Lenny Bruce Is Not Afraid
By Debbie Taylor

Debbie Taylor spends most of her free time foraging for peanuts to feed to homeless squirrels. An act of kindness that is looked upon by these squirrels with disdain and contempt, yet this will not stop her.
She also writes on a fairly regular basis for
Mookychick.co.uk, sells tee shirts and stuff under the flag of The Black Pearl at Cafe Press and Spreadshirt and also keeps a blog at Journalspace, though who she’s keeping it from she refuses to say.

 

I heard it on the radio that the world had ended. I almost missed it, buried as it was beneath the usual important snippets of celebrity gossip. I switched the stations over and got the full details from the news.net. It was true; it was the end of the World. This struck me as odd, as nothing seemed to have changed.
     My radio was implanted into my left tragus and, of late, I no longer believed what I heard through it. Some throwback to some Right-Hem Narcotips I took way back in the day. So I thought it best check it out somewhere more reliable. Especially after that time when I thought eight-legged spider monkeys were taking over one of the moons. I didn't want to go through that fear again. I tuned to the best source of truth and honesty, the HoloNet. There it was, in glorious TechnoTD, the World ending. I shifted channels for an hour or two, trying to find the best footage. I didn't want to go to the club tonight and be the only one who had missed the apocalypse. I mean, things like this don't happen every day, do they?
     It was, I'm sure you agree, compulsive viewing. I, for one, am glad I didn't miss a bit of it. However I was running late and had to get ready. I checked the Fashionista, and Googled for post-apocalyptic party-wear, and downloaded the top suggestions. It was black and expensive. But that didn't really seem to matter any more. After all if we were going to be swept up in the Rapture, I was going to go up in style.

The club had already changed it's name to The Wake in some desperate attempt to seem cool, but it just seemed sad and out of date. I mean, the world ended already, get over it. We didn't mind too much however, as we knew it would be ironic within a couple of hours. So we waited until we entered.
     I had met my friends, Boza, the JJ Twins and Saph. Saph was dressed in an E-Z-Clean white shock-frock. She glowed in the sea of black around her, standing out, as always, just as she liked. This was the reason she thought for Trndz. It had been her idea to put vowels back into places' names. The whole Hypa-Txt service had had to be rebooted overnight, just to cope, new impu-pads downloaded into our cerebral cortexes whilst we slept. The whole world had a hangover the next day and it was all Saph's fault. But we were cool again and that's all that mattered. She had smiled for a week over that one.
     We looked over the queue as we strolled by, the usual montage of TechnOcultists and Matrixisentilists. The nerds and geeks who had looked to literature to save them and give them a meaning in life. Sometimes, you would almost feel sorry for them. They spurned fashion and the Mediacontext. Of course there were worse people out there, who still used terminals to get their entertainment, but we didn't want to associate with them. They never bathed often enough for starters.
     Boza laughed as his timer kicked in and the spinal tap released another dose of Euphoria. The JJ Twins continued to talk to people elsewhere. We could never be sure if they were using their com.piercings or talking aloud to the things that only they saw. Ten years ago, they had tried to be separated, but the surgeon botched the job and they were comatose for about a month. We were worried about them, until we got bored. Thankfully for us they woke up, but have never been the same since.
     "I'm thinking of having my liver pierced." I turned to Saph. She seemed quite serious.
     "How do they do that?"
     "With a gun. They can't get the needles in and out quick enough."
     "Cool."
     "Someone across the pond had his entire skeleton infused with platinum."
     We reached the door and Saph grinned at the bouncer. He checked the DNA and dental records in that flash, and let us in. It's true what they say about only needing a good smile to get anywhere in this world.

The Wake was split into four rooms this night.
     The first contained the CyberBaroque, an awful fusion if ever there was one. They were currently making an assault on Chopin's Funeral March, running it through several filters until it became a mess of white noise and church organs, which only those on the strongest of drugs would dance to. There were patently some very good drugs on sale here tonight. We all four simultaneously sniffed in our haughtiest of tones and moved on.
     (Between you and me, I was using the DataDex to feed me all the information on the music, but I don't think anyone noticed my ignorance.)
     The second room was dedicated to tribute bands to tribute bands. Which, although the others scoffed and called redundant, I kinda found cute in a way. On stage four people, who looked only vaguely dissimilar to another four people, who, in turn, looked slightly like Queen were trying to harmonize. They were failing, but at least they were making the effort.
     The third room was drum'n'brass, which I thought had become passé a couple of decades ago, but the kids there seemed to like it.
     The fourth room was the chill-out zone. This room was ours and Saph set up her court. The hemperature was turned up and we began the serious business of preparing ourselves for the final oblivion.

Time shifts.

"Did anyone see the stuff they had on TNN?" Boza asked.
     "TNN is biased shit and tries to put a political angle on everything. That that man is still alive is a waste of technology." It should be explained that Saph had never forgiven TNN for its involvement in the Pakistan debacle, even though that was so last century. One of the few things other than looking good she cared about was her heritage, no matter how fake it might have been.
     The JJ Twins made a brief visit back to our world. "I liked the way it all went kinda dark, y'know. Bleak. Very bleak."
     We let these words of divine wisdom sink in. Boza stood. "Anyone want a drink?" We all nodded. He knew the order and slipped away. Somewhere the music stopped and the old apology from KaZaA barked through the club. There were moans and jeers, but most were thankful the old thing had lasted this long.
     "Why do I have to spend the end of the World with these people?" Saph looked disdainfully around her. "Isn't there somewhere better to go?"
     "Isn't it all over now? I mean, didn't the world end, like, this morning?" I had heard someone talking about science over the footage, but I turned him off. That sort of thing only left me with a really bad headache.
     "Yes, dear, it is all over. This," Saph gestured dramatically (as if she could ever do anything any other way) "is Nirvana."
     Boza returned. He brought with him the drinks and the science bit. He kept stopping and starting, so you could tell he was feeding it.
     "We're in the shockwave now. A hangover from the blast, there's like this time bubble we're stuck in and that's what's keeping us alive. It could collapse now, or it could keep going for a century or more. But eventually we will be called back into the singularity. Would you like to know more? Think here… Sorry, shouldn't have said that bit." Boza looked a little embarrassed, before clicking for more Euphoria.
     "But what does all that mean?" Though I could tell no further answers would be coming from Boza.
     "It means we might have to spend the rest of eternity in this damnable place." Saph took her drink and plugged it in. "It means there nothing else to do but party."
     She stood and her shock-frock changed to a deep, dark blue. She led us all away to the dance floors, where we would rule.

Time shifts.

Bitmap images of torrential raindrops fluttered across the dance floor, monkeys with the face of the Madonna floated around, handing out miracles in glasses. Cold fusion Handel pumped through our bodies, resonating across our synapses, bouncing from implant to outplant to be carried away on the Roxyhaemaglobin we had all ingested earlier and our hearts truly beat as one. In the corner a group of Shock Heads played Bach-Man and ate the notes in time to the beat as the little bewigged icon flew around the ceiling, avoiding the ghosts with the preternatural skill that only comes with practice and chemicals.
     I took some Vitriol Humour and the fireworks started in my eyes and I never felt so alive before.

Time shifts.

Back in the chill room, Saph held court once more. We orbited around her as she offered her favors and graces to the lesser ones, the ones without the Pinz or contacts.
     The JJ Twins were with us again. They had heard the music. They didn't like it.
     "We are living in a future obsessed with the past, because we have always known we no longer have a future." They smiled. "We no longer have a present. All we have is past and pretty soon that's where we will all be. With nothing to mark our passing." Then they started to laugh. We had never heard the Twins laugh before and it scared me -- it was a hollow laugh, the sound of loneliness turned up to ten. The fear gripped me, again, and Boza passed me some Euphoria cut with Viral Ellison that ate at my paranoia and I switched out.

Time shifts.

The sky is blue and perfect. Faint wisps of clouds shimmered in the distance.
     I hung above the sea of golden flowers below me and marveled at their beauty before becoming one with the cloud.
     I talked with young man I found lying in the field. He was obviously whigged on something.
     "The whole of God's World, His entire wondrous creation is laid before us, to be found in the resplendence of one single daffodil. Yet we pass it by, with not so much as a second thought. We pass by such magnificence, given to us with such grace and love, yet we refuse to acknowledge it."
     "I've never seen anything like this before. Not even in JayPees. We only upload about this sort of thing. Y'know, when we can be bothered. We only have descriptions and DataDex entries."
     The young man looked confused.
     "You have never walked in the fields? You've never seen nature? Where are you from?"
     "Here." And I knew it to be true.
     "Yet you know of such things?"
     "I researched it. Once. For exams."
     "Reading?"
     "You could call it that."
     "That is the power of language. It is often underestimated. It has a power and vigor of its own. One should never forget a word's worth." He looked at me with an apologetic face. "I'm sorry for such a bad pun."
     "That's ok, you were boring me anyway." I walked up and away.

Time shifts.

The chill room. It's getting darker and closer, yet more open and alive. Saph is growing increasingly fed up by the whole proceedings.
     "I never once thought that the end of the world would be so dull. I never thought I would become bored of the dance."
     "There must be more to it all than this?" Saph took her time in turning to look at me. "There was so much more happening in the stuff I watched earlier. It looked more … involved."
     "This is all there is for us. We just need to wait for the universe to clear away its waste."
     "Does anyone else feel that this has all happened before?"
     Boza was crying in a corner. His father had just called him. His father had been dead for four years or more now. Two kindly Harlegrins were trying to make him laugh, but their prat-falls just shrieked of desperation. Boza's trigger finger was twitching; we were glad we made him sell his guns.
     The JJ Twins breezed in once more. They were seeming more solid than usual. Saph looked at them with the look of someone who had suddenly realized a truth they always knew. I recognized the look, as I shared it too.
     The Twins sat down in the middle of the room and everything seemed to be focused on them. They looked around them and smiled.
     "We are nothing but glimmers of imagination. Fragments of half formed ideas strung together to create a better whole. There is no meaning to our existence, there is no meaning to any existence, and we simply are and were and will be. We are one and all and soon we will simply be one. We will become the singularity of all. We will join our others and become as them and with them and in them. I saw the Jesus of Consumerism dancing with the Buddha of Suburbia and I saw them and knew them and saw in the mirror that they were we and we are they. We are the light and the dark, the known and the unknown and we will never live and never die. We are at the end and the beginning whilst we remain solidly in the middle. There is no fear except the false fear and no hope except the false hope. We have no individuality save the single individual. We are aspects and we are the whole. We move backwards and forwards into the new and the old. We become one." They smiled.
     We had gone to the dance floor before they finished.

Time shifts.

I heard something about the world ending. I can't remember where or when, but I noticed that everything seemed different. I had hazy memories of a night out that had yet to happen, was happening, had always happened.
     I thought on the window and it opened. I saw the vermilion skies rolling in, as they swallowed all in their path. I felt free, for the first time in my life of all stimulants, free of all suppressants, hallucinogens, all drugs. I was disconnected from the false net that had for so many years supported me and cradled me. I felt one with nature, one with beautiful golden, yellow sea flowing beneath the dark sky. I felt no fear.
     The end of all things and becoming of all things edged closer and submerged me and I lost all thought and gained all thought. I became as one as the one became whole. All things were known and nothing was important. We were all there and we were none of us more than one or less than none. We were all the creation. We were the whole.
     The world ended and our being really began.

Time stops.

© 2005 Debbie Taylor

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