INTRODUCTION TO ZARATHUSTRA NO MORE ANSWERS, ONLY QUESTIONS This is all that's left of my schizophrenia genesis, of the beginning of a life-long struggle with insanity. It is a strange exodus from reality, the beginning, not only of a great adventure, but a fearsome, heinous journey straight to the heart of the Savage Id. I wrote this story, in a much longer form for Axel Schmaing's English class; manic symptoms, late night typing into dawn. This story frightened me so much that years later, I took it out and burned it. What you see here is the only extant version, created specifically for the novel MINDSTORM, recreated from memory. And it's much shorter than the original, with most of the Bender Shaft material and other superficial science fiction trappings removed. Thus, what you see here is solely the product of mental illness, destroyer of dreams. Yet these dreams have been resurrected with some of the newer antipsychotics. Perhaps sometime again I will become once more the Shakespeare of science fiction. # ANSWER TO ZARATHUSTRA 1. INVISIBLE NIGHT Sitting at the typewriter; delusions and hallucinating; part of the machine, in my dementia death was a recurring obsession. --with leaping from a window. --four shadows... --trance-formation... # WAR, THE HEADLINES SCREAMED After my dying, I was in some strange post-death realm, dead in a nuclear war; familiar mushroom-shaped clouds rose beyond walls of glass. The War of Light and Darkness, a strange mystical heaven, inspired by the Gnostic heresy, that the World and its Creator are evil. That God is a Clown and the Cosmos an Abortion flung far from the true God. Only the False-Creator boasts that he made the world in seven days and nights; the true God depends on the long, slow processes of time, and Evolution is the Thought of God. As my illness progressed, my vision of death was a recurring premonition of my own future suicide attempt-- No exit. The Death-rebirth struggle. Redemption. Christ and Apollo. Sunrise. Sunset drawing the All into realms of Shadow. The God of Dreams. I was transported into a world of silhouettes and substance, a world of myth and legend. The world of Zarathustra, an infinite question with no answers. The purposeless world the only thing beyond God is Sisyphus. He who killed his father, Tantalus, and married his mother, Mind, in his language, Ennoia--the Thought of God. Ennoia was a prostitute, a brazen lady of the night. And there were three gods in her womb, the Mother, the Father, and the Androgynous One, the One who said, "Where there are three gods, they are gods. Where there are two gods or one god, I am with him." This One killed the Father, leaving the Mother to become incarnated in the womb of every man. For the womb of the body is inside, but the womb of the soul is outside, like a male organ. Leaving my typewriter for a fruitless attempt at sleep, as evening fell the plains and fields of the Invisible Landscape, farmland and ranchland, rolled off into the distance surrounding Invisible City; the Cat's Foot Hills, Iron Claw Mountains, Satellite Butte. Under cloak of night, warm spring evening, I turned and confronted what should've been the Invisible College. A place of Rosy Crosses. College Hill was capped by an immense gargoyle-encrusted University of Nite, ripped out of urban space and deposited there, a strange hybrid of Invisible Night. I'd be lucky to get out of town--I checked my pockets for change, to see if I could ride the bus down to the state mental institution. That way, I could escape these terrors, taking mental medication. But it was what I dreaded: Joe Clip money, even better Dick than VADIS. The only thing that could prevent this backwards evolution was a spray-can of UBIK. Brave Imperial Aerosol Kings at the bus stop. Living mirrors on wooden legs with hands that move like little trees, wind-tossed and tempest-turned. I saw that Invisible City was surrounded by a tremendous Dome of some indestructible glass crystal. It even withstood thermonuclear explosions. They came from without; beyond the crystal walls. Perpetual war raged outside the Dome: two Amazon armies fought in this strange daybreak, the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, riding futuristic machines like mad spiders across a crater-pocked landscape like crawling insects. An immense tree, a vine-like plant stood in the very center of the Dome. It was clinging to the roof of that vast crystal vault, as though to some alien sky. Its branches bore some bizarre orange fruit, funnel-shaped melons. The tawny fruits were Klein bottles, four-dimensional with one surface and no edges, a mutated Moebius strip. As I walked the seasons were transposed as anti-time sucked me into its teleonomy. Everything was moving backwards in time without the UBIK to stop it: winter, snow roiling in turmoil as the winds whipped about; became autumn, leaves flying hither and yon; autumn in turn regressed into summer, the snowstorms replaced by scattered leaves; summer became spring, the pregnant dawn giving birth to sunrise, the joy of orange sunshine; spring yet a new winter, cowboys tripping on ICE as they pressed through cyberspace: and as autumn cycled round once again leaves fell, the frigid cold of winter over, like reconciliation. Outside, looking in, was a Great Gray Wizard. The Wizard blew his horn, and the dusky nubile Amazons were caught up in forward evolution, accelerated time, their weapons constantly mutating farther and farther into the future. Strange machine-things became yet more twisted and mutated. The exact opposite of the interior of the Dome. Outside, an angel-lady approached the wall of the Dome, as I stood behind it; a White Death Angel. She faced down a Child of Night. Black Nubian Princess bearing a pulse-pounder. And the night and its angels were good, black angels of life. The Nubian Amazon's life was suddenly stolen from her by an enemy's pulse-pounder. Her screams were muffled by the thick walls of glassy crystal. The Dome was tinted rose where her blood had touched it, crimson which dribbled away now to endless war-- I walked away into the hills, passed brush and scrubwood. I came to a cave, entered. It was death, but there was no long, dark tunnel... I entered a cave, the Source of 4Death, the Moebius of Life, the Klein bottle which contains the All. Darkness enveloped me. In the distance was a light, shimmering faintly through immense depths. When I drew closer I saw that it was a Mirror, light living within it, fluorescent and animated. The Mirror itself was alive, and its legs were wooden, gnarly branches. A Serpent was sitting beside it, subtle and sensuous. The reptile said, "I am the Theosaurus, the God-Lizard. I have come here from the future in a spaceship powered by teleology--I have come to make you more than Man: the only thing beyond Man is WoMan." Voice quavering to face the demonic apparition, I asked, "What's teleology?" The Lizard King spoke to me, saying, "Reverse causality: all fundamental particles consist of two or three quarks and their antiparticles. There is a force out of the future, from anti-quarks passing backwards through ordinary matter. It continually changes the past, creating fractal universes. New cosmoses bud off of old ones, when the sentient life-forms there learn to use technology to build laboratory universes. Ours is one such. Nobody knows who, or what, began the process. Teleology is what creates the life-force, negative entropy, the cause of all complexification, as otherwise entropy would tear those systems down." The Lizard-creature gave me a piece of the Tree's fruit, bade me eat it. The Fruit was twisted, curled; looking into that 4D infinity, I perceived worlds beyond the ken of the living, alternate universes-- "Eat, eat!" the God-Lizard commanded, so I cracked the fruit open. No longer four dimensional, it was merely shattered, broken. I prepared to throw away the rind, but the Theosaurus became 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. Then, I looked in the Living Mirror and saw my clothes dissolving into motley. I had a little party horn, I was God--and the seduction of Sophie was near as the Invisible landscape was lost in incredible distances of alienation. 2. TREE Zarathustra's mighty Galactic Dreadnought cruised space-time, cruised the inter-dimensional void, looking for me. I who had escaped Invisible like a Phoenix. I had escaped the mad Prophet of Duality, by exiting material reality for this afterlife, this strange death-realm. And would there be a resurrection? Zarathustra cursed, mad in his vain quest to find me. He searched in Invisible City; he searched in Nite City. He searched in vain. Like looking for love in a looking-glass world. At last, realizing that I was dead, Zarathustra proceeded to build a dimensional-travel machine. To pursue me even into this dark, tenebrous realm, this purgatory between incarnations. "Zarathustra yet has power over you!" I heard a wee, small voice saying. I turned. It was Sophie, the Wisdom-goddess, a transcendent angel-creature, a Light-entity; lustrous goddess of a Sacred World. Sophia, in shadowy lace, Spanish boots, and the black leather of a dominatrix. The great strong-hipped blonde beauty said, "Men call me Wisdom the Whore. I am the Highest and the Lowest. In the alchemy of Sublimation, I lie with base matter, to resurrect it as Spirit. You think you are God, yet you are mistaken: I am the Female Principle beyond the Creator. I make things make themselves, and the entire Cosmos is my womb." She kissed me. Tongue piercing like a serpent its cave. Like nails into a crucifix. She disappeared into alternate dimensions, passing like twinkling stars, galaxies forming in her womb. I returned my attention to my scanners: Zarathustra had completed his awesome Dimension-traveler. He activated it, sailing through tides of teleonomy, through measureless worlds unknown to man-- Then all at once there was a twisting inside me, a cramping in the gut... Zarathustra was through. He'd passed the dimensional barrier, entered this Death-realm of spirit things; black angels and white demons. The Amazon warriors who accompanied him on his world-spanning craft waited at attention. They were part of his eternal quest, to bring genocide to the Cosmos. The reincarnation of Hitler bringing the darkness of a False Light to the True Creation. The one that does not lie. Zarathustra gave the command to land, right beside the Tree. He exited his ship with his Army, the Children of Light spilling out behind him. The soldiers were dressed in angel-white. Zarathustra approached the vine from the east. It was a false light. A dawn that never came. An evening that always ended. The tremendous leafy plant cast an immense shadow. Sun on the horizon, crimson clouds, violet skies. Nekbael, the bat-winged succubus, was also present in that Place of Skulls, guarding the Tree; dark flesh the brown nearest black. She held a flaming sword. As the Light-Children drew near she raised it aloft, menacingly, said, "Hold, Zarathustra, this Tree and its Fruit are not for you: If you taste it, you taste your own death!" The Prophet of Dualism spat back, "Zarathustra takes what he needs. We must have the Fruit of Knowledge, to establish the Fourth Reich as the Empire of the Galactic Overlord, Saklas the Demiurge. The Creator who creates himself." The demon Princess replied, "The Tempest, Artemis, incestuous twin of the sun-god is my goddess." Then, Zarathustra 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. A fire-beam leaped from its magnetic bottle; plasma struck the terrible swift sword and was divided. Again and again the two clashed. The surrounding shrub and grass caught on fire. Zarathustra then 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 pulse-pounding beam had struck her. Feebly, she caught at life, then fell, dead. Zarathustra shouted in triumph, "The Whore of Amazona is dead! Long live the Empire of the Evil One, Ahriman, who turns all his enemies into cosmic puppets." At his orders, the Light-Children leaped to the task of felling the colossal Tree. And yet the mighty vine was thick and woody; resisted their efforts. It took many axe-blows to fell the awesome plant. Finally, they tugged it down to fall with a mighty crash. Leaves still clung here and there to the Dome where the suckered tentacle-vine had affixed. The Fruit spilled hither and yon, funnel-shaped melons of orange spilling over the ground. With strangely curled green stems. Zarathustra ordered his men to collect it. The soldiers proceeded to taste the sweet Fruit, after seven blond women had gathered several bushel baskets full--yet they threw the bitter rinds away. When I looked away from the dimensional-scanners and into the Living Mirror, I saw now that I was no longer a clown, I was a woman. I had become the seductress, Sophia; I was beyond the All now. So, I abandoned the scanners in the ICE caverns, the computer graveyard, saw the world with perfect clarity. The Thunder, Perfect Mind. But Zarathustra had yet a little more of his fate to live out, like a clockwork man running down in entropy: a shadow crossed his face. He raised his eyes to the sun; it was obscured by an Eagle. As the bird passed overhead and out of sight something inside Zarathustra burned and twisted. I had stolen his soul. Beyond Mind and Tantalus. The Communion with Death ended, Zarathustra ordered his rag-tag crew to march straightaway to the Dome wall... and straightaway they went, toward violent conflict. Nekbael lay dead and Zarathustra stole the flaming sword out of her still hand, tight in rigor mortis. He brandished it triumphantly; the world echoed to thunder. # ANSWER TO ZARATHUSTRA Part III GNOME The Children of Light followed Zarathustra as he led them on at a rapid clip. They came to the perimeter, but there was no exit. They marched futilely along the boundary. But, they came at last to a portal, like the iris of a submarine's airlock. It was guarded by a gnome. Zarathustra demanded of the wee creature, "Let us through, or know the taste of the sword which I stole from Nekbael. The darksome and terrible Sword of the demon-goddess!" "What is your name?" the gnome demanded of Zarathustra, in his thin, reedy voice. He puffed himself up to his full diminutive stature. The bells on his floppy hat rang. He was holding a book, black like a Bible, cover littered with alchemical symbols-- Starless-- Zarathustra was silent. Again, the gnome demanded his name. "Zarathustra." "Your affliction, the curse of Twosomeness, makes me blush!" the gnome said, turning several pages, finally said, "Sorry. Your name is not written in the Book of Life." Vehemently angry now, Zarathustra hacked the head off the diminutive creature. Its blood drained as the small creature died. As Zarathustra and his Armies had trampled Nekbael, so they now trampled the Guardian gnome. The Guardian's bright blue eyes became the eyes of a fetus; in unborn wonder, the dead thing regressed to a blind embryo, a blastula, a single cell... Nothing-- Heedless of his curse, Zarathustra cranked open the portal and passed through it, emerged from the Dome, into night. He raised the flaming sword and charged into battle, hacking, thrusting, severing neck and limb. A war-machine like a vast spider on its silver aluminum legs crawled toward Zarathustra's rag-tag crew. It pin-pointed them in its searchlights. A missile flared and all Zarathustra's forces were obliterated by an H-bomb. Zarathustra's Army was blasted to smithereens. # ANSWER TO ZARATHUSTRA Part IV THE OLD SAINT IN THE FOREST An Old Saint came down from the high hills, what remained of the Invisible landscape within the Dome, mighty pines probing the skies there. --he came down from the mountains. --came down with his Eagle and his Serpent. --came down from the Invisible pine forest, trapped like the desolate Invisible City, inhabited only by ghosts and memories. Snared in a hallucinatory skyline which divided and fell to trace the burning lights of the Invisible City, the phosphor skyline. He laughed a little when he saw me--I was yet the sultry, seductive Sophia, solitary and elect. He cried out, "Wisdom! You whore! Don't you fear being punished as a prostitute? You flirted with the Aeon Christos. Together you two formed a bridge of light between Heaven and the Underworld. Yes, you once carried your fire into the mountains in defiance of the Father, would you now carry your ashes into the valleys? Don't you fear to be punished as an arsonist?" I exclaimed, "What? Has this old saint in the forest heard none of this, that Zarathustra is dead? Look to your world now, False Creator: It is ending." The ground cracked open and swallowed him up. Sulfur. Hell-fire. Armageddon. And though the last battle was over, the False Light had a little more time yet to run out. Then it would go the way of Zarathustra, of death. I walked on, toward the dark mouth of the cavern. Where I'd first turned into God. A burning Bush stood in front of its mouth, guarded by steep hills, pillars of rock. --no exit; the perpetual repetition of the suicidal mind. The Death-rebirth struggle. Redemption. Sunrise. The God of Dreams. And all things have been baptized in the Well of Eternity, thus neither are the good good, nor the evil evil, nor is life a real life, nor death, death. I pressed onward into the gloomy darkness, came abruptly to a rock wall. I felt my way around, but found no portal. Then, in whispered dreams, like Apollo bringing the gods to men, or Prometheus bringing the forge and the crucible, Nekbael spoke to me, demon of damnation: I looked again and saw that the Cave passed through itself over itself to itself. I came at last to Truth: There was an exit after all; the Cave was a Klein bottle. One surface. No edges. I passed over and out, traveling through the fourth dimension. II emerged from that tunnel into alternate realities, to stand at the edge of a vast precipice. I was overlooking a Ground miles below. The Ground of Being. The Awareness of the Void. The All and the None: the first cybernetic Dyad in the Cosmic Computer. And there was fire in the valleys; the smoke of arson. I wanted to die. I wanted to kill myself. Nekbael whispered the seduction called Gravity to me; a Spirit which took me, a brooding, somber spirit. The acid light which is contained in noon. I leaped. Like Zarathustra's Eagle, I went down. For a moment I was weightless, 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 ROSE FROM THE DEAD, AND I HADN'T DIED. The next time I rose from the dead would be on acid, and that false resurrection stays with me. Transformed me. A little of that first acid-death yet lingers; psychosis, madness, paranoia, schizophrenia... And the suicidal leap from my window also took place years later. Yet it had its inception in this story; the window spoke and murmured seduction more than any lady ever did. Ironically, though, I met my girlfriend in the hospital following this leap. Fate moves in strange ways. END Copyright (C) 1998 by Jim Bauer