There's Nothing Quite So Useless As Self-Reflection

The Author Does Not Suffer From Intentional Phallusy But His Neck Is Stiff

Chapter 13

Let’s all take a break.

After eight nights and days without sleep, the author feels light-headed. Fortunately, his morning ablutions seem to have soothed the recurring migraine, and this afternoon has been reserved for preprogrammed merriment at the Doomsday Celebration. These words glow in green on the author’s VDT:

Fie, good riddance, and a pox upon it! One would better dig for wigglers to dangle before emasculate fish.

The Palace does have a pond, a hardy impoundment of roughly seven acres, reasonably stocked with bass, bream, catfish, and crappie, nestled among the potted petunias, rhododendra, and schefflera set in the Timothy-Green of Astroturf National Park. Many was the Palace resident who passed a leisurely morning at Kickapoo Lake — until the butchering of Rapid Ray, that is, but this isn’t the time to dwell upon unpleasantries.

It is time to relax and let go. To sink deeper and deeper into relaxation. Join the mob in the Civic Auditorium who have sanely chosen to drink to excess, since this is the least menacing of human activities in which to engage when one has been asked to kill the next twenty-thousand years and warned to steer clear of Idi Amin or run the risk of winding up as coeur d’homme en casserole a la bonne femme.

The Death of Fast Ed the Bartender can wait. Amin’s incendiary attack on the Michelin Tire plant will hold. The incredible journey of Jack E. Black across the frozen wasteland of what at least one preglacial authority called “the backbone of America” will soon enough out.

The uneasiness the author is attempting to ignore stole upon him just moments ago when he mentioned “a leisurely morning.” He doesn’t know why these words should so affect him, but as he has no desire to see this small discomfort turn into cerebral agony, please, name your poison. Bourbon, cognac? Scotch or vodka? Drambui, gin? Bambina Broccoli remains within easy reach. Enter a request at the keyboard, and it is processed so quickly that even before your last desire is encoded, the first is arriving.

***

“Here you are,” Bambina smiled, setting the fifth of King James and a single glass on the cluttered desk. “You really should get some rest,” she said, “Just look at this place.”

“Miss Broccoli,” the author answered, “You are a perfectly adorable maiden, but surely you realize a man’s room is his Bastille, and you must storm it if you wish it to change.”

“You’re impossible,” Bambina said, giving him a peck on the cheek as she turned to leave, “simply impossible.”

Mixed drinks do take a little longer. Fast Ed the Bartender was boggled out of existence during the first commando raid on the Heart of Materex, and with him The Bartender’s Standard Manual. But relax. Take a nap. This grim history and its bleak conclusion will still be here when you return. Even the Palace wasn’t built in a day.

In fact, it took 30 years, employing more than 75,000 laborers on the site alone. If one takes into account the carpenters, diemakers, electricians, founders, glassblowers, et al, engaged in the production of subcontracted hard/firm and/or software for the Palace, its construction was a feat of devotion and engineering surpassed only by Ch’in Shih Huang Ti.

Ch’in Shih Huang Ti was the first emperor to rule a unified China. He ordered the Great Wall built in the third century B.C., a project that utilized more than 700 thousand workers for 36 years in the design and execution of his spirit city alone.

The author was tempted to begin a treatise on time, when instead he rose from his chair and stretched, knotting his fists in the small of his back. He rolled his head around his shoulders and yawned, truly relieved to have done with the lives and times of Gottlieb Goforth and Cindy Gnomoure. He smiled at the memory of Bambina Broccoli who had stood in the doorway on many occasions, sadly shaking her head, having left clown after clown of fresh coffee. All coffee in the Palace is served in brightly-glazed ceramic clown heads with spouts in their noses. This one resembled Clarabelle, his favorite.

***

There is something terribly wrong here, but it’s hard to say what it is. The author wandered around the room, dazed, confused. Dreadful exasperation flooded his brain, and he felt indignant at being used for no purpose with his complete knowledge, and yet without his consent, but no sooner did he entertain this thought than his head exploded in a paroxysm of pain so intense the birds in Kickapoo Park began shrieking. Big Daddy Dada’s laughter thundered down the halls. The arch of St. Louis crumpled in a caterwaul before the painful advance of the southern fork of Hubert Humphrey glacier.

“Oh shit,” the author groaned, grabbing his temples. He jerked forward spastically and smashed his face against the keyboard. The lights in his chambers flashed red, and a voice repeated over and over: Emergency Alert, Emergency Alert, while the cool green glow of the VDT scrolled a single word.

Meditate

it said.

—30—

Epilog In Media Res

It occurs to me that some straggler might want to read all of Trout’s Tale in its God-given order, assuming I live long enough to publish all of it. I guess I could start another stack and publish it in order there, but where’s the fun in that?

Instead, what I’ve currently decided to do is add this epilog as an index to previous posts in the order in which they were not written, but in the most recent order they have appeared in the Hall of Records. Links will become active as new URLs are generated.

Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions.

Trout’s Tale thus far…

Frontal Matter And Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33