Infinite Will 4. Interrogations.
Infinite Will
Episode 4 of 5
Interrogations
4.1. FPAQ (= FPAnswersQ)
You are in the hospital. You are in and out of consciousness. You hate hospitals, and as far as I can tell, you always will. The hospital is staffed by the stupid and you, who think yourself clever, congratulate yourself for your rapid discovery of where they secreted away your street clothes and precious stupid shoe computer.
You find your crap and you congratulate yourself for, among other things, surmounting the obstacle of your near sightlessness. Somebody has taken out your contact lenses. But not your third-eye contact. Though this contact is for telepathy, not navigation, you stumble through the forest of altered volumes revealed from a perch high atop an extra spatial dimension or two.
The human third-eye is a five-dimensional perceptual organ extending from the surface of the brain in a direction perpendicular to the familiar home dimensions of height, width, and depth. It is a periscope that lets you see “over†and into otherwise opaque three-dimensional objects. A two-dimensional-creature granted a periscope extending out into the third-dimension could see what’s behind locked doors and the innards of his fellow inhabitants of Flatland. You usually use your third-eye contact lens to effect telepathy through literal mind- (= brain-) reading. The third-eye contact lens perceptually endows you with broad-spectrum microscopy of neural events. You can perceive a person’s thoughts as bathed in emissions from x-ray to radio and all the colors in between. What your third-eye contact lens is not so great for is guiding you through the corridors of a darkened hospital without stubbing your toes and banging your shins on every available unyielding protrusion. You have a glimpse of your surroundings from the other “above†but it’s like steering a “you are here†arrow through a map in a mirror while dizzy from spinning. Seeing macroscopic three-dimensional objects with the third-eye contact is overwhelmingly distracting. Your visual system is flooded with data and it takes a Herculean effort not to just stare, drop-jawed and drooling, at the hyper-foliating fractals of your enormous new visual environment.
Your vision penetrates every wall of every room, the fabric of every garment, the membrane of every organ. It’s more than a little distracting.
To rise to this challenge of your concentration you attempt to ignite your infinite-will power, to synthesize an army of faux-selves to attend to the distracters while your primary consciousness juggles your targeted contingencies. You attempt to ignite your infinite will-power. And you fail. For the first time you realize exactly what you were brought to this hospital for.
4.2. The Dr. Smax FAQ
Q: Can I ask you a question?
A: Apparently. You just did.
Q: Can I ask you another question?
A: . . .
Q: Ha ha. Just kidding.
A: . . .!!!
Q: Alright, alright. Jebus. Um, so. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE?
A: The souls of vanquished enemies. And by enemies I mean “people who TYPE IN ALL CAPS.â€
Q: Whoa, sorry dude. I just got these shoe computers.
A: . . .!!!
Q: Ok, um, What can you tell us about yourself?
A: That seems way too opened ended for a FAQ. Ask me something a little more specific.
Q: What is the seventh precept of Deicidal Reflexological Fundamentalism?
A: Basic Precept of Deicidal Reflexological Fundamentalism # 7 of 10 is that the most absolutely Vile and Evil thing that two or more human organisms can ever do is to touch the soles of their feet together for the touching of soles leads to the touching of souls and the touching of souls leads to the creation of a SuperDuper UltraEvil GroupMind which, if it isn’t God Himself, it is pretty damn close, and we will kill it and all those responsible for the creation of such an abomination. Now that you’ve got the specificity thing down why don’t you try asking a specific question about me?
Q: What is the eighth precept?
A: That one says “Sole touching that doesn’t wind up creating a SuperDuper UltraEvil GroupMind is still pretty gross and you shouldn’t mess around with that stuff. It will jack up your VEQ, so please, refrain.†Now that is the last question I am answering about the basic precepts of Deicidal Reflexological Fundamentalism. Don’t make me use Smjolnir on you.
Q: What’s that?
A: Smjolnir is my Bolt Throwing Hammer. The thrown bolts are “heightening,†not “lightning,†bolts.
Q: Oh, cool. I read an article about that once. Trans-cranial re-evolution radiation therapy, right? Non-surgical, non-nanotechnological IQ uplift?
A: You’ve got the gist of it.
Q: When are we gonna get that?
A: Not for another 59 years, or so.
Q: Does it hurt?
A: It totally fucking hurts. So why don’t you stay on track with the questions about me?
Q: Yeah, yeah. Ok. So, like, are you following this whole Past Pete, Slaughterhouse Pete, and Future Pete thing?
A: Of course.
Q: And, like, the whole Slaughterhouse Pete, Slaughterhouse Paul, and The Solipsist thing?
A: Sure. This is presumably leading somewhere. What, exactly, is the question?
Q: I don’t I get it.
A: . . .!!!
4.3. The Frequently Questioned Answering Machine
I used to get weird phone messages. Like, the phone lines would fuck up and two people having a phone conversation would somehow wind up being recorded on my answering machine. I was frightened awake one night from the weirdest sounds coming from the kitchen (where the answering machine was kept. Duh.)
Male voice: Oh yeah. I so wanna fuck my own brain now.
Female voice: Oh, what, fucking other people’s brains isn’t enough for you anymore? Where does it end?!
Male voice: It ends when all of the matter in the universe is arranged into one giant brain that fucks itself for ever and ever.
Female voice: And the orgasms?
Male voice: are, like, totally sweet.
Female voice: Filthy. Cosmically filthy. I so want your mouth on me right now.
Male voice: The only thing more filthy than the human mouth is the human mind. Oh, the infections I’ve suffered.
Female voice: I so want your mouth . . .on my brain
Male voice: You realize that’s a total violation of the ninth basic precept of Deicidal Reflexological Fundamentalism, don’t you?
Female voice: Oh, you mean the one that says “Non-sole touching activities that nonetheless eventuate in the creation of a SuperDuper UltraEvil GroupMind (like brain-eating, or whatever) also count toward your VEQ�
Male voice: Yes that’s the one.
Female voice: Well, then, being in total violation of the ninth basic precept of Deicidal Reflexological Fundamentalism is the hottest fucking thing I can think of right now.
Male voice: You are my night sky
Female voice: I am your infinite negress
Male voice: Beautiful, dark
Female voice: and boundless?
Male voice: Oh yeah. I so wanna fuck my own brain now.
Female voice: Oh, what, fucking other people’s brains isn’t enough for you anymore? Where does it end?!
And so on, the whole conversation repeating over and over like that until the tape ran out.
4.4. Answers Frequently Questioned, or: I talk to Jebus like all of the time, or: Thy Will be Done, or: Darth God, Dark Lord of the Sixth
One of the best things about my ShoeComputer is chatting with really cool peeps like Jebus. I talk to Jebus like all of the time.
JebusInDaHouse: So the deal with the Sixth is that most of the misinterpretation comes from peeps’ failure to note the italicization. Big Daddy wrote “Thou shalt not kill” not “Thou shalt not kill.” Killing’s ok as long Daddy has a hand in it.
SlaughtyPee: Dude, that totally kicks ass.
JebusInDaHouse: Just wait til I explain how polytheism is totally consistent with The First.
SlaughtyPee: OMFG, LOL
JebusInDaHouse:Um, dude? The Third?
SlaughtyPee:Oh. Yeah. Sorry.
JebusInDaHouse:You are forgiven, my son.
SlaughtyPee: Wait. Are we talkin’ about The Ten Commandments or The Ten Basic Precepts of Deicidal Reflexological Fundamentalism? I get confused.
JebusInDaHouse: Arrggh! We are talking about The Ten Commandments!!!!
SlaughtyPee: Ha ha. J/K, dude. I knew that.
JebusInDaHouse: Once again, you are forgiven, my son.
SlaughtyPee: Sweet!
4.5. FPAQ (=FPAsksQ)
You are in the hospital. You are in and out of consciousness. You hate hospitals, and as far as I can tell, you always will. Though you have recently acquired infinite will, you have even more recently lost it. As indelicately as you slammed it into yourself, it was even more indelicately torn away from you.
You are in and out of consciousness and despite your cleverness you will know only in retrospect the difference between hallucinations of the mundane and perceptions of the extraordinary. You will sort out only later what came before what. Your remembered present. Your imagined past.
Dr. Yamamoto is the neurosurgeon charged with reversing your auto-cerebral re-engineering. You wake up in the middle of surgery to a bunch of Japanese guys singing Karaoke. You recognize the melodies. They play some of your favorite songs. You love when the guitar break recapitulates the vocal melody from the verses. And as far as I can tell, you always will. The surgeons sing melodies you recognize, but words you do not. Over and over the words sung from behind their masks: Uvolim. Uvolim. Uvolim.
In post-op you fuck with the PCA ( = Patient-Controlled Analgesia) machine to see how much morphine you can get. You hallucinate badly. You wake up to people tearing wires out of your body. Which you realize is a dream. And then someone comes in and rips wires from your body, but then that was a dream too. You wake from a nightmare into another into another. You complain. They take you off the morphine and put you on Demerol. But still, your mind boils. You are recovering from neurosurgery, after all. You are tormented by figures, by voices. “Uvolim†again and again. Like that fucking “Redrum†kid from The Shining. Except, “Uvolim†is just as meaningless to you backwards as it is forwards.
You, who are so clever, have located your precious stupid shoe computers. Though you are no longer the magnificent multi-tasker you hacked your brain to become, as soon as your computers are laced up and humming against your soles you attempt to do everything all at once.
- Locate prescription and reorder contact lenses
- Googleplex “Uvolimâ€
- Finish second draft of illustrated and annotated edition of The Ecstatic Exteriority of the Particularated Ego
- Order Infinite Will Pills
You attempt all of these things but you are distracted. You are oh so distractible now. You have an incoming message. My T- (=tachyon) phone not only lets me place a call to the past (with unlimited minutes when both target and source time-frames are evenings or weekends) but it lets me TextChat with you on your stupid precious shoe computers.
FP: Hey.
SlaughtyPee: Oh, hey. What’s up?
FP: You have to stop the project.
SlaughtyPee: What? What project?
FP: Where/when are you right now?
SlaughtyPee: Shit, man, I dunno. I mean, I’m in a hospital right now, but I’ve had fucking brain surgery. And a lot of drugs. I’m a little foggy on the whole time thing right now.
FP: Fuck. Let’s see. Have I told you about the Twelve Step program I’m in yet?
SlaughtyPee: Oh Jebus, not this shit again.
FP: Listen. This is incredibly important. Step 8 of Time Travelers Anonymous says
SlaughtyPee: Yeah, yeah. It says that you have to make a list of all persons you have harmed, including Past and Future versions of said persons, and become willing to make amends to them all. And in time frames wherein Infinite Will pills are available, replace “willing” with “infinitely willing”.
FP: Yeah. And step 9 says
SlaughtyPee: Ugh. It fucking says that you have to make amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others or the very SpaceTime continuum itself. I don’t know why you bother me with this shit. I’ve never done Time Travel Pills.
FP: You will. Listen. I know the project you are working on. You have to stop the project.
SlaughtyPee: I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about.
FP: You. Have. To. Stop. The. Project.
SlaughtyPee: Arghhh! Dude! Shut the fuck up.
Study Questions
- Fill in the blank. Dr. Smax is to Future Pete what _____________ is to Slaughterhouse Paul. Explain your answer.
- That thing with the answering machine really happened. It only happened, though, when I lived in St. Louis. Did that ever happen to you? No, not the living is St. Louis thing. I mean the answering machine thing.
- The question of questions recurrently recurs in the “Infinite Will†story arc. In fact, the title of this episode makes reference to the act or process of questioning. Further, there’s this whole “Study Questions†thing and the recurring recurrence of the question question in these questions. What, if any, is the relation between willing and questioning? How, if any, is your answer to this question different from the last time around? Also: Recurrence. Discuss.
- So, are you getting the whole God thing? How about the stuff with the time travel? And all of the pills!? And the MongsterZ!?!? They’re toys! Get it? Crippled toys? Crippling toys? God-killer evading pill-popping time-traveling crippled playthings who would themselves dare to be Gods? Or GodZ? Explain in 150 words or less.
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Next episode: Infinite Will Pills