The Eve Of Destruction In Bunburyland
It is the night. And the cats are awake and careful. Alert. They know the beast is out there, the sky is thick with clouds, which conceals them as the beast prowls about looking for his prey, for his vengeance on the side-slipper.
Why not give it the slide-slipper? Give it the man with the wicked mean-tempered iron and copper bathtub that follows him about and has a steering wheel and tubes with many color-shifting liquids bubbling up and down in them affixed where normally there is just a coiled tube for the spouting water.
The King under the mountain, the man who mastered the gnome race and became like one of them says “no can do”, that the Slinker is not to be trusted. According to his Royal Gnomity the vengeance of just the one man and his magical bathtub is not enough for Slinker. It would wreck the world apart and knock all the nice little porcelain things off the window sills and root up the trees and flowerbeds and shit in the haystacks of productive farmers and scratch the sails of a thousand ships to tatters and catch elephants and whales in its jaws and thrash them back and forth and then lay them on the doorstep of eternity and expect a reward and then tear all over the world upsetting everything into a deep chaos for the reward not forthcoming, and in short, it was no good to curry favor with the Slinky beast.
And so all the cats in the vast army assembled in the forests just outside the great port city of Caturdam and they prepared for the approach of the beast that sought the man.
The Man himself was somewhat apart from the army, he claimed to have an allergy but folk knew he was a standoffish sort. It was said the man was part cat, which is an awful thing for a man to be part, just as it is a most wonderful thing for a cat to be whole.
He waited there with his comrades, the King under the Mountain, and The Scoundrel Who Steals Fruit And Apologizes Insincerely, and of course the sentient bathtub, his “time machine, the Protervus”, as he called it.
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They looked worn out, except for the Protervus, which fair to say nobody reads too much emotion into a bathtub, even a sentient claw-footed one.
The screen had come back in, we could see them but not very well, perhaps though it was not that the reception from the alternate reality within which they were ensconced was bad, but rather that reality was going dark. If it was because it was going dark and the reception was good of that darkness, I bit my lip in consternation. I was not sure what it implied, technically.
“It means nothing” said Borges (Agent 61), sitting next to me.
“What?” I asked.
“You were going to ask what it means, I answered, you remember that I am a precognitive”
“I know you have precognition but how did you answer my question of what it means if I never asked it?”
“First you were going to ask it, so I answered. That changed what you were going to say and you never asked but that is fine because you asked what I meant and I saw me saying you were going to ask. The reality collapses in on itself and all the possibilities becomes one certainty, as is likely to happen here soon. There is branching of paths, but the paths rejoin quickly, as a rule. ”
I groaned, I really hadn’t missed all the stuff while I’d been gone.
“What is he doing?” asked the Italian guy who had built most of this stuff (Agent 76).
Agent 88 was standing next to the monitor “He’s rolling four dice, over and over. And looking at a paper”
Borges “He is waiting for a particular sequence, when he has that sequence he will know we are watching and we can begin to communicate. “
“Communicate?!” said the Italian guy.
I had stood up and moved to the screen to get a closer look, Agent 88 moved a bit aside and said “Hey 9”, I said “hey” back, and then he asked “You know anything about this communication crap?”
“No, but nobody ever tells me anything around here other than what to do and where to be at what time” he chuckled at that, because same boat.
Agent 99 was rolling the dice. 4 6 2 1. The dice were each a separate color, I put the numbers here in a sequence of red, yellow, white, and black.
“What is this communicate?” said the Italian guy. 1 1 2 5.
“When he rolls a certain sequence he knows we are watching him” said Borges. 6 1 2 3.
“What, how?” 6 6 2 3.
“I told him” 3 6 1 2.
“OK guys. Pay attention because there isn’t going to be long” Agent 99 was looking slightly up into the air above his head. The others were also looking at the spot, but determining that there was nothing to see decided it had nothing to do with them.
“Can they see us now?” asked The Scoundrel.
“Yes, I rolled the sequence, there is 5 minutes of good reception let me talk. OK so I have 6 sequences that are responses to questions I can ask. If those sequences are rolled an answer has happened. I’m supposing this still holds or you would have managed to get some information to me within the last couple of days. The time dilation means if things change within just these minutes we’re screwed but time tends to less elastic than that. ”
“Question 1 — has the relocation to Sarasota been done?” rolled the dice red 3 yellow 4 white 3 black 1. “OK that’s a yes.”
“Question 2 — Is Agent 9 there?” rolled the dice red 3 yellow 3 white 2 black 6. “unknown sequence” Rolled the dice red 4 yellow 4 white 2 black 5. “unknown” rolled the dice red 3 yellow 4 white 3 black 1. “OK that’s a yes.”
“Question 3 — Is Agent 61 there?” rolled the dice red 1 yellow 1 white 3 black 2. “unknown” rolled the dice red 3 yellow 4 white 3 black 1. “OK that’s a yes.”
“Question 3 — Is Agent 81 there?” rolled the dice red 6 yellow 6 white 3 black 3. “No. Well it’s not a big problem, although was hoping to see her and get a squaring up about some things when I get back”
“OK I know 77 will definitely be there. So that means him and 9 can go off and talk this over depending on Question 4 — Agent 9, did you find the way to Carcosa?” rolled the dice red 3 yellow 4 white 3 black 1. “OK that’s a yes. You two need to talk”
“Now the big one. This will tell us if Slinky is breaking up as expected, is he **vulnoøø’ erable” There was some static. “Is the continent of Phantaz beginning to — ** — the northern clouds?” rolled the dice red 3…..
The screen blanked out, just white noise.
Agent 88 “That was a fucking short 5 minutes”
Borges “Yes the situation is not great. I, also, am unsure about the continent of Phantaz. Evidently 77 does not know because he says as much when I ask him”
Agent 77 agreed to that “yeah I haven’t heard anything, as yet. I’m not sure which I should check on first, that or this debriefing from 9 on Carcosa.”
There was a short pause and Borges said “Check on Carcosa” and 77 and I went off to a meeting room in the south side of the building. As I left I heard the Italian guy complaining that he did not understand what was going on, welcome to the club Italian guy I thought sourly.
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The communication had been inconclusive. The last sequence had been red 3 yellow 4 white 3 black 3, which in his list of sequences with questions had been “Most probably”, the paper Agent 61 had given him before departure said that once the most probably response was reached no more responses could be accurate. This was the problem with the time dilation, and the chaos that Slinkiztowicz was kicking up, even the greatest precog that had ever lived could not see clearly so far ahead, and so far into the realms of whimsy and, let’s face it, high fantasy that Bunburyland was morphing into.
If Phantaz was manifesting back in the real world then that meant success, a bridge directly from the world of science to that of fantasy. A real bridge, a real fighting chance, and that would allow the pressure of high fantasy in Bunburyland to drain out, and the world dwindle back into whimsy and good natured laughter and pantomime. But he was worried they were too late.
He knew, better than anyone, the battle tomorrow depended on this and also one arrogant powerful cat, who had every reason to hate this guts.
Angus DerPrrr, high Wizard to the court of Felicia Whisk, Queen of Caturnia, etc. etc.
Who was hopefully getting a good nights sleep, because he was gonna need it.
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This article was put together from interviews with people on the scene, and a bottle with a note in it that was stuck on a cloud bank above the North Pole some years ago.
If you would like to learn more about Carcosa and how it relates to Illuminati Ganga you may read our latest book, The King In Orange (affiliate link)