Satan Burger (19 page)

Scene 24

Ocean Man

The drizzle-rain dies as we arrive at Punk Land - not the punk version of heaven, but the place where punks acted punk before the walm took it over.

We’re not strong enough to pick Nan up off the ground and her knees are raw-bloody from scraping against the asphalt.  She has yet to become un-limp, but I’m not impatient for what she will do to me when her strength returns.  I cringe at the thought.

I left Gin’s demon body parts where they were.  Besides Breakfast, that is, who refused to be left behind.  He followed for almost a hundred feet, crawling on fingers, before I noticed him.  Then I stuffed him down Nan’s shorts, hoping she wouldn’t mind.  She’ll probably kill me for that too.  Waking from paralysis to find out she’s been pervert-handled by both myself and her dead boyfriend’s demon hand will probably be damaging to her mental health in some way.  I hope I can make it up to her in the future, after we start a colony in a different dimension.

The scorpion flies are behind us, feeding probably, but we can’t be too sure we’re safe from them.  And there are other creatures to worry about as well.  Like the dark ones and the prowler beasts and the krellians.  And the Movac, who knows everything, who is awaiting us at the walm.

Richard Stein said that it would be a terrible thing to know everything about everything.  I bet he would’ve agreed with Lenny’s statement that
nothing
should know
everything
, and whoever does know everything should be killed.  Richard Stein also said that all human beings are born with the
wish
to know all there is to know, even if it is such a terrible thing.

The park, which used to be punk-filled, is now flooded with a miniature ocean - one that must’ve been brought from a miniature world.  At first I see it as a giant puddle, through gyration eyes, but once I scoop a handful of the water I can see closer-closer.  Turns out there are tiny whales and sharks and sailboats inside.  So small that a sandwich bug can eat them in a gulp.  I drop the chunk of ocean back into place, probably drowning the sailboats that I had.  The ocean seems to go for half a mile, all the way through Punk Land.

Richard Stein said that the ocean, not old age, is where all the world’s wisdom comes from.  He believed that oceans produce an aura that seeps into the souls of anyone around it, so people that live in or around the ocean are generally the most enlightened people alive.  Mr. Richard Stein never knew this for fact, though, because he didn’t know any wise people that lived near the ocean.  He just assumed he knew what he was talking about after he visited the Atlantic one summer.  He said, "The vast emotion was overpowering and my thoughts were never so clear."  But he never went inside of the water, since Richard Stein couldn’t swim.  One of his legs didn’t work correctly.

Water-wisdom is what he called it.  He said that it’s much more powerful than old age wisdom or educated wisdom or the common wisdom you’re born with.  In fact, he mentioned that if there was someone who knew everything about everything, that person would’ve gotten his/her knowledge from water-wisdom.  If this were true then more schools should’ve been built on beaches or near lakes, because
wisdom
is more important than school-learning - which is
intelligence
.  The thing about intelligence is that it revolves around memory.  Those with good memories will learn more.  Those that forget easily will not be intelligent.  And those with photographic memories will be considered geniuses.  I don’t like to hear that someone with such good memory can be called such a name, a genius is one who has
both
intelligence and wisdom.

The man who knows everything is an exception, however, because he was probably born with the knowledge to know everything - at least in my opinion.  So memory would not be an important commodity for him, since there is nothing he can
learn
that he will need to
remember
.

By the way, I have been addressing the man who knows everything as a
he
, but I perfectly well know that it could be a
she
- the woman who knows everything.  I will have to start calling it the
Movac
, so that I do not ruin its gender.

Richard Stein figured that he could find total enlightenment by heading out to sea in a little sailboat.  In fact, he said that he would either find enlightenment or die trying.  With his spouse gone and without giving the world any children, there was nothing he really had to lose.  Except for his life, but by then he was so old-hugging that he would’ve died soon anyway.  He was probably going out to sea to kill himself.  That’s the way he wanted to die.

On the side of his little boat, he printed the words
Ocean Man
, which was the title of his ship.  He took two months supply of food and three months supply of whiskey and a few books; one was Hemmingway’s
The Old Man and the Sea
and another was Kafka’s
The Castle
.  Then Ocean Man shoved off from the port in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he lived for two years during adolescence.  His girlfriend back then was called
Nina
, and she was the first woman that he ever loved.  The one he never forgot.

Richard Stein said that you’ll always love your
firs
t love, no matter how many partners you may go through.  The
first
is always special.  His second love, which became his first wife, did not compare to the memory of Nina.  Neither did his second wife, who was his eighth love, and who died in an institution populated by crazies.  Besides Nina, Richard Stein loved his
Cool Blue Lady
the most; she was the only woman who stood with him throughout his entire life.

The Cool Blue Lady hovered over Richard Stein solemnly as he washed against the sea, kissing him with her breath.  Yes, the Night was his
love
, deeply.  He embraced her with passion, allowing Ocean Man to drift him into the betweens of her firm dark legs.  Richard Stein called this voyage the
supreme ordeal
of his life - the climax of fire, his grand finale.  It was the first and only time he truly felt
alive
and he was glad he lived so long to reach it.  He was glad he never put the gun to his head as he always figured he would.

Mortician and I find a dry island underneath a tree and set Nan down.  On the swap-side of the tree is a miniature city by the ocean that has a port leading out to the sea.  Dozens of fishing boats are coming and going.  I wonder if this port is similar to the one in Gloucester, where Ocean Man set sail.  I wonder if there is a character similar to Richard Stein over there, setting out to find clarity during the twilight of his life, trying to get in his grand finale before he dies.

"What are we going to do?" Mortician asks.

"I don’t know," I say.  "Wait awhile, for Christian."

"Do you think he will make it?"

"He better."

I pressure-thumb Nan’s eye open to see how she’s doing.  Still unconscious.  Her nipple has been covered over with a coat of mud.  I’m guessing that Mortician is responsible for earthing Nan’s breast, because he was probably disgusted by it.  Mort finds Nan dyke-hideous because she’s too thin, bald-headed, and without many curves.  Skinhead girls are dirty to him.

I hit myself in the skull, thinking about how I almost raped Nan back there.  Then I hit myself again.

Some walm people pass by, through the tiny ocean, slug-legged people with no eyes.  I often wonder how significant the human race is/was compared to the other peoples of the universe, wondering if we were superior or equal or less.  So far, I haven’t seen any race that is technologically more advanced than humans.  I have seen some that were emotionally more advanced, or physically more advanced, or own better lives than us, but none are particularly evolved scientifically.

Can it be that humans are ahead of their time?  Can everyone else out there be as primitive as the walm races?  Are we something
special
?  Maybe we were put to an end because we evolved past the danger zone - which is the zone where even gods are vulnerable to man’s destructive power.  Maybe we invented a device that could blow up the sun, heaven, where Yahweh lives.  Maybe He cut us off because He was afraid we would destroy Him.

"I’ve got an idea," Mortician says.

I glisten to the rolling water and stutter-mumble a word.

Mort asks, "Why do we have to leave?"

"Because of the walm.  Forget already?"

"I didn’t forget," he says.  "But what if we get rid of the walm?  We wouldn’t have to go anywhere.  I think we should just destroy it, just fuck it up with an ax or light it on fire, damage it enough so that it won’t work anymore.  If the walm is gone we can stay without losing our souls."

"You’re forgetting about the Movac," I tell him.  "The walm is guarded by something that knows
everything
.  How are we going to beat something that knows everything?  It’s impossible."

"Nothing’s impossible."

"The Movac knows
everything
, understand?  It would know exactly how to stop us.  Even if we had a gun, it would know where to go to dodge the bullet.  Lenny told me to kill the Movac also, but he’s an idiot.  It’s impossible."

"We might as well try," he says.  "What’s the worst that can happen?  Get killed?  So what, we can’t
fully
die anymore."

"Don’t be stupid.  I’m not living here as a corpse, waiting for the walm to steal my soul.  I wouldn’t want to stay even if we
did
destroy the walm.  There’s no future."

"But there’s probably hundreds of people around the world that still have some soul left.  We’d be saving them."

"You don’t know that," I tell him.  "We could be the only ones.  I’m not going to risk restarting the human race so that we can save a few half-zombie people.  Besides, we don’t stand a chance against the Movac."

Of course, there is
one
way we can defeat the Movac, although it’s a long shot.  The only way you can beat a man who knows everything is if he
wants
you to beat him.  If the Movac
knows
someone is trying to kill him, he has two options.  One, he can take the necessary steps to stop that someone - not to mention the Movac already knows he will succeed, because he knows the future, which can almost be considered cheating.  And, two, the Movac can accept death and do nothing - but the Movac would already know this before needing to decide.

By the way,
decisions
are just as irrelevant to the Movac as memories.  You don’t need to make choices when you already know which ones you will choose.

Then again, the Movac may
want
us to kill him, because the one who knows everything must be waiting for death, out of boredom.  Everything must be so
boring
to him.  Then
again
, the Movac has
always
lived knowing everything about everything, so he’s probably so accustomed to knowing everything that he wouldn’t have it any other way. 
Humans
may want to better themselves and better themselves and better themselves without being the best - because the best, since they’re the best, can’t better themselves - but the Movac’s point of existing has nothing to do with bettering itself, so these rules don’t apply.  The Movac’s point of existence must be something I can’t understand, something beyond my personal knowledge.  Something
godly
. . .

I’d prefer to leave the walm in soul-sucking order anyway, instead of destroying it.  Even if the Movac would allow us to kill it, I wouldn’t hurt the walm.  Because I’m hoping that it will go out of control, become unstoppable.  And it will suck the souls out of everything nearby.  It will finish off the human race, then go to the walm people, then go to the Movac or whatever other super-beings are here, then go to Child Earth and suck the bratty little soul out of it, and then it will start taking the energy out of heaven.  It will suck God’s soul away, chopping it up into the walm, into oblivion.  And I’ll be laughing safely on the other side of the universe, because that’s what He gets for turning His back on us.  A taste of His own medicine, you can say.

Of course, this is very unlikely.  I’m sure that God is the one controlling the walm and has the ability to turn it off.  I don’t even know if the walm can reach that far.  Of course, God might want the walm to take Child Earth’s soul away, which is good enough for me.  If I was God, I would’ve straightened out this bratty planet a long time ago.  I think Child Earth
deserves
oblivion.  On the other hand, I’m just an action figure.  I don’t have any say in the happenings of the universe, and I’d be laughed at if I thought otherwise.  I’m just a form of amusement.

I wonder how amusing Richard Stein was to Child Earth, when he shoved off an old man into the sea without any sailing experience, and without any company besides his Cool Blue Lady during the second half of each day.  I wonder how Child Earth felt about old men in their twilight moments altogether.  I wonder if he gives them their grand finale without killing them off first, if he thinks it would be funnier to not satisfy a pitiful old man.  Or was the distribution of such grand finales God’s job? 

Scene 25

Brain City

An hour or two passes and still no Christian.

           He went crazy, so who knows what could’ve happened to him.  Being in a bad place to be when the scorpion flies attacked, probably paralyzed in an alley somewhere, or in a pile of half-corpses.

           We can’t wait for him anymore.  Humanity’s future depends on our survival.

           So we decide to head towards the walm, with Nan against our shoulders.  She can walk now.  Well, it’s more of a stagger-wobble, and her head is still drunk with toxins, but she’ll pull through in time.  Through the miniature ocean cluttered with micro fish and organisms.  I wonder if there are water bugs trying to eat the tiny people in the sailboats.  I wonder if the tiny people are scared of this new land of giants.

           "It must be there," Mort tells me, motioning to a flesh-tangy area up ahead, beings walking (or sometimes oozing) from that direction.

           "Here we go," I tell Leaf.

The area is peach-meat sunshine, flowing curly, plastic.

Peculiar shock emotions hit me here, right
here
, emotions that I haven’t felt before in my life, wiggling
strong
.  Just as strong as love or fear or hate or happiness.  Another emotion, never felt by human feelings.  So
new
to me, freshly breathing into my system.

Intensities camber and take me over.

I’ve always figured there could be more emotions out there somewhere, similar to love or sadness, but I never thought they’d be so different, so unexplainable.  I feel like the color orange with red dots and a tree branch inside.  Then I feel like the tip of a needle and the fabric of a plaid couch.  I can’t tell if these feelings are beautiful or scary.  I can only say that they are extraordinary.

The emotions must be emanating from the walm like sillygo, but I can’t see the walm entirely - just a glow of red light.

It’s blocked by the people leaving from there.  More new people.  I see one man attached to a woman, who seems to be his wife.  Joined in flesh as well as in marriage.

Another being has a snake’s torso, like something from Greek Mythology, but it also seems to be a hermaphrodite with crab-claws for hands.  I don’t go too near it, especially with my dizzy visions mixing with my dizzy emotions.  Who knows what these creatures are capable of?

Mortician is in awe and doesn’t speak to me now.  I don’t speak to him either.

I look towards the red light behind the walm people, over the heads of twelve identical beings.

They’re fish-like beings, scaled wings along their arms, and large hook-like skulls that waterfall a salty liquid down their shoulders and into the miniature ocean - the source of ocean water.  Dark pools for eyes, staring at me, all twenty-four eyes directly at me.

As they stare at me, I figure out what they are.  But I’m not sure if it’s my intelligence that comes to this conclusion or if they have subconsciously told me in some way.

I realize: they are the Movac.

The Movac isn’t a male or a female, as I earlier believed.  It is twelve beings - all with the same mind.  They seem to be four males and eight females, an entire race that share a brain.  They probably reproduce so that the Movac’s conscious thoughts will continue.  A race of
one
.  A single brain.

"We are not a single brain," says one of the Movac.

I’m surprised to hear it speak, and I’m sure they know that I’m surprised, and I’m sure they knew that I was going to be surprised before he said that.

"We have separate brains, Leaf," says another.  "But we lack a sense of individuality, even in our appearance, but we are still individuals."

I think I understand.  When you know everything about everything, it’s probably hard to be unique from others who know everything.  You own every consciousness of every being that is, has been, or ever will be alive.  Which makes it irrelevant to have one of your own.  It all sounds hideous-depressing to me.  But the Movac live for a different purpose than what I live for, so I should stop comparing them to myself.  Their purpose is something completely beyond me.

"It is to answer questions," the Movac says, all of them.

"What?"  Mort shrugs.

"The purpose of our existing is to answer questions."

"That’s it?" I ask.

They all nod.

I feel betrayed and punch my leg.  They know
everything
and all that they do is answer questions.  What in the hell is that supposed to mean?

"That’s why we were created," says the Movac.  "We were created because something had to know everything.  With us around, nothing will be forgotten.  Not a man, not a thought, not anything.  You think of us as beings, but don’t.  Think of us as the record books of
everything
."

"Nobody
else
knows everything?" Mort asks.  "What about God?  Doesn’t He know everything?"

"No, gods created us because they didn’t want to know everything.  In a way, you give up your individuality to know everything, and the gods refused to give that up.  It was necessary for us to exist, for history’s sake, and also for the future’s."

I ask, "So you are the all-knowing computers of the universe?"

They started nodding before the question came.

I notice that the Movacs have miniature cities inside of their brains.  These cities are inhabited by the same miniature people that inhabit the miniature ocean.  An entire society physically living inside of a brain city. 

They are the brain citizens: physical beings formed from the thoughts of the Movac.  The process of knowing everything must be so complex that they need hundreds of brain-workers, functioning together in one society – moving toward one goal - to form a Movac’s super-complex brain.  And all twelve Movac brains work together to form the all-knowing super computer of the universe.  I’m not sure if my theory is correct, but I don’t want to know for sure, because theorizing exercises the brain muscles.  The Movacs know I am thinking this, so they don’t tell me if I’m right or wrong.

The brain citizens build their societies outside of Movac brains too, expanding productivity across the countryside of Punk Land.  This entire ocean, which Mort and I are standing in and Nan is lying in, is the overflow of the Movac brain.  Ships and villages and animals - all part of the Movac brain, all working together to maintain the knowledge of
everything
.

A female Movac stares at me with a gurgle-leak coursing down her neck.  Her brain citizens have built elevators from her chin to her breasts, where they can relax on the soft flesh before taking a shuttle to her toes.  Through my swirly eyes, I see her body as an arousing work of architecture.  A sky-scraping building that I wouldn’t mind laying over a mountain to inject my whale-sized shank through its front entrance, knocking the doorman out of the way and flooding the lobby once I am finished with her.

The Movac woman must’ve had her dark-pools eyeing into me because she knew I was about to fantasize about her, and wanted to give me a good stare-down before I performed the sex thought, licking some brain citizens from the corner of her white lips to dissolve in thick mouth water.  I’m embarrassed, but I shouldn’t be, not at all: she’s known I was going to do this her entire life.  It wasn’t a shock in the slightest, I’m sure.

"We’re going through the walm," Mortician tells them.

"We know," they say, pig-drippy.

The female, the fantasy building with large vacation breasts and the leaky saltwater entrance, approaches us, stiff-moving with her city built on her insides, trying to keep the brain citizens from falling into the ocean.  She glares into my eyes again, her pools gathering hints of purple and silver.  Black cave of a mouth . . . shingles for teeth . . . opening with pearl-expression . . .

"Let’s go there."  She turns and heads to the walm light.

I wonder why
she
is taking us rather than any of the other twelve.  Is it because I’m attracted to her?  Is she attracted to me as well?  Will she take advantage of my weakness to alien women before allowing me to escape through the walm?

I hope so.

She leads the way, through the vapid humanoid crowd emerging from the light.  Her walk patterns are mechanical.  Her backside is so sensual yet it’s like a machine, just how the blue woman’s seems to be, but the blue woman is an animal-like machine and this Movac is a machine-like animal.  I’ve never been attracted to mechanical women before.  Now I guess it’s becoming a trend in my life.

The walm emotions go squirrely here, as do my eyes, running up the tree bark and chirping.  Brain liquid drools from the Movac woman’s head, and I watch it slowly licking down to her fleshy rounds that are inhabited by the lower class of her body’s citizens - the salty odor thickens the air down there - then slipping between the crack to her thighs where it weeps into the miniature ocean world.

I’m paying so much attention to her absorbing body that I don’t realize we have reached the source of the light.  My head fixes on the lower parts as she stops, then it looks up at the sublime doorway, the walm, eyes fixed without much dizzy-swirling.

The door is a giant vagina.  It’s lips are spread out wide and emit a green light in all directions.  The Movac female statues herself next to it, arms out at diagonals and chin up.  Then her muscles go tense and it looks as if she is absorbing energy from the walm, as if she runs on soul-fuel as well, soak-slurping it from the reserve that the walm has collected. 

Then the walm door dilates, the green light melting our skin color to lime.  It awaits our penetration.  On the inside of this thing is our future, our new life.  Everything chaotic about this world will be uplifted from our crusty old shoulders.  Now the human species still has a fighting chance against extinction.             

"I’m not going," I tell Mortician.

"What?"  His face goes into shock, or maybe it’s disbelief.

"I’m going to wait for Christian."

"You want to wait longer?  We can wait for him longer if you want, but I’m not going in there alone."

"You won’t be," I say, brushing mud out of Nan’s half-conscious eyes.

"Come on, Leaf.  Let’s go.  You know Christian isn’t coming."

"You go," I tell him.  "Take Nan and the history book and get out of here.  If I Christian gets back here I’ll . . . Look, I can’t just leave him."

"Well, I’m staying too," Mort says. 

"No."  I shake my head lightly.  "I’m willing to risk myself to save Christian, but I’m not willing to risk the future of mankind.  Get out of here now before the walm takes anymore of your soul."

"Dickhead."  Mortician spits at me.  He nods his head and puts the history book of Man in his belt.  He takes Nan’s arms around his shoulder and she hugs into him, embracing to keep herself from falling and shattering on the ground.

Before he enters the fleshy lips of the walm, he turns back to me and gentle-smiles.  Then he tips his pointy head up as a salute.  Before I can salute back, he disappears into the walm and its lips press slowly around him, sucking him into another world far away from here. 

I’m only giving Christian another hour or two.  If he doesn’t show, I’m leaving him.  Even if he’s wounded, another hour is plenty of time to get here.  Otherwise, I’ll know that he’s lost too much soul to make it.  He has the ability, but he might not have the will. 

I glance back at the walm and realize the light it issues is no longer green, but purple. 

"What does that mean?" I ask the Movac.

She turns to me, a cricking of gears in her neck.  "The door has opened to a different world."

"You mean I can’t go to the world my friends just went to?"

"This world and the world your friends now inhabit will not share a doorway until the cycle is finished," she says.

"How long will that take?"

           "Twenty-four hours."  She turns away from me and begins to absorb more energy from the walm.  She will possibly be absorbing
my
energy from the walm if I stay for too long.

           My words come out soft and slightly panicked.  "You mean I’m stuck here for another day?"

           "Exactly another day."