Authors: Jeremy C. Shipp
“Well…except to harken in return after my own words are released.”
“And I vow the same. So with these promises, we are bound, true enough?”
“Verily so.”
“I suppose we now live in fragility then, if what you said is correct. And I also must suppose your life of old was mucho mightier, when you pleaded to faceless forms in void-of-vow solitude.”
“You…suppose in the wrong. If you were to disappear, more fragile then than now, I would feel.”
“Then I shall continue with the story, and mayhaps I will not fade away.”
*
“What say you?” said the Director to me. “Which one do you prefer?”
For the past mucho horas, the Director, the new Humpty, and I had harkened to could-be Newton after Newton after Newton. And of them, I said, “None.”
“None?” the Director said.
“Hai. They…they speak the lines as if the lines are tippy important. They speak nothing of the unspoken.”
“Your meaning escapes me.”
“Newton-san,” Humpty said, on the other side of me. “If you wish to play Newton your own self, you can marry in contract your body to the story. Then the only way the creators can bring the tale to the tele is if you are Newton.”
“It…is so,” the Director said and coughed. “Such things have occurred in the past, but more often than less, such an attachment entails a clear path to cancellation.”
“Fear not, Director,” said I. “I will not force my own self upon you, as many men would. But I do ask for the opportunity to audition. The choice then will be verily your own. You may have the tale of Newton and Humpty whether you choose me or do not.”
“So be it,” the Director said, like a burped baby.
To the center mat, I stood with Humpty. And let me say that though this was an audition for the tele, it meant to me tippy more. This was a test of sorts, and I forgot the Director even existed. I found myself floating in a dreambubble once again. A group of young men passed by, and did the expected.
“Does it ever bother you?” said I.
“What?” Humpty said.
“Their pointing and laughing. They speak such terrible things.”
“What is so terrible about what they say? Tell me their words.”
“I cannot.”
“You can. You’re simply a Hopper Lite who fears even inflicting welcomed rudeness.”
“You want me to say it? Very well. They call you mannish.”
“I care not.”
“They think you are the ugliest woman on the Flapjack.”
“Hai, but do you?”
Nada, said I. Nada, nada, and more nada, for that was all I could say. A nada formed from words never spoken to my familia; from the muffled screams of the Green butterflies I chopped; from my own imprisoned tears. A nada that replaced the waterfall of the broken fountain maiden. And a nada especially made of Humpty’s ugliness. For even if the whole of Flapjack proclaimed Humpty the ugliest woman of all, I knew I had the power to drown out all their voices, if I allowed myself to open up and set free the hidden words. But nada, said I, and the words remained hidden. But I heard them, inside, loud as a lie.
“My thinker resolves to interrupt you with a question this tiempo,” said I.
Humpty trembled as one who had seen a spirit, or realized he was one. “I would rather you continued with the story.”
“And had I not rathered the same thing every tiempo you interrupted me, I might honor your request. So here’s the question: did I get the part or didn’t I?”
For a mighty tiempo, he stared forward, frail. Then he grew mighty once more. “Whether you did get the part or not, I know not, but that is not the real question to be asked.”
“Which is?”
“Did you or did you not pass the test? Your own test.”
“And did I?”
“Your peepers say hai.”
“As speak your own.”
*
The Tele Adventures of Newton and Humpty was no difficult over-and-undertaking, but there existed no mightier gift than feigning such. Pop-fame blessed me like a magic stone, illuminating everyever my familia’s peepers became prox, and spat out a sparkly ray with hypnotic powers. “Newton the Telepersonality is too busy for familia business,” said the stone, in their thinkers. “Leave the boy be, you smally somebody.” And chopped I no more women and touched no more cutters. I did, however, play-chop women-shaped comper forms, and touched improper cuttery props. And so the Redness of my life meta-ed into a reddish hue which could be peeped by fans (including my familia) wearing thornless rose-colored spectator-spectacles.
Mucho tiempo I spent at Humpty’s home for the practice of lines, or at least such was the (mayhaps unneeded) justification. He was my amicus after all.
“What is it about these stories of mine?” said I, to him and my own self. “Why rise when others fall?”
“Humpty is a woman who lacks the lacks of womanhood,” he said. “She hasn’t the common personality of anyone you’ll meet eternal.”
“And yet those who gaze her with fervent peepers dub her ugly. Who would care for ugliness so mightily?”
“And who would so mightily create such ugliness?”
I preferred not to lie to him, so silence swallowed us.
Finally, “Does it feels strange?” said I.
“What?” he said.
“Wearing pink for the tele.”
He sipped tea with more-than-usual shaky feelers. “I don’t focus on my own self. Such an activity would beget too many unanswerable questions.”
“Such as?”
“What does it mean to be a man wearing pink? How can an unadorned man once called handsome be then made a treasured but horrid woman?”
A dreambubble I knew this was not. The real Humpty hacked on such self-spawned question marks until answers vomited forth, no matter how bitter the bile.
*
The question of Humpty’s popularity did not release her stranglehold. There was mas to her attractive unattractiveness than simple rarity. I began to wonder—
*
“I know the end already,” Humpty the White said.
“The end?” said I.
“The answer to that question of questions.”
“Release your thinker then, amicus.”
Humpty stretched his legs out on the prison floor, as if preparing for a dash. “Humpty intrigues the thinker due to the questions she spawns. Not the questions she asks, but the questions of we. Why do I live in a cage and not in a tree? Why does Humpty feel laetitia with her parts intact? Why do you think she’s beautiful?”
“True enough, you capture the end, and your words have shattered this story like a parsnip through a window. I can no longer tell it.”
Humpty’s face tightened. “Forgive my insolence! A word and I’ll smash my head upon the wall to dislodge this parasite!”
“Hold. That specific story was rather boring anyway, with all the self-analysis and hubbub. It’s better obliterated, so that we may continue to a mightier image.”
*
I helloed and entered Humpty’s quarters, to find him in his beddy bye, dressed in his pink tele-tunic. The desire to run twirled me, but my hello must have flicked his thinker, for I heard him stir.
“Newton, I…” he said.
My yapper exported nada.
“I wear it sometimes,” he said. “It…aids in getting into character.”
“Of course,” said I. “Shall we practice the lines anon?”
“Hai.”
We stood prox and spoke the words.
I realized (or mayhaps could no longer deny to my own self) that neither of us acted a whittle whit. The acting took place outside of our tele life, when we read not the lines. His want was to wear a pink tunic. His want was to be a woman. He was Humpty, but had to pretend to be someone else. Because Flapjack demanded the lie. And on that day, I acquired my first real enemy.
*
Humpty the White stared at Wall #4 for mucho heartbeats. Then, “Wee-the-People have always venerated the Flapjack for its freedom. But who is the freer? At least my own people can be who we think we are.”
I happy-faced. “Brainchildren grow up so fast, do they not?”
“Verily so. And did you go to war against the Flapjack? Is this what brought you to me?”
“Hai and hai. But I fear your thinker has been misled by my terminology. My battles involved no blood, no Red, no cutters.”
“Good. I have no taste for such matters.”
“You lie like a child, but I appreciate the intention. If only I could bestow upon you a mightier adventure than what occurred, but it was a tippy snoozy process of sitting at the comper, searching, searching, searching. Years I spent trying to understand my enemy. The mightiest shock burst from the fact that the answers were all out there, broken apart, as shame-sham shards. Piece them together was the only task, and not a difficult one. I own not an extraordinary thinker. Anyone could have learned what I learned. The vomity truth is that no one wished to see past the walls of their cage. The question now is: do you wish to see? Do you desire the truth of Flapjack?”
“I…do. However, I would appreciate if you would speak not the truth to me direct. Place it in a dreambubble, if you could.”
“I can.”
*
To understand the Flapjack, said I to Humpty, I required answers. And so I gathered ingredients from all over the Flapjack to summon a mighty wizard. At last the day came when I mixed everything together in a biggy black cauldron in the most mysterious section of Magic Green Forest, at the spot of Humpty’s nestplace.
The cauldron erupted with fire, then the Wizard whooshed, adorned with a tunic of Red. “You shake me from a biggy slumber, smally boy,” he said. “This had better be tippy important.”
“I wish to know about the Flapjack,” said I.
His laughter boomed, and the leaves vibrated circum. “You summon me for a knowledge that will bring you only mightier gray-thoughts?”
“My outcomings are not your concern.”
“Verily so. What you wish, I will give you.”
So we both sat on leafy mounds, though in truth he hovered a bugspace above.
“Of the history of Flapjack, what do you grasp?” he said.
“Not mucho,” said I. “My people lived once as groundlings, but crafted the Flapjack and rose above.”
“And do you know the reason for this crafty crafting?”
“The progression of technology, I assume.”
He laughed loud, but not leaf-shaking. “Twas the progression of understanding which birthed the Flapjack. You see, smally one, mucho tiempo in the before, civilization grew to be mightily conscious of the causes of human behavior. Every action of every human spoke of their genetics, their environment, their past. Many humans expected a more enlightened society to be borne with such knowledge. Verily, humans were tippy capable of living lives of laetitia and balanced authority. But occurred, this did not. The civilization of old fought back like an angered trollbeast. Ideological strangleholds squeezed tighter with this war for and against modifications. The Flapjack was created by the Merican sect that fought the hardest against the Enlightenment of Understanding.”
“Is Merica not a mythological place?”
“Twas real. This Merican sect hugged an ideology which justified the taking of resources from all over the planet. But this sect realized that ideologies could not last eternal. So they replaced their ideology with an automated resource abductor. The Flapjack, this is. Your culture has meta-ed much over time, in texture, however one thing holds eternal. Your machines abduct resources from the humans on the surface, killing more than many. You use mas energy than all the groundlings in combination, and you are one percent of the population. That is your truth.”
*
“I will have to burst the dreambubble if I’m to continue,” said I.
“Continue,” Humpty said.
*
The knowledge I had acquired bansheed to flee, and so for the next teleshow, spoke I not the lines Flapjack expected, but the lines of my real self.
“Something blazes within, Humpty,” said I. “A force wishing to be freed.”
“What?” Humpty said.
I held her shoulders. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. I love you.” I kissed her.
Humpty’s jitters meta-ed to fleshquakes, and he stumbled back.
Faced I to the tele-eye. “The things done and the things not done, this is our choice. We must meta the ways that pop the dreambubbles of our whispery hopes. We must meta that which spreads suffering to those below. We know our energy spawns from the ground, but do we ponder the how to the Flapjack’s forever-flap? We fire no weapons. We press no buttons. Direct, we do nada to the groundlings, but can disconnectedness illusionate as a comfy-warm void of responsibility? Iie. The mechanical feelers that ravage the lands below animate these lives of ours. Let these feelers serve as metal ghosts of murdered history, so that we may harken the need to fall to grace once more.”
I turned to Humpty.
But only a handsome man stared in reply.
*
“The worst part was not that a machine took me from my familia to this prison,” said I. “The worst was that my words meant nada to them, unquestionable.”
“But Humpty harkened your words. Mayhaps he will—”
“Mayhaps nothing. He was not the real Humpty. The words will not meta him.”
“But they have meta-ed me!”
I happy-faced. “Verily so, and I finally understand how and why. The Wizard could not explain to me why this prison exists, but you have enlightened me.”
“How could I enlighten you before my own self?”
“These things happen.” I pressed my feelers against Wall #4 and its imperfection. “This prison hangs below the Flapjack like a cancer. A great population lives in this prison, and are born in this prison, and expire in this prison. You and your people are here because your genetics dub you mas viable to destroy the Flapjack’s automated consumption. The ideological forces of this space force those tendencies to dormancy, and keep you all subdued. Viz, the Flapjack wins. Those who would fight are stuck here. There’s no hope. I fear that’s the end of the story.”
“Iie!” He stood. “As I still live and breathe, your amicus eternal I will be. And together, we will smash this chumming place until the Flapjack falls to the forests, where we may live among the trees once more!”
“Now that sounds like the real Humpty.”
“Humpty, I am.”