Nemonymous Night Part 15

The teacher could wait. Arthur picked up the abandoned watering-can and peered inside. Nothing except a residue of some mossy paste that had been one of his now forgotten experiments from before the time he had managed to forge a memory of the past. Any past. Children only knew the future as and when it was crystallised as a memorable past-and today Arthur, for the first time, realised he had a past he could remember. Amy, by contrast, was still lost in a fog with which stunted growth did besmirch the infant mind even if it was on the point of emerging as a b.u.t.terfly of Amyness from the dank turnip-egg embedded in the mulch of creation where she had wallowed, disguised as a human baby. Arthur laughed. No such thoughts had gone through his mind.

Yet nagging at him were further thoughts. Amy had left the watering-can because it was evidently not important to her. She still had the flowerpot as she left for the meeting with their schoolteacher. There was evidently something about the flowerpot or what was in the flowerpot or what haunted the flowerpot or a combination of all these things which had caused Amy not to leave it in his possession. And he took a last glance at his moated island of now bubbling earth-erosion, and followed in the wake of his sister, even if that brought forward the dreaded repercussions of the schoolteacher's visit. The flowerpot had become magnified in his new-found memory and would remain embedded there forever, even when he gradually became an old man with many more memories to harbour than just this single one about his sister's haunted flowerpot. A haunted memory, if indeed not a haunted flowerpot.

There was now a caped figure sitting on one of the square's benches, busy writing, oblivious of the weather-proof fountain that cracked like bones in a steady wintry wind. Arthur knew that was himself-a visitant from the future to seal or mint or rubber-stamp the memory that this sight would eventually become. A second memory to join that of the haunted flowerpot. This was a day rich with memories-because, a child's memories once begun and once adept in the art of storing themselves, multiply with a feeding frenzy.

That day's meeting with the schoolteacher would be a third memory that was destined to last for as long as memories remained. Including Amy's reaction to many confused instructions and recriminations regarding the shoes that belonged to a friend of hers. Thankfully, the meeting did not concern Arthur at all. For once.

Later, he returned to the garden-the family's own allotted plot amongst many other fenced subsections of agriculture or flower-display-and found his latest island of earth had subsided into a stinking compost of known and unknown colours. Despite the frozen weather, it gave off a warm steamy putrescence which was almost pleasant to his untutored nostrils. He could also still hear the relentlessly mild buzz of whatever lifeforms had evolved deeper down below his mis-mechanisation of stones, earth-deposits and man-made chemicals. Now more like gabbled talk than sirens. He poked a finger in and felt a large soft fleshiness that created the loudest screech imaginable.

He ran and ran, if only to escape the memory. Thankfully, he succeeded. The screech simply became the echo of a dream he no longer believed as a real dream let alone as waking reality itself.

His sister Amy squatted on the backstep of the lift shaft-tears streaming down her face-flowerpot clasped to her chest, as if she had kept it as a receptacle for any vomit she was about to let rip from the bottom of her lungs.

Arthur shrugged. Sisters. Strange creatures. Sisters were of that same group of creatures he would never understand, a group that also harboured his mother as well as schoolteacher. He looked into the square to see if that man was still there. He a.s.sumed it had been a man. It had the shape of a man, despite the concealing cape. Shapes could be imagined as well as seen for real.

He turned back to his sister. She had gone-leaving the flowerpot on the step. With his Davy Crockett hat's fur tail swinging, he went over. He needed some more swill for his moat.

The Weirdmonger-upon his now legendary rite of pa.s.sage through Klaxon's peripheral mudparks-came across a dreamcatcher hanging in the sky. Feathers and netting upon a singular swinging frame of irregular shape-or, rather, of both regular and irregular shape. A collapsible frame when not in use, the Weirdmonger guessed. He wondered from where it was thus suspended swinging in the siren-breezes that played fitfully around it at this distance from the city proper. He looked into the cavity's half-sky and only the light of Sunnemo gave any clue: itself. But the same light glared into his eyes-thus making it difficult to ascertain the dreamcatcher's root.

He touched it tentatively and watched it swing more vigorously. Dreams flocked around it like moths or mosquitos into the netting, some stuck there as burrs would on fly-paper. One dream caught Weirdmonger in the eye: and he saw (ahead of time) his arrival in a war-ravaged city, his close scrutiny of Sudra's shoe museum where the smoke from the chimney was like a huge stilleto-wedge rather than a plume or umbrella-shape, and the hasty departure of 'The Hawler' flopping from its pylon towards the gravity-logging of its pull only for the Drill's bit-tip to grind uselessly against the beach terrain which was apparently harder within Inner Earth than it had been on the surface.

Captain Nemo had to alight himself to sharpen the bit-tip whilst it was still spinning. And away the Drill went, faces mooning at the portholes near its back set of vanes. The Weirdmonger knew-from the dreamcatcher-that the faces' names were Greg, Beth, Edith and Clare. The Captain was left stranded as the Drill proceeded to push on into the under-surface without him. Fears for his pa.s.sengers blackened his face. Nemo and Dognahnyi parted company at that moment of violent alter-nemo dispute... a symbiosis in reverse decorated with a flare of more mosquito dreams caught by feathers. With Nemo's head yanked apart by a pair of its four limbs, the creature emerged from the red-sea gap in the skull with a smirk and a wave towards the Weirdmonger's future in the city. It was Weirdmonger himself (aka Dognahnyi).

The dreamcatcher had saved him the rest of his journey across the mudparks, so stub-of-pencil now needs to return that way itself so as to erase the relevant bit from the vexed texture of text with a renewed head of rubber, if not steam.

The Weirdmonger scratched his head. Ident.i.ty was a very strange burden to bear. To take his mind off the momentary discursiveness, he wondered how Sudra's museum was allowed to smoke in a smokeless zone. Fire was not allowed within Inner Earth-for obvious reasons. And, shrugging, he went towards a cave to give the locals a piece of his mind.

As well as Klaxon and Agraska, there is another known or tenable conclave within Inner Earth to which the name most often offered as label is Whof.a.ge. The derivations, even aptnesses, of these names are unknown whilst, paradoxically, the names have readily fallen into usage without any question of demur. Their real names remain unknown, whilst that named name of Klaxon still resonates, however, with an actual meaning that effectively entailed the tannoy siren-system to be created, not vice versa, i.e. character from proffered name, a phenomenon which is, when fully considered in the light of cause-and-effect rather than synchronicity, not surprising.

Whof.a.ge, in fact, was once named Synchronicity by some historic Inner Earth travellers during the days of Jules Verne, a fact now forgotten amidst repercussions of Klaxon's war spreading by strength of the battle echoes and air-alerts firstly ricocheting from chamber to chamber on a tight regional basis, then cavity to cavity between city-margins. Whof.a.ge (now named against the normal channels of sane semantics) was a place where Synchronicity began to be deemed as evil, thus giving Synchronicity a bad name at the same time as giving Randomness a haphazard boost by the strength of the craziness of war itself. Whof.a.ge seemed random enough (more random than using the name Randomness itself), and this even seemed eminently logical to the top brainwrights of Whof.a.ge's Inner City Council who were concerned to prolong the unpredictabilities of war (imported, by echo, from Klaxon) amid their various pragmatic uses of its collateral damage and bad karma... i.e. politics.

It is an unrecorded fact that THE HAWLER (with its index-number of H5N1 now visible for the first time from the direction of any observers) stayed over at Whof.a.ge on route between Klaxon and, eventually, one hoped, the Megazanthine Core near Agraska. Greg and the others alighted simply to stretch their legs and to discuss the disappearance of the Drill's Captain. Should they return to Klaxon to rescue him or forge on without him, both options impossible to carry out without his presence in the first place? They had crash-landed in Whof.a.ge having traversed random cavities in a rather spin-easy fashion of free-fall that did not entail any drilling whatsoever or any off-detritus clearance by the rubble-vanes. Even now, the Drill squatted on the craggy sides of Whof.a.ge's cathedral, having demolished half of the Gothic architecture in the process-making it look more like a bridge than Notre Dame. A bridge from and to nowhere. And over nothing.

Greg had put such problems towards the back of his mind-as he wandered the back-streets of Whof.a.ge looking for souvenirs. There were feathery models of the Angel Megazanthus in many of the antique shops, but, at that stage, none of the party recognised these knick-knacks for what they were. They a.s.sumed they were dreamcatchers or frames of varying complexity or simplicity. The Core, to Greg and his party, was still a mystery and no rumours as to the Core's incubatory nature had back-tracked along the sound-veins from Agraska to shed any light on this mystery. Echo-filters, unlike some other filters, were never two-way. Beth did buy one 'dreamcatcher' to hang in her cabin in the Drill.

Another excursion-one not programmed in their original holiday itinerary-was to watch larger models of 'Megazanthus' dreamcatchers actually working. The party sat in a row of canvas deck-chairs-hired for the purpose to them from the rather business-like brainwrights of Whof.a.ge-at the edge of a cracked meadow. And they listened to a commentary from the city's own tannoy-system describing the various aspects of the air-show. One craft that slowly took off-by the use of a rather slow-motion lifting by spluttering fireworks-was a gigantic kite or glider that seemed a cross between a crop-sprayer and horizontal radio-transmitter. Bearing in mind its motive power, it was rather difficult to control at ground level and it soon diverted from its original advertised course towards a random one that entailed much collateral damage in the city itself.

Whof.a.ge, unlike the other conclaves within the cavities of Inner Earth, was p.r.o.ne to funnel forces-which, on the surface, were commonly recognised as whirlwinds or tornados. Often, Whof.a.gers would glimpse a sparely nourished coil of discoloured sky, then slowly but ineluctably deepening and spinning into wilder, larger shadows of shape (whilst simultaneously trying to hone its integrity as a funnel)-finally, not spinning away into nothing as tornados manage to do on the earth's surface, but spinning into the under-ground, maintaining its force-fed maelstroms (now of rubble as well as of black-clouded air-s.p.a.ce) as it wreaked further courses of crazy-paving via many under-surfaces, even via otherwise impacted areas of solid earth.

Before Greg and his party had managed to salvage the Drill from its open-plan sectioning of Whof.a.ge's cathedral, one such funnel-force had managed to accomplish this feat quite freakishly, almost balancing the Drill's form within the inner meshments of its visibly darkening torque until landing it lightly near the cracked meadow where the party were already watching an air show. All seemed highly appropriate, if essentially accidental-in keeping with Whof.a.ge's reputation for the syncromesh of randomness.

Also, with some panache, Captain Nemo arrived hotfoot from Klaxon-or someone remarkably carrying off this persona with skilful replication-claiming that he had utilised a number of short-cut back-doubles intrinsic to the hawling-shaft system of Inner Earth, comprising mostly rat-runs privy only to Drill captains. Nevertheless, it had been quite a journey. The other members of the Drill's party welcomed him with mixed feelings. Soon after, all of them left for Agraska in a quickly repaired Drill and for what was already to have transpired there vis a vis Mount Core (or Sunnemo) and the Angel Megazanthus. (Beyond the scope of this Apocryphal Coda).

Scene: Sudra's Shoe Shop in Klaxon City. Sudra is sitting in one of the stockrooms, surrounded by s...o...b..xes from ceiling to floor, having just received a surprise visit from Amy clutching a rather large flowerpot. They embrace and are now in close conversation.

Sudra: The last time I saw you was when you were holding me from falling in the hawling-shaft...

Amy: Yes, I'm delighted to see you survived.

S: I didn't! At least for a while. Until I woke up here in charge of this shop. Placed into business by some benefactor who stays unknown, even today. I still felt it was me that was me, but I suspect sometimes that I woke up as someone else. At first it was disconcerting...

A: Very! But you learn to live with yourself eventually as I did. I still have memories of a childhood, my brother Arthur and all that-and Mum-and Miss Clare our teacher. But then, I'm not sure I'm the same person who grew out of that child.

S: When I last saw you we were both hanging on to dear life, or at least I was! It was my life hanging in the balance, after all. I looked up into your eyes and I saw something or someone behind them which wasn't quite right. And then you let go!

A: No, you let go! I felt your hands ungrip around mine. I wasn't perhaps completely myself, true, but I wanted to save you-I really did. I had been recruited by Dognahnyi for something but I'm sure it wasn't to kill you. It was to do with the Angevin traffic...

S: All these years I believe you killed me. But life has to go on without recrimination. Since things went strange, I'm sure there's no possible blame. Even shame's gone out of the window. Dognahnyi-wasn't he also known as Captain Nemo?... the one who travels overland to the centre of the earth as they put in the 'Jules Verne Tours' blurb...

A: Yes, and I've since found out, he's also known as the Weirdmonger...

S: The Weirdmonger? Someone of that name has been lurking round here for a while-but I've not seen him for ages.

A: They said you had John Ogdon working for you here in the shop?

S: Who said? Has someone sent you here to spy on me?

A: No, no, Suds, it's just that-I can't explain it-or I can explain it. You probably know John Ogdon as Crazy Lope... You nod. Well, he's also known as Blasphemy Fitzworth or Padgett Weggs... A proper spy disguised as a dosser or cat's meat man or...

S: Well, I've not seen Lope for days, either. They say there's war afoot. Many have already left Klaxon. Most visitors have gone. You're probably the only visitor at the moment.

A: Not a war so much, Suds, as head-on collisions of bird-sickness plague, body to body... blending...

S: I don't understand. I don't think I ever will.

A: It's the Drill. Dognahnyi's Drill. It was originally intended by its designer (DF Lewis) as a plug to prevent the flow of Angevin back to the surface, as he believed it was not so much a recreational drug as a carrier of the bird-sickness in a more virulent form, encouraging people-to-people contamination instead of mere bird-to-people contamination. The latter can be controlled. The former can't be.

S: That's the first time I've heard mention of this Lewis bloke.

A: He's a rather shadowy figure. Arthur once told me about him. Anyway, getting back to the Drill or Plug-it has worsened the situation because of what happened at the Core when it got there. It just provided more fuel for the Angevin from the pairs of people who visited it-and then the hawling-process took it back with it, so not a plug to prevent carrying but the carrier itself. The sickness has now reached the surface via man-city-Viet Nam, Rumania, Turkey, later London, even Clacton-then New York, the whole globe infected not from the sky but by things that masquerade as birds within the globe itself and then come out as real birds having stowed away on the Drill 'plug' or, more likely, flowing like feathered torpedos with the Angevin hawling-flow. It's still rather confusing. But it can be stopped.

S: How?

A: It's something so oblique, so d.a.m.n opaque, it needs conversations like this to approach from various brainstorming angles to reach some semblance of its basics. Something to do with the word 'firedrill' I believe. And that's just the beginning of the wild guesses.

S: Firedrill?

A: Let's relax for a moment. Talk about other things. Solutions only come when you don't try to think of them. How's the shoe business going?

S: Not bad. With the war coming, the armies needed shodding for a start.

A: I don't know how you put up with all those sirens all the time.

S: Well, they are only going when there are visitors in Klaxon. Otherwise, the tannoys play Cla.s.sical Music all day. It's rather a blessing.

A: Cla.s.sical Music! I think I'd prefer the sirens!

S: It's quite restful most of the time-Chamber Music by Debussy or Beethoven, Schubert-loads of Bach-but yes, they sometimes play some more modern Cla.s.sical Music more related to the siren sound so we don't miss it too much! Ligeti, Bartok, Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, you know the sort of thing... But if there is at least one visitor in Klaxon, back to the sirens proper!

A: Rather you than me. I'll be pleased to get out of this place.

S: What's in that flowerpot, Amy, by the way?

A: Guess.

S: Can't guess.

A: OK, let me guess first what that thing is that is in the corner over there-it looks to be a cross between a s...o...b..x and a proper shoe.

S: That's a shoe for a Grandfather Clock.

A: I wish I hadn't asked! Anyway guess what's in my flowerpot. It may help.

S: Arthur's ear?

A: Nope S: My shoes that you once stole from me?

A: Nope. And I didn't!

S: A clockwork toy-a model of the Drill-an Angel Megazanthus brooch-a cabbage full of dead flies-a toy log-lorry?

A: Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope.

Amy puts her hand in the flowerpot and brings out her own childhood doll strapped into a doll-sized deck-chair and clasping a doll-sized flowerpot. And Sudra is alone again with her s...o...b..xes and bespoke shoes. Even the tannoys are silent for once. Just barely perceptible jingling from some of the s...o...b..xes.

Klaxon City was the name of an amus.e.m.e.nt arcade in London's Soho-sufficiently sophisticated to be considered a casino, or certainly abiding by the same rules and providing comparable opportunities for the punters. It was simply more open-fronted with looser membership conditions and lower grade jackpots, but otherwise it had all the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs: just on the corner from Leicester Square underground station.

A husband and wife team by the name of Greg and Beth were managers and the owner was Sudra Incorporated, the whereabouts of whose shadowy head office was even unknown to the managers, other than as a Registered Address which could not easily be checked out, short of a long journey to the ends of the earth, it seemed, or at least beyond Zone Six on London Transport. Greg and Beth were recruited via an agent by the name of Mr Dognahnyi who had a flat in Mayfair, but even he had indirect contact with Sudra Inc. Emails and cash transfers by PayPal. Only the odd visit from Authorities, most of which prying was kept at bay by mysterious paperwork behind the scenes in bent accountants' and solicitors' offices. There being no food involved, only the broadest Health & Safety Regulators were given the slightest excuse to pay heed to Klaxon City's methods, without any recourse to Cleansing Agents or Culinary Inspections. And even these turned blind eyes as well as deaf ears to some of the outlandish noises and migraine-inducing strobes.

Mr D's flat had original oils sporting walls to hang on that were so thickly chintzed one did not need to wonder how the thrum of London outside was sound-proofed for the benefit of the subtle Chamber Music playing from the tiniest speakers, but ones with the greatest dynamic range that Greg and Beth had ever heard. The walls of Klaxon City itself likewise did indeed have oils to set off the hi-tech walls of digitalised games and spinning mantras that const.i.tuted some of the 'amus.e.m.e.nts' and insidious temptations to gamble. Oil portraits of fantasy vistas which-when one became accustomed to the types of game on offer-were seen to accompany the risk-and-ride boxes-of-tricks as a pianist would accompany a singer.

Only a few were privy to Klaxon City's 'amus.e.m.e.nt' services because-from the outside-it looked quite seedy with a threat of muggings by scarred street-sleepers rather than promise of coddlings by bosomy croupiers. This was a way to keep the place select-a topsy-turvy method of restricting the clientele by aversion therapy with regard to the unwanted narrow-minded types of punter who only judged things by surface appearances. The games needed far-sighted specialisms of humanity to make them work at their optimum-and these prize customers were encouraged by winning large sums of money rather against the odds of most other casinos. It was creative payola for turning imagination into actuality-a method in a madness of which even Greg and Beth had hardly scratched the surface. The punters simply needed to get past the obvious signs of criminal danger that a.s.sociated itself with most arcades and then they would find beyond such frontage the most benevolent form of creative gambling imaginable-and once imagined, the world was their oyster.

Greg and Beth used to run an arcade in Clacton. That was useful experience. In Clacton, one can be trained for all manner of deeper occupations which seaside resorts alone know how to harbour. A Dry Dock for the re-fitting of genius prior to its re-launch. And even for Greg and Beth, it was simply a short journey by train to Liverpool Street, then underground to Leicester Square followed by a warm welcome by Mr Dognahnyi on behalf of Sudra Inc. At first, rather troubled by the frontage of Klaxon City, they were-once inside, once through that initial burst of dismay at the grim-faced bouncers-soon glistened upon by every conceivable spinning-table of landlocked luck teetering towards the benefit of all who played them-and even the toilets boasted original oils.

The underground trains made the place shake with low-throated rumbles from time to time. Luckily, imagination drew short of imagining them to be bombs or quakes or even life going on elsewhere beyond surface after surface of surface appearance towards a recognition of the madness intrinsic to an existence still not fully in the know.

One wall-game was to shoot the birds. A spinning-vista of a lake sanctuary where you needed to aim at any feathers once glimpsed. And the more you shot off, the more you won. It was called 'The Tenacity of Feathers'. And a siren sounded out at every direct hit.

I wonder myself if there was a deeper symbolism in that phrase-'The Tenacity of Feathers'. And whether it was just another misleading frontage within the first misleading frontage. A meaning that we were all feathers in an eternal lifetime of ident.i.ties, each ident.i.ty a single feather that we wore throughout this time-line of crossed-feathers or ruffled ones, being indeed a single feather that we fought to preserve tenaciously, only to fail when one became the next feather (or ident.i.ty) ripe for plucking. It takes more than one feather to make the bird. And somewhere a creature stretches its still spa.r.s.ely feathered wings-but with gradually more tufts just starting to sprout on its huge balloon of a belly.

One day, I fear sound-fire will be drilled real deep by a dead-eyed punter towards my own feather's root. Crazy Lope-dead Red Indian. Null Immortalis.

"It's a need for immortality-whilst before in pre ma.s.s-communication eras very few people went down in history books and therefore religion provided the 'immortality' because there was no feasible ambition of 'immortality' in any other way-today, one can imagine one is in the public eye, and the public eye immortalises in a very insidious but also a believably crystalline fashion. Notoriety or self-crucifixion are two possible paths towards this crystallisation within the 'public eye' as well as more straightforward forms of fame-all as provided by the mutual reflections from the unreality/reality syndrome of ma.s.s communication-mirrors (and I would include the internet as well as TV as examples of these)."

The speaker in Earth Towers Hall paused. The audience could only wonder if they had correctly placed the quote-marks around words or phrases within his speech. How could they do otherwise? Speeches-like any other sounds or items of music-are interpreted and filtered by the listeners, sometimes quite differently from each other but all 'correct' for themselves. They are often dependent not only on mental capacities (prejudices, proclivities etc.) but also on physical ones actually to receive the sounds and translate them into 'meaning' via, for example, both Inner Ears. Likewise: visions, dreams, lies, ghosts, fictions, performances, poems-on-the-page, morality fables-all 'seen' (mentally and physically) as 'correct' by each and every one, but in a slant or shade that is peculiar to each of them one by one... often affecting (or not) the 'reality' within which the sounds or visions are placed or contextualised. And this contemplation of mine-words that you have just read as commentary on the speaker's speech and his audience's potentiality to 'listen'-was effectively another speech within my own mind as I waited for the audible speaker (compared to my silent 'speech' to myself) to resume his own speech, as he did: "Here in Earth Towers Hall, it seems appropriate to digress upon the meaning of fiction in the context of what I've just said."

Earth Towers Hall was a new purpose-built building on the banks of the Thames quite close to the City of London. The tip of St Paul's dome could just be seen through the window that backed on to the hi-tech podium. Mock-architecture mixed with real paintings of Thamesian scenes. This was the inaugural event. An important slant on things real and unreal by a purpose-born Professor of Philosophy who was downgrading his thoughts by posing as a famous author of fiction.

"And one can believe that fiction and non-fiction share the same jigsaw, the same rattle-bag of broken shards of ancient pottery of thought all leading-potentially-to a pattern that we can examine, then use to solve problems (or to create them). An example would be useful. 'Nemonymous Night' ostensibly deals with many current matters (as they happen) and today bird sickness has fallen lower in the sky-and we can only hope that the fiction itself is helping to lower influenza's temperature and eventually eradicate it. Fiction is that powerful. A happy ending (yes, skip to the end of the book, go on)-it's bound to be a happy ending or the author would never have finished it. He needs to be thanked for all his good work in harnessing the power of fiction to solve this single pressing problem by setting himself the goal of a happy ending, despite all the horror images he necessarily conjures up in order to reach that happy ending..."

I smiled. This speech made no logical sense to me. I did have some sympathy with the speaker's views on the blurring of reality/unreality, as exemplified by TV Reality Shows like Big Brother and the fact that audiences, these days, actually 'create' the event with their reactions (such as pop concerts)-but to extrapolate, i.e. to manufacture an audit trail between fiction (art) and the malleability of reality itself to the same fiction (art), was certainly something very difficult for me to swallow. I held the very book in question within my hands as I sat in the audience-skipped to the end and everything vanished, including myself. Earth Towers Hall echoed with the silence of bird droppings.

Stub of pencil: Many people each holding one large word and, if they found the right order, the words would tell a significant story. They shuffled places in an arc, until a consensus as to an optimum order. A camera swivelled taking a panoramic photo of the story... but broke before the end.

The millions of warmongers in Klaxon-under-the-Ground swarmed from pillar to post, ready to stone even stones as well as each other-displaying a mob hatred simply engendered to stem the tide of love's infections. A vital mutation or misalignment of possibilities.

Quite close to Clacton in Ess.e.x, there is Britain's oldest recorded town, Colchester, its tall Town Hall pointing at the sky like a stretched wonder of the world-so attenuated you wonder if you're in a surreal dream rather than a proper lifetime. The Water Tower is another land-locked kite of brick. The Castle an impacted rattle-bag of Norman stone, weathered to the gills. Yet a tree grows from its topmost tower. The Colchester Tree. Wet-weather fireworks of green. A ground-based kite-display beneath the empty sky.

I was brought up in Colchester from the age of eight.

"There is too much concentration on false endings. References to death. Half-hearted attempts to progress some semblance of a story-line-meandering like a blunt drill between the images-or like a Proustian discursiveness without Swann's long-feathered perfections of prose or poetry. Not even managing to convey the believable, truly-felt astringency of human failings. Just attenuations of mock-philosophy or many wild side-glances from a big Bird Brother with a desperately flirtatious squawk or tail-flutter. Then role-playing a kitten so that its own feathers would be squashed under its own immediate paw."

I listened to the speaker as he continued from the podium in Earth Tower Halls. His own lecture itself was indeed meandering like a blunt drill within already carved tunnels-also thrashing about in crazy dismay like a dying creature trying to reach some sense-bait at the end of its longest sentence. But he was reading from an invisible memory-aid that the technological advances of the new building supplied. Like a politician, he probably had not written the words-and was reciting them parrot-fashion. Even this my own interpolation was dragged kicking into the residual cavities or chambers of his very speech thus masquerading as his own words as dependant upon the hypothetical font used within the aforementioned memory-aid.

"My long-term hobby or labour-of-love: literary experiments in depersonalisation and seeking a unified morality from among the Synchronised Shards of Random Truth & Fiction: 'difficult' extrapolative empathy in the art of fiction writing: and creating/distributing the acclaimed but non-profit series of multi-auth.o.r.ed anthologies ent.i.tled Nemonymous...."

The platforms were being queued haphazardly (and often over-vigorously) by those waiting for their turn to take the long trains that had now been shuffling steamingly within sidings for some hours of impending preparation. The hawling-tunnels had by now been freshly railtracked to furnish easier journeys to the Earth's Core without having to travel overland. And most were eager to take advantage of these technological advances. The first public trips had been well-advertised and the demand was great. Ticket-only.

One of the platforms was so ill-queued only a few stragglers had self-consciously sidled there into makeshift positions of arrival's order by mechanical memory-aid. They wondered if they were on the right platform, as they viewed the milling hordes on the opposite platform across the gleaming tracks. These few stragglers were evidently representatives of people who had already been to the Earth's Core-and, in some cases, were still there, never having returned in the rather undependable transitions provided by the early 'Heath Robinson' Drills that had prevailed heretofore. Their tickets were for specific journeys whereby they could seek and then reclaim their lost selves... an adventure or quest that would be both exciting and linear. Several trainspotters or twitchers watched them from various signal-boxes in the vicinity, giving themselves (and hopefully others) some perspective to the early beginnings of the platform stragglers' characterisation and potentiality within an unusually distinct plot-development.

A smartly be-suited Greg was a tall figure with pink chops sporting Victorian whiskers, which rather belied earlier sightings in other habitats of his working-cla.s.s upbringing and work as a lorry-driver or amus.e.m.e.nt arcade attendant. Mike, Greg's alter-nemo, was possibly the wise counsellor Greg truly sought, rather than just another version of himself.

Beth, his wife, frowned but instinctively showed an equal balancing of love and caring beneath the brusque veneer. She would be his real-life counsellor, whilst maintaining a rather uncomfortable relationship with her own 'road rage'. Once beautiful (and her alter-nemo Susan was still present just below the surface of the skin in a far more acceptable silhouette of femininity), she now had frown-lines tracking the crows' feet on her face and (if revealed) the rest of her body.

The children Amy and Arthur would need to develop more naturally without being force-fed fictional epithets. Equally the older ladies Edith and Clare would be given even more shadowy roles than those granted to them in earlier days.