God of the Game

Liquids. Liquids are the substance of life. All living matter is full of it. With my webbed palms pressed upon Sha-Rronne’s fibreglass tomb, I recited a pagan prayer of sustenance, and spoke to the sleeping beauty, a justification why I chose Sharon (aka Sha-Rronne).

It’s because I needed an attractive yet fleeting memory. I couldn’t portray my liberty through Gee Ni or my fave chick, they carried too much luggage. Too weighty and dense, their lives were too intricately woven with mine. Sharon, instead, was of no consequence. She was just fantasy, yet fleshly enough to bear the product of a soul. Present and pure enough to manipulate. Sure, she roams the spheres, but our paths have never crossed again since the two revelries on different dimensional plates. As long as I’m concerned, she’s me, though she may be a goddess of a hundred thousand planes.

I took a deep breath, changed my atomic composition and walked through solid, then secreted into the unconscious mermaid; when I surfaced from the other side, Sha-Rronne was in my supporting arms, awake.

She was still a bit dreamy. The embalming fluid, no longer of purpose, drained out to the clouds overhead, immediately releasing rain, black like oil, but simultaneously saccharine as liquorice. The End of the World scene rejuvenated, dead buildings resurrected, adamantium pylons laid, synthetic concrete, steel and bullet-proof glass slapped upon tall towers, similar to a CG cinematic orchestration. The reverse of a calamity; with every death comes new birth, a revival, regeneration, but yet, apocalyptic; an anti-cataclysmic shaking of the foundation, dry bones re-hydrated, rehabilitated, and re-habiting real estate; beings colour the postmodern Venetian city, which is the silhouette of my spirit.

Imagine my own surprise, an entire metropolis that is my psyche’s essence, the true power of my mind manifested. And this erected empire is merely the capital. A planet I will discover beyond the outskirts of its suburbs when I realize the potential of my busy, busty brain. Society over a billion represents my diverse personalities, characters and disorders; the economy is for trade with other deities; politics, my invisible governance; and art-science to spur new frontiers.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said Sha-Rronne, stirring from her slumber. I nodded.

We stood on a hill inaugurated by this crowning glory, the setting sun casting long shadows over the sweet and oily canals and the imposing classical structures, reflecting light of shimmering amber in the modernistic penthouses above. Something magnificent I can call my own.

---

At Jai-I’s workstation, an emoticon blinked on the monitor. The kind that warrants an emergency. He stared into the screen, a horror perplexed, the VDU smiled teasingly with a split second horizontal flash, before a black pool of nothingness reflected his blanked out phizog.

Then, slowly, a teddy bear with an evil grin emerged, like the living dead from the bottom of a swimming pool, accompanied by a child’s mischievous laughter echoed over a thousand hills. Below the furry creature, bold letterings of red ran.

NIMROD SAYS HI!, it read.

“What???” Jai-I screamed, “…the hell!!!”

ZOOL.A.N.D was being hacked. A virus uploaded into its main street upon entering the key gateway via the rubbish strewn alley behind Club Utopia.

“Shit!” Jai-I cursed again. He smacked the display, but the damn teddy chuckled harder. On an alternate connection Jahr’s son hooked up auxiliary visuals, and to his dismay, ZOOL.A.ND had been compromised. Contaminated. Everything and everyone was squishy and squashy. A soft toy haven. All the cool, cold avatars transformed to bunnies, dolls and every other cute creature imaginable. Even the architecture had become playhouses and liveable mushrooms.

“O’ my…o’ no, who the hell…” he cursed, “is this Nimrod asshole?” He did a check on the Net, the Vine, the Matrix, the Metaverse, and the results came back nil except for a tiny link to an online article titled Puppet Master Vs Peppet Master.

“This is odd,” he spoke to no one; “this sucks!” From the report he gathered Nimrod had some vague connection to the Nephlim; and it was highly probable too that the current state of affairs pertaining to business dealings with the Kreators was at the middle of it. Rumour has it that negotiations had broken down and relationships soured on the agreement terms to develop the Western slums of Syurga after an apparent conclusion was briefly reached. Disparity on technical matters, the legal proceedings preached. This entire deal had caused much mayhem, an inconvenience too many; the last being, Jai-I remembered, was at CLIT, where Trekz had turned inside out and Vesper cooked with boils.

The unsatisfactory write-up also said of some obscure union with the shadowy Leper & the Gunk.

---

Elizabeth Amber sat transfixed by the window of her cottage. Children play in the garden outside. She has a good life. Munching on cheesecakes – a slice a day she savours, ever since her migration to the UK. Elizabeth loves Jane Austen; that entire epoch, actually. She wears a bonnet, the costumes of that romantic period, whenever she strolls and takes Pup (her Golden Retriever) out for a walk. Some kids and teens make fun of her, some insensitive adults, too; but she’s unbothered. She’s happy.

Elizabeth had come a long way, a high flying career in modelling, every man’s number one wet dream; money flowing like free champagne. But she’d given it all up. At the time of her peak, some more. Sensationalism. All the world is after is a new sensation, after the old one is gone, vapour in a few months…weeks even. Fifteen minutes of fame. Fifteen seconds! Where was the certainty? Where was truth?

Elizabeth rather withdrew. To a quiet town, a tranquil village; but the modern world was everywhere. Coke, Sony, IBM, brand names at all corners, products she’d helped to sell. Entirely unreal, compulsively choking, that’s why she’d resorted to organic vegetables planted in her own backyard. Rear and slaughter pigs instead, keep chickens for eggs. Wholly self-sustaining, a closed-circuit.

Townsfolk called her a waste. No one understood her ‘irrational’ decision to throw away fame. They mocked her, blasted her insane. And for a while the media crowded round, breaking for an interview, to report on her odd behaviour, feeding the consumer’s stomach for news and hearsay. But soon they got bored, and then they allowed her to do her thing, went searching for the next big thing.

She was only twenty-five when she ran away, when she built this cottage to live a recluse’s life. But not exactly a hermit, `cos I was with her.

Elizabeth Amber,

How I love you. I am a simpleton, the Village Idiot. You showed love when all others poked; you cared when they scorned. They said I talk funny. It was a grainy afternoon, grey with rain. I was beaten up by thugs, scarred, left to suffer in a playground from the night before. Housewives passed, gentlemen take this way as a shortcut to work, even two priests flocked along with their black robes. No one bothered.

Until you, until you came in your funny but elaborate clothes. For a while I thought I’d died, and heaven was the gentry of the 18th century. But you picked me up, supported my drawling weight by the balancing justice of your delicate shoulders. To clean me, you first had to get dirty with me. Tended to me, and finally healed me.

I am forever indebted to you. I serve you. This is the way to live, basking in simplistic beauty unperturbed by the dissonant chords of the world.

Village Idiot

Elizabeth Amber sat transfixed by the window of her cottage. Children play in the garden outside. She has a good life. She sips tea; we are a billion light years away from Earth, orbiting a nebula galaxy, and I approached to hug her, tenderly.

---

Elizabeth Amber? Who is Elizabeth Amber? First, Sha-Rronne leans upon my arm, but then I have this vision of Amber, superimposed at the top of the glorious view of my metropolitan urbanity. I can’t say it was I, this simpleton, this Village Idiot, but I can’t say it was not either; so I teleported to the zenith of my world, and stared far across and wide, expanding my telescopic lens to the ends of the universe. And Elizabeth stared right back. She was in her flying saucer, sipping tea on a cup of painted pastel farmyards.

“C’mon in,” she smiled; her red lustrous hair, polished with shoeshine, swept the tiles on which she stood. Two columns framed a stairway akin to Jacob’s ladder. Angels ran up and down, as though god was playing Super Mario Brothers.

A ray of light beamed right onto the tip of my planet from her spacecraft, which was indeed an Unidentifiable Flying Object (UFO), and I walked the spectrum plank right into her living room. It was cluttered with books, novels mainly, and everything was either made out of dark wood or solid gold.

“You must be Sha-Rronne,” greeted her genial hospitality.

“Nice to meet you, Elizabeth,” I returned.

“O’, just call me Liz,” she waved, feminine and cultured, even a bit timid and old-styled, “no need to do with all that formal air.”

I immediately like her. And since it was a woman of substance and grace I was calling upon, it felt appropriate Sha-Rronne made the visit in lieu of my usual male-self. I slid into Sha-Rronne’s skin, and it felt like slipping into silky, frilly underwear. The soft texture of her flesh on smooth fabric, however, gave way to backache, buoying bouncy boobs on an undernourished frame which is lacking in calcium and potentially, on a later date, diagnosable with osteoporosis. It was strange possessing a shrunken crotch, one which was warm and fuzzy inside, and not loud and obnoxious and spitting about! The sensation was gentle and pure, and perhaps women should rule the worlds. Everything was calmer, unlike the riotous perversion inherent when males are in command.

“Would you like some tea?” asked my host.

I nodded, and she poured me a cuppa. The steamy aroma of Earl Grey wafted up my nostrils even as the china graced my lips and the leafy brew circled in my mouth.

“You have a very nice place here,” I commented and shifted about the chair with lace trimmings. Huge oil paintings festooned her walls. One was of dogs, hounds and beagles playing in a meadow; another, the front porch of her cottage with an old lady in a rocking chair. A third had workers in a field; and the rest were portraits of various persons. Family, I presume; ancestors, siblings and descendents; progeny from a distant future as well.

“Thank you. Try some of the cookies and cakes.” She mildly moved a plate of sugary goodies, “I just baked them this afternoon.”

There are scones, strawberry cupcakes, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and of course, her famous cheesecakes. “Try this one,” she coaxed, handing over a triangular wafer with florid patterns, “they’re love letters.”

I obtained it from her hand and took a delicate nibble. Delicious. Thin, sweet and crispy. “My Chinese neighbours are celebrating their New Year. Lots of cookies they gave me, knowing how much I appreciate them,” she explained as she observed my fondness for rich, sweet titbits.

Elizabeth then served more Asian delicacies. She brought out a tray laden with six see-through air-tight containers filled with various types. One which was round, savoury, and coated with lard melts on contact with saliva; the second came in animal shapes, white and floury with pink dots for eyes. Pineapple jam tarts filled the third; while thinly sliced deep-fried ngaku (arrowhead-root chips) were contained in the fourth. Tub five had preserved fruits; and finally, six was to the brim with grandma’s special coconut candy.

Sha-Rronne dug in, and Elizabeth said, “Welcome to the D’Arcy, your gateway out of ZOOL.A.ND.”

“This is tasty,” Sha-Rronne replied, biting into grandmother’s delight, obviously oblivious to Ms. Amber’s last statement.

“Welcome to the D’Arcy, your gateway out of ZOOL.A.ND,” she repeated in a cool calm voice which would not defy serenity even if she were informing of a calamity undoing the spaceship’s defence mechanism.

“Oh, thanks,” I mentioned by Sha-Rronne’s tongue, as she was busy gorging biscuits. The pronunciation wasn’t that clear, though, with her mouth full. I added, “What do you mean exactly by gateway out of ZOOL.A.ND?”

“Simple. Whenever someone leaves the encryption in Jai-I’s hard disk housed in Trekz’z romp-a-room, I host them till they decide where they want to go?

“And you can go anywhere,” she added.

“I’ll have to think about it.” I consulted Sha-Rronne, my split personality, but she was too engrossed stuffing herself, now that the Village Idiot had brought out milk for her to dunk the cookies in.

“Take your time,” Elizabeth replied, “Meanwhile, make yourself at home. All that I have is also yours.”

I thanked her, and then leeched on to her generosity, “I would need some time, definitely. After all, this is a first for me. It is very confusing being two persons.”

She smiled and nodded. “As I said, welcome to the D’Arcy. Feel free to explore…after yer done being such a glutton.”

Sha-Rronne ignored. The sarcasm flew past her like a sparrow overhead. As long as birds don’t poop on her, she’d continue packing on the pounds, which I could feel; cholesterol clogging arteries, I encountered slight breathing difficulties.

“Don’t bother cleaning up. Idiot, my humble servant, will do it,” my hostess said, even as she arose, turned and left.

Sha-Rronne acknowledged not, but instead, she gestured to the manservant for the next dish. My female-self was getting fat. But might as well, more flesh to support those heavy jugs leaning on cleanly licked plates.