The Donut Effect Page 5
The Blood Cafe
(zone three.1)
The pick-up was named Trey Poynette, a former alderman bounced out of office for driving while intoxicated one half-dozen too many times. Things like that weren’t supposed to happen in Quant City, and in a weird quirk didn’t actually happen. Not so much.
This is getting hazy fast. Poynette was arrested once, just the once. It wasn’t public record that he drove intoxicated on a regular basis. It was the powers that didn’t want him to be in power that were keeping count and counting him out. The powers that didn’t want him to be, but not the powers that wanted to be. This was OCE. The Office of Cause and Effect, at home within the Office of Control, monitoring the herd while the powers that were did their thing around and about without them.
The herd that existed as the main body of Quant City as within the Cactus Rand Speedway, and sometimes without. The OCE and the Office of Control were things Mulligan, once Mulligan, sometimes taking liberties with predators, if only to position them or give a shout out about their presence. Much like those antelopes you hear about that contract out to have camouflaged spear pits put where cheetah liked to hide out when hunting them. Still, even worse than cheetah, was dealing with contractor.
Poynette was under watch, especially after-hours watch, starting the instant he was charged for DWI the first time. The next five times he was DWI, if unofficially in a legal sense, he drove about a block before his ride was scuttled.
Scuttled - rammed off the road by a driver-less car gone rogue. And maybe not all so rogue. Then, as a favor, a non-favor sort of favor while his ouster was being orchestrated, Poynette was quietly taken to a local police bar and locked in the holding cell in the basement until he sobered up.
Just like drunken drivers, rowdy cops weren’t tolerated either, and if they wanted to be free to drink and drug themselves into a shot-up, shoot’em up, stupor there was a place to do it and a holding cell to hold them, off the record, until they cooled off.
Back to the current situation,“Newport Arms,” Poynette said to the car, before realizing it was driver-less. “Where’d you go?” he asked the empty front seat.
“Where do you want to go?” said a voice seeming to come from everywhere.
“Newport Arms,” Poynette repeated, trying to comprehend the speaker system.
“What about your urology appointment with Dr. Chalmers?”
Now he tried to comprehend the speaker system again. “What business is that of yours?” he asked, not as belligerently as would be ordinary for him, sober or not, and he hadn’t had a drink lately. “That was yesterday, anyway. Who are you? Where are you?”
“You’re on Dr. Chalmers come when convenient list. We can call and see if he can see you now.”
“No,” said Poynette. “Stop screwing around with me.” He reached for the door handle and found he was locked in.
Contained.
|m|*
Hermann Strumm going missing left K Strand with a puzzle - what was she supposed to do? As in Hermann seemed to think it went without saying that she would know.
To keep it straight for any flat time travelers out there, unless directed otherwise, if Hermann wasn’t missing, it was just not yet. No two ways about it, he was going missing, in an out of order sort of way to align with the out of order created when he was finally gone missing. That would be this upcoming dose of missing, as just referenced, not permanently-dead missing.
Is an explanation of flat time travel needed? Maybe. Will it be supplied? Maybe not. How much of that stuff can anyone stomach?
K started by doing what she always did, not that she’d been doing it that long, she showed up at Hermann’s now Hermann-less home to get instructions.
“Well, I think we should go looking for him,” said Kara, her sister, Hermann’s cook.
No way was K taking instructions from Kara. Why she even asked for her opinion, who knows.
“No,” she said. “He went missing because he wants to be missing.”
“That’s insane,” said Kara. “That’s the talk of someone who’s insane.”
“Are you calling me insane?” asked K.
“What? No. Of course not. What? Did you fall on your hammer or something?” Little girls and their hammers, that’s a story.
“Any word from the factory?” asked K.
And just like that Kara was out of spunk. She knew K was right. There had indeed been word from the factory. Well, their word was, “Again?” More word then followed, mutated by space, individually and plural, mixed within then more letters, summing up with the news that the Strumm Transcender Quant?m X was ready for it’s next test run.
Actually, it may have been more appropriate to call it the Mulligan’s Transcender Quant?m X as based upon the Strumm Transcender. Well, Strumm did have his flat Transcender idea first.
It wasn’t the case, but Hermann might have indeed taken it on the lamb to escape the Quant?m X trials. It was a co-project with Mulligan Motors, under who’s auspices the Strumm Transcender had found a maker. Strumm and Mulligan’s had what you might call a fragile agreement about the Quant?m X in which Hermann begged off compensation in the name of freedom - if Hermann wasn’t interested in keeping up with Transcender Quant?m X development, he didn’t keep up.
Needless to say, he did not beg off access to the everlovin’ pool. He wasn’t that nutty.
The thing about Hermann was he could always catch up in his sleep, and very well just might, and most probably would.
Ooh that Hermann.
*** Know your zone aid (as sponsored by Mulligan’s Chamber of Music.)
Strumm Labs one.1
With what was coming, Hermann saw a need to re-word the Wiiirl-D, if only for the sake of more ongoing EARTHverse for Bossche Bol, as bled into Quant City. He began with what was to become brain milk, which was a nickname, later, for what was originally called Strumm Labs, and decided to place a starting point in the middle, a centralizer instead of a beginning and gave it two coordinates, Transcendence and Lightness.
Perhaps they were less coordinates and more coordinators, testing the structural integrity of any and every nominee to be a point. The nominee was transcended by light, carefully and thoughtfully reviewed in and out and through, subject to the torn-asunder test via doing nothing, and if still standing, a solid, realized point.
Well, solid was redundant when it came to realized points.
Redundant, now there’s an idea.
Not? OH heck, let’s just go to the main event. Coming soon.
FYI, back in zone two, which is still coming - no, you didn’t miss anything - by the time Pete came on the scene, Strumm Labs had been bought out by Mulligan’s and reorganized and renamed the Department of Communication. Philosophically, it also changed, but not much. Advanced may be a better word than changed, as the change would have been the same had it still been under the auspices of Strumm Labs. Different company name, yes, different eg’zistence, not.***
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Life Sentences
(zone 6.2)
Whereas the zone aides address the zones, and the next page addresses aberrating me, life sentences will address everything, in bits and pieces, and nuts and bolts, and perhaps dangerously bleeding into EARTHverse 666. EARTHverse 666? That’s something you may have missed. Hopefully, life sentences will be a rarity.
Let’s talk nuts and bolts. This was actually brought to light by a movie, but let’s skip movie talk except when stealing quotes.
Nuts and bolts, and screws, and clockwise and counter-clockwise.
Is always knowing to turn a screw counter-clockwise to loosen it intuitive or learned? A little of both? To wit, suppose you are being coached on removing the detonator on a bomb as is screwed into the head of the bomb. It has to be turned counter-clockwise and suppose you are coached to turn it to the left.
&n
bsp; Does that sound difficult? Considering a clock, if you think in terms of the minute hand pointing at twelve, turning it to the left turns it counter-clockwise. If you think in terms of that hand pointing at six, turning it to the left turns it clockwise. Is it just an assumed constant that you should think in terms of pointing at twelve, making you an aberration if you doubt where the minute hand is supposed to point?
Could it be you are a bomb expert who would now like to chime in how that is so not how bombs work, and proceed to discount the plight of the less-intuitive than you?
Nuts and bolts, on the other hand, and on occasion requiring another hand, may need to be turned clockwise and counter-clockwise - at once!
Run and hide.
Run and hide.
Stealing quotes.
Stealing quotes.
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