Sprout Mask Replica (14 page)

‘Speak
to me of chaos theory,’ I suggested.

‘What,
all that stuff about a butterfly flapping its wings in the Indus Valley causing
a sweet shop in Huddersfield to catch fire?’

‘That’s
the kiddie,’ I told him.

‘Don’t
believe a word of it. It’s a sophism.’

‘And
what is that?’

‘An
argument that is deliberately invalid, specious or misleading. As opposed to a paralogism,
which is an argument that is
unintentionally
invalid, specious or
misleading.’

‘Why?’
I asked.

‘Conspiracy,’
he said in a hushed whisper.

‘Ah,’ I
said. ‘One of those lads, eh?’

‘Would
you care for me to explain?’

‘Very
much indeed.’

‘You’re
all right for tea?’

‘Fine,
thank you.’

‘And
biscuits?’

‘You
didn’t offer me any biscuits.’

‘Because
I have no biscuits.’

‘Please
explain,’ I said. ‘About the conspiracy.’

‘All
right,’ said he. ‘In a nutshell, nothing measurable can ever be proven
absolutely.’

‘Why
not?’

‘Because,
well, let me think of a simple example. Something obvious. Ah yes. Suppose you
wanted to know the precise temperature of this room, what would you do?’

‘Look
at a thermometer?’ I suggested.

‘On the
face of it that would seem to be the solution.’

‘But it’s
not?’

‘No,’
said Uncle Brian. ‘Because you could not be certain how accurate your
thermometer was. In order to find this out you would require a more subtle and
sensitive instrument to test the thermometer’s accuracy.

‘Then
you’d know for certain,’ I said.

‘No, you
wouldn’t.’

‘Why
not?’

‘Because
you would require an even more sensitive piece of apparatus to test the
accuracy of the instrument that tested the accuracy of the thermometer.’

‘You’d
be certain then,’ I said.

Uncle
Brian shook his head. ‘Not until you’d tested the accuracy of that instrument
with another, and that one with yet another and so on and so forth until
infinity. And you really can’t measure infinity, can you?’

I shook
my head. ‘So what
is
the temperature of this room?’

‘Ultimately
nobody knows for certain.

‘Blimey,’
said I.

‘Ultimately,’
said Uncle Brian, ‘nobody knows anything.’

‘Some
people must know
some
things,’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘Well,
people at the top. The Prime Minister, for example.’ Uncle Brian laughed. ‘Not
a bit of it,’ he said. ‘The man at the top of the chain of command is
constantly being misled by his subordinates. They lie to him all the time, to
flatter him, to avoid punishment for their misdeeds, to further their own ends,
to curry favour with him. The man at the top has the most distorted view of the
world imaginable.’

‘That
sounds somewhat cynical,’ I suggested.

‘Never
confuse cynicism with scepticism. The two are mutually incompatible. Let us
return to the principle of the thermometer. Let us say that the Prime Minister
is
not
being lied to, he is simply being advised by advisors.’

I
shrugged. ‘Let’s say that.’

‘So who
advises the advisors and who advises the advisors of the advisors and who
advises—’

‘I get
the picture.’

‘It’s
like the police force. Someone has to police the police force and so someone
has to police the police that police the police force.

‘But
they don’t, there’s no such someones.

‘No, my
point exactly. Therefore the Prime Minister receives incorrect advice from his
advisors, because there is no ultimate advisor to pass the advice down the
infinite chain of advisors to him.’

‘So we
all ultimately know nothing.’

‘I
would like to say, precisely. But ultimately I don’t know.’

‘But
when I originally asked about chaos theory, you said that it was a sophism
rather than a paralogism, that we were being
deliberately
mislead. If
ultimately nothing is ultimately knowable, then how can you know
that?’

‘You’re
catching on,’ said Uncle Brian. ‘I know
that
because I’m the man who
invented chaos theory in the first place.’

My thoughts
turned to my non-uncle Felix, the Alpha Man theory and the Ministry of
Serendipity.
‘You
thought up chaos theory?’ I said.

‘It was
a joke, I thought it up for a laugh and sent it off as a thesis under an
assumed name to an American scientific journal. I didn’t expect them to take it
seriously. Although thinking about it, I should have. After all the art world
took Picasso seriously and he was only puffing their legs.’

‘So
chaos theory is just a wind-up?’

‘Not as
good as the ones Einstein came up with, but not a bad one, I think you’ll
agree.

‘So
none of it’s true? In fact
nothing
is true.’

‘There
are no ultimate truths.’

‘But
what about
me?’

‘What
about
you?’

‘I have
this gift, or curse, or something. I compensate, all the time, I’m the
butterfly in reverse, big events reflect upon me, I balance them with small
events. I’m doing it now.’

And I
was. To compensate for the angle of the sunlight coming in through the front
room window I had placed my saucer over my tea cup and orientated my armchair
three degrees towards the north.

‘Ah,’
said my uncle. ‘Well, you’re different. You’re as different as it’s possible to
be.’

‘But
what does it
really
mean? Why do I do it?’

‘We all
do it to a certain extent. We all try to impose order upon chaos. In universal
terms, order out of chaos may be nothing more than a passing fad, but in human
terms, we all prefer order to its dire alternative. For the most part people
don’t take risks, risks incur the possibility of chaos. For the most part
people are unambitious, ambition leads to all manner of chaos. For the most
part people do not question what they are told, be it by their “superiors” at
work, or by the media, or by politicians or by priests. To question orthodoxy
is to risk chaos. The
status quo
exists to maintain order, those who
create chaos within it are dealt with severely.’

‘And
who determines this
status quo,
who decides what order should be and
what should be defined as chaos?’

‘That,
my boy, is the big conspiracy. Is it a
who?
Is it a
what?
Maybe
it’s God.’

‘I don’t
think it’s God,’ I said.

‘Nor do
I. After all, God is the divine creator, but which divine creator created that
divine creator, and who is the divine creator who created the creator of the
divine creator and—’

‘All
right then, it’s
not
God. But I’m as baffled now as when I came in here.
Possibly more so. You still haven’t explained to me why I do the things I do.’

‘You do
them because you’re different. That’s it. That’s the reason. Each person is
more than just the sum of their inherited genes. Each person is an individual,
unique. Except possibly for identical twins. All right, so some people get a
bad deal. They’re the bottom feeders in the gene pool, but others, my oh my,
others have enormous potential. Potential to change the
status quo,
possibly
even to come up with a minor truth or two. Possibly you do the things you do
because you are one of these. Or possibly you do it out of nothing more than a
personal need to impose order upon chaos. You don’t actually compensate, or
reflect, or balance, you just think that you do.’

‘So
which is it?’ I asked.

‘Probably
the latter,’ said my uncle. ‘You always were a bit of a weirdo.’

‘You
haven’t actually been the slightest help to me at all,’ I said, rising to take
my leave.

‘Only
winding you up,’ said Uncle Brian, gesturing me back into my chair. ‘You
are
different and you have enormous potential. You could do great things,
wonderful things. You
do
have a gift, but it is chaotic, it’s all over
the place. You’re at least two degrees out on the orientation of the armchair
and this
is
a Friday, so why aren’t you wearing a red hat?’

‘Thursday
is a red hat, Friday is one black sock.’

‘Just
testing,’ said Uncle Brian. ‘You seem to know your stuff.’

So you
do
understand why I do these things?’

‘I have
explained that we all do them to a certain extent in an attempt to impose order
on chaos. You do them to a
major
extent and
actually
impose order
on chaos. It’s cause and effect. The cause filters down to you and you produce
the effect. The buck stops with you. Without you to stop it, it might go on and
on and we would have
chaos.’

‘You
might have explained this earlier,’ I suggested. ‘To save time.’

‘What,
and had you miss out on all that esoteric wisdom?’

‘Well,
it was certainly esoteric, as I’m the only one here.’

‘You
have thought about trying to reverse the process, of course?’

‘It has
been mooted. I only became aware of this last night.’

‘Well,
it’s not beyond the realms of possibility. We might experiment. If you were to
put yourself totally in my hands, let me personally manage your career, as it
were, there’s no telling what might be achieved. The potential is there, have
you considered just what you might do with it?’

I
shrugged in a casual manner. ‘Aid mankind, end wars, feed the hungry, that kind
of thing.’

‘Hm,’
went my uncle, thoughtfully. He looked unconvinced.

‘Is
that not a happening thing?’

My
uncle shrugged, even more casually than I had. ‘Perhaps a tad ambitious,’ he
said, ‘something you could work up to.’

‘My
thoughts entirely.’

‘Ah,’
said my uncle. ‘Go on.’

‘Show
business,’ I said. ‘I’ve always fancied show business.’ ‘Yes,’ said my uncle. ‘Show
business, right.’

‘That’s
why I
really
came to you.

‘What?’
went my uncle. ‘Not for all the esoteric wisdom?’

‘Nah,’
I said. ‘I recognized you in The Flying Swan, you were the mystery contestant
on talent night. I want you to teach me how to do those back flips.’

SWAN
SONG

Out of his case came General Tom

Onto the knee of Dicky.

Out for his final curtain-call

Doing the dashed and tricky.

Drinking the pint without getting wet

While you’re saying the alphabet.

All dolled up in your moth-balled schmutter.

Saying, ‘gread,’ and saying ‘gutter’.

Getting the laugh with the well-timed pun.

Saying, ‘Who’s a son of a gun?’

Saying, ‘Give us a song then, son,’

Saying, ‘Isn’t he the one?’

Saying, ‘Everyone having fun?’

Then back in your box and put away,

Till the Christmas matinée.

What a bloody cock-eyed existence it is,

Being a bleeding dummy.

8

SHOW
BUSINESS?

ALL RIGHT, I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE
THINKING. YOU’RE THINKING,

Show
business? He wants to get into
show business?
What’s all
that
about?
He might have the power to do literally
anything,
but he wants to get
into
show business!

But you
have to understand, I didn’t know anything for certain. Not then. It had yet to
be proven whether the process
could
be reversed. Whether I
could
actually
make things happen.

And you
learn things in show business: self-confidence, how to project, timing,
stagecraft, how to put yourself across to people.

And it’s
a good bird-puller too.

And let’s
face it, this is my life story and I haven’t got my leg over once yet. In fact,
apart from my mum, who only got the briefest of mentions, there hasn’t been a
single woman in this at all.

And
that’s not healthy.