Accelerated Turing Machine

Dango picks up an Accelerated Turing Machine at fifty per cent off in the post-holiday sales.

‘What does it do?’ asks his son, phasing into continuity.

‘It divides time infinitely.’

‘Can I play Minecraft on it?’

‘Maybe. I’m still not sure if switching it on will end the universe or merely collapse it into a singularity of limitless computational capacity.’

‘What do the instructions say?’

‘Threw them out.’

Dango’s son is also overweight and a source of constant but vague disappointment. No one really remembers where he came from and in many versions of the story he doesn't exist at all. He starts in again with this shit:

‘Dad, I've been meaning to say, I don’t really want to live like this, it’s too complicated you know and I’m not really even sure what algebra is let alone any of this stuff about chronology, I think I’d much rather be a painter, I did this really good still life of a Caesar salad the other day, particularly the croutons-‘

Dango cuts him off by groaning loudly and for an incredible amount of time. He glares at his son until both of them begin to feel uncomfortable. The vibration causes some of the ash at the end of his cigarette to fall off, but as the embers reach the point halfway between the cigarette and the floor they discover that motion is impossible and self-consciously climb back up.

Dango, still groaning, decides he’s glared at his son enough and resumes tinkering with the computer. A salad. Jesus. His own flesh and blood. It will not stand. Pointing a finger and roaring mightily:

‘There is work to be done, boy! Do you really want to live in a universe made of seventy five per cent dark matter like some sort of fucking poor person all your life? This is it boy, this isn't like the time I sent you off to sell the cow and you came back with that dodgy particle accelerator-‘

‘I still reckon with a bit of repairs-‘

‘No, listen to me dammit, it’s useless, couldn't fry an egg.’

‘But-‘

‘Shut up. The point is, this is the real deal. You’re good with computers right? If you set it up you can play your thing, I don’t know where all these cords go.’

Dango finds the existence of his child worrisome and uncharismatic, though he’s not sure why. The boy brings out the worst in him, there’s no denying it; he feels as though his character flaws were graphed out and represented with unpleasant fractal imagery, spiraling endlessly through the deep-seated root of yet another anxiety. He has never quite gotten to The Bottom of The Thing.

Globehead

By the time we rolled through the Mojave, the phonanesthetics stiched inside the lining of the seats weighed scarcely twenty kilos. It was going to be very, very close. The federal police of the Analgesic Unlimited energy concern was moving quick but we hoped to outrun them in the desert. They jump us within site of Vegas  - razor wire along the road pops the tires and we skid out. Someone must have talked. Cries of "who, me?"

Figures appear in the distance. We live and die by the glint of iron on the distant horizon. Larry catches two in the head and gets the blood absolutely everywhere. The rest of the crew try to shoot back while I make a break for it. Someone swings at me but I tase him and his gimmicked fingers malfunction into knives easy enough.

"To explain: there is a vast network. A whole ocean of possibilities. Now these here amulets will protect you from curses both witchcraft and voodoo in origin, up to three demonic possessions, malignant sigils and scabies. They'll be expecting a full report in the offices and I for one do not intend to get written up again."
The firefight switches into the high-noon showdown. They bring out the old cliches. In the red corner, weighing in at one hundred fifty pounds and packing a Ruger Bearcat, Theodore Rosenstein my collaborator and neighbor from the flat downstairs. In blue, of mass only detectable with a particle accelerator and wielding authority roughly equivalent to the energy output of a neutron star is the unnameable presence behind this whole thing. It's gonna be a hell of a fight, kid. The dusty street goes quiet. Tumble weeds beam in over the shortwave unconvincingly. Three cold seconds under the desert sun. For a moment everyone has fixed themselves in the world. Then Theodore moves - too soon - and it's all over in an instant. He screams as the big hands come down. The new rules are read forth briskly and terribly by every roided up goon of the right and established order of Goons and any fucker tries to shirk his union fees is subject to a beating at full cost.

Sweaty Charlie

Charlie Green – ‘Sweaty’ Charlie to his friends – was and presumably still is a large and nervous man, prone to crippling obsessions and paranoia. True to form, he was being large and nervous in a café. He was eating a chicken Caesar salad, which in his opinion contained rather too many croutons. Charlie like to represent every ingredient equally in every bite, but this salad was simply too saturated with bread for this to be accomplished whilst maintaining both a correct ratio among ingredients and a regard for taste. 

Indeed, it seemed that as he ate each even forkful that the quantity of croutons relative to that of say, chicken or lettuce was steadily rising. Soon, he realised, croutons would comprise the entirety of food in the bowl. Given that in the beginning they had comprised but a fraction of the meal, Charlie reasoned that they must somehow be propagating, multiplying themselves whilst retaining the same volume. Soon his lunch would reach a point of infinite density and form a black hole which would then devour the solar system, if not the universe.

‘My god!’ cried Charlie, as he flung the bowl through the café window, ‘I knew I should have ordered chips!’

Apologue five

Indulge me temporarily. Look up and see: through the outermost orbits of the solar system moves a mysterious and terrible planet. Unknown by telescope or any other traditional means of inference, we perceive it as breath on the back of our necks, a strange light on a deserted street. There's something wrong with that man. A voice that whispers in your headphones, beneath the Morse code. Tension rises and all the old numbers stations go dead. Theia has come back to finish the job.

I can feel it in my bones now. The gravity well's run dry. Look up; they're here already. Fiddling with radios somewhere near magnetic north. All of this is stricken from the record. Damnatio memoriae. Like electrons around an atom we spin through the void and with us spins this planet, the malfunctioning engine. It's over. Arm yourself. Bring a knife to a M.A.D. doctrine. It's almost ready. A little further now.

Here it comes.

Even Smiling Makes My Face Ache

He was bankrupt in seven dimensions and 

having nothing better to do of a wednesday

I offered him shelter from hungry and vengeful 

creditors. He'd been financing an insurgency -

on the astral plane, dear boy, where the final

battle will resolve itself and I will free mankind 

of all tyrannies, spiritual, existential, benign or

otherwise, as foretold by ancient prophecy and 

tv guides. I said yeah, but look here at these 

faucets in the shower. They're fiddly, you hear me? 

Fiddly, and they must be fiddled in the manner

of a safecracker in order to achieve correct 

tem-per-ah-ture - oh, and you'll be sleeping

on the couch. He thanked me for my hospitality 

and for taking such an enormous risk, dear 

boy. I told him that I liked to live, as they say,

on the edge, and that really it was nothing; later 

that night I crept downstairs and phoned it in. 

The look in his eyes as they dragged him off in

manacles delights me to this day, and though

it's been close I have never since felt so

free.

Apologue Four

Look. Charlie don't surf. He do not. A question of grammar; the narrative play out otherwise. He just don't. Oh lord, oh Jesus, make sure they broadcast my death live on Foxtel! Skimp not on the details, I seen nothing better yet. Come on! I am calm, I am ready! Out with it man, give me your vacuum cleaners, I do it me self. My reptile brain, see, it's just no good. Like rotten teeth. I am the dentist around here and I do the dentistry and I do all the dentistry. Lay it on me! The gear, the really good bits! This is it folks, this is it. Or will it be. Surely. Yes, this time for real. Dissipate my existence. We've got freaky Zen koans out the wazoo and special machines what write more if you tickle them with correct posture and dexterity. Here we go now chums and chumettes, strap yourselves into the apparatus which I happen to build real comfy so don't make me have to come down there strap you in personal. All refreshments available at extra charge. We run outta Twix. Sincerest apologies.

My bones like bubble wrap clickety pop outta get it checked out but who has the time? Not I and certainly not you; real life only a nice example of pointillism anyway and we all know that Seurat was as French as they come. I give you good deal, nick your wallet and shoes leave yer Dendritic cells and most of the spine unharmed. A persistent disintegration of memory. We recall John and we recall Johns actions as distinct entities. John put the can in the bin. So who put the can in the bin? It could have been John, he is like that after all. Clearly the whole can thing is a set up. Treasonous little shits. No brand loyalty talk trash about our motives behind our back. Hire someone to level the score; he equalizers things, so to speak - nice and thermodynamic.

The Picnic

1

At five AM, and with a vague sensation of déjà vu we finally make the big lurch to Circular Quay. Something feels wrong. I begin to have doubts about the purity of my quest; surely we were going off script here? No, I reassure myself, this too is part of the film. And if I want to watch something else, well, too bad: we've lost the remote so it's either get up and walk to the television like some kind of fucking poor person or double down on popcorn and put the 3D glasses back on. To this end a drink is in order, but unfortunately not at hand. Cursing the bouncer who kicked us out of that Irish pub an hour ago, I stumble around the quay. It had, ostensibly, been for gesturing too much. Maybe my lack of apparent joy at no longer living in the mother country was bringing everybody down. Probably it was the fact I was cackling to myself and sweating aggressively. That fucker just didn't get the joke.

In retrospect, neither did I, but to me it's always been a given that at least one person in a large establishment has to be moving their eyebrows oddly at nothing and sucking down jagerbombs, by himself, for reasons we trust he explain later. Someone has to be that guy. No, Scruffy Murphy's Hotel and Irish Pub was not a venue friendly to the concept of Having a Quiet Drink - and I was more than willing to meet them halfway on the quiet thing. Much better was the overpriced but empty twenty-four hour cafe, restaurant and bar called City Extra on the quay, where I asked for and received bacon, eggs, coffee, beer and a lighter.

This beer pushed me past some kind of spiritual limit. This beer got me. Yes, it understood me, accepted me for who I was and validated my lifestyle. I sat back and reflected on the multitudes of things that made me great. It only took a quick glance in any direction to confirm what I had always suspected to be true: I was undoubtedly a genius. Not just anyone can go to a cafe. Oh no. This was a precision manoeuvre on a mission almost spiritual. I was very, very clever. I was going to get on a ferry. Post-ferry, I was going to go to sleep. On a beach.

Yes.

The ultimate, long-term plan was to attend some sort of picnic-style “let’s-all-have-a-catch-up” type-thing that was happening later, one which I had previously decided wasn't worth the time I could spend, say, carving a swastika into my balls. Then at around two in the morning I suffered a change of heart: I was already awake, drunk and had nothing better to do, so why not mumble gibberish at people whom I'd not seen for over a year, and didn't even know particularly well to begin with? The choices I make at two in the morning are universally poor. I've heard it said, however - possibly third hand, and almost certainly originating from Bear Grylls - that in a desperate, life-or-death survival situation such as this, indecision is the real killer. So at least a choice had been made, even if consideration had only been given to the dramatic appeal of the available options, instead of their pragmatism.

And standing around, waiting for the first ferry in the limbo of a drunken six AM, undoubtedly has dramatic appeal coming out of the wazoo. It makes a man slightly nauseous. At six twenty sharp, the ferry casts off and I sit at the front, enjoying the pleasing rumbling of the engines and swell of the harbour, watching my window reflection against the lights of the north shore fade slowly into daylight. Overcast, wet, grey daylight, from which there can be no escape save for the embrace of vacuum sealed interiors and maybe a towel. This, I realise, buggers my plans to have a quick nap on the beach in order to freshen up and restore my energy for the long day of being drunk that I require for proper effect. Does anyone sell amphetamines before breakfast, and do they do it in Manly? Could I somehow force them to?

Only one way to find out. Plenty of time to formulate a strategy on this, the greatest journey in the history of nautical public transport. Charon himself would have balked at such an undertaking. Not I.  Various other classical references launch themselves across my brain only to die out in the temporal lobe as I forget the character's names, or what they were supposed to have done, or how I could possibly relate it to my current business of being on a boat. I hold on to, and congratulate myself for, the river Styx thing though. That was good. Mental note: mention it later, and often.

“Don’t fuck with me, matey,” I mumble to myself, “I’m like a big old ravenous fuckin’… hydra?”

Kill the body and the head will sprout legs and crawl under a desk.

The ferry pulls in at Manly. What the fuck am I doing in Manly? Ah, yes: continuing my journey. Stay in character, keep back story and motivations in mind at all times. Life is little more than the narrative with which one chooses to identify, after all.  And this narrative, surely, must be the best on offer. Why else would I identify with it so strongly? My presence on the wharf, bleary eyed among the closed Starbucks and crappy souvenir shops, just feels so right. This place is my spiritual home.

“Hey man, is it cool if I crash for a couple hours in your little booth thingy?”

He good-naturedly tells me to fuck off and continues setting up his shop. Classic. It’s around this time that I think to check my phone, and discover that the picnic has been cancelled for the rain. My crisis is immediate and highly existential; my life made purposeless. I feel somewhat ripped off and want my ticket back. Should have seen it coming. The foreshadowing was all there, not at all subtle either. Dark skies. End times. Tear gas canisters burst in through the windows: we clutch at our throats yelling “save us!” and the universe angrily punches us in the face. It’s every man for himself, now that the context’s been altered and Tyler Durden revealed to be your dad. What, then, to do in manly at ten to seven in the morning?

I stand in the middle of the empty road, arms outstretched like Jesus or a man being frisked, and pose this question to the grey sky. It pisses on me, half-heartedly. I recall that it’s not too far from here to the sea.

2

"Fuck you! You think you're better than me, you gigantic fuck? Nuke the whales! Destroy squids! We're coming for you, dickhead! This is just the beginning! James Cameron knows your secrets! You ain't shit!"

For the second time in as many weeks, I spend the early hours of the morning drunk, very far from home and yelling obscenities at the ocean. It's a lifestyle thing. The sea calls to some people; it calls me a dickhead and up with that I will not put. For me, going to the beach inevitably results in ungraceful sweating, complaining and panic attacks of a weekend-ruining nature. I can't cope with anything more than ankle deep immersion without experiencing a kind of reverse ego-death: my sense of self becomes rigidly defined in definition to an infinite, uncontrollable external environment. The ocean - and there is only one - is the biggest single thing on the planet, and to be in it is terrifying. Vertigo in four dimensions.

So naturally I am drawn to be near it, because my existential nemesis is the only real nemesis I have, and I like insulting people. Near, say, just out of reach of most waves. Near enough so that it can hear me shouting and see me waving my arms about and throwing cigarettes at it, demanding full recompense for indignities suffered. Reparations. Refundments.

Revenge.

A few early morning surfers look at me strangely. I nod at them in solidarity and pride. They go where I cannot, to perform vital reconnaissance and get tans. God's speed.

Despite going to great pains to stand firmly in the “Beach” part of the beach, I find myself en-dampened. What the fuck is this? Light rain! Shit! We’re being flanked, the sky’s in on it too! As I run off to find a suitable bunker or toilet block in which to take cover, I remember my comrades-in-wetsuits and turn back, only to discover that it’s too late: they’re already in the sea’s merciless grip, tossed about by the maybe half meter of swell and pinned down by this pretentious mist. I can only assume they died heroic but senseless deaths. I remember what they told us in year four about the water cycle – if only I’d listened, this could have all been prevented.

“A pox on the shithead what invented evaporation!”

Some joggers jog past.

“And on you, for exercising in public. You can jog but you can’t hide! I’ll find you with my telepathy if I have to! Ah, these psionic gains, bro…”

All of life’s problems originate in the brain. Maybe I can get it removed. Give me ten inches of garden hose and a vacuum cleaner, I’ll do it myself. Memories, some of them even mine, overtake me: my private brain care specialist shoots spinal fluid in the skin, Deep Blue beats Lance Armstrong in the full contact monopoly, at age three I am walking along Bronte beach when something grabs at me from the bushes…

With all my plans to sleep, drink and attend informal reunions ruined by the bastard weather, I catch the ferry back after a scant half hour. It's about half past seven and the transition from drunken craze to sleep-deprived-delirium is almost complete now; the loud conversation I have with a variety of friends, all of whom are non-present, presumably bewilders and frightens the other passengers. None of them seem very keen to make friends with me, which I attribute less to my own blatant lunacy and instead to upper class prudishness. I assume they're upper class. I mean, who else regularly rides about on ferries at this time of day? If I was rich, that's what I'd do. Sober, no less.

I look around, hoping to find a brother in arms, or at least someone who looked willing to listen to the gibberish I want to tell them. The secrets of the universe unfold around me, begging to be related. It was all about lamps, see... Something is wrong. It's the same film but the genre has changed, from a sort of stoner comedy into an experimental student gizmo shot on a budget of about twenty dollars in which nothing happens. It's not even a depressing tragedy, it's just three or four hours of straight nihilism. Why am I watching this. Where is the fucking remote? All my electric running out out

Someone is singing.

"I saw the worst bands of my generation... applied by magic marker to drywall"

I think it's me. How long did I sit stood standing on this ferry for? Destroy squids. Yeah. Fuck 'em! At seven-fifty AM, and with a vague sensation of déjà vu, we narrowly make the big jump from boat to dry land. Something is wrong. Didn’t we do this routine before? Surely we’re recycling script here?

This too is part of the film.

Back in the quay. Christ, will this horrible cycle never end? What's the point of going somewhere and doing a thing? You'll only have to leave and do something else. Climb the steps up to the train station.

"Excuse me!"

"uh, yes?"

"whendoesthetraincomeplease?"

The woman looks at the display, conveniently located directly in front of me.

"… Five minutes."

I close my eyes and whisper "thank you" with what I intend as palpable relief but probably comes off as palpable erotic satisfaction. Don’t flatter yourself, station wench. Just tell me when the train comes.

As usual, I find the correct platform at central station in time to watch the train leave without me. An hour twenty minute wait, none of which is pleasant or even memorable. The rising sun is noticeable only by the extent to which the clouds obscure it – which they do, totally. A man sitting beside me remarks that it’s a cold day. He’s right; although the temperature is acceptable, if not ideal, it is indeed a very cold day. Shit, it’s a cold world. He is prophet and truth teller; why is it that such people always speak in riddles and complaints?

“Look old man, sir, I want answers. I did all the right stuff, right, and spent more money than I can afford to spend, all to keep my drunk rolling until it was time to go to this thing, but then it was cancelled. So what was the point of me doing all that stuff?! Why the fuck did I go to Manly, on a fucking ferry no less, if not as part of an epic adventure?”

He gets up and moves to another seat. Cold world. What’s the point of grandiose rhetorical questions in such an uncaring universe? Finally the train rolls in. I climb aboard and try to pass out but sleep won’t come. I consider, briefly, suicide, but dismiss it as too stressful, and I’m no longer sure if I can stand. I stare at the seat in front of me. It offers no interesting revelations or thoughts. It’s just green, and it continues to be green, and I continue to stare at it like a zombie. Finally, we leave the station and the camera pulls back for the inevitable long shot of the train climbing up the mountain into the distance, over which the credits roll until I'm invisible on the horizon and a few rays of light make it through the thick clouds. 

Although it's an electric train, I imagine they'll add smoke post-production for extra effect.