ACT ONE

SCENE ONE

IMAGE ONE

In which the narrator attempts to talk about someone other than itself for a change, and finally, after many years, finds someone smarter than oneself to talk to, other than the nearest brick wall, one's parents, and the cat. One wonders why 'I' got promoted to main character, until one realizes that this narrator was too stupid to accept payment beyond basic health, education, and sanitation—and the right to keep, and interpret true copies of one's work.

Seen from above, the city of Central is nothing more complex than a spider's web. That said, a spider's web is extremely pretty, as long as one remembers two things: firstly, there is no minimum safe distance-no, sorry, make that three things; secondly, it is important to not get lost among the tracery of strands, and—thirdly, and finally, it is crucial to understand the key function of the construction; namely, what happened to the spiders?

No. There is ALWAYS more than one.

And they dream...pleasant dreams...of food, and prey, and eight.

Translate that both ways, Google, please. Remember the homonym for 'ate'.

….

I'm going to check the dictionary for a minute.

Homonym…Homophone…Homosexual…

No, homonyms are the words that look the same but aren't, and homophones are the ones that sound the same but are spelt differently. As for the other word, that one means you're reading too far ahead in the dictionary. Books like these are truly invaluable. In fact, they're so invaluable, very few people bother to read them, and most are available without penalty, or guidance.

Yet without books, or explanatory repositories of this type, the World Wide Web, and all forms of culture, and government, and communication across the universe, would not exist. In truth, they could not exist, and the world we know would sicken, and die.

This is due to something called Science.

Faith is a term used when people bloody well follow the instructional method laid out in black and white. Science cannot exist without faith, and faith is nothing without its libraries.

So sod you.

Admit it. You thought this stuff was dull.

…

Naturally, my eyes would be drawn to the bugs—golden suns central-reeled, trolled, by solemn strands; streams of silver—sorry, Drizzt—rivulets of silver, twisting out, are buried among the stench of silken iron, gleaming.

From up here, the streets look empty.

They don't smell empty. But I'd need a false-colour image to demonstrate this without a massive headache.

No, the licenses to conduct chemistry legally cost a fortune; it's literally a license to manufacture, store, and apply poisons, acids, and caustic substances, without any idea whatsoever how to dispose of the materials safely.

Picture the current gun situation, multiplied by the ability to manufacture any type of bullet, grenade, or high explosive people want, in any amount. I've already seen what people get up to in the Fallout games.

The difference between those games, and reality, is that in reality, the computer doesn't delete the bodies, or spent shells.

And there aren't any cheat codes.

Only hooks, lines, and sinkers.

Did I mention the bait?

…

Oh, right. That's why smell-o-vision doesn't work; impatience, greed, bad editing, and a severe lack of grace.

Particles persist. The nasal passages have to sort through a complex variety of chemicals, and react accordingly. Too much of any particular chemical association, and the receptors burn out, or otherwise send the pain signal to indicate damage to the body, indicating the brain ought to do something about it before it gets worse. This can be navigated around via direct electrical stimulation, or by other tricks, but we're still talking about a high energy, and materials cost with the neurotransmitters, causing physiological strain on the nervous system. Give the body an exhaustive variety of aromas, and then change scene without a suitable length of time for the transition, and this will cause seizures. Scents are complex. Light, colour, pressure, sound, and music, comparatively, are not.

And no, you cannot get around it by having no nose. Which part of particles persist do you not get? They persist even when outside the domain of detectable concentrations for human smell receptors.

This is reality. Reality is uncountable; the rule of law is not.

Welcome to the Event Horizon.

Of Every Thing, Everywhere.

It's all Relative, Einstein.

And we really, really, ought to have paid attention before we lost our Hawking.

'Star Trekking, Across the Universe. Boldly Going Forward, C.O.S. We Can't Find Reverse!'

The skin, and any exposed organ, acts as a nasal sensor, regardless of what materials it has been made of. If people get rid of their ability to detect chemical damage, or other chemical signals, or otherwise ignore said signals, or damage, then they are effectively lobotomized in any engineering, agricultural, maintenance, health, or other industrial capacity.

For crying out loud; the eyes and ears can't do the work. That's what the nose is for. You can't even get people to understand why ultraviolet light and infrared has to be translated. Or why ultrasonic and subsonic pressure waves have to be shifted into the normal hearing range. Voluntary synaesthesia is not difficult to understand—we use it all the time, to communicate between different functions, and functionaries—but those systems are already in use.

Let's face it. Most people cut off their nose to spite their face-and then the Viking invaders burn down the nunnery anyway.

And I didn't even get a chance to explain shapes.

That one, is an octagon.

It's tried to disguise itself by being lopsided, and having the funny right angle triangle with the overpass, and underpass, and buildings cover this side of it because this shot is taken from an oblique angle, and whomever drew this aerial view fudged the lines for the roads, because some of the structures have congruent bits which are clearly too small to be independent constructions on the opposite edge of the road, so naturally, if it weren't for the pretty golden globes, the pattern there wouldn't be visible.

Regardless, there is a pattern, and it is quite clear.

These people have no love of gardening. Look at all the flat roofing. There's not a trace of plants, or shrubbery, or greenery to be found. The water must pile up on top of the buildings on rainy days, cascade down the faces, and flood the streets. Anyone opening a door or window has to step out into a waterfall—and I don't see any balconies.

Whoever lives here is working on something other than wine and cheese night in Quebec City, seven nights a week.

The advantage of not consuming wine on wine and cheese night is that in the mornings, two can catch the baker, and sound out the best baguettes before the locals do.

Forget what I said about the food in Canada. Only the wheat fields, the fish of the Thousand Islands, and the food in Quebec exist east of British Columbia.

Give me back my golden brown-paper-wrapped shredded wheat you sellouts. I don't care if it's conveniently packaged. It just doesn't sound the same. Convenience my—someone bought the brand, used British wheat, and someone's left out nine-tenths of the recipe.

I'm assuming the brand names conflicted in some way. Egad! Why don't you bloody pirates change the shape of the box?

There are only an infinite number of shapes to choose between.

Three of the regulars even tessellate.

Air, Sea, Ground, and Space Patrols simply plough the waves.

Goddamn pirates simply plow through said waves, oblivious to the damage they cause.

Mind the Gaps.

Nothing can keep it in track.

…

Murdach, were you counting that?

Were those ten hundred words?

No! It got turned up to twelve.

This is what they mean by a picture being worth a thousand words.

Some pictures are worth more than others, but a computer monitor will not tell the difference. A computer monitor spends the most amount of energy simply displaying a full screen picture that's entirely white.

Seen from the outside, whitespace contains the least amount of readable information. Looking at the power bills, and the space requirements, it costs the most. Yet without it, the lettering to be printed on a standard white page of A4 paper is completely unreadable.

We need that empty space.

Don't try to fill it.

Nothing can exist without it.

Everything else... cannot.

This particular image, is what we call a map.

I'm struggling to find the public lavatories.

The little icons aren't showing up.

However, it's not that kind of map.

Naturally, there's a river near this octopus, sitting on an octagon, as it's only pretending to be a spider whilst it's an aquatic creature clearly out of its element.

This octopus dreams of being a spider, and thinks arachnid thoughts.

Personally, I don't think it has thought the matter through.

Squawk! SQUARK! Pieces of Eight! Pieces o' 8!

Speaking of which, here's something to remember:

In two dimensions, there are eight directions, four of which have unambiguous names:

NORTH

SOUTH

EAST

WEST

HUB (or CENTRAL HQ)

RIM (or OUTER LIMITS)

TURNWISE (or CLOCKWISE)

COUNTERTURNWISE (or WIDDERSHINS).

Seen from any singular perspective, there is an additional eight; hence, rotation is possible with two, or more, perspectives. I'm not sure what the names they go by collectively, but individually they are:

Left (Port (Larboard)) Side, Right (Steer (Starboard)) Side, Front (Bow) Side, Back (Stern) Side, In Side, Out Side, Write Right Turn, Read (Wrong) Turn; I may have made the last two up.

It is important to note in scientific consensus that A collective point of view may not be the complete compilation of ALL points of view; there are indeed, other collectives than Red and Green.

This also helps on a battlefield, although other than academic and playground situations, I'd rather not have to utilize it; much to the American gun industry's disappointment, I never saw the point of owning a gun outside a firing range during peacetime. Guns are for military, emergency, special task force, and ranger units only. Anyone else using them outside of a firing range is simply a danger to themselves, a danger to their country, and is a danger to anyone they meet.

Translated from Limey to American—nuke that fu-literacy, language, vocabulary-I'm calling any gun-happy twit not on active duty, on a firing range, or other training course a known terrorist; if you want to own a gun, bloody well join the services—otherwise any armed individual not in uniform will be treated as hostile by people under too much pressure to get things done quickly in emergencies and behind enemy lines.

From a cynical, practical, and historical view, any point of law which talks about 'well-organized militia' is talking about 'highly effective foreign mercenaries'. Just for your information. Naturally, any winning force which used mercenaries is going to leave a back door open to employ more again. Something about 'not burning your bridges' springs to mind.

The interaction between Order and Out 0f Order is quite fraught enough without the Ops and the Uh-OH's freaking out about the O's, which got separated from Oops.

Hmm…something does not sound right here…

Ah, that is the problem.

I had 'individual' written there instead of 'singular'.

There's a world of difference.

So, armed with this reinforced knowledge, to construct a compass, one must, from the East's perspective, facing towards the hub, understand the North is to the right, South is to the left, West is out of sight behind central headquarters, and to go clockwise, one must head towards South, then West, then North, and finally return to where one started at East, which is where the Sun finds itself at Dawn, beyond our Map's Edge.

This information is completely useless, because I have no idea where the sun is supposed to be from looking down at the cityscape at night. From reading ahead, I'd hazard a guess that North is in the far right hand corner, which is a preconception only reinforced by the squiggly symbol looking suspiciously like an 'N' in the same area.

Then again, I'm looking for something familiar in an image where the artist had finished making a sneaky octagon of lights inside an obviously octagonal city wall, before someone told the city designer 'No! Make it BIGGER! More impressive! Give onlookers a grander overview!' And then someone drew a bunch of extra roads on top of the existing buildings, whilst muttering under their breath 'I wasn't told this was the Star Wars Special Edition'. The city wall is one of those things which has quite clearly been compromised by the redesign.

As with all conflicts of interest, all sides have their point, even if it's facing the wrong way, blunted, ruined, dead on arrival, fallen over at the starting line, or not even belonging to the same set as the rest. This particular redesign has the advantage of offering an interesting view of how two octagonal borders, one nested inside the other, intersect at their vertices, via a simple rotation of one compared to the other, with a third, smaller still-being the smallest, lighted octagon around the hub-with sides parallel to the largest, are connected from the smallest shape to the largest, and beyond—with the smallest shape an illuminated square in the centre.

Oh, now I remember.

Whilst rattling off the names of the directions from the singular perspective, I inadvertently took the viewpoint of a ship or building within the city limits, instead o the viewpoint of the smallest component.

So, there are twenty-four directions to remember on a two-dimensional plane; eight for observing the entire map, eight for any ship, shape, shop, or plane, and an additional eight for any individual point, such as the presumed people therein.

This makes it easier to tell the time, and navigate in space. One can know both when something happens, and where it is going, although never to the same precision.

Hopefully I've gotten that right. I've already confused Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle with the Observer Effect once already, and I'd rather not make the same mistake again.

It's a rookie mistake these days. Much like the psychology joke for second year university students and up which runs 'Freud'.

That's the entire joke. After one year of psychology, students need no further impetus to start laughing. And no, I heard about the joke from students who took psychology; it's not something I personally attended classes for.

It's easy to dismiss centuries and millennia of blood, sweat, and tears with a simple laugh. And an insult. Yep. I've got nothing. All the lines were in use. All frequencies were full. All roads were clogged. And all the railways were gone.

So, I used my own two feet.

…

Admittedly, those feet were carried above the ground through means of various piggy-back rides, but I'm sure there was some steering involved. Trying to dodge other people, and not get stepped on, and avoiding the people who get underfoot so they don't get crushed is a real challenge when one bears the name of 'half a job', two hands, and half a brain.

Anyway, there was one more thing I had the responsibility to point out, before I completely lost the plot as to what I was talking about, and crashed for two days.

So far, we've covered the three octagonal shapes in the image, and taken the point of view of each, which works out to twenty-four different directions when one is taking general relativity into account, which quantum physicists seem to leave out because it causes too many problems with their computers.

Look, the guy made up the special and general theory of relativity after working on the railways. It's not hard to figure out. It's just stupidly difficult to understand it using mathematics, as opposed to showing it in action.

I mentioned, briefly, the illuminated square in the middle of the city, and the minor point that an overhead observer at this scale, and picture quality, can't see any people; just the little lights from the windows. The smallest unit seen in this city map, therefore, is not the people dwelling within the city, it's the singular points of light, which each have their own viewpoint, and a grand total of eight directions they can go.

From this vantage point, the city-dwellers may as well not even exist—and yet they each have their own points of view, and directions to move in.

Conversely, the entire city is seen within rectangular limits; these are the absolute borders of the world from the two dimensional perspective. As much as one cannot see the people, being too small to see, and thus may be tempted to forget they even exist, one must also keep in mind that even though the world seems to stop at the horizon, there are in fact, structures and perspectives much larger than the entire city shown on this map.

People have a tendency to forget both the small scale, and the large scale, and sometimes even forget that they themselves, have a voice.

This is a law of physics. Not psychology. Literally any machine, engine, structure, living creature, life form, or any thing which has the capacity to act as an observer will run into the same problems when doing any form of calculation. Full stop.

It's not even a law of motion. It's how the system of rulers and balance scales work. Things literally forget how to count.

So, I'm here to tell you that anyone unable to count past two, beyond the idea that there is 'With Me' or 'Against Me', and that is all there is, can go to hell.

Life started with a little Cheshire Catalyst…..

…. H

. E

..-. F damn. .-.. L

..-. F checking…relearn Morse. .-.. L.

Not sure if this fits in with the flow, but taking the 'larger than the entire image' and 'smaller than the smallest part of the image' into consideration, this makes forty directions to consider.

Look, if you don't understand why certain numbers are important, try telling the masses to stop using their fingers, toes, and arms when counting.

We use a base ten system because we can see ten fingers on two hands.

We use a base twenty system for a 'score' because we have ten fingers plus ten toes.

We use a base sixty system for minutes and hours, because we start counting the bones in our fingers and toes.

And we use a twenty-four hour day, because someone bloody counted the directions we could move and rotate in on the ground, without lying down on the job.

Some numbers are more important than others. The primary divisors will tell you that. This fist counts as 'zero'. This other fist counts as 'hex'.

Personally, I'm amenable to counting to eight on one hand.

But if not, I'll count myself, two fists, and ten fingers as '13'

The baker always takes one loaf so they themselves can eat.

As for the system of tithes…that's what happens when you forget you have fists.