Chapter Twenty-Six: Sick Times
The streets are empty.
Well, at least— there's dim, cold fog. To keep one company.
"And me, of course. Reminds me of Silent Hill. Right? Hey, did you know that place was based on a real town that had a coal-mine fire goin' on underneath it or something? —No wait, I'm wrong. That was a slip! Ha. The original games were NOT based on the coal-fire town. That was the design the MOVIE's town was based on. … Heh, boy, what a lousy movie. I once saw a video review about how bad it was!"
The little boo that is always carrying around a book is still following Bowser. To be frank, he simply appeared a couple of months ago, originally a steady babbling sound that grew from obscure whispers to louder, legible full sentences. He had settled into a conversational, if slightly excited & insistent tone, providing a basically unlimited and useless wealth of information.
"A better narration would have SHOWN, not TOLD that information."
The boo flips through a parodic tome entitled "The Elements of Writing".
"SHOW, don't TELL— Presumably by letting me speak more, demonstrating my capabilities & general genius."
In other words, more dialogue regardless! The nature of this little boo itself was the existence of words. Whatever that means. Maybe everything that that can mean.
"Terribly vague! Maybe one of these philosophy books will help? The analytic philosophers of the twentieth century believed that words are everything— so-to-speak. But go into ancient times, and you get all this stuff about the "sacred Word", like in the Bible! Do they mean the same thing? Maybe I should read a comparative essay."
(...) (...) (...) — — —
Gone. Silence again— Just the chill of the streets, that nearly existing (attempting to come into existence!) sound of a twirl-spiral of wind carrying along a remnant of frost.
It was time to leave. Time to leave. Time to leave Chai.
Bowser would have to take a bus to make it to the train station, unless he wanted to walk for four hours. He might have done that with some watery nostalgic pride-thrill in the summer—
(Oh! To walk through the city one last time before saying goodbye! Oh! To see the sights and absorb the general tone of the city one more time!) — Ehh. But now it was cold, and the city was comatose. It was not exactly dead, but the life here had otherwise fallen to the minimum necessary to keep things (society) running.
"Seems like a metaphor, hmmm? Or maybe this is just the State of Existence, and people reflect too much on nature, and, and, and, and—"
For fuck's sake…
(...) (...) (...) — — —
Just get on the bus. Just get on the bus. —Be thankful the bus is still running.
There was, previously, a period of about a month when all public transportation in the city had come to a halt. That should have presumably been a "real shit-show", but most people had stopped going to work by then anyway. And it was theoretically "illegal" for people to meet for any other reason at all, so all the restaurants and bars had closed down as well.
So, unless people were meeting in very small groups in apartments or houses, there was nowhere to go.
There was only your own place— To stay. And decay.
That was a funny thing, though. Bowser had gotten quite used to solitude, or at least, if he could rationalize the spikes of lonely pain he felt, he was often quite used to it. So when the world began to close down and the darkness came on and then no one could go anywhere… He didn't find it too awful. Part of him even enjoyed it for not having to go to work.
But then, there was a part of him, his "social being", let us say, that had become increasingly conscious over the last year, and that was beginning to let out a kind of wail in the darkness of this societal night. That part which recognized that… maybe, after all, much of the "existential pain", so mysterious and so often attributed to the miseries involved with Peach, was more simply described as... just general loneliness.
As he had gone to meet people, and want nothing… Yes, yes, want nothing, not care about relationships, or getting anything in particular from the parade, not expect anything from events… The natural flow of the social organism, the mass created by two or more people in one place, began to devour his individual soul.
There was a levity, a loss of conscious pain that came with socializing. One naturally became more foolish, more emotional, and more desirous to attaining the ends of the group, rather than the ends of the individual.
It was like allowing oneself to be eaten alive. ((But a good kind of eaten alive.) —Right?)
Then, suddenly, the night— quite literally the "Night" had come on. A fresh pandemic, a plague from the north. The source of Night was unknown. Although it affected all developed, conscious species, it was not clear who specifically was in danger, though certainly age was the greatest risk factor. Virtually anyone above the age of 65 (or the equivalent, depending on species) was guaranteed to die if they contracted the illness.
Obviously, there were many "important" and powerful people over the age of 65, so in the initial onset and panic of Night, everything was quickly shut down. Extreme precautions were taken. When the young people of the city flaunted the newfound quarantine rules and continued to drink in the streets, there followed a terrifying week when armed city police went out to chase people away.
Now everyone had the message: Night had come on, the parties were over.
Slowly things had unthawed. Even the rich, powerful old could not let the economy crumble. Things had to keep moving, at least a little. —So, things began to open up again.
What of Princess Daisy? This was a surprise for Bowser— it turned out she was pretty much a figure-head. It was clear, in her uncomfortable televised speeches, that the things that were going on in Sarasaland were not by her decision, but were sourced from directions and orders fed from elsewhere. Perhaps it was just the modern state of the world, that there were no truly powerful people anymore— just submerged labyrinthine bureaucracies, sending out fragmented instructions that coalesced into complete messages, delivered to the public by recognizable faces.
Bowser had known about Daisy's case already, to be honest. It was another one of those intuitive things. After all, his own case had been extremely similar, and once he had managed to free himself from his own shadowy bureaucracy, including the abusive instructor and real power of the Koopa Kingdom (the General), he had discovered his own motivations and abilities to be thin and incapable. His pursuit of Peach, even, had begun as a forcible recommendation by the General, who wanted Bowser out of the way so he could continue to plan all of the (more important, politically-decisive) plans that Bowser would carry out.
Basically, it had been easy to make Bowser a puppet king when he was a child. Once he had entered his teenage years, however, things got more complicated. For the General, giving the young "king" a sexual target worked as a good distraction. Kidnap the Princess Peach, have your way with her… While the true power worked at slowly, craftily expanding the Kingdom borders.
And for the General, if Bowser could actually manage to kidnap the young Princess, it might become easier to conquer the Mushroom Kingdom.
...If that's what the General had wanted at all. Bowser still wasn't even sure, years later. The General had been interested in power, overall. Maybe really trying to conquer the Mushroom Kingdom would have been too difficult, too risky. Maybe the General had wanted to make the Koopa Kingdom much stronger, and then he would have seriously taken on the Mushroom Kingdom— but he died before that could happen.
And (Bowser's thoughts turned) it made for some nice irony that years later, it would be the Mushroom Kingdom that took over the Koopa Kingdom… and through largely peaceful methods.
Ultimately, the most powerful forces in the universe were those that moved slowly, insistently, and inevitably. Underneath spikes of violence was the cool, insistent flow. The surface of the ocean crashed and frothed, while deep beneath, the water moved slowly, creating the ripples that drove the waves above.
"What about the wind? You can't forget about wind. And I bet you left a bunch of stuff out. Important science stuff. Like, the power of the Moon?! Right? Dummy. Idiot. Why don't you read a book before you think? Why don't you think before you speak? THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK."
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Here was the bus.
Inside it was just him, the bus driver, and one other passenger. Usually this time of day you'd have something like forty people crammed on.
Bowser sat in the seat nearest the bus driver, half-consciously hoping for conversation. He could tell that the other passenger probably didn't speak any of the Mushroom language, while the bus driver might.
"Stereotyping! How nasty!"
It's not like that, Bowser thought. It's more probable that… Anyway, I have to sit either near the other passenger, or near the bus driver. Either way, I am choosing someone that I believe I might be able to have a conversation with. You wouldn't be happy with either, right?
"Excuses! You're just trying to hide your racism! Or, no, wait...this is disdain for the poor. Yes… you think the other passenger looks poor, so you think it's less likely he can speak more than one language!"
"I can only speak one language, asshole." Bowser growled under his breath.
"That doesn't matter! What matters is your value judgment of this other passenger, your racism based on him being poor!"
"That's ridiculous. That's stupid as hell. You're just trying to drag me down."
"No, your problem is you won't accept my help! I'm only trying to help you! I want you to be the best you can be. You want to be bad forever?"
Oh hell. He had fallen into the trap again. Again and again and again &...
(...) (...) …
"Are you running away? Ha. Try it. I'll keep poking at you anyway. Even if you can't hear me whispering to you, even if you can't read me in the air. When you feel the ache in your flesh, in your mind, you'll know— it's me."
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What an ugly, evil creature.
"And you summoned me again!"
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Surely… this was what Freud called the "super-ego".
"You wanna talk books? We can talk books. It's the only way you'll get any smarter. If you have any chance of getting better…"
The criticizing aspect. The moral authority. Mostly helpful to some, mostly cruel to others. The accumulation of authority's voices, from all parts of society.
"The super-ego isn't real, idiot. Freud was a FRAUD. Heh (pretty clever). You're better off learning CBT. It's the newest fad in psychology, all the cool kids use it. It's like, scientifically proven through tests and stuff. You just need to re-frame your thoughts, and then you'll be happy as a clam! Freud was so stupid, really. He didn't prove anything! Now, CBT (coc—)..."
FUCK!
(...) (...) (...) — — —
Just keep breathing. Focus on your breath! Save yourself…
Save… yourself…
Yourself… Because your prayers aren't answered…
(...) (...) (...) — — —
That thing was right, actually. It wasn't exactly the super-ego. It was something simpler than that.
Simpler, but no easier to combat.