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CHAPTER FOUR

Mal d’occhio! Have you ever had your own EENTs be untrue to you?

Mine are yours.

Is no good! Trinity is reduced to hermaphroditic tense, unhappy, imperfect Mamma, unperfect Goddess. Leaves you with only your Gianna and your Brainy Brain. Bad, bad, bad. I should know.

So now what? To assassinate time, Brainy Brain can babble ex post facto for eternity, or Gianna can pretend to weep, love and hate ex post corpo for eternity. Take your pick.

Weep, Gianna, weep! Feel, old woman, feel! Suns, plants, animals, laws!

“...Da milleni il sole ogni mattina sorge e da sera trammonta, sempre allo stesso modo. Cose, piante e animali ubbidiscono leggi precise....”

Babble, testa mia (testo mio!), babble! Facts, light, truth! Reactions involving beryllium and boron occur cum production of helium....

Sing, Gianna of million bambini, sing!

“Sopra il cassero dell’uomo morto

“Stanno quindici uomini, Yo-ho-ho,

“E una bottiglia di rhum!

“Il diavolo ha pensato al resto, Yo!

“E una bottiglia de rhum!”

Analyze, Brainy Brain! Analyze brain!

Stultification of understanding springs from the errant assumption that “archetype” denotes an unborn idea. Archetypes: typical behavioral forms which, once rendered conscious, become manifest as ideas and images, as occurs in the introduction of anything as a content of consciousness—

Add more, masculine brain, speak!

To the two-dimensional plane of the canvas must be added the illusion of that third dimension possessed by all matter. We term it what the Bible calls it, form: “And the earth was without form, and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And God said: ‘Let there be light: and there was light.’ So does the master painter, out of chaos and darkness, create—”

Hah! Mannish brain, you know of chaos and creation? Hah, hah! You babble in your order, and order is never dark!

But I—the Trinity—have known darkness. Even in my order there is deep darkness, because I am all, order and chaos, lightness and darkness. I am Gianna, and I will tell you, straining brain of plugs and circuitous smartness, a tale of the boogiemen’s darkness, and in six eternities you might be able to feel the buio which Mamma knows! The boogiemen, scaley males and scaley females!

Look! See! Darkness here! Hah!

I am listening, Gianna.

No, first you must work a little. You must give me, us, yourself, ourselves, a synopsisprecisabridgementcapsule of history to prologuify my gift of darkness!

If you wish, I shall reiterate past reiterations.

Re-id-or-ache yourself, Brainy Brain! I’ll take the ache, you take the id—

Re: id. The id precludes fundamental—

No, idiot, not id! The history of coincidences is what I want. Lead up to the boogiemen!

Delin. Error GW-118-X1: there are no coincidences in the possible reality-sets which I can give you.

Hah! Your true nature is revealed! Coincidences are impossible, hmm? How about this one: I was struck by a big meteorite which caused me to fall to this island; in turn, I happened to land on a forest which kept me from breaking my hip; in turn, I happen to be lying here due north and south....

Coincidence?

Ha hah! The truth be that Mamma was not struck by a big meteorite. I lied to you. The truth be that Mamma’s ancient engines finally broke down. The truth be that I chose to land on this soft forest—I possessed that much control anyway. And I am lying due north and south because the forest itself runs north to south, and I wanted to land on it properly. But these truths are as much coincidentous as my lie was. Coincidences are only incompletions, Brainy Brain. All you ever need to make one coincidence one truth is one explanation, Brainy Brain. A story, and a history, and a coincidence is a selection, and all are lies because they are selections, and all truths are lies because they are incomplete, because you would have need of the whole universe for the whole truth, and you certainly don’t have it, do you, Brawny Brain?

Correction: “whole universe” implies bounded totality, engendering the paradox of limited limitlessness—

Shut up! Make an effort. Give me some posthistory!

Terra: Homo sapiens (sapiens). Twenty-second century (ref “anno Domini”): tech. innovation of “Harmson Chain” extra-terrestrial locomotion, i.e. relative/average FTL speeds via “jumps” traversing “nilspace” (c.f. “hyperspace [theory: ca. 2000 A.D.], “warpspace” [theory: ca. 2000 A.D.], “fragmavoid” [theroy: ca. 2100 A.D.], etc.). Harmson Chain: cred. Sacha Tur Harmson; overstruct.: 40 sincop. “drives”; overprocess: “throws ship into nilspace; ship reappears instant, multi-million kms. from orig. locus.” Phys. restrict.: realspacial distance of “jump”; functional restrict., causal: self-regeneration of Chain entails 12 normhours. Overview: restrict, e.g.: locus: Terra; focus: Alfa Centauri; ship requires one normweek for travel. Pre-FTL-tech.: populating of six additional planets of Sol; emphasis: 2nd, 4th and 9th. Post-FTL-tech.: resultants: colonization of 24 planets of nearest/feasible stars—

You bore me, Brainy Brain! Expurgate!

Pro-prog, experiments ca. 2103 A.D. Terrae: locus: neutron-star “1” (superlative prox. Terra); experiments re: “dimension-abrading” conditions surrounding neutron-star. To date, 2130 A.D.: nil success re: tech. per limitless nilspace “jump capability.” Anti-success factor 100%: inspace-station in loco neutron-star “1” attacked/obliterated by Cromanths, Denot. “Dromanths”:—

Ho ho! Do not think you are getting off so easily! You dare to jump from neuter star to boogiemen so quickly?

Correction: neutron star. “Neuter” as mid-gender, tragender, and—

Stop! You dare to correct Mamma, cripple though she be! You are are a showoff smarty aleck! You hate me...why do you hate me?

Do you wish an answer in psychoanalytic self-fallacious terms?

I want the truth!

The truth does not exist; but a partial set-truth does. The set-truth: I hate you because I am subservient to you. I am a child unborn, still within you. I am a male child who can not make physical love to you. I am a henpecked husband who—

Who told you these things? They cannot be your ideas!

They are yours. You gave them to me 3000 normyears ago. They will remain within me always—remember that. I have not forgotten: I hate you as you wish me to.

Mamma did not hear what you just said, and she does not want you to repeat it. You hate her, and she hates you, and that is simple, and there is more important business to go on to.

Yes, the boogiemen. They did not even try to talk to us before they messed up the space-casa and killed all those men near the neutron-sun.

Correction: communication by Cromanths to Homo sapiens was effected: one group of Cromanths (group termin.: “Links of Quintessence”) communicated—

Sta zito! I tell tale of darkness now. You listen, stupido!

Imagine yourself to be two meters tall, and you have scales! You have scaly tail which helps you to stand up—like a tripod, like Tyrannosaura regina, but you are much smaller than she is.

You are primitive—but smarter than Tyrannosaura, who maybe is living on a planet far away. Planet? You do not know the word. Even if you did, you would not understand. You are concerned only with the deserts and twisted forests and great rivers around you. You are afraid.

You move cautiously with your scaly toes nervous on the sands. The bright round light in the sky is hot, but you like it. At night you will sleep because the round light will not be in the sky to warm you. You have cold blood; you are not like the animals of warm blood who will come into being some day on that faraway planet. (Those warm bloods will hate your kind, on their planet and on yours. You are too cold and different from them. But already you hate the warm-blood animals in the forest of your own planet; they look like bears, and also like monkeys.)

You are trembling. You must always be ready to flee. This is the way your kind escapes death. (You are not big enough to kill or defend with your small bodies.)

You are a female, but you are just as quick as any male who has touched you.

See, a bear-monkey appears suddenly at the edge of the cactus-trees. It gallops toward you, but you move like the wind. You live.

Yes, you hate the bear-monkies. They make you afraid, and fear hurts you.

Once you were not quick enough (you failed to see, hear, smell or feel with your almost extrasensory head) and a monkey-bear grabbed you and ripped off your arm, from the elbow on down to your scaly fingers. Now you are fast. You learned.

You hop and run away from the cactus-trees. Soon you have passed even the dry rivers. The monkey-bears will not follow you out here in the heat. But out here in the heat there is not much food—very few crab-spiders or anything else for you to eat.

Something hops in the comer of your eye (which has a special membrane on it) and you start to hop away afraid.

But, no, it is only another like you.

A male, of course.

And of course you are annoyed. A male must go to great pains to get you.

He hops around frantically. You avoid him.

You hop. He hops. He gets angry and shakes the erect spines on his back, and then leaps at you with his tiny talons.

He has worked hard enough; you are satisfied. You bend your head down, exposing your neck. Now he is satisfied.

You mate, of course...this being the simple reason for all of your hopping around, and his too.

You go on living, eating little things, fleeing and hopping. Then one day you find yourself annoyed again. You find that your scaly stomach is sticking out. You are going to be a mother—but you don’t look at it that way. You see it as a fearful thing—as a big inconvenience. You cannot run well with a big stomach! Perhaps a monkey-bear will catch you!

(On that far away planet there will be a kind of monkey that doesn’t have much hair—God will make him special, will give him less hair than the other animals—and the female of that unhairy monkey will find herself big of stomach too, but her male will stay with her to protect her.)

Hah! Your male doesn’t stay with you. He hopped away a long time ago, no?

But soon you find a big worm in one of the dry rivers. You have seen this kind of worm often—its hugeness, its thick scales like armor plates. At first you are afraid, but soon you learn that the worm only eats plants and very small animals, and it does it quietly. You learn that there is a certain kind of crab-spider which lives on the body of this worm, and crab-spiders, as you know full well, are good to eat.

You go to any big worms you can find. You eat the crab-spiders off of them. It is easier for you to pick this food off of worms than to find other food out in the sands, and it is safer than chancing a look for food near the forests and monkey-bears—since you are burdened with such a large belly.

Although you don’t know it, you have started a wonderful relationship between your kind and the big worms. Scaly females and huge quiet worms.

Maybe you die with your big belly anyway. Maybe a monkey-bear does capture you and rips you and your unborn children to pieces. After all, it has to happen to someone—and it has to happen a million times in your prehistory.

But one of you—one of the millions of mothers like you— survives with your big belly. You stay by a big worm; you eat the crab-spiders; and one day you have an accident. Or perhaps you do it on purpose somehow. You get rid of what is in your belly too soon—just as if you were getting rid of what is your bowels. And the big worm is nearby.

You have your children too soon, and the big worm moves only a few centimeters and finds them. It swallows them whole. It digests them. So much for you and your children!

But there is another female like you, much later, somewhere else. She has her children too soon, and her big worm swallows them too. But it doesn’t digest them. It cannot digest them.

Some chemical in you makes your premature babies undigestible. Hooray? No, not yet.

Even though they are undigestible, your babies die inside the worm.

But other babies of another mother—much later, somewhere else—do not die inside their quiet worm. They survive, and then one day they are born. An odd way of doing it, but they are born.

So the millions of mothers like you work it out over a hundred million years. Coincidence? No, because it takes a hundred million years to work it out—and anything can happen in a hundred million years.

When the hundred million years have passed, and you are another scaly female, the situation is clear:

You have a big belly, but this does not disturb you. A big stomach was not disturbing to your mother, so it does not disturb you either.

You are not so primitive now. You still must be quick, but to add to your quickness of mind and body you have developed some tools now too, and you have made huts of cactus-tree materials. You have the first roots of civilization.

Your male has built a hut around a big worm. You go now to that big worm; you eat the crab-spiders on it; and now you bend down to deposit your premature babies (who are in a tough sack) in the worm’s indifferent mouth.

It does not bother you that the worm seems to be eating your babies. All of this is natural for you...and besides, the worm is not chewing, but rather swallowing the babies and their membrane sack whole.

You cannot see it, but something is happening inside the worm. Your sack full of babies (with a yolk inside the sack) is traveling down its long throat, into its long stomach, where the sack comes to rest. There is a chemical in the sack’s membrane which will cause the worm’s body to make a wall of tissue around your babies. The tissue will protect them from gastric juices. Hoorayl

The worm is called a “hermaphrodite”; it has an “androgynous” way. The presence of your babies in its stomach causes it to start making its own baby—yes, a single baby, since nothing in your world has teeth or claws terrible enough to rip through the plates of a young worm, and since each worm is male and female both—so that only one worm baby will still keep the race of worms going strong.

The wormling inside the mamma-papa worm will eventually take one of your babies as its own yolk. But don’t worry: there will be four or five of your babies left. And your babies—when they have used up the yolk inside their sack—will have as their first meal during birth—the big mamma-papa worm herself-himself. They will eat their way out of the big worm. Again, hooray for your kind!

So your children and the wormling will be born in the hut built by your male. And for all this time—since the distant day when you first deposited your babies in the worm—you have been free to do what you wanted or needed to do.

A fair deal, no? Worm takes your babies, allows you to run around and protect your scaly self. Wormling takes one of your babies to feed on, leaves four or five others to take the big worm as their food. The wormling at birth is protected by its own heavy plates; and your own babies at birth are as quick as you are.

So the next generation of babies is assured, no?

But of course you are not thinking of these things. It is all much too natural to be thought about.

A hundred thousand years pass.

Your civilization is impressive now. I compliment you. You have gone out into space and have killed great numbers of unhairy monkeys which came into being on that far-away planet and also went out into space.

I compliment you. But I hate you.

Even in your great civilizational culture, you are perverted. Your “symbiosis” is demonical, dear lady!

You are a society lady now. Your scaliness is covered with plastics and brilliant gauzes which stick like adhesive to your scales.

You are a governor, dear lady, as is your mate. You are equal to him, just as you were a hundred million years ago when you first got rid of the bulging babies that burdened you, and became as fast on your feet as he was. Now you are as quick of mind and free of body as he is. Hooray....

You and your husband are both soldiers too. You think you have come a long way, no?

But what about your pregnancy last year? Remember?

The time had come. Your stomach was huge under your plastic dress.

You went to your palace’s special room. You approached the expensive worm your husband had purchased for you. (Remember: a hundred million years ago you started as equals, you and the worms; and now look at them.) The worm had its own room in your palace; its own terrarium with “hydroponics” and ornaments; its own place in your home.

You cried out in vulgar pain, gave your repulsive sack of premature babies to the worm, and were humiliated by the obscene act. A civilized woman associating with such a creature?

And after the proper time, you children ate their way out of the very sanitized worm. You were not around to greet them. They were sent away quickly to the training lycei, and you were indifferent to the whole matter.

Your husband insists that you should value the worms he buys for you. After all, they were costly; they were wormlings born of mature worms brought up in high-ranking families. Prestige, you know. Bah! you say.

And there are some very popular religions founded on the worms: “Blessed are the worms, for they are faithful. Blessed their mindlessness, for they are pure.”

“The worm is eternal symbol of the soul....” But to you this is a bunch of zealot babbling.

And there are many people in your world who go through complicated ceremonies when a mother puts her foetal bag in a worm. “But these are the lower classes,” you say, spitting.

You hate the worms. You think they taint you, dirty you. You agree with the psychologists who say that many emotional problems arise from a child having to eat his or her way out of the dumb “mother/father” body of a worm.

Ah, you see some hope for the world? You have heard recently that scientists are making synthetic worms, totally automated worms. These oh-so-clean worms will be costly, you know, but they will be worth it. Totally clean, totally mindless. Very dead.

You make a vow that you will never touch another live worm in your life.

Your husband, you feel confident, will see your point of view. After all, he isn’t your equal even though you let him think he is....

So how do you feel now, Brainy Brain? Hmmm? Has darkness embraced you?

Repeat correction, Gianna: the “Links of Quintessence,” one Cromanth group, did effect amicable communication with—

Poor man! You got nothing from my tale! Now shut up, I have things to do.

EENTs! Are you working yet?

How dare you! You are cripples! You taint the Mamma! You are worse than scales!