God of the Game (Dreamstate) (16 page)

   “But fret not, it is only the common process of growth experienced by all things, and if your memory serves you well, you may remember similar growing pains on Earth. You will
, in time, bloom like a beautiful flower.”

    I raised a query, “Why do I create another being separate from myself?”

   “Different people do it differently. I guess, for you it’s your innate longing, since you never tied the knot and have always wondered what it’ll be like. A natural road of progression you observed in friends, to be coupled, to bear the next generation; all very well; all very good.” He drooled on, “You long for someone to know you, to understand your emptiness, to taste your joy.

   “But mind you, though joy can be copied, emptiness can never be understood; by no one, otherwise there’ll be stagnation in the orders above. Emptiness is unique. I cannot comprehend your faculty of it, neither would you know mine. It can only be filled by its bearer. And as gods shovel in the dirt to stuff the hole, eternity expands.”

   The Perverted Penguin continued, “Sha-Rronne is your spade for your cavity; all for the betterment of everlasting civilizations.”

   “Look at her!” he screamed with a shuffling of his tail, a stamping of the boots; and I thought I heard the heavens roared.

    Sha-Rronne breathes, o’ ever so slightly that it escapes mortal eye. But I am a demigod, and I am bound to her. Even the slightest tremors of her heart are as thunders to me. Her bloodstream crashes like a prodigious cataract in my acute hearing.

   “I have a question,” I asked. PP raised his thick brows, and I said, “Why Sha-Rronne? Who is she to me? Why that name, what is its significance?
”    

   “You have forgotten? Search yourself.” 

    I dug deep, tumbling in mire of memories. I see myself fall inside a rabbit’s lair, vortex green; the intricate function of my intellect, synapses sparking off, electricity riding, laden with information in the brain to invoke reminiscences, allotting new data, giving direction, absorbing nutrition in way of new environs – the operation of this great machine, the centre of the universe, the god’s mind. My mind.

    Y2K New Year Party at a defunct airport. A hundred thousand strong in attendance. DJ is counting down to the next M
illennium, “Ten! Nine! Eight!” the inebriated crowd shouts with him, “Seven! Six! Five!” in unity of spirit and in one voice…

    …
and she decides to faint
…

    The biggest event for a thousand years
, and I spend it in a medic tent. My friend had carried her, hero of the day, knight in shining armour. Heat wave, the nurse explained, common. The beds were full, the result of too many people canned in excitement together. We waited, her friends, my friends. I remember one of them, black pants, grey top. She said her name is Sharon, and she’s adamant she’s neither bulimic nor anorexic.  

    Vivaldi strings to a thumping electro beat and Double P is framed by two topless beauties; fake but very real at the same time. Big tits and hot pants, metallic blue and green. We appear to be in a discothèque, some hot media party celebrating mega-boobs and megalomaniac private parts. In the middle is a giant vagina dentata, chewing up male slaves with its sharp teeth mainly, besides some domestic pets and a lesbian or two. The cunt burps as she swallows her prey. Pinkish goo-spray, greyish haze, and perfumers are analyzing the potency of the scent, her pheromone juice, which sends revellers to frenzy. An orgy.

There I see her again, last from year 2K. With the same se
t of clique, but this time bare breasted, advertising low-slung hip-hugging Levis jeans. One plain Jane with plain twins; another, who is the sweetest tit of the lot; followed by a bodacious vixen, the largest tata of them all; accompanied by the ‘faint-girl’ and her sky-scraping towers gravitating to the middle, but now no more cataleptic despite the smouldering temperature generated by human bodies heaped.

Sharon, she said her name is Sharon, an anorexic bul
imic waif supporting healthy hooters…and she’s leaving the club with the fucking Penguin.

32

Elizabeth Amber

Liquids. Liquids are the substance of life. All living matter is full of it. With my webbed palms pressed upon Sha-Rronne’s fibreglass tomb, I recited a pagan prayer of sustenance, and spoke to the sleeping beauty, a justification why I chose Sharon (aka Sha-Rronne).

    It’s because I needed an attractive yet fleeting memory. I couldn’t portray my liberty through Gee Ni or my fave chick, they carried too much luggage. Too weighty and dense, their lives were to
o intricately woven with mine. Sharon, instead, was of no consequence. She was just fantasy, yet fleshly enough to bear the product of a soul. Present and pure enough to manipulate. Sure, she roams the spheres, but our paths have never crossed again since the two revelries on different dimensional plates. As long as I’m concerned,
she’s me
, though she may be a goddess of a hundred thousand planes.  

    I
took a deep breath, changed my atomic composition and walked through solid, then secreted into the unconscious mermaid; when I surfaced from the other side, Sha-Rronne was in my supporting arms, awake.  

    She was still a bit dreamy. The embalming fluid, no longer of purpose, drained out to the clouds overhead, immediately releasing rain, black like oil, but simultaneously saccharine as liquorice. The End of the World scene rejuvenated, dead buildings resurrected, adamantium pylons
laid, synthetic concrete, steel and bullet-proof glass slapped upon tall towers, similar to a CG cinematic orchestration. The reverse of a calamity; with every death comes new birth, a revival, regeneration, but yet, apocalyptic; an anti-cataclysmic shaking of the foundation, dry bones re-hydrated, rehabilitated, and re-habiting real estate; beings colour the postmodern Venetian city, which is the silhouette of my spirit.

    Imagine my own surprise, an entire metropolis that is my psyche’s essence, the true power of my mind manifested. And this erected empire is merely the capital. A planet I will discover beyo
nd the outskirts of its suburbs when I realize the potential of my
busy, busty brain
. Society over a billion represents my diverse personalities, characters and disorders; the economy is for trade with other deities; politics, my invisible governance; and art-science to spur new frontiers.

   “It’s beautiful
, isn’t it?” said Sha-Rronne, stirring from her slumber. I nodded.

We stood on a hi
ll inaugurated by this crowning glory, the setting sun casting long shadows over the sweet and oily canals and the imposing classical structures, reflecting light of shimmering amber in the modernistic penthouses above. Something magnificent I can call my own.

*

    At Jai-I’s workstation, an emoticon blinked on the monitor. The kind that warrants an emergency. He stared into the screen, a horror perplexed, the VDU smiled teasingly with a split second horizontal flash, before a black pool of nothingness reflected his blanked out phizog.

Then
, slowly, a teddy bear with an evil grin emerged, like the living dead from the bottom of a swimming pool, accompanied by a child’s mischievous laughter echoed over a thousand hills. Below the furry creature, bold letterings of red ran.

NIMROD SAYS HI
!, it read.  

   “What???” Jai-I screamed, “…the hell!!!”

    ZOOL.A.N.D was being hacked. A virus uploaded into its main street upon entering the key gateway via the rubbish strewn alley behind Club Utopia.

   “Shit!” Jai-I cursed again. He smacked the display, but the damn teddy chuckled harder. On an alternate connection Jahr’s son hooked up secondary
visuals, and to his dismay, ZOOL.A.ND had been compromised. Contaminated. Everything and everyone was squishy and squashy. A soft toy haven. All the cool, cold avatars transformed to bunnies, dolls and every other cute creature imaginable. Even the architecture had become playhouses and liveable mushrooms.

   “O
’ my…o’ no, who the hell…” he cursed, “is this Nimrod asshole?” He did a check on the Net, the Vine, the Matrix, the Metaverse, and the results came back nil except for a tiny link to an online article titled
Puppet Master Vs Peppet Master
. 

   “T
his is odd,” he spoke to no one; “this sucks!” From the report he gathered Nimrod had some vague connection to the
Nephlim
; and it was highly probable too that the current state of affairs pertaining to business dealings with the
Kreators
was at the middle of it. Rumour has it negotiations had broken down and relationships soured on the agreement terms to develop the Western slums of Syurga after an apparent conclusion was briefly reached. Disparity on technical matters, the legal proceedings preached. This entire deal had caused much mayhem, an inconvenience too many; the last being, Jai-I remembered, was at CLIT, where Trekz had turned inside out and Vesper cooked with boils.  

The
unsatisfactory write-up also said of some obscure union with the shadowy Leper & the Gunk.

*

    Elizabeth Amber sat transfixed by the window of her cottage. Children play in the garden outside. She has a good life. Munching on cheesecakes – a slice a day she savours, ever since her migration to the UK. Elizabeth
loves
Jane Austen; that entire epoch, actually. She wears a bonnet, the costumes of that romantic period, whenever she strolls and takes Pup (her Golden Retriever) out for a walk. Some kids and teens make fun of her, some insensitive adults, too; but she’s unbothered. She’s happy.

    Elizabeth had come a long way, a high flying career in modelling, every
man’s number one wet dream; money flowing like free champagne. But she’d given it all up. At the time of her peak, some more. Sensationalism. All the world is after is a new sensation, after the old one is gone, vapour in a few months…weeks even. Where was the certainty? Where was truth?

    Elizabeth rather withdrew. To a quiet town, a tranquil village; but the modern world was everywhere. Coke, Sony, IBM, brand names at all corners, products she’d helped to sell. Entirely unreal, compulsively choking, that’s why she’d resorted to organic vegetables planted in her own backyard. Rear and slaughter pigs instead, keep chickens for eggs. Wholly self-sustaining, a close
d-circuit.

    Town
sfolk called her a waste. No one understood her ‘irrational’ decision to throw away fame. They mocked her, blasted her insane. And for a while the media crowded round, breaking for an interview, to report on her odd behaviour, feeding the consumer’s stomach for news and hearsay. But soon they got bored, and then they allowed her to do her thing, went searching for the next big thing.  

    She was only twenty-nine
when she ran away, when she built this cottage to live a recluse’s life. But not exactly a hermit, `cos I was with her.

Elizabeth Amber,

    How I love you. I am a simpleton, the Village Idiot. You showed love when all others poked; you cared when they scorned. They said I talk funny. It was a grainy afternoon, grey with rain. I was beaten up by thugs, scarred, left to suffer in a playground from the night before. Housewives passed, gentlemen take this way as a shortcut to work, even two priests flocked along with their black robes. No one bothered.    

    Until you, until you came in your fun
ny but elaborate clothes. For a while I thought I’d died, and heaven was the gentry of the 18
th
century. But you picked me up, supported my drawling weight by the balancing justice of your delicate shoulders. To clean me, you first had to get dirty with me. Tended to me, and finally healed me.

    I am forever indebted to you. I serve you. This is the way to live, basking in simplistic beauty u
nperturbed by the dissonant chords of the world.

Elizabeth Amber sat transfixed by the window of her cottage. Children play in the garden outside. She has a good life. She sips tea; we are a billion light years away from Earth, orbiting a nebula galaxy, and I approached to hug her, tenderly.

*

    Elizabeth Amber? Who is Elizabeth Amber? First, Sha-Rronne leans upon my arm, but then I have this vision of Amber, superimposed at the top of the glorious view of my metropolitan urbanity. I can’t say it was I, this simpleton, this Village Idiot, but I can’t say it was not either; so I teleported to the zenith of my world, and stared far across and wide, expanding my telescopic lens to the ends of the universe. And Elizabeth stared right back. She was in her flying saucer, sipping tea
on
a cup of painted pastel farmyards.

   “C’mon in,” she smiled; her jet black hair, polished with shoeshine, swept the tiles on which she stood. Two columns framed a stairway ak
in to Jacob’s ladder. Angels ran up and down, as though god was playing Super Mario Brothers.