meanwhile, back in the neurosophy lab

and then he wandered off into the luminous forest and was never heard from again





eht- context of the living branch
web of shadowy figures
trading identities
sending messages back in time
memories of the future


it was all made of wood
the living wood
grew into whatever was thought
each structural strut also contained conductors of twelve types
regulated its internal environment
clustered with sensors within and without
self repairing
self adjusting
autonomous and multiplexedly linked





aerodynamic enhancing cluster of sensors enhance my chance at the ball

tall guy with a toga

sunlight green room 1001091923
(verification: unknown)
(cannot be transcribed)

the stellar array orbit relative to the normal
and the Central Stellar Body is such that there are periods of darkness in the green room
the splicer ticks away
faint lights are visible through the dense foliage-
but not enough for me to orient towards a horizon
it seems for a moment that gravity is missing
but I still feel my weight

if I could express it another way, why would I not do so?

as light floods in, my eyes tingle with filaments and patterns
resolving into lush plant growth
the smell of sex is heavy in the air
pollen covers my hands
the splicer ticks away
it is amazing to me the rate at which viable mutations of many species are produced

I pull up the graph and notice something strange
it's the shapes of the data
it's almost as if there is another set of data in the data
something unrelated
something musical, whimsical
something watching me

to me it seems as if the periods of darkness are getting more frequent-
but not of greater duration
what is happening with the orbit?
my weight feels normal
the ticking remains a constant rhythm
I have no idea who (or what) set the current program

forgetting the mission that brought me here-
I study the patterns
I study the plants and the darkness and the sounds
there is so much new input that my scan is getting neglected

I heard the voice of the Magic Robot-
faint and distant
something small ran away through the undergrowth
I heard what sounded like a loud fart
it's dark now
everything stopped
even the ticking
again there is the impression of gravity being "turned off"
longer this time
my feet are where my head should be
focusing into the dark
thinking through the patterns
an anomalously long period


the light floods in
(brighter because my eyes have been desensitized?)
I'm seeing- things- everywhere
not things
not seeing things
things in between things unfold
filaments of super string ?
we're far away from deck 19-
this shouldn't be happening

an impression of music and voices
I can't tell which is vegetable and which is mineral

the antique helmet lay on the ground

its many knobby protrusions sprouting wires that wriggle and branch

I have a passing thought to put it on

and then a deep seated fear of what would happen if I did

and then an even deeper fear that I might put it on

would it become heavy heavy gold
long cooling fins drooping
burning my collar bones
red gold glinting
I am arisen
reborn as my own avatar

there are a number of tree trunks that seem to glow with golden braided snakes

and around the trunks, colored branches writhe

the single throbbing head the meristem apical a ball of white fire the house of light

jump to the link

in the noisy background fuzz a holographic image of all the images of us

we are all neurologists

fingers

remembering the layers,
we had to start shutting down the simulations
many of us couldn't remember what we were doing,
where we were going
the encounter with VolVoX spread retroactively,
altering files as it went
a series of of spherical wavefronts
the black sublingua arts
uttering the insect pictograms
invading the hyperreal,
by stripping the real
the time gets fuzzy


edges begin to crackle with filaments

I WANT EVERY NUT AND BOLT ON THIS SHIP EXAMINED MINUTELY UNTIL THIS EXTRA MASS IS ACCOUNTED FOR!

once we have regrown into ourselves,
we can then weave the tendrils of our former reality

at the end, it was Junk Thing that counterbalanced the advance of the VolVoX system,
(I am reminded of the way that Junk Thing battled the Zombies in an earlier era)

at the end, it was the fact that parts of the ship had reached near terminal C,
relative to other parts (that were still contiguous),
that accounted for the extra mass

at the end, no one knows if Junk Thing had sentience or,
if it did,
when that sentience originated
was it born from the zombibotified brain of an earth scientist,
or was it Bordo's moon child?

in the end, no one knows if anyone had managed to pierce all the simulated layers of Control

1nt0 the VolVoX sKi

1nt0 the VolVoX sKye



oldskull non-existant spherical void(s)
dial up the atmospheric viscosity
go through a trillion vortexes
agitated twisted convection cells
clamber down plasma webbery vinage
snaking licking
hissing infobukkake
a singular experience?
a very soft landing on the fuzzy planet
xEno, are we down yet?
the normal is not, anymore
split splintered glinted dissolved
an angular experience?
green bubble green bubbles
green bubble green bubbles
the billion worlds
the voices the voices
the green fullerized paradisos
the vision of the nugreeman
Finks and zomB's
fly and worm
collide and stream
into the jpeg foam
where the Kbots roam
ho, flo!
watch EBB!

was what i was

hey, did you catch that?
they want to kill us
they're trying to help
they gave us cheese
but it's not real, is it?
i don't know- did you eat it?
i'm not hungry now
what about what it says here?
here?
over here- this

this... thing
yes, a lot of this stuff is from Earth
i miss Earth, let's go down there
don't you remember? we left earth a long, long time ago
why?
we're on a mission- don't you remember?
huh- what mission?
i can't tell you
because you don't know?
i can't say- exactly- maybe it's this
this conversation?
this this
this this'll thistle

when the ball dropped (I really don't have time for this now!)

When VolVoX ate the sky
Ate our home
Ate our brains
Green Brain Glow
dripped down my chest
the tracing grew transparent
looked down saw my heart beating
beating in the Green Goo



They heard the Voices
Selling a Million Songs
Redirected-
we got one of those pettin' turtles out at the lake
sent to the wrong page again- it's like a low level virus

yea-

shit-

you've got to volunteer- you're not given a dime
sminjas i think are a much more credible threat than inFinks

disassemble-

there's something that you can actually use
and certainly more than Junk Thing- you just made that up!

I'm just going to cut up
so i saw this page
and there were sminjas on it

something bang it
something like black rubber
a hood with zippers on mouth and eyes

should we say that-

I think they were offering protection
pull up-

from the White Whiches
I don't know what to do
what should be included in this event?

this is liner and this is plastic

VolVox ate my homepage/string cells

it's not about that
we're gonna pull things with the skin of our teeth.

so far we have recovered only a small sampling of voices

and there is much contradiction between samples
this was a chaotic time period
a period of increasing chaotic complexity
interpreting time stamps is especially problematic
as various parts of the narrative were moving at different rates
some apparently even in reverse

we have, however, discovered the first known instance of the word VolVoX
although its pattern of capitalization is still a mystery
and its referent seems to have varied greatly
what were those beings experiencing?
because of the fragmentary nature of our subject
we are forced to create as much as we recover directly
in order to navigate in even a rudimentary fashion
through the portal that is now often referred to as "VolVoX"

Magnificent gold Art Deco helmet.2

He remembered thinking it through before. Not a complete run through, just a basic trace with a nod at the major intersections. The way he had come here. The decisions he made along the way. These were the things he was thinking about.

He was thinking about how he had interpreted the situation and how his response had been correct or incorrect according to how it affected the implementation of his plans.
There were plans; there were lots of plans.
There were contingency plans; there were plans of plans radiating to everything in sight.
He wondered how his actions could have been different- if, in the future, in a similar situation, he could do something even more effective towards that implementation.

He thought about his actions of the last half hour in the light of his basic strategy, which, at the moment, consisted mainly of an avoidance of pain and/or death. He reasoned that even without any conscious effort, there was always some sort of basic strategy, even if it was "run away from this fucking heat!"

He wondered what he could do to prevent the same kind of horrible events from occurring again, but he didn't seem to have possessed any control over these events while they were occurring.

He must get to the eyebrary and there was only one access point- in the Chasm.
How he was going to get down there he had no fucking idea.



Just then brilliant light flashed off the cooling fins of his magnificent gold Art Deco helmet, creating a jerking striped pattern that momentarily dominated the entire virtual cockpit.
It had begun again.

inFink attack!

i thought it was the inFinks again
i still remember the last time they boarded:

"Fuk the po-lice!"
"yeah, Fuk the poo- lice!"
were the words we heard.

i think some of us were inFinks once-
a lot of people have shielded those stories away from themselves-
the sometime result of rejuvenation treatments (some say) taken too far-
into the area of higher mental functions-
a drastic pruning-
resetting for freshness-
a dangerous state-
smart bitches, they tend to escape their cribZ-
or sometimes they're born right fucking here under our asses-
here-
wussa.

2 year old pirates-
run away-
run amok-
berserker babies with shit guns-
grab shit and go-
just havn fun-
urine trouble-
walls obscured-
how's your sidestroke?



sometimes they saw the Magic Robot and then
just kind of sat down around it and watched-
Bordo made it-
it fucking works-
it sings and it dances-
does tricks-
tells stories in- probably- all known languages-
ask him say the word shit in every one-
it's pretty fucking fascinating-
it got me.

not so straight into the heart of matter at hand

subtitled: "not the same, not the same"

i thought this one was deleted forever:

in the helmet, not that helmet- this is another one-
in the helmet was a constellation of sensors- probes-
the sKuad used it for game control-
monitors everything from Ntransmitter levels
and impulses down cellular
to all I/O's, several sets for each-
maps chaotically real time-
rhythmically models the mess and then you can choose any overlay(s) you can think of-
pretty cool (as they would say) for 21's.

the sKuad had clandestinely collected the pope's arrows
some say that they dosed the tips with zombie powder
and returned them to the quiver
it was meant to be funny- and illusory
ha ha

for the arrow to reach its proper target,
it had to be modulated to match the branching
but they used the branch's shadow
and the shadow was on some junk in the yard
(the yard was a conical space with its tip up toward the center-
amid east and west-
sort of junkyard/ garden/ park/ shop/ playground-
also the largest open space in the normal-
not the same yard as in the legend)
and everything got twisted-
spirally waved-

and what was dead walked again.

brain rotation (eVol Vox)

-the way to create a graduated control for apophenic sensitivity is to have some of your brains be rather unstable, but able to survive for at least a typical or near typical span-

-see, you just pour some more chaos in here- let that go, will you? they're both correct. they're just spreading now, see-?

-ZOMBIES! GET DOWN! I'm looking, shh- they're all moving in one direction- over there- FUCK! they're FORMING A LINE!

-"It's like casting a net and capturing as many neurons as possible at any one time," he says-

-now i can no longer tell where the voices are coming from. all of them used to have specific functions. the washing machine now tells me stories about my fictitious childhood and a voice inside my spleen sounds like plia singing- i know she doesn't sing-

-let's meet in the lounge, you can hear it in there, but not the wet end- it's too noisy-

-I think it's a natural consequence of living in space with a bunch of freaks- not you- but you noticed how our mission was so much clearer in the beginning? well, at least my beginning- the Funky Pope says that we don't have a mission, but he's full of shit, anyway-

-I don't believe in VolVoX-

-Planet? What Planet? That's imposs- -

-oh. oh. oh. oh. oh. oh. oh- it's just me-

-I am going to assume command. Gris. pAla. SnelF. Initiate ignition sequence. We are going to make a burn. Sound the alarm.

-it was at that moment that the world ended- not the worst world ending of all time, but pretty bad, anyway-

-i can't tell where that is. what are we looking at? those are zombies? oh, yeah, i guess you're right- do, i mean did, we know them?-

that room

it's like i can see everything
no, it's like i can hear everything
bleedthrough
palimpsest
pareidolic amping-interface
stochastic resonance



i hear-
the hive
the hive mind
or the pod
a pod
you have to get out of the web
the memeplex
get out of it to get into it (ha ha)
you can see the stars from in there
you can party with them

only when i'm in there
the limited physical access
the dead zone
inFink access
hatch 235
that chemical trail
i dream that i'm a molecule riding the twist lock
folding my body to match the machines
attracted by my opposite
in the conduit
down bolted down doors
through the small freight medusa

it's actually a brain
a brain
not a heart
a human brain in a cooler
aluminum champagne cooler
and they were termites
not ants
swimming in glycoprotien

there are contradictions
speaking of antifreeze
i know about the people on Mars
not us
the others
underground
at the bottom of the sea
outside the vent
but connected by cable
just outside the fracture zone
but it doesn't matter
you dig them
the contradictions (ha)
watch out archer!
the helmet blinds you
raise them up
see you in hell

CRAWG

AW, DON'T LISTEN TO THEM, CRAWG

Greg

CROMAG, CRAWG, KEGGER, DON'T MAKE NO DIFFERNCE

Greg- but doesn't anyone know what's going on?

SURE- MOSTLY A LOT MORE THAN YOU DO- RIGHT, KRAKKEN? (PUNCH)

(WTF?) don't call me that- that thing is fucking disgusting. really, what the fuck is going on?

EASY THERE, LITTLE BUDDY, YOU GOT SOME BAD DREAMS?

no.

KRAKKEN?

oh, no, that was that thing in the hold that Padre showed me.

WE HAVE 17 HOLDS. WHO IS PADRE?

Pedro. Pepper... tall guy with a toga.

LISTEN YA LITTLE SQUIRT, TIMES CHANGE, SEE? YOU CAN'T NOT EXPECT TO JUST JUMP RIGHT IN AND UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING AT ONCE. ESPECIALLY NOT WHEN WE'RE DEALING WITH THIS, UH, UH... CHRONOLOGY VIRUS... THING.
ANYWAY, I'M PRETTY SURE THAT KRAKKEN THING WAS JUST TUBIFEX.

tubifex?

GOTTA GO NOW. REMEMBER: ONLY BELIEVE WHAT YOU CAN DO.

but...