CHAPTER VI ANSWER TO ZARATHUSTRA # INVISIBLE NIGHT I was in some strange post-death realm--Captain Strange would be familiar w/ this place, as he flew the Higher Planes--but how to get a hold of him? What to do here? I guess I better pray here, though God is probably as dead as I am. The plains & fields of the Invisible Landscape, farmland & ranchland, rolled off into the distance--yet now I turned & confronted what should've been the Invisible College. College Hill was capped by a gargoyle-encrusted Night University ripped out of its urban space & deposited there, a strange hybrid of Invisible & Night. I entered the physics lab, hoping to find the shade of Otis Bender: # & SMILES TO SEE THE PUPPETS DANCE I walked the halls of the Physics building at night. All was silent; the building was empty. His footsteps echoed long before he saw a light burning angrily in the distance. He came to it at last; saw that it came from a bare bulb in a workshop where an Old Magician carved puppets out of wood, lathe turning & knife scraping in that harsh artificial light. "Who are you?" I demanded, entering the cramped workshop where lifeless puppets rested in a little amphitheater. "I am the Demiurge," the Old Magician replied. "I am the Creator. I make puppets out of wood & I make them dance w/ my strings & my manipulations." He held a puppet up to the bulb. Its varnished surface reflected the yellow brilliance. He plucked the strings & the puppet moved jerkily, spasmodically. "See what I have made w/ my Making?" he said. Outside the yellow-paned window was the World. & all the world reflected the glory of the Maker, dancing like puppets in the Theater of Mind. But I saw deeper, saw that beyond the World there was Abyss, Chaos. & the Abyss was silent in the Night. # I wandered further, found myself in another workshop. "I am the Creator," the proud owner said, a wizened old man w/ a beard of stars, distant suns twinkling in his eyes, in his mouth horizons bent & twisted. "There is another who calls himself Creator," I said. "He fashions puppets out of wood & makes them dance in a little theater, the theater called Worlds & Generations." The beard of stars trembled. "Bah! He is a False Creator...these puppets of mine have not been fashioned by human hands, they crawl out of the woodwork!" As he spoke the wall warped, twisted; the white, cracked plaster melted into a form, a little puppet which dropped to the shelf beneath it. It picked up a puppeteer's axe & swung it deftly, its intent to kill the Creator, as it slashed the weapon wildly. Angrily, the Creator snatched the Tool away from the puppet, slamming a cardboard box over it, trapping it. The Creator scooped up his prisoner & tied the box shut w/ string, saying, "It's alright as long as I can keep them in boxes." # The Demiurge was working in his shop when I knocked on the door, a clown in motley. The Demiurge answered, angry at being interrupted in his Making. I was God. I was a Clown. I blew my little party horn, flooga! flooga! flooga! tickling his nose w/ the serpent-thing, said, "Package for you!" He jerked it away from me, slammed the door in my face, & put it on a shelf to busy himself anew w/ his perpetual craftwork. Behind him, unnoticed, the lid of the shoe box popped open. A pair of sinister eyes glinted from the shadows of confinement. The puppet, 1 of the Creator's puppets, emerged into the glare of the bare bulb, a thing of living wood. It walked to the edge of the shelf, found an axe. W/ a single crashing blow it brought the weapon down on the Demiurge's head, sending blood & bone flying. The Demiurge was dead. In the silence that followed the voice of the Creator could be heard, reverberating from empty spaces devoid of life save for living wood: "It's alright as long as I can keep them in boxes!" # Now I stepped once more into the sun, & saw that time was moving backwards: Night had been replaced by Twilight, but Morning did not Dawn Electric; rather, it was Evening. In the distance, I saw that Invisible City was surrounded by a tremendous Dome of some indestructible glass crystal which w/stood even thermonuclear explosions, perpetual war raged outside: 2 armies fought, Amazon warriors riding futuristic machines like mad spiders across a crater-pocked landscape. Like insects the teeming machines dotted the horizon where mushroom clouds rose. I now caught sight of an immense tree, a vine-like thing clinging to the roof of that vast crystal vault as though to some alien sky. Its branches carried some orange fruit, funnel-shaped melons. I walked a road, horizons changed; seasons transposed as I walked: Winter became autumn; autumn, summer; summer, spring; spring yet a new winter: a backwards cycle, anti- causality. I saw it clearly now: The future controlled the past. & as autumn cycled round once again leaves fell, the frigid cold of winter passed like reconciliation. An angel-lady approached the wall of the Dome I stood behind; life was suddenly stolen from her by the pulse-poun- ders & jackboot sprayers of her enemies. The Dome was tinted rose where her blood touched it, crimson which dribbled away now to endless war, strange machines beyond imagination. I walked away into the hills, passed brush & scrubwood. I came to a cave, entered. Darkness enveloped me. In the distance was a lantern; when I drew closer I saw that it was a Mirror, light lived w/in its fluorescent depths. A Serpent was sitting beside it, the Lizard said, "I am the Theosaurus, the God-Lizard." It was holding a piece of the Tree's fruit, bade me eat it: communion. I took it. It was twisted, curled, a true Klein bottle, 1 surface & no edges. It was 4 dimensional; looking into that funnel which curled back around to connect to itself I perceived worlds beyond the sight of the living, alternate universes where Otis Bender & Eric von Heisselman were twins. "Eat, eat!" the God-Lizard enjoined, so I cracked the fruit open. No longer 4 dimensional, it was merely shattered, broken. I tasted sweet & sour. I prepared to throw away the rind, but the Theosaurus became excited, perturbed: "No! You must eat all of it, the bitter as well as the sweet, for the Whole is Life, but the Part is only Death!" I ate the horrible tart shells which left a lingering aftertaste; then looked in the Mirror & saw my clothes dissolving into motley. I had a little party horn, Flooga! Flooga! Flooga! I was God--God is a Clown--& the seduction of Sophia was near.... # TREE There are 2 material worlds; souls pass in & out between them thru the psi-space dimension called the Bardo, the strange afterlife realm. Souls can travel from 1 universe to the other thru the Bardo, but since antimatter travels backwards in time, an anti-soul reincarnated in the matter universe is born before it came into being. I was in this in-between realm, God in his command module manning the Dimensional Computer to see, hear, feel Knowledge of the All. ZArathustra's mighty Galactic Dread- nought was now cruising space, looking for a transmuted Lead. He found no Phoenix--I had gone beyond myself to myself, had exited material reality for this cybernetic heaven. Zarathustra cursed, mad in his vain quest to find me. He searched in Invisible City; he searched in Night City. At last he found the grave. Realizing that Lead was dead, Zarathustra proceeded to build a dimensional-travel machine so that he could pursue me even into this dark realm. Like some Old Magician become electrician, he worked to create the machine that would take him out of the realm of Body to the world of Mind. Zarathustra has power over you! I heard a wee, small voice saying, a thing that cries out in the night. I turned. It was Sophia. Not the earthly Rosencruetz, but a transcendent angel-thing. "You think you are God, Creator; you are mistaken: For I am the God beyond the Creator. You Make; I do not sully myself w/ Making. I am the Mother & the Androgyne; men have made of me a Whore--I sleep w/ base matter to resurrect & transmute it.... "I am beyond you God, Lead, whatever you may be: I am Phoenix!" She disappeared, twinkling stars; & there were galaxies in her womb. I returned my attention to my scanners: Zarathustra had completed the awesome d-travel device. It was a thing of both magic & science; it reached into the world of magic, my world--psi-space. Then all at once something twisted; a twisting inside me, a cramping in the gut.... Zarathustra was thru. This incarnation of the Demiurge lived now in the world of the dead. The Amazon warriors who accompanied him on his world-spanning craft waited at attention. Zarathustra gave the command to land, right beside the Tree. A D-rider now, he exited his ship w/ his Army, the Children of Light spilling out behind him, tall Amazon warriors dressed in angelic white. It was a false light. A dawn that never came. An evening that never died. Zarathustra approached the vine from the east. The tremendous leafy thing cast an immense shadow. Sun on the horizon, crimson clouds, violet skies: In the red of twi- light the tree appeared almost black. Nekbael was also present in that Place of Skulls: Nekbael had died, she lived in this inter-birth realm now--& though any mortal would exit that Bardolcs `s3"#sbsb`2sb"` s3`3s33 s""s`"03"``3""3sb`2s"!"s0000<<3"#s`s"ps3c  b`! 33""s c3bs c""ps s3`p33` 3``pba"3a""3#ss3 aloft, menacingly. "Hold, Zarathustra, this Tree & its Fruit are not for you: If you taste it, you taste your own death!" The Prophet of Dualism spat, "Zarathustra takes what he needs." He drew a ray-gun from his white holster, white leather like his boots. A False Day. He took aim even as the mighty demon whirled her sword, shedding images, ever-changing colors. The fire-beam leaped from its magnetic bottle; plasma struck the terrible swift sword & was divided. Again & again the Two clashed. Violence, force: The surrounding shrub & grass caught on fire. The Light-Children leaped to the task of drowning the blaze even as their leader continued his battle. All at once Zarathustra fired off his jackboot-sprayer, simultaneously striking home a blast from a pulse-pounder. The demon Princess coughed, surrounded by a cloud of poison gas; bled where the powerful pulse-pounding beam had struck her. Feebly, she caught at life, then fell, dead. Zarathustra shouted in triumph, "The Whore of Babylon is dead! Today the Army of Light will know victory, & victory is sweet indeed!" The mighty Army cheered Zarathustra on. The Light-Children leaped to the task of felling the Tree, yet the mighty vine was thick & woody; it took many axe-blows to fell the immense thing. Even cleaved thru, yet it clung to the glass ceiling of the Dome; finally they tugged it down to fall w/ a mighty crash which crushed the unwary. The Fruit spilled hither & yon, Klein bottles rolling like funnel-shaped melons of orange over the ground. Zara- thustra ordered his men to gather it. 7 blond women col- lected the strange melons in bushel baskets, enough to feed the entire Army. The soldiers proceeded to taste the sweet Fruit, yet they threw the bitter rinds away: It is only the bitter & the sweet together which makes One God; yet I saw now that I was more than a clown, I was a woman, a seductress: Sophia. Fully transformed into the opposite sex by a love which cannot be explained, I looked to the scanners once more & saw that Zarathustra's Army had finished the Fruit they had stolen--stolen from the Tree of my Garden, a realm that was neither Eden nor Armageddon: Death makes the beginning & the end One. Therefore neither are the good good, nor the evil evil, nor is life a real life, nor death a real death. I was beyond the All now; the All came from me & it attained to me. I abandoned the scanners which my inferior nature had needed as the hallucinatory manifestation of a still-remembered material Self. I saw the world w/ perfect Wisdom. Zarathustra had yet a little more of his fate to live out, like an evening shadow, like a clockwork man running down in entropy: A shadow crossed Zarathustra's face. He raised his eyes to the sun; it was obscured by an Eagle. As the bird passed overhead & out of sight something inside Zarathustra burned & twisted, like a serpent digging its hole in his guts. He flinched in agony; then it passed: I had stolen his soul. The Communion w/ Death ended, Zarathustra ordered his rag-tag crew to march straightaway to the Dome wall...& straightaway they went, away from the center of everything toward violent conflict. Nekbael lay dead behind them; they trampled her corpse, they spat upon her supine form...& Zarathustra stole the flaming sword out of her still hand, tight in rigor mortis. He brandished it; the world echoed to thunder. Caught in temporal regression, anticausality, Nekbael was transformed from a young adult to a child, an infant, returned to the womb eve as the Army left her behind, an embryonic thing, an abortion. Redeemed thru pain & not thru joy. # GNOME The Children of Light marched toward the boundary of the Dome, following Zarathustra as he led them on at a rapid clip. They came to the perimeter; outside there were black & white women caught in death agonies, screaming soundlessly in the oncoming night, all noise damped out by that thick crystal. There was no exit. They marched futilely along the boundary, came at last to a portal guarded by a gnome. Zarathustra demanded, "Let us through, or know the taste of the flaming sword, the very sword which I stole from Nekbael!" "What is your name?" the gnome demanded in his thin, reedy voice. The bells on his floppy hat rang. He was holding a book, black like a Bible, cover littered w/ alchemical symbols: The Phoenix rising from a retort, the Green Lion swallowing the Sun. Zarathustra was silent. Again, the gnome demanded his name. "Zarathustra." "The curse of Dualism makes me blush!" the gnome said, turning several pages, finally said, "Sorry. Your name is not written in the Book of Life." Vehemently angry, Zarathustra pulled his flaming sword & hacked the head off the diminutive creature, blood draining as the gnome died. As Zarathustra & his Armies had trampled Nekbael, so they trampled the Guardian. The Guardian's blue eyes became the eyes of a fetus; in unborn wonder the dead thing stared out at a life that was an afterlife, then regressed to a blind embryo, a blastula, a single cell...nothing. As Zarathustra emerged from the Dome outside it was night. The cool breeze in this tenebrous darkness was a gentle caress upon the land, comfort which belied the violence proceeding all around. Zarathustra raised the flaming sword & charged into battle, hacking, thrusting, severing neck & limb. A war-machine like a vast spider crawled toward the rag-tag crew, pin-pointing them in its computer guidance system. A missile flared, thunder in a world of thunder, a world void of God's perfect mind. The Army was obliterated, blasted to smithereens. # THE OLD SAINT IN THE FOREST An old saint came down from the Invisible pine forest, trapped like the desolate city by the immense crystal hemi- sphere. He laughed a little when he saw me, knew lust: He cried out, "Sophia! You once carried your fire into the mountains, would you now carry your ashes into the valleys? Don't you fear to be punished as an arsonist?" The old saint was none other than Saklas, the Blind God; he praised himself w/ singing, laughing, crying, dancing, & humming, for he thought there was no other God beside him. As Nekbael had passed over into this post-death realm, Saklas had ended his miserable life of pain & greed here. Seeing w/ perfect clarity, I perceived that Saklas was not the mere villain I had supposed him to be when I was the mortal Lead: Saklas was the False Creator, a Maker of False Days. I exclaimed, "What? Has this old said in the forest heard none of this, that Zarathustra is dead? Look to your world now, Creator: It is ending." Anticausality brought the end: In simultaneous Apoca- lypse & Genesis the opposite worlds merged, annihilating One another. Matter became energy in Apocalypse; in Genesis energy became matter: The Twins in perfect harmony of Word & Mind made & annihilated each other like the Orouborus, the serpent w/ its tail in its mouth. Once the material world had ended, a world he had made insane in his own image, Saklas' hold on life was cut like the umbilical cord of a newborn; he passed out into some unimaginable world. I walked on, toward the dark mouth of the cavern. A burning Bush stood in front of its mouth, guarded by steep hills, pillars of rock like mighty legs. The Bush spoke the Gospel of Anticausality: I AM WHO AM NOT BECAUSE OF WHAT I AM BUT BECAUSE OF WHAT WILL BE # SUICIDE The Cave opened up like a rock womb; I returned to a womb of granite & marble, a womb of rocks & pebbles, stalactites & stalagmites. This place where God had been created was slippery & moist; I stumbled but I had no place to fall. I pressed onward into that darkness, came abruptly to a rock wall. I felt my way around, but found no exit. Then in whispered dreams Nekbael spoke to me: I looked again & saw that the Cave passed thru itself over itself & I came at last to Truth: The Cave was a Klein bottle. One surface. No edges. I passed over & out, traveling thru the 4th dimension, thru the very substance of Time itself. I emerged from that tunnel into alternate realities to stand at the edge of a vast precipice, overlooking a Ground miles below; in the distance were Discs supported by poles; somewhere the Eagle turned the crank which propelled the world God had vacated. & there was thunder in the hills. I wanted to die. I wanted to kill myself. Nekbael whispered the seduction called Gravity to me; that Spirit took me: My soul intention was learning to fly. I leaped. Like the Eagle, I descended. For a moment I was weight- less, then in an instant of pain I was obliterated on the Ground. I lay there, still, trembling, a thing that cried out in the night. I looked up & it was not some infinite cliff which I had leapt from, it was home--I had been suffering from depressive hallucinations for the last year while I had been home, in a moment of schizoid split-aware- ness had leaped from my bathroom window. Above me the light in the bathroom glowed like some metaphysical Mirror, fluorescent from w/in; Ma peered out & screamed in terror at what her son had done. Far away sirens wailed. I waited. I waited in an infinity of pain, agony. At last the paramedics came & bound up my feet. I felt myself being lifted, & then in another instant was w/in a steel womb, the Invisible ambulance, & was hurtling at immense velocity toward Fargo, where a podiatrist would try to reform my mangled feet. Human feet, & not the icky warty protuberances of a Slime-thing. That did not matter now. The only thing that mattered was the pain, & it was intense, numbing. Fire. Fire & ice. # End of file Press RIGHT ARROW (#6 key) of the numeric keypad to load the next file.