‘“If computer memory keeps doubling …” reckons Dax “… then eventually a computer will be capable of pumping out a copy of planet Earth replete with cats that need feeding and socks that need mending. And if this computer can pump out one copy of planet Earth … it can pump out multiple copies. So how would we know we’re the original? And isn’t it much more likely we’re one of the copies?”’
‘You see, Benjamin, this is what happens when you give the students loans …’
‘Dax is … urm … one of your scrounging public wastrels.’
‘… and books …’
The single leaf falls into the fallow mound of academic mush.
‘… My students keep making unreasonable demands of me.’
‘We have a winner.’ Scholar Benjamin waves an academic conviction sheet as long as your arm. ‘Worf is a military Christian fundamentalist.’
‘Christians never give no for an answer. Except when you want to sleep with them.’
‘Worf quotes … from the Bible … and John Milton’s … Paradise Lost …’
‘Bah yes. I’ve read this one,’ enlivens the Professor. ‘Banging yarn. This bloke, right, and this bird get washed up on a desert island ...’
‘You have read the book?’ Benjamin seizes the ballistic missile of burning bush and blasts blue exhaust into the rain-flack night.
‘What kind of a question is that to ask a professor — “You have read the book?”’
‘A good one.’ A flash-flood of fire trickles to the tentacle ends of thick dry dreadlocks. Veins pulse raw plasma. The lights are flashing on the poop-deck, Captain, but the power-buffers are out of line.
Hades howling.
Storm with a whip in its tail.
Softly quiver the velvet lashes.
Softly curdles the lip.
See how quickly the man declines after a hard half-hour’s raiding and freezing of Nazi.
High arcs of blue smoke trailing. Burnt offering to the gods.
The big black box releases Lost Witness’ Red Sun Rising.
The trail bone cold. Bats, moths, locusts-in-battledress thrash about the bars of the window. Rain raps a ragged rhythm — two — three — four — syncopated breaths of fresh air like Bob Marley.
Death flies the face of the moon.
Death.
Does Death rear at you like an angry black bear? Grip you by the throat with its talons of panic? To be suppressed. A country best left undiscovered. To die. To lie in the sodden ground. To never know the Meaning of Life. A fate worse than Life.
Sans soul.
The end.
Star food for worms.
Benjamin rises on stiff knees and ganders against the rusty bars a calamity of celebrities herded to the Main Gate to protest LGBT/Nazi’ human rights. Arclights terraform night like day. The chopper buzzing over them for most of the day now buzzed back to the hive <—> The man with the megaphone long given up, dementedly demanding at devilish decibels for everybody in Lower Springwood to come out with their hands in the air, behind their backs or flat to the ground <—> But singly the prison feral cat stepping to the plate and offering to persist with a dialogue.
Benjamin doubting the Wrecking Crew will want a dialogue. But he can think of one or two private demands that need satisfying. The party rocking for hours and now Benjamin is in the mood.
The library and gym-room open for business. The tuckshop liberated and the call is to consume the evidence free for all.
A game of Springwood Fives lathering the floor of the Ones in which the old-school rules are forgotten, and the object is to boot a ball of Sellotape and paper to the far end <—> The opponent optional <—>
Silver trays pass from floor to floor. And kidney-shaped bowls from the Doctor’s surgery. Volunteer waiters dodge the free-for-all.
Yes the party is warming nicely.
And Benjamin is satisfied.
From the Gutter to the Stars.
Not bad in one hit.
*****