drip that he be hehbee. & splotters to the ground, to the miniature bank of this miniature stream, whose ends don't even seem cleverly disguised to seem (se=em) cleverly disguised go to go infinity, but look like merest backdrops in the concave of the stor only, O, maybe...lessee, mmm...I dunno, p'raps, ah, uh...mm...uh‑‑O maybeya, ya, ya‑‑ya...ya; er‑ya, hmph, say TWENTY FEET saway, enh? Wouldn't you say? Yea... & this glob of liqueb forms into the shape of a pastril Lounging Boy About To Die, a Big‑Bund Farm Lad Bending Oer, 'sif the childgods lost track of the Eden imagery, unless this was never their intent & I (yes I)'ve losstrack of the Eden Imagery which was never what they had in stor edenicalyhyhee. Hard to say. Farm Lad with big cuffs on his jeans & the bib of the jeans hooked oer his boyish shoerders I'd like to lick & his blond hair tousled in winds that won't even winds that wonteven winsthat wonteven try to seem genuine, but come warmly from the maw zuv these gusty fans stationed three along the southwestern‑as‑the‑stor‑goes wall the wall. But the Qid donotice. It's an inherent part of the end-program that sends him dwivling here that he wont be conscious of such things. You have such an end‑program, & I'll bet it dictates that you won't be conscious of the same sorts of things. So just think: as you read there's a big fan clanking, but you donnotice, & the backdrop sops a wall, but you can't see, & death walks giggling behind you with his big pink deathy hand, but you wont know with the poor wall weeping right there. Sorry about this. Sorry about that. Look at Qert with that grass stalk in his mouth. His mouth outsize‑‑why, that grassstalk muss be at least fifty yards high, Maw!‑‑he chaw zaway, much to the milchomusemeant of the gods. Always the gods. At least he gets to relax aboard someone else's stor, & generally Qinz's exhibited from this stor‑‑that is, Qinz cannot as a matter of contraptual coarse come straight here to kill his best friend, though he's allowed to watch. & Qinz does watch, most portions of his botic mind having been burned like totally away by now, leaving only the vision of Qert & the love for Qert twisted into something resembling some sorta obverse hatred of himself (qinzelf), that is himqinzelf, so he's pretty enraptured by this image of his friend alyin' by datdare streambank alistenin' to the water runnin' down though the pleasure of that's someawhata takenawray because the water doesn't even try et cetera but seems like some steam‑distilled detcetera lim pidlongo out the little rectaggle cut in the side so the "water" & "flow" out as the "icefloes" "flow" in the chintzy melodrama of a quickie dreamaha) anda chewin' on this MONGOUS piece o straw "What is that‑‑a tree trunk?" whispsof unauthorized Qinz inheard as whinspers in the wind‑that‑doenteen‑try et cetera and akickin' his ol' leg in rhythm to the rapturous beguiled & smitten "birds" that try & try chirpcetera. & like I say before I comvoloupted myself, the sun of this little Eden‑‑or farm or whatever, OK?‑‑keeps fallin' in love with the perfect handsomeness that the kind‑if‑silly gods ha givunto Qertin thisstor, & he keep descending in the fashion of a gold ball & leaving this silly dark socket in the doesn't‑even sky & nestling up to Qert, such that in many appearances we have Qert ewith the sun under his arm, looking pretty godlike here‑‑he'd preciate this if he were conscious, wouldn't he?‑‑kicking & humming some of the finest tunes never mentioned in the stors. Only this time Qinz win E‑special authorization, & the sun descends full of love & cracks open & "Hiya, Qid," softy loffs this real‑small version of Qinz (that just about gives slow‑reactin' Qert‑Boy a chance to break into his Patented Feckle Grin) as he BLATZis frien daway...But I comVOOLT myself. RUIN DOUR HEAVEN or GOLDILOQUINZ INTO THE CENTER SELF OF SAME When the gold smoke cleared, & when after many an illusory lenium by Qinz betired him of his posture, Dynamigild Contragung, & his big bronze‑flashy gold unggun, Bomnamniumn Coltraysung, he perceived his friend had pulled a fast one. A "fast one," thought he in style indirect libre. You can't pull "fast ones" here! Hm. I better think this through‑‑might be his stor after all. & with such careful thoughts, training his poremind to be poured into the molquen golbs that would fluiform his stuff into ample stamps‑o‑him, he stalk police‑style to the large powder‑burred brown box‑‑looks like a tent, maybe, maybe just set up & with that now‑missing kissy lil sun inside (because outside I notice now we have a moon, nothing special, justa willowtousche moon as a brough on you cheeghkaugh!)‑‑predicating THIS ___(might be Qert)___. He push opeS! thaDOR! Qert glode gold enin the center of the room. He was pint‑sized in this heavenly trap, & his coruscating gorgeousness was meant to make him the icon of this sphere. You could feel how he was The Center of The Intended Sphere‑‑Intended Sphere‑‑& you could see the engineers grinning yes the engineers grinning as they gawked in wonder at their own creation, unable to think (because an engineer's unable to think:) God did this, or The gods did this, unable as I say to think that thought think bethink hought hink and so make themselves disappear‑‑not an "engineering" thing to "do," but you can see how they handle this tension of the Cosmic Engineer pressing his orderly engineery face to the edge of the surmount of the bastion of the glass that ends his universe, beyond which he is not allowed to see (see think above think above think) where his rules become silly putty..and a verry sillilly puttutty tooo I might deadd but when they chew lotsa gum, green weird gum, which I certainly didn't invent for The Seven False Heavens of Qert & which therefore must've been intrapolated tin from, say, O WHICH I WILL NOT DESCRIBE, & when they turn their sharp regards in, toward the plastic model of the sphere which is the sphere they created which is the false heaven I have popped out of this digressium hear, they can delight in the perfection of their mode, how the various made‑up two‑bit phumey‑balewmy bull‑shit laws of physics used in this particular spear all combine to force Qert helpless (& as I said above small above small) & goldiloqinz into this center self of same, & the psychologists (in a separate room WHICH I WILL NOT DESCRIBE) smile with a certain pwump swuginess which is built into my version of the swame, because they have handled the emotive lawrs of the stowr such that, to maintain any degree of sanity, to avoid being torn asunder (asunfer, y'all!) by the forces of his own botic conflicatives, Qert has got to stay right in the center of the stor. So he's astuck in his false heaven. They've really gotim now... & here this Qinz character bashes in. Tentripping PAUSE whilst everybody checks his NOTES... No. No mention of Qinz in this. This thing isn't for Qinz‑‑I mean, this heaven is not set as a trap for goddam Qinz to get in. What's this now‑‑he gonna murder Qert? Is it possible? Here? Everyone furrows through his notes. Notes take time. Time furrows botes unto eternity. Two eternity. Eternity. Notes(s)... Nope. But Qert realize right away he can relax his stance, for it is immediately evident that Qinz has appropriated the manifestiatiums of the god, & so as Qinz moves here & there around the room, bobbing & weaving all sorts of invisible attackers‑‑which only a later analysis based on the famousin Zapruder Recording of the Heaven Four are the physic & psychic forces making up the vorf & the voop of the stor of the stor herself‑‑you can see his trunk break into all sorts of silver torsos, & likewise as his zarms move the gun‑‑seeming molted & melten & BIG‑‑they become the multiple arms of a Hindu god, & Qert, enforced on his pod at the xenter of the xod, falls deeply into worship falls ever so deeply into worship falleth intimately into actual cocksucking worship of his friend. God he thinks & God he thinks, & God comes out his eyes‑‑filling even as we squeak with perfumid teors‑‑& "God!" cometh outeth mouth & this sort of feeling‑nexus sort of spreads sort of to the enginears who dissolve (as all engineers musht) unto engitears & even in fumic fuorm unto the psychologists, designers of the mental frame of the stor known in Secret Technical Klinguo as as as as "H4," who cannot cwy & so somurely psyigh. So, adancin' & ashootin' his way in, this wonderous monster of love & randomity‑‑this beloved usurper god, this haze o' fast‑firin' silver, this penetrator unto the erstwhile mythical secrets of Qert(God)‑of‑the‑H4(Stor) (meant to be stuck, not shot!), this crazed lover of killing, this contractual alter‑Qert, this crazy guy, this big lug‑‑grabs the icon by which we represent his buddy Qert, his pal, his friend through many a lifelime gimes, & tucks him under his arm, still firing in the wonderful storbiscopic effect of troboscoopix evvex ostroobo vexxoo *** a dis in the grat grat grat titin tin ing stor *** & pulls the now‑mib Qert away Qert away Qert away Qert away. "Well!" someone who's left says. "He ruined our stor!" "He ruin dour heaven!" lamented a Very Sad Voice whom I have not Bother to Personify. "He did still more," says the dying sy yting sto or. "He god damn rescued 12735." "Yea, we noticed," says the vacuum which characteristically forms at the center of the stor much like the vacuum at the center of your heart when you realize you are utter iso late alone. Big contractsheer! Hey‑‑big compracks hear! Hey‑‑! Time a blue face get longly a' lone. Qert gone, saysy sadly, turning over its last shad teors to infinity... FACES OF ENDLESS DETAIL or DOUBTLESS COMPULSIVE BEHAVIOR OF THOSE COMPULSIVE BEAUTIFULS? "O, Qert, you're so beautiful!" Mom was crying, crying 2‑quart blue tears that broke the Beautiful Turquoise Heart. She is more relieved‑‑& muschly roughly morere liev'd‑‑that Qinz pulled his brother out of the stream we saw ring round to the lasses of the book. & in celebration at least fanfares flared in the background, & one noticed that the colors in this universe were rather more pale, more subdood, more suave n' pastel than those in the other, younger, less intelligent, less develop, more savage universes, & Qert never remembered this beautifubble noment of his creation (all false implants, by the way) without noticing that he preferred yes e preferred the more savage colors of the more savage universes, & that he traveled very fast, much faster than normalfast, to get to these. (He recalled one in particular, a universe of vague fat bodies & nothing but red. Red, red, red everywhere. That's all that anyone there said, either: "Red," they said, "Red red red." They didn't even have rudimentary punctuation marks. Everything was too red to spunctuate, know what I mean? Too red. It had its subtler akspecks‑‑spaks that tapered off to various hues. So you could say if you said you could say if you said you could have said if you'd had sayd you had rust colors, maybe something a liggle like burnt umber, maybe a color like the first irritant burp of pain announcing that final deadache unto pain‑‑but mostly it was red. This was a crude n' savage universe in a nook of the multiverse not mulch travailed by such botix as Qert's brothernensensterem, & there were no faces, but for a ruddy‑mentary gnose ertoo ernosertoot knowsairtoo gnawzerrtu, & as I said at the top of the parenphrapgh you had mainly bulk bodies fraught with (yes) spikes (yes) spikes (yes) spikes (do I repeat myself (no never (yes) with) spikes?) yes. "O you're so so beautiful now!" she said, quite naturally‑‑& hey, this must've been the most sophisticated heaven, right? It had softer colors, right, more detailed faces‑‑hey: faces of endless detail‑‑& many many more multifarious tomensions, too. Lotta dimensions. Hard to remember when you've (sob) been (snif) lost in the barberies(nf!) betwixt beautiful places (sob) & far from your mother evermore (snfsobnfornomb?)? Too many questgions! But because the incident itself had been ever so packed with detail, Qert could qurl himself up in the soft selfenclos‑ed manner of your botix everywhere & close his eyes soft as lids & make small rustling sound as of plastic bag packed with freshcured well‑palump eddope & still dream a lot of it, dream a lot of it. So he lay there & made small motions like a qat enthrash‑ed in a dream, & he would in the InterLunar Silence™ make even little murring sounds as of some Infant Thing hurting away imsleemp & groew soft fur in dream, & rememberet. "Oo, soo beautiful!" was what more of less she said‑‑& it bore repeating, too, for words inhere were fashion dout of cast iron, dismal‑prepard steel, grystal‑steel, weightless & motionproof & indestructible as the force that was locked inside that oftrepeated first "O!"‑‑a force composed with the delicacy & intricacy of a jolly Haydn minuet, only moreso‑i‑say I say‑only, & with sweet subtle flavors, too, which would've had ol' Frankie Jo a‑grinnin' from aear to aearisay. & it boor repeating for more inheriant reasons, two. Qert was beautiful. There they took their babies there & they madem into botix & they sentem out‑‑& before they sentem out they filldem with much more beauty than the I can bare. I'm not sure why, because these really are weird b‑yings here. But they overborem with beauty, beauty beauty‑‑in a sort of higher analogue (if you can dig a higher analogue) to see all that red in the Red Universalogue‑‑until hearts burst just seeing the gigantic beautiful‑to the‑nth‑power babies (babies‑‑yes!) shipping out the big gate through to the intraverx leading to your various sleeping univerks niverks iverks verks erks erks ks s... Doubtless a form of protection from the savages? Doubtless a form of reminiscence of one's origins? Doubtless compulsive behavior of those compulsive beautifuls? Doubtless double parody of solves? Doubless ouble arody f olves? Doulss ubl ody lve? Or just a rich supply of beauty, which was as necessary for survival in that place as water in your your watery pal‑ats, & which they mistakenly figured was necessary for 1) survival between stors & 2) survival within stors? Yea, probly. But they was wrong! Beauty was & is anabsolutely negligible nasset in the traveling among stors‑‑neither at the Gate, where so many died of the beauty of these gigantic infants known as BOTICSes, nor again in the Internix, where there was no awarenets at all except unconscious defined as uinconsciousness of beauty‑by‑the‑ray, nor yet over & again‑again in any of the Univerts Thus Descried, nor even-&-also in the various innumerable buzzing false universe known in the title as Fuckin False Heavens which we oblige too detail here beauty here. Beauty was enphaga liability. For the critters of them other univerts was indeeda tracted to the beauty‑‑or let's just say their attentions, such as they wiz, was attraxed by the beauties which our hero's so plethoric of. Bu their "attentions" took sundry & variegated "forms," not all of them allied to the central concept of quote beauty, which is "love." Not love at all, in these beasties, in these false heaven zaqert, in these annals, in these here logs. & so Qert's False Implant Dream: & thus it was that, saddled with his excess iv deadly beauty, the huge infant Qert sets out from his love universe, that which Qinz ript to home, & with his mom dying dissolving in her tears over his beauty (what they called back home blubbering, but with no ludicrous connotations (ha!) at ha!) at (home) spwin that beauty every rischwray, & attracting the Deceivers to his side. & I tell you, he was just a child! FANTSY‑FLASH & FLAMERY or THE FLOWERS ARE BLUE TOMORROW We now enter stors of the middle period, & Qert has put on weight. He means to woo May Beam towooze again, preferably qua Qert & not per pet. He strolls over to her frame house with the bright captions wincing yellow‑overit, yellow‑verit, proclaiming his (Qert's) mother's (Qinz dead. Qinz stalk him in the shadows with his cap gun. Loud, boisterous brilliant‑‑seems like no stor's home anymore ome nyore me yre e re e... Qert enters May's sphere with a large bunch of flowers. The sphere is yellow today; the flowers are blue tomorrow. Also, these were extra‑‑special flowers‑‑Qert had createdem in his own shop, to the likeness of his verylike, & they were a species of his own devising, with the finest gene‑magick of his aching ik=mage phials. So. Qert was dewyn love with her, & this dew this dew this dew I say this dew he sprinkled with his own fingertips (you could if you could smell if you the new dawn smell on his if‑you fingerstips‑‑ssnnnffff!‑‑& you could see the fine pinsuns the pinsuns in the dripulepts‑‑Look!), wagging his head in the manner of an overconfident typro entringgin. Qert has this tendency to...forget‑‑uh...that he is entering 'sent'ringringingng (Hello?) somebody else's stor, not one of his (Hell‑O?). Vigntillions of stors strung together round the necklace of his 'zomes've persuaded Qert that he create all women. This can happen, & now that it have he have his finest flowers, & he donno what to do. Upon entering the cartoonist's stor, Qert instantly Qert immediately Qert qertstuntenuously loses control of time & size‑that's 1) Time & 2) Size OK. So the flowers burgeon & grow‑‑& they grow exceedingly colorful with comic colors‑‑fantsy‑flash & flamery‑‑as if she were parelaborat aradinghis own & finest flurrs, which is yet so muschphinere & infinitely more subtle, I mean detailed, than his flors that the goggling suitor can only stare, drooling just a bit off perimeters of gape like a fine old delicate ship, as his expansive flowers became not merely a forest of flowers, refreshed at last with that hole rain of real to stun, but a world, a global hyperverts of flowers so distant & distinct one from anotherun they send out scents across whate'er she'ers‑o‑lusion she may she may choose to springe‑‑white bubblews like dew ydrosps faster than what pass for thought in here. "Smell the flowers," she command, & Qrt‑‑reduced to an awkward sort of cartoon qrt in pantafallaloonds (whereas your "real" Qert wareth no pantths‑‑I hate to tell you that)‑‑ condescends, condescending vapours fillipis head uh head, with the usual results. "Was there something?" she says, her desk a speck floating upsidedawn wordthere. "No," come reply, "there was nothing." & was not. GREAT ADOLESCENT IMAGERY She did her job. She led him on. Kept him from gegging kilt too fast. Her his inspiration. With his capgun. Waiting. Love. & so Qert wompack towerk, in the tewerks twilite werk he auf & par, a & by. Qert went on to cast fabulous MAY BEAM in many a romantic stor. However, there was a catch, i.e., he forgot all about Qinz‑‑no matter how many times he (Qinz) killed him (Qinz), lost all track of his contractual obligations & his feral obbligatosations & was making up these completely nonmurderous (& because nonmurderous, therefore felonious) stors full of lush, cornball adolescent imagery (but it was great adolescent imagery as your title say, enh?), wherein the erstwhile cartoonist, no longer one, a cartoonist, I mean‑‑a cartoonist, then, no longer then, would occupy the centripetal spot in the guide of the Maiden of Mysticos, the Maid Off Magick & the Oervremajikles Maide in fillowing burrows of blowse of a taint‑grey purple aand those billowy cuffsapuff fum the shoulders (ye botix, what shoulders!) to the wrists that Qinz qua Knicht would feign of kisse, & a smarl shawl just to add to the texture quough‑‑no longer the implied or raw textureens of the Standard Qinz Suffering Act‑‑& the great & wollowy skirts that had, not so much the patterns of willow trees & the streams he ztole Qinztole out of DAVIM DENLA VILOVEEZE, as the actual precreated artifax themselves, like nothing Qert ever deed, like absolu nottun fumda ik=mage files (or phials I suppose as I quaintly calla dem), & like no place there for a murderee. No place at all. No place at all. No place at all. After a quick consulspation with the gods re garding this arg uable brooch in the compact, Qinz butt sintoo the Acts IV & V, scs. ii, ii, iv, & vii or iix or dehaughty‑naught, & presenther wivven his Phineast Ameathyste Broooche, thate ofe the Demesne de Qinz o th' Toche, saltry Qinz th' gunmettleblough Knichte du Roche, who meem to whim dismaidful dainamim wither flouncy bedrets & thereby umgaphoile untuttrelee th' pompostuous ombustlpuoies o' th' False Knavische Vight & the unnamed Traitoroux Archimajoik Stoortooleur Qert. Now it was a classic rivalry between buddies, added to which is May's noteworthy tendency too evade these assignations‑‑for she, in her universe so much more bonewhite & ashblock logico than than heese (Qeese's's), did not perceive nor deign ysee in any manner o mean watt‑so‑aires to term it assignation, nor anykind of th'thang. & she was underdstanderbly relucutants to meet Qert on his home (illegal) gorounds, for this particular cartoonist (not that there are not others, & lovelier by far, & in many "higher" univerts) had a great & whorthee pheare of the holy gods, seeing in herself nothing of the god the narcissistic Qert saw that Qinz see in imxselfs yousee‑‑an axpek of her personeallity which I either mentioned above or will mention, now yet again, below. So usually, by the time Qinz & Qert‑‑goofy‑jollicky happy to be gedderagainin ill egal circumstamps‑‑got to playfully throwing grapes at milady's mazzard, than the brittle little thing (for women of uncanny powers are brittle, every time‑‑they are so brittle, know what I mean?) would implode like nothing so much as that light bulb feeding your dreams. So foreboding yedremes, Qert would have to show up at Beam Shop sphere‑again with another bunch of (cleverly‑dishusted‑guide‑edyas) flowers. I'm talking so‑called flowers. All that effort, all that work, all those tokens from the gods, & here she just wanted to get laid, in black‑and‑white, with grain, base genitals sliding roughly one again stother, over & over & over & over again, in seething heat. But Qert war no cartoonist. Ultrarefined, supersubtlely mad, he kept missing the ha ha port in his solemnly storms hahee. UH! SAY I IN FALSETTOS Qinz consider thustly in himind if you domined: Qert thought she was beautiful. Ha! That's a laugh! Shows you just how much botics know, don't it? She was not beautiful. Not by a longue shought. May was colorless, rather, scrawny, & grainyboo. She had no flowery flesh, no full woman‑curves, no bosom or bazoom to speak of or to hoo, nothing but cry jetstone specimens in the place of flesh, & when she moved‑‑Uh! say I in falsettos‑‑Uh!‑‑there was the dry scraping of the weird deserts of the desertworlds of the dessicant universe of the dry stors, known as the desert stor, of that set of some hundreds of dozens of mysterious stors, or problem stors, originator(s) unknown(s). Though I think I know who made them. So each & every morning, who it is who is the cartoonist would get up & rifle through her infinite closets of mirrors of closets looking for a sketch of herself. She did this in the deepest, most poignantly dark hope that she would somesuch find therein of self, or some worn portion of forgotten soul, albeit sad‑‑or not even her proper soul, really, just some woundsoul she could halffeed to her pen & her pen & scribble out, narcissuslike, alloer the ricky body of her self. Failing this, every morning, this Beam'd squint like a modifier & pull out one or another of her, um, some say athousants flesh, a real moiety, & she'd draw the yucky strutchy thing on out, soak it in a special artist's oil which even she‑‑a goddam cartoonist, to be sure‑‑could be seem to be & thereby had to use, & this sweet & like succulent (because like artful, hey!) flesh she fleshe would pull on oer her stony antipostical shelf, & she would then to her copydesk, wherein, praying for the day's inspiration in this sadblew of sunless stor she call edher loft, so‑qualled, she'd do her most sensuous truly thing of the sayly stoil‑‑she would bedew her sole with her most fantastical do, most holy too, or rather glew, whuch she dyuse to to to fashion the flesh of over her overer face, if you can squall it dat, & thereby do her concupuscent dupuscent dupty of daday, a frame with herself in the middle of it, a tri‑D frame tritrimpuple thick (or as the Guleons say, "thuick") & make of herself a variatable goddexx o beaute an dovelove. Ah, but I should say a cartoon goddess, made out of carteem love. Enter that... DEADPANNED BY THE GODS His flowersa disappear, so Qert try another tack. Enter Qert again with a box of sweets. "Sweets?" she says‑‑yes, sweetly she says! And‑a‑thump‑thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthimpthimpthimpthimpTHIMP! as she fall into his wherl of sweets. For meee?" she considers, one of those fancy, delicatate, feminine thoughts not restricted to fems in swich the thoughts clust be HIND‑a theyebrowse, slow‑to‑awink. "I made it for you," Qert declare in The First Lie of Love that kill the loveanders. Enter: eateateateateat‑‑eyes bleared with a surfeit of sweets, Qert push shis way through the emerald ice‑cream forests with their sloughy syrop‑falls & springles of fragment nuts & springles o flagrant sugarpurls & aviaires with aromatic conewings filigreed more in the manner of butterflies than birds (buthen, Qert's never seen a butterfly; Qert ha never traveled in your circles; Qert salways been left out & demanded‑of & unloved: Qerts), & weightless aureolas ovaire that have some of "the fpray of fodapop mift"‑‑a concept the gods found "puerile" & "pukey" & "enough difguft to die me of gufdufk!"‑‑& some of the joy, I think, of the first flushtiered friendzip galanzes that airy & his best friend Qinz, whom he lost, did glance, hence the cool etheric eeriness & underlying sung of cerulean sadness, if I may, that I have been externsively tortured for drinking of (O Qert!)‑‑plunging through these florests of chocolate bark comfections & branch of stiff licorice & hairstuffstrings from the willows of still more licorice & the droplets of, yes, stiflicorice that this apparently licorice‑loving botic spread staround through rills & rivulets redolent of some of your more condimental herbs‑‑fpecifically wicorice‑‑beating more goodies away as they literally throw themselves at his mouth, Qert dumbfounded with love & his missioon‑a‑loon, or swo‑he‑thinx, to track down that girl. I don't suppose he'll find her in here, since that would be a real relationship, & these stors of the Middle Period are really rather short of personal relationships (no families, etc.' just Qinz showing up, candy smeared all over his much & his gun held sticky in hand, to kill him sugarbloop bloopbloong over the palaice), but he is in love, & I suspect that, & also I think I've figured out why his later stors have goeng‑zwo‑bad. It isn't a matter of structure of absence of motif or rap of the gods nor botic's block nossir: it has to do with the quasiobasic physic structure of stors & their relationship to the "close pogram" or "endik=mage loop" or "mobius flup" or "mode fillup" of stors & they interaction with the imaginary, created bullshit of the content of the fairytale world of the world of the galaxy of stors of stors, if I may be repetitious. Yes (or no), it have to do with the materio‑cognitive interaction that make these little cubyholes‑‑spread in platted fashion round dis curving sort of velvetfloored, sort‑of‑clay‑walled hallway, if nigh mayre peat‑‑appear to inhabitants to be, not only entire worlds‑‑despite the often slapdash n ramshackle n gumchustle n quonshubtle nature of the stors, with cheesy cheesecloth blothback backdrop dropblack blacklight lighthole holecheese horizons & quickie minuficured artifax & off‑the‑cuff crooked‑from‑the‑unconscious (but WHOSE unconscious? here?) neolanges & some awfully amateur actors, ofttimes in rubber suits (falsetto:!HAH!:otteslaf)‑‑but their entire lives as well, complete not only with pasts & hopes & families & futures, but also with like beliefs, sometimes deeply held, AND‑‑farbuvuv all else‑‑those "shaped" thought‑patterns, not only with repetitious circularities & emphlanted timewasters galore, but also with unconsciousness in & of themselves, which not only influenzed the bliefs, feelings, perceptions, & actreactions of those stuck in the stors‑‑not only the audience but the erstwhile actors‑‑but actually caused events in the stor, hey‑hey, so you had a very complete universe. As complete as you or I, I mean your or mine. & underneath all that stuff were some all‑important fergeffer imphlants, see. These kept you from memerin al you othe stuf. This kept you ascribing to the hogods unstead oQert. & for Qert himself it kept him from remembering that his best friend was coming to kill him. Or if he remembered it‑‑usually in the form of SOME DISTURBING THWEAT, no more, no more‑‑he did not remember it in the form of two botics gaily trying the stors & ahuntin' onother down, but rather in the form of the stor itself. Well, I figure Qert began building hints & cautions into his stors. Qinz was not the only one driven mad by the game. So was Qert, it seems, if my theory be grant Galactic Clearance Encredence Density Ityupence Ents. Yes, he was getting tired of it, but like Qinz he couldn't stop it‑‑not by any means less desperate than means you can't even think about, like the thought I was tortured by my mom I can't think about (O but I can DREAMABOUT! I can dreamabout! I can dream about‑‑O yes!). Yea, druv mad by the game. & so he gan to put lil hints inside. Then I believe he began trying to undercut the illusive strucxure that, to return to my initial point initial point initial point initial point initial point, tied in with the very physical like structure of the stors, you see. He began violating quasiphysical rules. Oybe gan undercutting the structure o the stors‑‑& not the lusory content strecture, neithernoy, but the pure actual clayaey walls & backdrops & various fragrances of air they pump tintooum, there. Qert began to make these unstead ystors. Needless to say, they didn't feel right, & the reviewer gods‑‑at first seeing this eccentricity as the sign of the genius stretyching the fabric of his self or stuff orstelf‑‑began to pan him horribldy. Naughtmore deadly than to be deadpanned by a god. & Qert got panned & condemned indeed. "The words of the gods flew like bolts from the blew," & Qert wassu spending a lot of his intertwiome, when he might presumably be cooking up other & better ideas & structures forstors, ducking these deadly vorbs or vorx orvorz. But he had to trystop thit flicking little duel he & Qinz had going‑‑& I like to think because I do like to think he was doing it more for Qinz, his friend, than for his own inmightighty self. But I can't prove this shit. I can't or won't. My mind won't tell me if I can't or won't‑‑won't or can't, get the so=kaldik ik=mage iksee (excuse me). So he kept on amakin them inferior sorta stors. & they kept getting worse until so goeth my pheory the actors gan befusing twenter in & the stors got depopulate & the craftsmen gan not bedeigning to flolow his "designs" ("Ha!" they began to say, initially, at first & at the start * here), & even the rather sleazy backdrop‑dighnors stopped painting, so you can ilmagine how empty the stors did got, & ultimately did the gods did die o disgust (now THAT'S disgust), & thense came the Ddead Stor. So we have him running through his own, middle‑period Creamery Stor, or Coogie Stor‑‑or whichever of the 1001 nicknamen they (they) gave twim‑‑only half‑aware that something is wrong, aware that he must run, should try to move quickly, but he was still keeping himself pretty mixed‑up in this stage (he only hid here out of desperation, I think. This means I think I reject the Suicidal Theory ject‑re ject‑re jek!), so he's got his dumb ass in love with that sweet May Beam‑‑probly not even a girl, possibly even Qinz (no, he's dead at this point‑‑isn't he? Hello?) Hello or anyway not the creamsweet she sweems, so poor Qert thinks he is chayaysing after someone or thingone some orsum. ON SECOND THOUGHT, perhaps this is the safest thing for him. If anyone in here falls in love, one would think assassination would be hard. Hey‑‑that's right. I've got another theory I must hasten to down about a further, deeper rationale for this "slickly switness enfulsome gwoo" of Qert's Midperiod Stors. WEIR DVERSIONS OF MY SOUL Taken in by woman again! One, countem one woman in the entire yarn, & they both get tangled up inside. Qert dressed up silly, wearing many a paper doily, sailboat hats, crepey filigree, undulant antimacassars flung cross his shoulders. You could tell he was freshly in love, & doubtless between chapters locking up in ocktup‑n someone‑winx's box of jewelry. Qinz disguised his love, by which I mean him self, by means so deviously made‑up they cannot be vealed. Perfumid! The gem‑shaped creature moves closer & becomes a but more of a man. Now he has but a gemshaped, purple head. He come closer. He is wearing nonsymbolic gold‑plated chainplated goldchainpalatted golchangs which chang as they chang round a neck sproting, at last, a perfect‑faced head, with just one small flaw‑cum‑gem in the forfem of his nose. When he sniffs his nose it's OK. I mean, it's nothing transcendent, nothing comical, nothing grandiloquent, nothing bezeled or bejuled, nothing lacking, nothing plain, nothing straight, nothing married, nothing gained, nothing comingof, noting doing, nothing having, nothing halved, nothing egg, The Nothing Egg, The No‑Thing, The No Thing Egg, The No Thing Egg Egg, the nothing egg nothingegg, the Eggnothing eggbeing, the nothing...all right, maybe a touch grandiloquent‑‑but that other stuff naught. Also he wear the jewel that was his nose, having before that been his face, having had been his head, having had been having been his body having had been having been being a jewel in the jewel box of the woman that I loved, had‑been‑nothing‑egged. "This," he said, "is the Hall of Words, Mr. Qert, into wish you've been inducted, or shall I say, into witch you shall have been being inducted, by me, since now there then." "Skip the doubletalk," answers Qert‑‑showing I must say a bit of unusual pluck in these Chronicles Unpluck. "Skip the doubletalk. & the name's Bottic‑‑Bottic's the name, OK?" The sensitive iris in the jewel looks out. "OK?" "O, as you say, KK," he smiles. "I am Phluorib the Poet. In any event, by virtue of having been smitten, we..." "Phluorib‑‑Phluorib‑‑I've heard of you!" "No you haven't. Come." Qert repeat shimsmelf knowingly knowingly, as Phluorib the Poet stooks theym down the Hall of Phenomenal Words, which I have oft heard referred to as the Hall of Euphoric Words & have heard in fact this hall itself Hall Itself echo co with the sounds of Horric Turds, but that's just the self‑hating hall expressing its hatred of self‑hating hall expressing its hatred of self. Nothing hates soul more than word, I say. I have already clarified the relationship(s) of Hope & Light. I will now discuss Soul & Words. Phluorib, florid though he was, did mostly waves in here. This is where the madmun go. He turned to the right, waved, then turned to the left, flung one arm up in what was a violent wave (& the Hall said violet rave because poor thing purple columns couldn't help help help itself souldself hatesoul wordhate selfsoul worths) & then turned back right & flung his right arm that's right arm up so very very hard, one might even speculate violently hard, one might spec selfhatrred here here here here & here, but anyways, so very hard you could hear little liquid pops & pops & pops & pops and pops everywhere & see some of the clear bluish‑tinted or tinned or tinctured yummy dewdrops of the ichor from his joints flynk swetly off 2‑space (you see you see?). & the burnt‑umber column that he laughed at waved at him. Refluxions here * have depth, see. So there was a small disatorted Phluorib in there, orange‑hued as you may expect expect expect (my but aren't we repeating today? Ay?), waving back at the self‑destructing Phluor we were sliding down these snot‑slibbry (sorry, but it's true, damn it‑‑true! You want me to state the truth don't you‑‑preferably in italics, don't you? Or was this not your plan? Was that not your idea, the italics, I mean? Maybe the italics were my idea? Who's dreaming whose inhere, ay?) floors made much like the old skating rink my father back in the Whole Ah! Universe used to make by spritzing hosewater on the yard. Butcept the govvanged grass on the yard rundled encurdled, thrumbled imcurd, & so you had this ice which was as wavy as ice shot through the soundfield forceyyeelds of Burr‑‑bitter Burr!‑‑or like glass haste‑moltenized in the time‑compruxion of, say, the tanglelight or the Y‑en=jedd forcewheelds of Ceage or the Efferblapty Zorx i‑eelvs of Sweege or even the inimnitable repperessetion epperveseeateons of Ude of Ude of Ude. Only the ruddy little tiwstment of Phlur seemed a great deal happier than he. Love notes‑of‑waves lovenotes‑of waves...and all this while, showing us the words he was so proud of & the ik=mage files (at least I, speaking as Qert, thing of them as ~) he kept them in, festring with wild colors, stalactite columns, rumber‑wub glazemolt zurphaxsez & and self‑lootheries, he was moving at a turfurrific clip, as if either too excited to swim or possibly too enopained to dim. He threw up another arm & it (the ~) fell off‑‑or should I rather say flung qup, into the air, evidently very poorly conjoined to the connective tissues of his "body," if "body" be relevant in this splace, unless his flung was an unsamely violet one. But in any event, the arm, its various joints working even as it rose into the air, was fixated by the eyebeams of many a column of po‑phlorescent words, yes it was, which, despite the face that their syructure as I'm scribing it here was more that of a big spelunkif structure here than that of what you could safely call an "observer" or a "being" or "an entity" "or a watcher of words," watched in awe, their "heads" (if I may ~) moving like the heads at a tennis match, only up as the armjoint rose, down as the armjoint fell. I have repressed what happens when the armhunk hit. The information repressed. I remember faces in the glass distortions, I remember or thinkre‑member a momemberteary lossts of that hate feeling, as if the limb lopped off were a limbwelloptoff, & now I remember the ache of thinking I was going to have to remember, for the rest of the novel, to keep lopping that arm off whenever I forgot or repressed or lost control & went wildly into my hot hot sparky hot self‑gatreb mobe & accidentally oops put‑an‑arm‑on‑there, you know, & how this gave me a headache, like all the weird dversions of my soul hated in the image of the wordstalac ti yites... STORED STORS Once Qert‑‑love‑pommes zinand rougued russet with chudder‑‑'sgone, Phluorib stretch himself. We've all done that. I think we can understand his motivation at this point. But his spangled body shapesout like a screciching starfish or the hand of Alien. Moreoer, he stretche all directions, & does it in muchover moreso than you or, say, I. & his sighs, I have to admit (my fault, really), fall heavily to the Core of the Guilty Stor. For what Phluorib next does (with Qinz invisible panting‑I‑presume impantling), in a series of minute motions backed by the small small fragments of a sigh (see FRIGMENCE OF A SIGH), not to mention the tears so stored sublimely sough with sighs, consist of an act so criminal, revealing the seemingly harmless old neon poet‑figure, this flash‑clank interstoral being as such a turpitudinous antigod sorta fella, such a nefarious ol pimp anaesthetique, such a dyed‑in‑the‑wull enmedy of all that is good & right & sacred & wood & write & the fals integuments of eyes, that we can at this nexus safely, & as I think, not without no undue rationalization or ratiocination as the case may beam, dismiss his motives as authentically unfathomabobble, so ver ybad be they. Now I trust now. He (Phluorib) slips (Phluorib!) a clear (Phluori!) disklike disk like disk likedisk into his stor (Phluor!) machine‑ine‑ine & begins grunting (Phluo!): "Phlu! Phl! Ph!" These are illegal (P?), countercontractual, counteractuatividive store stors, yes‑‑nasty & pornographic, & doubtless featuring as their limp & limber‑limbed limbic heroine, suckin‑anda‑fuckinup astorm, none other than that May Beam‑‑yes, this May Beam, this "cartoonist" (May Beam!) in the midst of houghondpough donglicking slithery acts of lucking & glupping & gods know whatnaught waow. Phluorib (!) ha-haha-hahahahas obviously viewed these dozens of suss hundreds of sinful times, over a cascade‑‑or more properly, a series of rapids‑‑of our hurs‑‑& possibly thousands‑‑judging from the creamswook, the fastidious hubba moistnersch inirsch right‑aye, the clarity in the FifthEye, the slight discolor ation of the sotherultry‑I, of babes emergeant, the auras, ectos, aureoles, ignutes fatuui, phanplasms o light, sighshapes, shysapes, brok en the ars, orgasm!c h!pes, nutwhought}. Phluorib is an addict. Sometimes he spends days down in his crystalline vaults‑‑which are not actual crystal in any case but lousy cheap Vengerbleeve©‑‑moving his lips round curiously & shuffling, hand to his crotch, tracers of images that have escaped from the highly toxic, definitely illegal "cluster‑stors" he zhooked into. You see those eyes like one of those curv edqorridors of green that they shoot you particles down in the lusters of dream. Yea. Mm‑hmm. O yea! Someone since nonexistent once described Phluorib's eyes as "fate eyes," & I find the phrase inversely but haply apt. It express‑‑ohowlshillIshay?‑‑the plethoric fulsomeness of the sorts of, um, sexual acts festured in these yeasty sexual, gross, wholly‑of‑redeeming‑value‑void, ghastlily fornicating pornostors from the illicit secret stor‑edstores of his little quasicrystalline veering stacks ahore. May Beam does things in these stors you cannot do anywhere outside a cartoon. You need a lot of room, special penises, lots of fragrant liquids, some from the body, some from the fridge better left unimagin ‑‑ed. & as I say I say & as, many of these images‑‑the smaller, lighter ones, forsooth...the ones more pastel in uh coloration, the less strange, inwardly symbolical wums the images, in short, that recur even in the strangest direst clusterstors, which form words in a language not even god zunderstand, & so & so & so & so these unwed images, lonely lil guybs n galgs as they escape like radiation through the special inebriate radiation‑pores porespores asnore of the captured kongtankerouf ftorf & gather pollenround the smelly fliggero Phluorib with his paisley wafts‑o‑deur & flit about in brieftimeschisms in & out of the frangible aire in an doubt, I say, like so many glustreflies, like so many petals loomed from their petaloose overarth, like so many (so many!) small springes in gasses of your thickly spimmining whorles, like oft too many face‑vox eztupht in the schitzoid's poise, like neologysmic zies, like fooptrinkts yas from the savarage labo Qert, like one of Qinz's beautiful, fanciful bullets thank Gob from the stuggy ol gun he keeps hauling in to stor within stor within stor within stor within stor uh‑huh, if the truth be gnome‑‑to kill his ancient friend just to watch the luxt, in form of anything that pops from out the bubble of the zasperacaghing man, or woe mam, like anything that strikes like any flash slipped out of being or anybeing. 'ARD The adolescent cadences of some savage festival play in the background. Phluor, a savagery‑pornagravy fleak, have a collection of some several bakers's‑burnt's‑dozens' of Savage Gods buried in iconopalum, their flame‑hatered to get out acting as some sort of eternal stimulant to the veneeriable, seedy protobot whatairy‑was, just as the noises of the synthetic festival, that's the noises of the syn thet ic fest er ing fetsival, served to illuminate certain otherwise wise‑lostwhys portions ise of his battered, broken edbrain somewhat, I'd say, the brains of the battered infant as they splatter aughnought, glad & breemy, thinking the last othought that This is the end at last. Or should I say at first? Yes: "At first," Phluorib said, taking what amounts to Another Savage Spark that was in my voice when I voic ed that edthat dhat ha . Phluorib pointses to his face, & the expressiom om his face somehow draw you upward, to his forehead, which has so often before before growin translucent, in the which you can see gold images inside. It's hard to make these images out, tertially because there is too much bright, perfectly‑zizzy gold enlight inem, so it'zard to see where one symbol lefts soff & anyunthor bygimbs. 'Shard. 'Ard. "Come on out, Qinz." Dressed like a woman in her closet, out come Qinz, afrusch wiff‑nouveau couloures. Phluorib has problems as well as gifts. He has obsessios as well as Grade Zero Spexuos. Has pains as well as welters in the brink at it twirr offtime. Yea. He has. He's been trying to get this goddam image across to the everdense Qinz for some interstorhurs of intratime unnow, & Qinz just keeps giggling nervously & washing in his hair the air & clitching up his bonery kneeze in those foolish breeches that he wears inhere, & rocking back & froth & occasionally pointing & noaciunily painting & in general reducing this act of potential interdimensional communication to the mundane object neutral allseen scene of the child Zero regaled by his elderfuls. Phluorib not like that. Phluorib not want be viewed as zelder. Personally, in all my travels & amongst all of my dreams‑‑burnst like batreds o trash I the howling interalley seens‑‑I vneverseen aone witha lumopulous forehead who relished‑‑I'll say it: "Relisht" I say‑‑being thought of as old. Consult your own experience you will agree. Agreed, then. Phluorib's splan's to enform this dense little botic bout May Beam & Love, bout the effermenny levels of same, & most notably the polyspatial images of sames within the ik=mages of those there‑familiant stors that have been deserted by the sames. Just think. By the elder sames, I mame. Phluor's trying to goad Qinz into an awareness whereby he can destroy sameqert sutterly. "Why's that?" plonder Qinz, pronounced kwaaannnzzz, aplonderin hedress musinly, & the old man (scuzeme‑‑the noneld aman) glisters in gleed. He's got the message at last. Big celebration, followe by cold rendition, thus: "I just hate him, OK‑OK?" says Phluorigo in various verts, nodding twice & smiling alsolu, not wanting especially to be pumped or briefed by a stunned stalwaort ort of a botic‑ikik. "He owe me money," he muter, closing the light from his head into the sun. There. There. Small dark teacups of tea resplace everthang in the thin thang seem sough‑faghr of the sceghne‑sough‑faghr. "Now go to the lovestor & change it to a murdstor. You can do that, can't you Qinz?" The plot thwickens anface! "OKOK," rechechoeoes Qinz‑‑love‑pommes zinand & rougued russet with chudder. PLANET, QUA PLANET or THE UTHOR CAN'T CRY FOUL When he ope ins the door to her room he is in the moon. She's there soft‑someplace (sofplais‑sum!), too beautiful to be seen. Emotions well up on the Personal Face. That's Qert, I think‑‑just let these clouds cut the eye‑bi...yas...yas...Qert Qua Planet, Qert Cum Moon. Seas berupt‑‑a yucky greentwinge rayzout starwrize on the purple glostening. "God, he looks terrible God," gasps Qinz to God, but God is not Manifesting Himself in any Particular Form at this moment, merely as a shadow, O merely as a shadow, like a figure of ink your worst cartoonist should know (you know: the first cartoonist to scripple in your pain, at superspeed, there & there & there), ashushin' & ahushin' excitable excitable Qinz, sh! shh!! Qert's trying to turn them away with emotion. He's as big as a planet in this stor, which use some heretofore proscribed ate‑of‑the‑start spacillusory‑stretching moodalities, the so‑called "Tom Thrum Moodalities," engineered by engineers who had been enspeered, as engineers inspired by Qert's own Engineer Petri Block stor, in which the heat of mechanical inspiration's xacerbated unto thwicex aggrezations by inspulling timewoolly rupes & a temperature, O, I'd say somewhere in the thousands range about, & by the nestling presence of other engineers manifestly much more nerdy than oneself, an illusion of course imposed pong geach erngineer inthere, so that each one flips into Crazed Engineer Competitious Mobe & begins inventing violently. Too fast for emotions, that, reflexxed Qinz who has Qinz who has been taking advantage of his proxomy wit God, or at least Phluorib, to read the very text of which he is an inhabitant. & the Uthor can't cry foul. Watch‑‑I'll try: " !" You see? It has to be inked in in the form of a fallow symbol or a tallow shambal, ensketched in piggy‑plump pink, & the cartoonist woon't doonit because May here fears God may hear more may than she beam fears the loss of Qert's love or (loss of) I. & as I think I said & know I wrote by checking back, cleverly, we see Qert's mocked up as a great big ball here, & the stor have the presences of space, so that "ball" is a globutary deniuzen of your very inhalation firmamental swaze, toshay. Hey‑‑norill it do any good for Blue Qinz who's blue inhere to complain, "I thought we couldn't have the illusion of space," because he definitely has the illusion (of space) & God standing next to him, both floating in elliptical‑equatorial‑orbital range II‑III of this planet (which Qinz note with a sneer does not have sun‑‑only lots of cart**n l!ght; he can tell Qert used May in this one a lot a lot in one) which is the big purple face of Qert, an unnatural monstorsity illuzed to seem quite natural a monstrosity here. "It's the biggest planet I've ever seen," gasp God, which irritate. Well, wouldn't it irritate you to have God‑‑now get this: to have GOD CONSTANTLY MAKING DECLARATIONS CLEARLY IMPORTING HIS CLEAR & TRANSIENT LIMITATIONS‑‑huh? Wouldn't that irispate & irrigate the whell of a hale out of you? You bet your booties twould! Well, Qert is big. He's the only planet in what looks & feels‑‑& would measure out on instruments, if they had them handy instruments id they had them handiong instruments if they but had them here instruments here handy‑here, for because of course any "instruments: in the false "space" of a stor would be as mixed up illusory as they‑‑as your eyes‑in‑a‑stor, of corse, or your instor‑ears daccore, oror yor storic brain abor, you‑see‑you‑sor‑‑like a galactic‑sized space, empty of everything. But this one big face, beyond‑worgs hideous, & with what is evidently a most cloody & turbulent and‑‑get this‑‑purple atmosphere (at least we see nunothing for a time but the purple of time in the atmosphare), keep schoking & schorming with emotions. It's in a massive pout, its "cheeks" swolling out as if there were megavulcan ossities in there, on either side of the horthern nemisphere as the frow cries, & its "lips" stretching for what must seem to be thousands & thousands of miles around the Sub‑Equatorial Trough that this cloudy buff made uph, just to be this big emotional world ("You've gotta lov him for that," says Qinz with enough love to blow out the shadow of God at his cugh like a fingerclught, whereby doth Qinz beam & gleam in ininsininuated love. Clearly he's enwrupped; qeerly inhe trupht; serely, he's going to have to land on this world, & his mind stu stux, notthinking Now how are you gonna shoot THAT???)‑‑possibly some involution ocean under sheemy druphs of clough producing that yfect. You can generally bet it's been well‑researched‑‑althought not by Qert of course. Qinz's vapowring in toward his big defeat. He doesn't care. Qert may have phantazed pazt his own intentong zere; he mave transqunead his own engenuious here, for as a planet he simply froths with emotion, & the translation of these emotions into this planetary face equapes to the sheer hypnotic underpunge of Qinz‑‑the mesmeric layer built into every botic by legality necessiyi, & yet well protected...up to thus‑‑so he's caught up in the very waves of friendship he's enticed to kill entrak tooqilpt. & so. You think too that such a planet, qua planet, must be terribly stormy enturbulent below. So Qinz is really gonna lose this show. Nor can God Who Is The Floating Shadow God Of seen once above ever help. Now can the Uthor cry fol. LEG ALL YE or QERTOID QERT, HEAVENLY QERT Qinz's face change shapes, & Qert almost out of orbit goes. "Be right back," Qinz says hastily (Is this legal? wonder Planetary Qert, Cosmic Qert, Qertoid Qert, & Heavenly Qert), & he pulls his face back from the stortissu it is presstin too. Turns out that's how you "enter" a stor‑‑you press your mug against this soft oval oval oid of tissutissu oid, which give way like slowdown water & forms itself, not to the face, but to the bustles beadabib on that face on the skin concentric swelves of that which has gone round you. Then you see as in a stor. That's how it's done, all of a sudden. Hmp. But Qinz is too much in a hurry to question his method of waking up from the stor (this is tricky)‑‑too self‑centered, if blunt begnowme, for the self‑questioning of the waking up from this dream of stor. "Sure you're not just playing into his stor, Mr. Qinz?" weask. He waves us soff. "No time," he cries. May's in her cell & all is sapy & wol. Oyeh. This is the small, cellulose, mintyscensced version of the cartoonist's giant studio in which she starves herself in This Version of the Dream‑‑& she in't this strange being awarin them skins as she was for Qert, but a plain, earthy, doubtless anemic little slip of a young gal, but smarter nor a whip, Nora Whip, who is right now sitting languid on her spool as Qinz graps her hand & drafts her for the stor. He can do that: Leg All Ye. "Let's go!" he says, & she giggles much more rapidly than thought‑potsible. I mean, it cometh ver fast & it blip out instantly, an unveritabule microguig. Yea. She flies weightless through the big tissue, whish tizzyou having evidently followed Qip, & have obligingly omny (or night marish ly?) grown big enough this times to leap into, wish they does, she wrapt stoler in his arm... Keep in mind, if I may interpose what you must for a mose, that Nora Whip, or Nor Athe Whip in what‑ev‑her guise, is always anxious to proove to her self if naught the gaughgs that she dares anything. It's just that a cartoonist, in whatsomevor giguise, have precious few opportunities to cast herself, I mean, to depictureself, orather, to be brave OK. So she goes. Therefroe Qert, who is functioning as a helpless big ol moon, gets to observe this lovey‑dovey matchless purple seen (straight out of some of Phluorib's phials? Know what I mean? Know what I mean?), with Qinz successfully wooing her in time at least as focused as that laugh, & breathing fast, & emoluments & vapours heady‑di‑hi, a‑and expensive eyes & Qinz (This is abit muxt, whumadoresqert?) playing fabulous lovestumes on a glassy braceless violimn, & the woman asigh & present her hand, & the music manic multiphuolde fuldemuptimfode, & the kiss, itself a major motion pic, against the beams of the moon‑‑& Qert can't help but notice in his tormeant how he forgot to put eyelids in his universe‑‑which is the punchline. "FORGOT TO PUT EYES IN THIS UNIVERSE! A‑HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA‑HAAAAAA!" Spreads like magnesium till everyone's aflare‑‑Imaflare, youraflare, hezaflare, sheezofaire, eckcepturah's‑‑this the form that the killing took in the planetary storoQer. (In his view, on replay obsessively replyd, we see, O we see wesee, she was that bare grainy bonething to he, & somehow that made it worse for him, on account of the risch‑drepe Romanticism of the sceme, I guess. I don't guess.) Here the shot of Qert going nova as he lose the stor: SPAXIALMAZZIK TEARS Qinz notice Qert's in tears, & for some reason this irritates the living shit right out of him. He pulls his head right out of the drawerful of underwear he's been rummaging. A small pair of panties hangs from his nose. He SHNEE!! & it flies into Qert's coolly outstretched palm. (Why coolly? That's what I want to know. I mean, we have gone this far‑‑this far in‑‑& suddenly he is in cool tears. What's this business with the cool cool tears? What's this cooltear zrub? What's this bip?) Qert does wipe his eyes. He really does. I have image on't: it is the One True Thing in this story, that hecry doeshe wipe himeyes. Agreed, then. "Well, don't get so tragic," is that which is what Qinz says, & makes as if to roll its head away‑‑you know, terminate its gaze, scan the tessellated tiles of its attention elsewhere, flow a few solid‑streams of sineflo in another direction, deradiate the tearaeting face of its friend, whom it was hating now with the hate you feel only for the dearest friend you have ever had in all existence when the pain existence cut through & you hate with all the leftover will you thought you'd ditched but had but had stored in stored in side. But that is only metaphor, & that which is what Qinz says says: "Metaphor, Metaphor‑‑All is Metaphor!" By wish I mean tomb‑ply that Qinz cannot stop looking at that face, can't stop staring into these tears, which have a special magic or a spatial matic or a spagial manic or a spaxialmazzik known to tears that have so to say been wrenched from their universe, not precisely tears (precisely tears? don't make me shout!) precisely tears so much for if I may emphasize for the universe lost or any of the beauties therein‑‑for these are cause for joyous love, not tears‑‑but tears more precisely tears squnitnig themoot for absolute perfect lack of any cause. Vacuum‑cause, & this would make anyone cry‑‑precisely as you wish, & as beautiful. That seem to be what's got Qinz so mad, if I may probe at the psychologic depphs of this mos' profound o' characters. He hates falling in love with his friend's dead tears (did I mention they were dead tears? My God, I forgot, didn't I? I forgot to mention these were ddead‑ddead tears that Qert was crying, & still is, what with the emolative blation of time. Like I forgot to tell you, & it's too late to revise! I forgot! I forgot! I forgot!) which now have the absurd & hideous beauty of creation stripped o cause, which is esotearic as hell, but "it's the beauty of the deadness that will drive your killer mad." Go ahead, pause. Go on, let's pause. Go right ahead & watch him go mad right now. Just close your eyes... See? He went completely mad. & to the now‑mad Qinz, each tear seemed as if it were a world‑‑& not one of your greasy little stors, neither, but real & actual created places, univerts, not little tricks like that one with the cops flowering like villi everywhere or traps like the Dead Stor or mere curiosities of profound emotional dephts, such as your Qert's early works‑‑but universes with their own infinite intricacies of causation, randomity, structure, fine wisps of sense‑‑the entire blit. He was so mad they had to stretch him out, but it was a worry, as they had no places left to put him. "Let's like give him to the gods," someone suggested & was immediately strucken dimb. Everyone sat in the firestorms of stors & storms of storsand enwatched the flicering tears. They all sighed, smiled‑‑not driven like Qinz as mad‑‑but were silent, stunned, hypnotized. & Qert kept on crying for an endless loop of time into time into time. That's our stor for thevening, kids. Now sleep so daddy kill you in the trauma of a dream that blear tween universes. Then you'll see. THE HEART OF TWEERS In which that which Qinz says relates its dreams. "Qert was wearing a big white QINZ big white T‑shirt with extra armholes for his oxtra urmhules, such that the T‑shirt was much more like a skeletal umbralla than a T‑‑a skembrirt, forsooth‑‑& it had the famous idealized version of the face of Qinz As Heroin‑‑qeroinz forzooph‑‑done by La Artiste, which is the new nom the erstwhile "cartoonisht" hidnunder, Maybeam taking on some of the finest airs available in this {new corporate univerts} starring Qinz made possible by Qert & brought to you by the good folks at GOD., INC., & enjoyed by everyone. Relished & savored by everyone. Heated to a radiant sheen & ARE by EVERYONE. "Qert's old eyes would just about fill with tears, & I really mean a botic sighs can fill with veritable tears, true & blushful tears, friendship tears too bashful for propinquity, tube‑tears to be cwied outswide the swector of the zwone, savor‑tears shed from the glowfromp of the tube of the screen he wishes Qinzes exploight‑sonn, coagulant gleamy bushfel‑tears torngout of the grandiose Heart of Tweers, sweeping scuretiers not of the Sal Variety Not Of The SALT Variety NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT UN for he was really feeling really the real love really for real Qinz really he really held real in really all areallylong all those enginyears in the enginyears in the stors and the little enginyears INSIDE the little stors, & sometimes yes the littler microenginyears inside the stors inside the stors & also the inside doubt enginyears hanging like dewdrops across the anguished brow of the insighd‑oubt stors, known as flupscrots, or tuoedisnisrots, none of which Qert ever ever made. He said they are only lost records lacuniaic regist.ring th.s: nobody cares what Qert thought anymore. No body knows. It is not in Mind, understand? OK? We are in deep deep apathy here‑‑& that's apathy twice‑deep dear apathy deepdeep totwice, uK? Dear Apathy {relates that which Qinz says in Qinz's written dream}, Qert's eyes keep flowing with tears. I am wondring if we could get some sort of science‑fictional Automop™ in here, unlets you would prefer a fantasy version fantasy vergion fantasy vergium. Of course those seldom work so well. But anyway, he's frankly mad about Qinz, seeing Qinz idealized in all these extraordinations of His Former Stors‑‑it's really like doing a bunber nobim, & I fear not for his sanity but health...I mean, for his sanity I fear, his intactness, or something. Am I the only one who thinks we might need him again? I digress but. I cannot help it‑‑I love that bot too much. & he loveth Qinz too much, & poor Qinz is Qinz is so caught up, I don't think poor Qinz had any emotions that can keep up with his velocity, you know, so I think Qinz is running through eternities being recorded & broadcast to these {guggy little gods} & piling up an {enormous cosmic debt} of Emotionality. Some day he's agon na flail‑‑someday despite the compute‑modalities, the technogalidies, the corporate help from All Fronts‑‑known as allfronks, vorzoorth‑‑he's agonna fail, fall down, miss a beat, or otherwise slow himself enough that just one tendril of that {amoebic monster Emodin} flowing like something giddy between a liquid & a gash behind & afterim will reach out & just get the {slightest molecular purchase} on his ankle, just come into tangency with the outer rim of his energy aura, despite all‑everything and then your Mr. Qinz will be gone, Mister God the Uthor Gaug, Mister Qeater, Mister Uberqert von Uberqanz, Mister Smort, Mister Goodogod, Mister Smuff. He'll be up in something much less blinding than smoke...I mean something mush mere blining than swoke...I mean he will be eaten by his motions as his emotions are eaten here, by such as Qert only lower, Mister Tweer, & you'll be in a Wilterness of Stors Witout Kno Doors...no heroes..do you un der stand? You'll need your goddam bot icgain. So I am worried here. This letter here in the mibst of this sector of the novel here expreff my sfeorzOK? S'Qert blubbering up a storm even as I speak‑‑& even his blubberforums have that Qert Magikality that makes others in his midst worp to the slaga giv his theers. His skembrirt's getting all fanaticosh. He's villing the TV room with warsch, don't you gedit? S'griepf, utter griepf, for his "friend." Seem you forget this "friend" save him through seven torturously countem faultseaven, zuh? Huh? Hnh? Enh? ENH? You forget. I remain writoff in dreams, Your That Which Qinz's Says Relate in Dream CLOUDS THAT EAT THE HEAD Next morning, in the shim of that which dream, smiling with the wisdom that she know he is in love, "Now, drink your milk, Qert," his mother said, & little Qert was fairly burning with suspiciousness. No, it was hate. He noted that the milk was burling with rust & that there were {deep green clouds} floundring round her head. He noticed that she Had No Face, that she was turned away from him because that's the way his mother was Always Meant to Be, & his little lip (aww!) curled up in perfect synchornicity with the burling of the rust color in the milk expressing the young man's contempt for the gods who thought he would be so fooled‑‑even if they made him a child, just a child‑‑by a mother with no face. Face? Hell, she barely had a head. She was always faced away, as I said, & there were often as not at least in this short‑looping short‑loopining scenene those angry green clouds eating at her head, like the greenwing edin sect, the Tapnib of Jeek, so small & so foully congregative that they form these green clouds. Clouds that eat the head. Clouds that eat you dead. This cloud was eating his mother's suicilver head, which looked like some half‑completed spaceball. Indeed, if one imagined this as occurring on a much larger scale‑‑which is the sort of thing that {freshly tortured kids} drinking poisoned Milk of Somnesia dream fuckin readily‑‑such that his "mother"'s "head" were some orbiting supersatellite half the size of a halfsize standard moon (imagine that: * ), then you could see the guywires strung out a widthless glint in the supersun, further toward the right side of her head, or let's say the planetary side o' her Orbiting Head. "The planetary side o her Orbiting Head." Thank you‑‑we see some of the main girders, a thicker glisten in the borealik sky, & further "in" still the imperfect tessellation of silver squares, the actual material by which someone thought to make this satellite we've found in this {heretofore unexplored system} setting off the novel about how Qert comes to question the existence of his mother hence Civilization Falls & the station is left orbiting the autoband madly playing its big bow‑curlicues & tuba‑fooneroos & spangles gilt across the silver of the old dead, the old dead head, & the small inhabitants leave & love dies & the milk curdles grey as that {constantly hissing rain} that constantly hshsing RAIN back on Jeek‑‑the very selfsame self‑reflexive (thoughtful (thoughtful) rain) rain thatthat feeds that green cloud Hatred for your mom, the Tapnib mysteriously small, lit‑winged, communal, & bugs is all, without mothers of their own awww. But on the other hand, if he drank this milk he might get to go out & play, assuming the concept OUT has any "play" any "'more.'" Qert drinks the milk & gets out one {truly horrific "Mother"} eriz throat bloat Udderly Out & he dies & he dies & he dies in the repetitious way designed by the repetitious i.e. sensual e.g. sadistic gods viz. gods cf. gods NB. Afterward the mother turns‑‑twirling on her one heel (my God, the woman has only got one heel! Rupert, this is grotesque!)‑‑like a little princess, her small voice albeit lost all‑be‑it in the cloud, & chirrupts, "Ta‑da!," so silly & proud of herself. "Aw Ma!" Qert would no doubt say had his mother not killed him. TimeCube That box is OK. That is not one of the many dangerous boxes that infes this & all other universes. That boix means time pass. To be more accurate, TIMELUNGE UNTO OVERDRIVE! To be exceedingly acrate, time ZOOM, time WARP, time spim dizzily by. Time rips its head off in haste. Time in time. Time wastes. This is what time is to a kid, see. & we really need some lights in here, in this pre‑storic cave. There is nothing but the dust left by the unnamable things that eat color, eat love, eat lust. Very fine stuff. I know I like it: I happen too‑due. Underneath the which is a face. All grey. Plated. Flat. Falat. But the ik=mage comparator sees it right away & flashes us the answer incandense‑the‑cave: "Yea, it's Qinz, all right. Though you can barely raze him beneath the woman's make‑up. One of his best jobs, I'm told." "Sir?" sir "Son?" son "Beg pardon, Sir?" beparsir "Never mind. You want to raze the corpse, right? You want to whip out that razorblade you've been carrying this whole trip & cut this Qinz up a bit? Huh? Huh!? You you you youngsters are all alike, unless not, in relation to your ah sympathies for Qert. I don't think he..." "Nossir." "Beg pardon, kid?" "I was just awonderin', Sussir..." "Yes. Out with it." "Just who are we, uhSir?" "Huh? What? Here we are in the face of the biggest duskovered face in this intire expedition, & this whippet's asking dipshit fragas? Hu‑hu‑HOO!" "But who are we‑‑in relation to the story, I mean?" "'In relation to the story' the little cunt says! Heh heh heh! Nice try, Qert." BZAP! go the gun & Qinz dust stoft his big face & puts it on. It's way too big. It looks silly. He spin zonhis heel andre zerts the stor. GOOFBALL OBLIVIOUSNESS At home, as always, Mom is gone. The authorities stand round in perfect blue. They have many wrinkles in their head‑‑this detail someone worked on very hard‑‑but their clothes lack judgment; I mean, their clothes wrap lack ingwrinkles see; their Authority Uniform resemble ik=mage projections of special {Ik=mage Protection Clothes}. But as I said, the face was the face of a very old man. Little Qinz & Qert‑charmingly smutty, exchange a glance. "You boys have been screwing around too much, amongst the stors," the old man said with his arcane diction, doubtless meant to seem wise yet friendly (to these two, so cooked out of friendliness or any conceived degree of the concept feel of friendliness!), & he had his lower jaw in full thrust & his dark eyes in action, & were Qert & Qinz not Qert & Qinz not totally insane by now they wouldha' respon dead‑properly with full cringe, three‑quarter cower, wince one, & flinch to. But they did not flinch to. Totally unconscious & surrounded by streams of steam, they kept giggling in their silver suits & pushing one another. They weren't paying a bit of attention. "You two fools have been deceived too much," the old man said. It was his job, in this scene, to disapprove of fantasy. Always you will find, in any fantasy, there are those implanted as a joke I guess i'the fantasy who‑is function‑is to disapprove of the fantasy & to punish th' essence o' th' fantasy & to make it disappear. This is a part of the structure of fantasy. I can't help that, anymore than can the dying green hurricane. You like my image? My image like you. Anyway, he didn't seem to be upset, xactly, & he kept on talking, as if either the two botics heard him or else someone was watching on TV. Someone was walking on TV. I don't know who they were, but they had very large faces, balwoombic, & were a very dark degree of bluish green, & they leaned in close to their little TVs‑‑which didn't have much depth‑‑& they seemed to be eating these things like images that spewed out from the V. They were leaning toward the screens like excited geeks & munching, bobbing their bodies furiously, & what they had of expressions indicated they were quite rapt. But Qinz & Qert had attained to a new degree of something. It wasn't exactly freedom‑‑they were subject to punishments & duties, after all‑‑but it was a sort of goofball obliviousness that came about apparently from all this hunting down & murdering in the stors. The old man checks over the record. Maybe he's hiding his time, hoping the two clowns will stop to clown or running gout off clowin. He look dismal 'bout the record. His face turns into a misty swamp, ill‑lit in the fog of racial stars. He shakes the swamp off the feature of his head & frownds. Then he sees something that amuse zezee. He pause minching on his big sendwhinch in which we see, like the fluorms of an un‑wanted fantasy, all those little balwoomfaced bluegreen darkleand Oriental V‑twatchers kicking & being munched and his face be Dramaticallys Litsup by a dramatic gold sun from the storic stock of or heavenly stockoff Dramatic Golden Zuns, a sun beams right up from the fog clearing from the swamp in the letters on the page of the record of their deeds. & we see we see we sudduddenlyly seyee just why our two friends-o-been so idiotically & suspiciously carefree. The record the old man's gooning at‑‑placed with a respect bordering on the gooey, bound in a skin the sensuoushnush of whusch borders on the jeangener‑creamery, into his hands by Polite Little Qert at beginning of the meeting back in the memorywrap before this time begans‑‑that there book was like a trap conceiv edbyQert & implant edbyQinz, & so they have outfoxed the Master once for all. They have. You can sense it, first in delicacy‑‑quivers of almost febrile euphoria in his eyes, then spreading in perceptible gold‑electric forms across his eyebrows & down in animation major lines of his cheeks, lightening cheeks, then little gold dots acrox the tops of his whiskers hoar, then a fantastic metal filigree of gold brass gold silver brass gold gold gold all over his whole head, spreading quickly dowon the nerve tubules of his body, then expanding beyond the horizon of his body & into the energy fields, not so much of his biologic body as of the perceptor fields netting round his body in order to put him on the self‑deviec‑V we saw T‑ceived inself insan whichly & then blowing out not just the vision but the entire concept of the room in blazions & baziums of goodol gold imlight. & as the room goes so go zQert zQand zQinz inz nz. They fall down the Normal Hollow Tunnels that howels you back to consciousness when the Uthor of Oll Bying don know where else to go, what else create, who to me, how to die, oror why why why. "Pretty spextakular, Qeret," giggled Sqinz as they roll through the empty space. Qert agree, but he too fraid of his friend to gree. He needs this bot bot there this paina sociate with such a FANTASTIC FRIEND & the pain make him, Qert, spim silently, with but one residual giggole ertoo, & not return the compliment in any way to his murd'rouf friend, who really for Qert represent a power much beyond any of th'lusions he have blazed zaway sos to empfool the foolery. Nope, Qert's a but crippled till they land on the black empty grasses of the grasses of the Eden. THE GODS GAVE OUT or MERE QERT MEMORABILIA The Sun of Eden smiles, et cetera, only this time it's a blank‑‑a smile, as it were, with no lips behind it. We are in some stor, I reckon, but there is no face pressed against that starry nigh, no guns in the blues of bullets that are fired like wind. Qert's lost, or else he doubled back... Many concerned friends‑‑other botics, such as Quu, Quh, myself, Quib, Quop, & (in a pinch) Qedapinch‑‑looked to help him out. Petitions were signed & (this in error:) stuck in the Suggestion Bot there to be lilted down, waftstyle, all in a styllic leaf, leaf, leaf... Each of us tried to find him, but as you know difficult systems of image‑fitting were required to focus Qert's phile. No surprise there, as it had been designed by the gods to incorporate their entire goodlooness. Actually, each & every explorer of the file disappeared, & in this I include my scholarself, leading us to believe that inside lay multicolored mountains of vast design‑‑mountains thick as dripping paint, palette‑mountains wide as a discus of stars hurlt throughout the true intergalxis, milking its entergy with a wide‑velocity spim too vast to measure. No one knozes because as I say the initial intrepids disappeared‑‑lost in that vastness beyond the vastness of any file, no doubt‑‑& no one's left to do it. The gods gave out. No one left to do it. No one home. No one here. We learned to explore only the soft, small outer regions. We found homely garbarafage & junk there‑‑mere Qert memorabilia & of absolutely no significance to anyone other than one who loves Qert more than anything. Of course that's a danger, as you've learned we learned‑‑a danger in relation to the makers of stors, such that one falls in love with the image of the stor one‑zin. & Qert's stors were‑‑well...special stors. So despite its insignificance (I chuckle just to thing gabout!), I kept poking & probing around this these steaming sweaming ga‑DUMP, spoking my fine blue foot‑inhere, my fine blue foot in there, lifting my flattened deviceries shiny as life‑kitchen juicers strainged their guskets up to gangrenes of steam & veritable putrescences o rime (qel steamin rime!) to keep the double halves of the double halves of the ik=mage the fiendish gods implanted into Qert ere his memory died. Chuck‑chuck‑chuck‑chuck‑chuckle! (Sorry‑‑just thing ginga about.) Me & my fine blue too. Twas created by the "cartoonist" Beam, May of Qert's memory‑in‑reality no cartoonist at all but a fine bioliogest, a mighty fine bioliogest, who sketched this up in her super‑ink, which is swink that gives you biodimensionality to a T wink‑swew, chuckle‑chuck, & gave ut entoome to "wear" or serve as my toe on my fine blue life‑design‑ed foot for tosplore Qert's galaxy. That's what we called it‑‑Qert's Galaxy. O, we were falling in love faster than light you know it, & we had that precipitous breathleshnush of heart O hort A heart U where you can observe yourself falling, faster than light, but observing the cool bepurpled limes of the light as she s t r e t c h h e r s e l f into one vast manic vertical cavity down which what's left of the body of your heart zips zpiz like the momentary eremorn pang of a promise lost, not in memory, but in complications, complications that you watch & even laugh at with a pang as you watch. Or "observe." In one pile of old rubbish I found the original compact that Qert & Qinz id signed. Theid sign dit, quite cute & either an anachronism or an indication‑‑the first so far‑‑that the story of Qert & Qinz & their war of stors goes back went back gong bok much fiercely harder than the very toof o time, ip I moight wax into the Metaflowr of Qime which give its title to the searching spatial work known as The Metaflowr of Qime which has nothing to do with cwime nothing to do with rime nothing to do with chime chime chime chucklechuckle ja. I was going to say, before I was so ridly entewoopdad, that they'd designed it in the ancient classical fashion of wholegroms of their whole heads‑‑brains icluded‑‑holeheds, brang‑zempuded‑‑in energy form such that, looking at the compact & getting bleary from its smallness & the consequent difficublearta focush & intensest detaiblear‑‑you could, as it were, read the compact in their faces, for the hologrum was such that the details & words & clauses & factualities & botics‑of‑the‑first & ‑second part heretofrorebegnome were much in the minds & thereby swuch in the fasces that you saw‑‑you ballwoomis head akoonging‑‑in this enntsiest little compact foulocust rather like your three‑D flims through the special goggles that bitwi yer Is. So here was the original compact, much prized by the gods if the gods all hadn't got loxt, as small as a poshagxamp, yet crammed with the technical details necessary ensufficient toward creating the basics of a game, a world, in which worlds, games, could be played with microverses increated in‑adfanitumb, complete with rest areas & hideouts, emotional inwroughts & rideouts, the facef o dem too fremf side by side on the surface of the tiny original thing they'd signed with their foolushische "brains" as drarwn by cartoonoonist & smelling let me tell you ancient as hell. Hell, maybe those two did go back to the inceptions of this comceptium of time. & maybe not. Only gods would know & they're not telling. I sort of pocketed the compact. My toe had a built‑in pocket which I fortunately had made up just now, so I spared the seed of this novel from posterity. I spared its seed. I did. I swoon with love ensmuggery‑‑oom! POTENTIAL ROBBERS OF THE FIRST BANK AQERT During my megayurs of pain, sitting on the garbage dump with the chickens & the flies, friend to the rats which came however black, lone crooner to the faceless, limp idmoon (a sea‑moon, a jellyfrisch stactillite, i'sume = short for I PRE SUME, just as socket as the sun, sssssssssssssssss...), I finly found the clause with Qinz in it. I mean, the clause in which Qinz was contained, & not these rough, hollow simulacraha of hinz, as pooreggs ampl, "That Which Qinz Related," or "This Whisch Qinz Have Saib," but the true, real subsistent, rarefied Qinz, locked in the sweet little loop that makes soon murders of us all. So ol' Qinz finds himself just obliged & compactually obligated & tied up all over the place. Thus it is when a botic deal with gods & with (worse) creators ogods. They made him go to the bustling metropolits of Par. XIV, cl. viii {Financial Statmint} & try to bust into the bank to see just what sort of fortune this most successful creator or stors had amassed. & let me tell you, it was no easy thing to bust into that bank! No easy thang, nossir! A lot of force was required to get directly in, on account of the bank had these shields that made you rather go off to the side, see, so you kept pressing against the (perfectly clear, perfectly fair) concave door, & you'd find yourself waltzing down the street across town, whistling, full of cheer for everbody you meet, stopping to buy a bagel from the Umbrella Stop, humming, making strange clicking noises, louder & louder, until the police finally pick you up‑‑very pleased in their own right, yes, because arresting potential robbers of the First Bank Aqert was one of the most porofoundly true pleasures of any life, let alone the predominantly nasty life of policebotz in a fantasy world, lemme tell you. These robbers were always found purchasing bagels & making a good deal of clickering sounds halfway across town, & you were always glad to see them, & sometimes their joy was just so gosh darn overwhelming that, heck, other criminals right there in the vicinity‑‑within the joy horizon‑‑just plain turned themselves in, gosh darn it, just to be nice, or stay near the bank robber, whose brains as you could tell had been sliced off in crescents off to various neatly‑aligned parts of town, wherein they could be picked up, their locations indicated clearly on the clear & perfect concave banky door. Judges always let them off. Judges turned green & robes billowed up into nothing at all. That's all. Well, sans judges & with our Special Purmit from the Gods‑‑Qinz were quickly set free. He applied a bit more force to the door & found ourselves walking the shores of a vast & liquid lake, Liq Laquid, I believe, whose shores were all this gritty dark volcanic material, which makes you wonder the nature of the liquid, & the sky seemed capable of immense & blinding cold, of bleeding cold bleaching the bloot too froxt, of cold riming told timing fold miming coald, and, in short, of keeping you trapped wherever the hell you were‑‑which turned out to be some antarctic region that happened to have a lake o liquid under a dome o heat above which was a cold just grimacing to get at your ass, yessir. He had to send for rescue & meditate on the lake, whose imperturbability reminded us consciously n constantly of our guilt, our guilt, our guilt‑‑so he ware awfully oggam glog of reckscue & aware that, though this attack on our souls & further exile indicated some progress in cracking the door, we were not especially anxious to go on. But the gods didn't have to wave a compact under our nose for us to goes. This time we thought we were going to broke. This time we really sent the forces into the bank to crack to bank... & there we were‑‑in the vault! Not such a tough critter, after all, unhuh? Except this: there is nothing but dust in the vault. Or to but at another ray: excepting this: that there is no thing but luminescent bonedust ground to something blow the threshold of tolerable pain in the vault, pain in the vault, pain in the vault & your mother trying to grind your little wobbly todderbomes to exceptional duxt: Thuts: we're really in dutch. Really. For this looked like Qeret's last wall of defense‑‑& keep in mind always that this was a master stormun here. We might be contained in just one tiny crystal in one of the safe deposit bots. We might be in the actual dried heart of Qert, or might may even be fired down one of the guts o Qert's own dimensional shutes, which I've thought about & toyed with ever sincy my botic infancy, which is possible on accounta Qert could always slooze wiff time you see, so he could make an ik=mage & seed it part of your deepest passed, which is quite a weapon here for a bot who'd shot his friend countless times & every time with this lousy god‑issue gun. Also, just for flum, we might een be in the vault, unable to see for the duxed. Able even perhaps to see his stuff, but be unable to claim it. Its like we've been cruelly trapped (cruel Qert!) & possibly even become a part of the vault, become some of the contents of the vault, like the other breakers‑to‑be in. Certainly spolaims the bones, duth it naught? Oh, dear... "Quite a prize to get you in here," grinned Qeet, which one supposed was the spectre of Qret. "Like you to have your spectres round," said Qinz bitterly. He looked around, don't‑supposing no hope of rexque hyar. Qeet grins on unsuspecting. Dead, you know. "This strike me as a lod bedder dan jus shooding you again & again," laugh Sqeet. "Look roun you, Qinz. Look roun you. Look. {Mayb some glitch in the run?} Go ahead‑‑open some of the boxes. Go ahead. You can see what you see, & then die slowly." POSSIBLE FOUL PLAY! Qinz feel kind of rotten, kind of heavy in the pit, if you know what I mean (an if you don't Qinz feel so fine‑‑so it your feeltee faults sick, KK?), but since the qerctoplosm'll go on talking as if he were looking over the fortune, & since this was Qinz's compact‑‑assuming some poggibility, with Qert dead & being dissected again & again & again, of rescue, hum‑‑Qinz pull open tee long drawer of a box & see light run in her characteristic sisterly light mother blue fashion into the depths of the depths of the bankand slam at shut. "I've got special juels. I like them," the spectre of his (Qinz can tell: rather young & callow at time of recording) friend can tell. "I could have anything I like. "One other thing I like {and Qinz is trying to locate it, but he can't keep up‑‑this is just like one of those how‑to‑cook tapes or exercise tapes, isn't it‑‑don't you uthink it is? Huh?} is deed & compacts & ownership sorta stuff." & here the here the helpful spectre pull one out‑‑just whips one into the air, very large, so Qinz can settle back down into the dust of the bones of his predecessors & cry in the very ik=mage of his friend finally successfully murdered & so torturing him byond ruepair OO‑K? "If you follow this line of the compact, Qinz," & it dawn zon Qinz that the ghosts saddressing him by name‑‑arguing a program of intriguing sophistication or else POSSIBLE FOUL PLAY "...you'll see it lead you out along a very brightly sunlit path, spewnin wiph snake, in the sun of the Pyrenees. See? See? S‑e‑e?" the voice become zechoic because he followed the long luminous ik=mage thum=kmage of his firends & find himself fwee, stwipped of compact, guilt, & vault, & walking galong, not the path the spectre said‑‑which might bing mionoturd‑‑but somewhere entirely & wounderfully else. Qinz's found Qert's leetle hideout. An excape for Qinz made back before the guilt made the hate real & the hate made the murders into real & actual GUILT (=FOUL PLAY). The bastard's fooled his dead friend‑‑again! So the gods and the real Qert scour the Pyrenees, whilst Qinz lie somewheren tirely elts zand zdrugged into "movie hypnotique" o Qert, whisch make his stors seem sorbid dy compair o. NOT‑GOD DEAD, DAMMITALL! "Qert. Qert Bottotic. Yea, I remember him. He went on to become a god, didn't he." This was stated as a matter of fact, & not asked. That's why I didn;t append a interrogation point, so get off my back. It was a rhetorical answer. It had questions going back in a wavery line which went back far enough so that it touched Qert as the infant he was in his own Implant Fantasies Infant & intersected with his identity. Rhetorical questions being highly dangerous in the Intraverx: they tend to backlash timeback & lash‑in, as they sayback, with the personal identity of the closest available referent to the question i.e. The "answer" to the "question," which bears the same relationship to the "question"‑‑itself unasked‑‑as the current "self" of the being serving in this illustration as the "answer" to the question bears to its "infancy," which is pure synthetix‑‑very pure, as a realm of synthetics's likely to be...synthetix perfect, pure, & beautiful, & there's a schizoid i.e. reflexive title if you ever read one, A? "Yea. They say he a god now..." "That'll be the day!" "...and you can visit the tear in the intraverx fabric where they rip‑tim‑out..." "Qert a god‑‑I never!" "...a rip shaped rather like a dendrite, some say, though as you can say I never sayed it naw..." "Qert's dead. Not god‑‑dead. Not‑god dead, dammitall!" "...and filled with the clearest liquid you ever saw..." "Do you hear what I'm saying?" "...a liquid not synthetic, like everything else pointed out in here‑‑but quite real, quite organic, actually..." "I'M TELLING YOU QERT SDEAD!" "...They say you could drink that stuff..." "You're not doing a terrific job of listening. I like your description, understand. I like the image of the dendrite & the concept of this liquid filling it, & like it's not being synthesdic & all..." "...and maybe be translated into a god...and maybe not. Death's possible, I suppose." "But Bottotic's dead. I killed him‑‑again & again. I..." Wherepong Qinz's disguise is rip‑pe‑doff (a stupid affair, really, glasses with a large false nose & a gusky brush of a moustuche 'sall. You canna disguise a botic (with no face) like that. It only made him seem suspicious, tacky, & unconfident. You can tell as we haul him off to arrest that Qinz's lost his donfidnce. The fantasy's too weird. I don't blame him a bit. "...a god..." (Lessee...whas the penalty for like murdering a god?) "...poor Qinz! Besfrem to newgod kills his frengd!" AGAIN AGAIN Word about anything rarely reaches these upper echelons or "god‑sectors" or head or grub or bug. Dat antensification modalities have reached such a piglike pitch of perfection (dubbed "purefuction" by various medical‑wags of the midwog burseauctocracies) that one (1) can barely stand to (2) hear, say, the time of day, alet lone the sort of complete rundown dawnmoss mub of mub, of milliards (000) of negabitz ovenergy that would convey rather after the fashion of an electroshock (dub "electoschlock" by 2 (to) other mediawrigs of the mediocratic vinge whoove been fired except that "fired" in thies whealm ream I mean mean being subjugated to an ectoplasmurk serge of meniscus‑vergimold "subsistence" dupt "sumbsickstenks" by the icktoplausumurk vigovags oerwegged a parenthoughdigo so that they are perpetually, like figures in a fungouse mirrim merem riooir, hanging oulver your shoulvre & trying to read the goddam maddog words before they've quite reversed your dnim. So..oS. These will stop you writing.)‑‑the thoughtless comprehension, compleat with paine, of everyvent in the halls of the Intraverx, in the whole system of stors, in the whole storic city known as Melmcitob. No, these things which do not have the power nor status of gods but which seem to be running my entire subconscious‑‑especially in the absence of any adult gods‑‑have themselves grown etiolated & supersensitif, hypersophixtricated & megasubtlebe yond bresolve, beyond quite a number of numbers of suggestive conceptual "pales" (dibbed "elaps" by the gawgews of nonsensic triplerealms or not or not or not not‑not), so they really cahn't stahnd to hear about anything now. They've become the real gods, the unnamed gods, following the rule which quite mysteriously hold shvaybe yond the intraroalms that gods to be gods must stay unnamed. Why hell, if my logic be rights on this, or right‑un‑dis (or "hyondis" dubbord), we could like banish these gods simply by giving them clauses. I'm streng temtored, eyam, & you are too. Let's break for brunch & brink abroughtit... ...So the actual Burp Operationurps of the Burmegazurpsurps come to beurp hanurdlped by the lesser dubers we've been wagging goff here & there too intoo oother reolms. Bp. Seem swe've been namingim allalangue, no need therefore to name those already‑attenuasted bossos (zap! oops...) we've been trying to avoid cake voice dextro oater oid scribing the scrillic lighyight which blindeth ye too pain, to paing, two pine, & which tell you triple to plugplugplug back into That Body There or Here Or ereH, plug bagk into that body & feel duh unnamed demons of sleep kick its ass, ha ha, ass. Still, the message that Qert Bottotic got away came through, & it really sort of helped that the message was the biggest shot they'd gotten in many lengths of whatever illposs fourtime........ "Got away?" one of them ask, pausing in her pressing of an exquisite & I might add perfectly clare pietze of essentially liquid nectarfruit ygainst the perfect smoove bowl of her palette lit like limpid wings in idealized‑out‑of‑your‑skull‑glowing evening light, infatuate light. "How did he get away? How is this possible? Huh? I was not aware that things could work like that." "Calm thyself, O god," snee the servitor, contemptuous in the manner of gods who are split in existence, as these gods & alla gods always ore. "It look like Qert was never your ordinary botic." "No kidding! No kidding!" answer the god, wrought up & flinging sectors of flute all over wrecteurs sruit. "What do the technicsport?" "The technics‑‑ah yes, the technics. Ahhhh..." pacing. Pause. Quick nrut: "They're sort of gone," he said, a space against a slab of nonexistence, which is feeling very small, mechanical, small, mechanical, small. "Gone? Gone?" the god's into echolalia todalaliaay. "Echolalia to‑day‑‑you think this is funny, ay? Brimgem hither." "They would seem at this point intraverx to be, um, unavailable." I don't want to describe the following Rampage of the God. Her tizzies involve, firstly, bumping her head against a wall held firmly in splace by two little cute fat dwarflike maginary thangs, to the point where her fruity brains splat out, then, secondly, the ripping the skin off of the unfortunate reporting this, er, unwanted news to her, & then, thirdly, philing a very long & ugly report, & then, forthly, creating a Fourth Courth for "The Said Report" to go to, & then fifthly two. "In short," smile the judge of the Forthly Court, beaming truly not wise but mad, "Qert solipsed to use yer duberm, the technicians into his own ik=mage system..." "That word again!" "Echolalia reduplicative word‑bird again, so that whilst they was athinkin they was uh avivisectin & arobbin ol Qert a‑his ik=mages againa urdagain, they were in hehe 'reality' ahah absorbed into the selfsame phials again. Am I right?" "Except for one word, right." "Which word, skinless one? Which word?" The silence draw a deep deep breaf, becoming a peerless elegant blue slab of nothingness erasing spaceupon‑‑space-upon-space-back-down-to-the-lower-levels like a‑baby bumpling‑dump. "The word again, Sirrahladie‑‑ah." "Again?" gasp the puzzled god. THE CAVE MULBEW Bottotic's Compact Breach‑‑the so‑called Said Breach or Brach or "Blaghh‑‑ach-ach-ach!"‑‑led to the following out of the flowing frag of summary. Worshipped by many, worried by few, believed by none, trouvJ par les morts, zit goes: This small version of Qert, crouches at the dripping pools. Another May BeamCreation™, another marketing ploy, & yet this is really Qert here really crouching. No, really! Heynonnyno, the cave we're in harbor it light, the Lumescence of Stones so precious they have 'scaped 'ntirely from scars. The cave, Mulbew, has a particular genius for husbandring this light‑‑he pour it out in boiled shells, which, being so soft & multifragranced, act hardly as shells at all but more like the {soft coaxing of wishes} that come in the night‑‑the Wishes of that {small blue child} you accessed off the low‑left input‑corner of you eye, soft, {boiled little kids} in the images of my. Holy shit, what a thought! he thinks. So he stares at the shallow pools in the cool lightcave with its hints of distant animals, or at least lower forms, as they say, in the queer shape stalactites & the low smoothness of the white stones he walk supon. In this situation‑‑in this shape‑‑the details of the fantastic compact they have signed stipulate that Qinz must "wive his wet pal"‑‑that was one of the earliest Tiny Details, stipulated perfectly early on, a sort of ur‑clause so primitive (rather like this pwimitif Qert here Qert here hah?) it begin zike dis: "Ur..." You can guess, I'm quite sure, that this clause emit when Qert & Qinz were friends afterfriend omit. So inagonably tisit evity for nem now. Repeat one million times, AGONY, till it zubzixt in an incandescent cave in the centre of your mind if you call this (get it?) mind. OK now. Onwiph show. Qinz come not so much as The Healer‑‑which would be so much agony agony it might (just might) end the goddam show & send both botics hurling back along the infinitely stretching line that line that line that lead you back two gods. Or so they claim. GO BACK TWO GODS. QerznQint stare up at the big marquee with the bobboling lights spelling out Go Back Two Gods, but so you couldn't read it. Sounds like a game, Think One. Yea, Think Other. They look nod at each other. Neither bot wants to check that out just now. Nossir! So Qinz come as the botipologist and‑‑the adult to Qert's weeping choldirswize‑‑put a hand to that wet Qert head ("Is this head to be perpetually red?") & stroke his friend. Ugh. Stroke the head again (ugh) so that Qert glance & no more than glancesayseses...up. & again strokes & again & again, over a period of time‑‑the cave dripping lovingly into the dropless knifelight nike, the boiled night‑‑till the Head of Qert 'sworn down like the holy stone, the one kissed countless irregular numbers zmaginary time, so great is the pleasure, so great the need, plessure in pressure, & it's quite a hopeless loop that they loop that they have here now loop that they have going at this loop that they have in this juncture going loop that they have round the edges of this loop at this time that they loop they they loop loop that they looploop have. It is also a grotesque sight, what with Qert's head all worn down, so only the tip of his lowermost ramus is loop that they have at this juncture wearing down. "There. That fuckin heals!" laughs Qinz with a Drimp of Irony you cannot simplex spam. Nothing can withSpamd. Qert can't even say "Huh?" but he knows he's fucked. Point to Qinz. Technical decision on the part of the gods. Match to Qinz with Qert totally pissed because he didn't shoot him. The gods said Qinz had figurately shot him. Match. Brilliant irregular work, the laughing gods wrote in their Big Word Processors or their Big God Wordprocessors pounding out their Big God Prose using their BigGodSoftware version 5.1+™ for DOSH!® leaving Qert azoft-before out in the dark, chewing O so sadly on his liver. TimeCube A RARE STOR‑ODDENDUMB In the brach‑stor, Qinz fall into Qert's role. I believe I believe this came about when Qinz, arriving at Said Breach, casually looked into the pool atwitch his victim was crouching. He looked, did Qinz, into the pool anddna yltnatsni emaceb treQ daetsni, os ereht. But we're not sure of this is Qert's doing or some sorta ForeStoric Accident. Or the doings of the gods, for itna rettam, who have untold unfallen doing doing in the untellingible doings of the erew. Thus renegotiated, it Qinz, not Qert, who have been the savage lying under the waterfall for so eternally long (full roundels of millennia passed him by in his godqorsoqqm stor!) that his hair cohere in spiked bunched & thatched mats upingainst his skull to like symbolize the complex coverings (mind‑barnacles, in a form) of language he've forgot. So about all you can get out of Qinz the Savage at this juncture here are grints & hereare gruntz: but THESE ARE NOT ORDINARY GRUMTZ. Let me exprexx this unsuprexxedly: these are not the empty, emotion‑soqt sapurld grintz of the Normal Savage (on view now in the Qert Mewzay at a free commensurateedat in the city of Fee Qomnemsulaq Eraadedaq‑at), but sapslaped, surchuong eden vlopes of purestle, lostmostle languagle carryingle the Luckle Viewle down the palimpzexts of back to some of the very lost languages of gods that Qinz Oncet No. Of course, they were not very good gods. Goodgog! they were second‑‑nay, thirderfurth‑rate edgods n goggexces with one of those lower‑linear languages to boot which expressed nothing more than the sort of filmy "sort‑of" sorta releases of godblowsed energies not fit I say to clear the late‑aft mists from the sodden Streets o' Desprexxium down in frowmtowem Xan Qanprescolt, where Qert have spent manyanour, I c'd tell you. So Qert hap to drop back, stop stortime, & improvise. He hap to plan out a rare stor‑oddendumb as hasn't been engineered in thirty‑twirteem enginyeers & as have been pruvim hazardoux in extremus in, O, too many textx to mentium, and‑‑said plands hanving bim drordnup‑‑gather his various Technicians, Cartoonists (exclunding May Beam, of course), Orinbotics, & Henchmums, to begin the acceleration of an Additional Annex to the Storio that will, once all the esoteric fol‑deed‑lofs have bun takin careough, enable the pryfhfrtat Qert to enter stor as a therapixt, to get Qinz back inz. Snicker! Whitecooted, waering green scrubs, Qert now approach primitive longforgottem Qinz (whoo you'll recall thinkk inasmuchh ass hee thinkk he'ss Qertt ass muchh the Primevole) with his bagi nand‑‑that small Doctorium Bag, by the by, the true fulcrim of this late‑reedited stor, way the way, calling for much the bulk of the additional software‑the‑ware what Qert & his "men" hastily had to enter into the Deadhole Centre of the Stor. Now it didn't take up very much memory so much as it tookit ip just to have Qert get in there in his silly docswuit & and & pretend to be the be by way of Qinz, you by you see bi see, now did it, or would or wouldn't it? Answer yes by yes or by or no by no, ha? Of course naught. So anyway, the bag have the gems in it, with which Qert quaparqua Qinz laboreath to "cleanthe the falthe memorieth bathed on the eceththive exigence of time(th)," so as to release poor Qinz over a period of decodds, at which, according to primordial progrorm, Qinz riseth up with the strength of true Qingth & the madness of the botic who see his douboticle & the power originally inhered twim in the original form of the bubble (slang fourstor) ubble & draws out the gun provided for but not erased in the Ions of the Qertodditions to the stor which have tho thoughtfully & like "mercifully sav ed‑old Qinz"‑‑the real Qinz now, I mean by I mean‑‑& shoot the doctor dead & all his descendants branching logy down the plasmurk like a nervecell roddin in time. PHONY GROANS or LOOK, LOOK, LOOK AT THE EMERALD SUN "Gads! Why this fervor for the tropical? queries the first explorer. He then removes his pith helmet & wipes his brow, or forehead, off, & points the telltale stars in his brow, or forehead, at his explorer‑friend, who hath half his size & twice inintelligence. "You've lost your brow," or forehead says the smaller splor, & she wets a hanky with her tongue & run his forehead backorbrow. They walk on through the forest, metabotic guns cradled in their arms in squalling purples. "Hot stors‑‑forever stors‑‑are difficult to hunt within," she tells him. She's breathing hard, but not for joy, not joy. "One tends to forget who one is." The man look worry ed. "You mean 'forget whom one hunts,' don't you hon?" "You mean 'don't you, woman,' don't you, son?" she rejoints, whereupon the big boob falls to the lushy ground & sobs him big hillopobbs, weeping, "We'll never find them! Its hopeless! There is no life anywhere!" etc. She sits next to him, & she lights a fag‑‑though it hard because of the consternatiling dreeping of this particular stor, ifn it even is a stor, & not one of Qert's trapstors within‑a‑stor, or even Qinz's counterstor, a development. Luckily, the Detail Technician failed to draw sweatbeads on this woman, so she look sweet, unmussed, & perfect‑‑a fact which her big son‑‑deciphering word upon word of this ascription & believing it‑‑note suspixualy. She hand him a fag. His eyes are kinda narrow. He is green, it seems, or the creator failed to put any color ollr than green inheer. When he puff the fag go outs. She lean backs & give out one of those really phony groans‑‑a groan of politesse, a sympathetic groam, a goddam phatigrone, forsooth‑‑& smokes her fag, the meantime staring at the sun. Need I say it is this emerald sun? Look, look, look at the emerald sun? "He's dying," she sayus, "simply," but by this time her son is sidalingaling‑‑or rather shluschalingalung‑‑wayfumer, his wet fag dangled in his moufthph. "I believe Qerbotic be dying, lying in his own house, hallucinating wildly," she goes on musingly. Puff Sirfag. "And will die shortly‑‑hey!" Her son run screaming through the forest, having had some sort of adfalts realization‑‑& let me step aside for just a mo while this storic chase goe zon, to interpolate ina klina wartor too on the dodgy subjunct of False Ideas of the Stor. False realizations, goofy ideation, delusive cogitation, etc., are clearly illegal in the storic characters. Notwithstanding this withering upstanding foct, that renegade Qert & his oistwhile friend, Qinz, would seem not only to have begun this forbidden bidnesh of implanting completely invisible wild bliefs or notiums aalongst the pathrays of the stors, but to have qarried it to the very point of infinignitgni regressnoi of infineti deceptnoi toward the postulated polyverse of infineti regressnoi in which nor gods nor competitior‑bots nor Friendlyly Murderdererers, nor one's bustling mum cun find the perpetrarots. They are free, albeit trapped, you see you see. Thas why it illegal, I recnok. So this big chump‑‑some agent of the gods, some small‑potatseo enforceur‑‑have pass through the whiff o the false idea, & have gone mag thisayaw. His mother, aware she is not his mother, stop & breathe a tib, & then stop breathing. This effectively getser out of the stor, she think, & we think you mustn't think what she think of her son, He has de generated much, thinking he's her son, lost forever. Many fruitflies here. THE GODS WERE NOT JUST FRUITFLIES IN THIS SCENE They are gagged & bound before the Forest Court. "O, the Forest Court, the Forest Court," etc. go the anthems, & the Slick Tigress of Phony Groans & her Son, Look Look, at the Emerald Sun, accentuates her lean leg muscles through the leather tights & presents our botics to the Central White Court, God o Judgment D, as belikes to call, presidin. "The Charge: Supreme Degeneration. What you say?" "Well, I'm not the only one who's degenerated," Qert tried to point out, but the gods were having fun, toying with him I suppose, gadding about like fruitflies. "Look at Qinz," & here we have to note that, despite their sadistic ways & the fact that the gods were not just fruitflies in this scene but the most beautiful little fruitflies I have ever seen, & I've beheld myself many a fruitfly having been somewhat the connoisseur in the many planes of existence, all of which have fruitflies brushing sweet against soft fruit, fruitfly soft brush foot, & I swear this, yes I do, as sure as words are to: they were utterly ravishing in their little gowns (little gowns! that fit pretty well!) of an opalesh‑pastel utter‑subtleness that brushed your tenderest thought(s) into their nesh, aaaahhh!! gods!, despite all this, I say, the torus in the air took on some of the images o' Qinz, en rap succession Qinz during the past gigillion stors, Qinz‑Qinz‑Qinz‑Qinz‑Qinz, like flipping cards, filupping cadrs, with only the Qinz‑glim o the eyes the same the eyes the same the eyes the same the same. "Yea, there‑‑you see? See? He's been the same thin, pale adult in every stor for gigillions ostors you see!" Well. He seem stoo've got through. VoilB Qinz, slouched like some punk called before the Board & not looking in qinz‑control at all (& Qert thinks, "Ha!"), but enormously enlarged & huge, & smart Qert narrows his eyes knowingly for the knowing cloe‑zrup, 'cause y'see, he knows‑‑O yea, he knows, don't he, tho', how themthere gods the godsloves love to enlorge, & not only does they loes toes enloesgre, but they also like to like emphasize that All Is Lusion, & startle ya, or if you wish to put itanother wray, they like to emphasize that they are completely in control of reulity, such that it is illusion abstruse suble spuff like that, finding its filmination in the fact that Qinz, as he appear, in the hole of the torus in the air (or "air") of the room or "room" of the "gods" or gods is sit rahhthahh lihhke Zeus, hey! in a giant chair, a sorta sotney thronofa sorta stomey chair of hugest por'rful slabs & slouching to one side & more or less like holding his great big head, & as I say the upshot of all this circumlocutory swaze iz that he's enormously normously LAGRE, o, LARGE o K? & as I shay, not looking very much in control of the situation at owl and this not so much despite his uncommon hugeness but possibly if I may be subtle‑as‑hell for a momeant, because he's so huge‑‑you see? You see the su'tle distinction? You see? Is 'tworth a shit to see? Hnh? HNH? HNH? HNH? but unshav‑un n puffy, especially under the overmockedup eyes, those eyes, & without any of the glimt a‑tall, none of it, as if some evil force had read the last p‑graph & thought, well I'll just show those sonsabitches, yes I'll, I will cut out the glim from his eyes in my p‑graph, swill. 'Cause I'm the spirit of the p‑graph above. (Whereupon the spirit of this p‑graph cast a spell.) Whereupon one is cast out, & it's like death, except that after all the falling & the feeling of blood, the dire deel of blug, after the howling down corridors lit with the certainty one is going to Hell, or if not going to Hell at least hittin hard, I say hizzin hurg, unto the most brainsplittin paing you could imagine even gafter you ate of the fruit of flies ug & flew thereby through the gate of the fluute ofize‑‑after all of that, the glim's back in his eyes. "Well, why bother to change," Qinz zizzayng, "when his stors are so pathetic? God, I'm so disgusted, I can't even talk." & (possibly cognizant of his giantsizedness‑‑is this fair? We wonder...) of course he emphasizes his dusgustedness‑‑a common Qinzian defense, Qerecognies‑‑by rolling his head in a complux pattern & finally leanding it to reshed on his hands & sighs. "There‑‑you see?" Qert sas, butyept evertime he sa, zis spatter with flies or lightdrops we thought a coupla pediagraphs ago were flies. "You {sputt‑utt‑utter} see? He's so goggled with guilt he he he..." But he cannot get it oup. Meanwhile the little Dots We Might Call Flies, except there are no flies in heaven, no fruitflies for the heavenfluut here, are doing a sort of parody‑mime worshipjob on Qinz, who seem exhausted n huge en huge, making occasional boinging noiges with lips, which are dim, glim, him. DUNQUOTE THE JUDGMENT: "One way to look at it is this," says Judgment D, & then makes a structured series of increasingly ugly faces, each face exponentially uglier than the last, so that Qert was starting with alarm then whimpring oddily & then squeaking loudily anthence crying hideously & then screeching wailingly themnem scrawling right up the shiny back surface of the sliney green surface of the surface of the surface of the perfecemoove chair he was sittinin andzen shittininis parachute pants & then mogging these ugly faces by making faces of his own. Qert's faces didn't look so scary. Qert's faces looked like brains. They were ugly, but... "Or this," says D in what might be the ugliest face in any eing, but relaxing, slowly & by severe gradations (severe!) back down to his own smuph phwace, bland as yer mudder an blanly beggin yur pardon as poor Qert‑‑who hath landud behind the chair‑‑is left to clean up & get back setback down. "You were {Ik=mag'd} for something far beyond any intelligence to do, & it has druv you mad," explains D, proffering the prabashed prexplorer a Perfect White Tube (P.W.T.) from a gorgeously, elegantly plain silver case with silvers beyond the silvers, recalling these faces(es) but with beautier enbeautier zinside, so you stared in in in at the surface of the case... Until D slampsit down. Qert would seem to've ta'en one on'm tubes. It make him feel mild & mos' precise. He's aware this thing is a control device of the Depptres, but he doesn't care. Taken care: that's the mark of a truly fine & excellent control device, like these fine purwitoobs there these these there: you just don't care. That's why you see these tubelets everywhere, O you see these tubelets everywhere, yea, you see these tubelets everywhere. These particular device make Qert real smart, too, & entirely convinced that he suddenly perceives the entire nature of things. This is not necessarily the mark of a good control device, but it is the mark O of a good interrogape device. Clears the mind. You don't (D don't) want your interogee forgetting what he's about, & like some characters like characters like Qert are ik=maged with ik=mplants to make them forget, & the purws are made to counteract that. So suddenly Qert remembers everything. His mind slices up the levels of reality, cutting through cardboard box after cardboard bwox, till he stands proud & gloaming in the most moaning most physical of the univerts‑‑the biggest & the solidest of all‑‑& confronts the Uthor God & nods, & his hand strokes the lovely purwitoob & sighs and... D has to take the tube from him. Qert quickly forget. "Thangs a lot," Qert says, no longer above sarcasm & still feeling a little bit loquaciously gawdlike here. "Thanks for telling me I'm mad. I'll try to do better." Pa! But D is still at least keeping what the kids used to call "a surrfaxx colmnaxx" at least. He carefully puts the pwtaway‑‑& I mean carefully, in the manner in which you might put away a small stonnic bomb, OK? I mean very carefully, indeed. Indeed. Indeed! It takes three novels' worthles o spurts o carefully time indeed for him to put it snugly imongst its corridor corrounidors, there in the tumidor humibor cubigor silveror boxadore, & then clap down the lid. We have therefore excised the three novels dealing with D & his careful putting away of the purwitoob‑zokay. We have taken the liberty of also excising the titles, words, latent ik=mageries, tracers, traceries, tracerease, Uthors, historical context, & all all bibliographic references to same. So if you want to read them, forget about it‑‑unless you relosh to deal with your intraun pirates ey irates ey ey? "I can see why you're mad," offer D, who is mad, which make Qert madder than he even was that D had said heyuz mad. Now in this paragraph mad mean angry mean mad. "But it's true. They wanted you‑‑you, Qert‑‑& your kind‑‑" "My kind?" "Don' tnrrupt. They wanted you to collate enformation relating to the most complex (and, I might add, subtle) sentiences in Eing." "The stors?" Exaggerated, mild‑sarcastic nod. "Stors. We'll none of us ever understand the first basic thing about a stor‑‑let alone the interrelationships among all stors." "The interrelationships along all stors‑‑gee." "Don' rpt. They wanted you‑‑allow me to laugh at this: YOU! Hahahahaha!‑‑to collate the emformation & comprehend in your structure the nature of multiversal intelligence. Howyalike that?" Golly‑‑no wonder I'm mad. "Don' thnk. But this arrignment, as it were, Qert‑‑it explims your variable struciature, which I am sure you have notice by now, despite inhibitions‑‑also programmed in‑‑on reflexive cognitation on your ƒelƒ. It explain your varm attitude toward ƒtorƒ, vhich you are ƒtriving to imitate in euch detail. It explains your blank periods‑‑your periods of ƒugue, if you will. {I will?} "Don' terpolate. Yea an it further 'splain‑‑to me, at least‑‑why you are totally mad. Yep‑‑we've come back to mad again. Don' takovr. The impossibility of such little vermin as ourselves even beginning to comprehend one stor‑‑let alone the multiverxic nexus of stors‑‑well hey: it would drive anyone mad. It would drive me mad. It would drive your mother mad." "I'll bet it wouldn't drive the Uthor of Eing mad." "I'll bet it would." "Would not." "Would so." "Would not!" "Would!" "Not!" "Would!" "Not!" "Don' disgree!" "Would!" "Not!" "Don' cnfuse!" D take a few deep bweaps, during which the Uthor o Vul Yeeyng qount his cuotes. ... "And in any sad event sadly there is no Uthor yov Yaing, close quotes. "There is so! "Close quotes. "No there is not! "Exclabatiun quotes Quote quotes Don' quote!" Dunquote "And in any case, it certainly did druv you, Qerd Boddodoc, mad, OK? So you are adjuicatied Not‑Guilty by Reason of Mad." "But you're mistaken‑‑you're Qert. You are therefrore Guilty By Ream of Bot." "Hmph‑‑obvious ploy. Then I am not mistaken." "Hmph‑ovious ply. Then you're not Qert. Not‑Guilt Bi‑Knot, I'd say." "Who's not?" Qert then. Guilty but gong! "What do we do now?" "Space dist missed. Now pray dunquote, I'd say...{Only don't dInquote'} say THE FORMAL FANTASY MANNER Qert kept burning the contract over & over, but it cycled; it didn't help. Qert kept himself warm by burning the intensions, I mean intentions, of the ones who'd made up the contract. He formed little blue fires & held his hands over them in the traditional manner. His palms waxed poetic‑‑they lit with intrigue & beauty. He felt beauty honeying his skin, & his skin ran‑‑in the formal fantasy manner‑‑into honeylike rivulets fa fum disgusting, as you might have expected honeyrunning skin to be in past times when nature was so much stronger, so much thicker, so much more coagulate than she is she is now now. & anyway this beauty, this deep yellow rich beelike quality that was buzzing through our Qertour in the substournce of thour substanceless memories' that the pursuant gods were trying to lay in him, this beauty tempted our boy Qert to melt his very hands‑‑I mean melt them for real, you know, being as how the basic substance of any stor that Qert dweltin was or were or war or wur hus wurhus own creation, it might just melt into substanceless. But would that, or wouldn't that anyway, leave the nerves, you know, like leave the naked nerveendings satretched immersed in the goddam fire of the goddam crimson gods I call them CRIMSOM & wavering about like z-creatures z-kreeturs z-creetels chancing for a spung guv a spung-gnew whimd? Would this not hert? Would it not? Is it guesswerk we're talking heretalking he*re or are we talking (*) the nature of things outside even these systems of worldly words. Huh? ANSWER ME‑‑HUH? FILTERS N SUCH Well, he did it. Cycling back or no, that botic had created a little bubble-cycle in the Intraverx of stors you have had have reference two, os so ergo ogre oN No Contract‑‑no game, no lumily-beauticle stors. Keeping always in mind that THE GODS DO NOT GET ANGRY, guess whom theym hirem tom kilm? & Qert was leaving a trail of phony stors‑‑like crumbs of deception‑‑for Qinz to eat. Qinz was trying to make do with a gun which, understandably, Qert made dimensionally unacceptable to the crumbs of the veritable stors. But Qinz kept using it anyway. Thus was pain introjuic'd into the herefore realms of the stors, not to mention your seepage into the Intra the into the Verx the. The gods are so worried they forget to change their clothes. They lean forward in the god-mansion, which is the actual magnusion of Qert's "private 'mansion,'" & stare at the big green bottle on the floor. But PAN BACK to the gods. They look at us & pan back‑‑many of them in various Qinz & Qert (or Qert & Qinz) disguises that have been half ripped off or shuddered off or but the heads torn off, gedangeleng like rubber monstor suits or rub or mons tore swoots or rub whore mom stor swets or zots or toots as the true godheads‑‑which lookalike worried stars in the Galaxy of Woe O‑‑look at the bottle contaQinzining. Two of these gods still have their pith helmets, which they fondle dangerously, I mean fretfully. Bottled Qinz is green, & he picks up a tiny bottle. Everyone can sense Qert snickering. He always give himself away with that damned snicker‑‑and it infuriates these gods, because back when the original like compacts were like coalesced it was decreed that Qinz would "wear filters to the snickers of the creator of the universe {he}'s in"‑‑known golloqually as F.S.C.U.H.I., or else Qinzud neer lose a stor. Would they could reverse that ruling now! So Qinz goes on in his indigneous fashion (a fansction o three factors: 1) Qinz's youth as decweed (allowably) by Qert in every stor; 2) several compactual stibulations which the gods als oregret; & 3) Qinz's inherent natur as a friend & murderer. In short, filters n such.). He sniff this small yellow botticle. He go back & kick the bottle out afrum. He hold zup the bittleup to THAT GREAT BIG SNIGGERING SUN! (O Jegus! moan the gods.) ...and he takes a swig, turns into a swig turns into a great big swig as big as a Macy's Day Sawig, & he hears Qert's voice cooing him. Now the gods themselves are forc edto listen to the madfilterd voiceoevroev Qertoverof of. RESULTANT L A L C K A J J A G G S "'Lo. Qert here. Boy, is this a safe haven! That must be why they call it Safe Heaven (ha ha ha). "No, really‑‑your Perhaps Copser everywh'ere. Nothing but plice, or forms of plice. Perhaps I shouldn't splain (ha ha ha!): Whoever built this place figured to catch me for my friend‑‑the one I know as Qinzhahaha‑‑and so they thought What better way to construct this universe of heavenly safety for our precious God-To-Coming Qertz (Ha Ha Ha) than to utterly fill absolu ely ev ry v c nt sp ce in the space of the place with, you guessed it, COPS. I am full of irony‑‑and I mean lots of cops. Of course, they had to cut many corners. Forimpstamps, there are no corners on the cops (na HA ah?)‑‑they're round-sided suggers, these cops, but the Mysterious Makers partially compensated for resultant lalckajjaggs by by by making the copsass bigas irony. "Naturally they're so big‑‑roundshouldered & humpbacked, whalethighed & spherefaced, gasfulsched & sagschlupscht, blinkless & erotoluss‑‑they canna move, so instead of legs I say instead of feet they have a simple wright by which the rest of their very nearly weightless inflatable OK:INFLATABLE bodies OK achieves a kind of fulcrum, a sort of bastionality, a modicum of ballast or terminex of flector andor sourcepunkt o vu or so. "Thus they bob. That sentence has never existed before: Thus bob they. & even then, nonsentience & all, they don't have room to move, not much, what with billioons & billioons of oother copaloons muschlike themselves filling virtually every inch of available floorspace on the fluoribsplace of the stor. Excuse me: heaven, not stor. Heavenspace goodgrace, ha ha! "Pathetic, you say. Well, this is what I say, if given a chance (but I don't have the chance 'cause there're all these COPSAROUND). They have the sort of bare intelligence a sadokid'd give a trapbloon, & becausa their numbers & spare intelligence, they're not given weaponry... "Weaponry! That'da misamatch B! "...Just a kind of overowl glo, meant to be official, a fused imbitatium of the light atop a copcar in the earlymorning glow of someone's vacant lunardreams, I am sorry to say. As for their sound, their sound is pathetic‑‑really sappy, a squiggy scheeghy sort of thwitty scree, meant I invoke to stop one in your tracks except this is Police Heaven where they have no tracks, OK? "I feel better here. The cops bob & glow, & Qinz would have to be a fool to chase me in here. It's not worth killing me now, I'm afraid." GOD-COLLOQUY ("He doesn't seem aware he hunted," whisper D. & May beams back & whispers over her shoulder, so as not to distrimb the wrup of the dust on the mantelpiece & cushion the bottle molecularlyly. "It's a par o or part of the heavenly ik=mages, see. There is no ik=mage of HUNT in the stor." ("Then why can't we catch him then?" ("He mulch two clever," she says again again, but you must note this one most important detail, that she says this not to him, not to D, I mean by the whey, but says it again‑‑and again says it NOT TO HIM, but says again again.) Yea, Qert couldn't help but grin from within his bottles. He couldn't help it‑‑this was so damn much fun! Qinz was stalking him through the big greenhouse‑‑green in the sense of be-ying made of emerald glass in a chloroid world of dews that fell, giggling like the children you have always imagined the god to gods to be, lil pink tiddies in green blubs o dew, snickering in cheers that sound ever-so-slightly like the screams you hear ever-so-slightly in your slight sleep leading to something very close, right next to on the emotive scale, to weeps‑‑and he was following the basic compulsive storic psycho rule that Qert had etched (using up one of the five (5) Stip U Lated Rules that Qert was ik=magically ollowed/abliged to ploy emeach new stor, being a bit purfloget, with only five (5) psycholrules & seven (7) physical rules s.t.i.p.u.l.a.t.e.d., plus some Minor ( ) Rules related to Time & Color & Seasonry, not to mention the Basic Language Program, each stor generating her own teeming language like newts jabbering under a mossy roch. Visualize roche here: Yeawell the green came from one of the minor rules that he, Qinz, was to be assiduously & painstakingly careful, heedful & cautious in the comportment of his flows & the alignment of his energies, such that he would never never if possible break any of the bottles here in the greenhouse of green bouteilles. Which guv Qert delight, for he was himself hidden in one of the bottles, with images of himself hidden in various distortions in most of the other bottles, & some other odd inhabitants‑‑close distant friends of Qert's hidden relatives‑‑beaming & sliding away in the other bootayyeeze. It was a greenhouse, insane dark green virtually flaming overhead, with green glass psychedelicizing further oo too booot, & the strange livid wailing of tiny gods in pungent liquicy, bamming against the topgloss glasstap sloss & breakiling aplart in sloabs olf blauberri, & inside it had the neat orderly rows‑‑awkwardly narrow, Qinz couldn't help but Register with a Grunt (all of which went onto the Continuous Record that they made upstairs, upstairs being metaphorical, registering here ing REG:<GRUNT>), which was clearly part of his inspired friend's need to humiliate him. That was this stor's motivator, by the way: that that Qert Qert was was trying trying to to humiliate humiliate him him. He seemed intent upon the game despite the murder, cycling back indestructibly in his mind like the comtract. Motivator given here in standard reduplicative form form trimplicup form form. Humilate indeed, grimmed Qert, bright in his solid awareness that this glass stor might be his most brilliant stor. Qinz had to pad so cautiously round the maze of paths. He had to avoid breaking the glass, & so was obliged to hold the gun‑‑which the brilliant Qert had arranged to have somewhat BLOATED here‑‑right close to his chest or his belly or, in some instances, his knees. Booooaauuuk! He had to be careful, which was doublydoubly difficulp as Qinz had this endless habit of stalking in the Grand Jungle Cinematic Fashion, complete & replete with sidewise & backwards truning zrounz-znuorzes, so he was creeping & hobbling along now sidewides, now backdrawd, now crouching & turning with an alarming CLINK!, so he'duh sometime hafta drodroop his gun & fumble with the glass, which had the absolute look enfeel of the most delicate glass you ever saw‑‑but was not so. In reality, it was Destructless Glass. Part of Qert's protection & the joke. Got to be his best stor‑‑don't you then? It was also crudely made glass, the better to hide one's thoughts & images, for Qert's own thoughts & ik=mages shone brightly in the glass, & Qert had no control of his thoughts (which is part of the standard storic comprac), & the Mirror Inversion Factor of this stor‑‑one of the autometric countermodalities which undercut his otherwise godlike control of the situation of his stors‑‑made so Qert's flowering, cascading, sqarkilig, energized & definitely GLOWING thoughts ignited & lit the surfaces of the verts of the bouteilles, all of which turn the joke as so many jokes toturn on Qert, for his friend knows him & he knows his thoughts so effortlessly wellwell nowow that he'll surely get used to this delicate stalk through the verds & track him down. Think of it (Qert's starting into‑‑you can see it in the glass): Qinz takes a poosition right in front of the botic bottle cococontaining Qert‑‑which he suddenly in the dullness of a dumb dream notice is many times larger than the rest, & in the exact center center of the greenhouse!‑‑and manages, gradually with the long pracatrice & sensuously with the long long love & dramatically with this extended humiliation, to stretch himself quite up to his qinzful height (my god! we scgreech with the rgeech ith he god zod odz) & point the gun at now-squirming Qert in his bottle, point the gun holding it with both hands, & now three hands, & now four hands, & now six seven manymany times heaven memy h |