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christmas micro novella – Escape From Quomboin – an outline

I suppose I should get this down quickly. Impressions don’t last long, especially when they are wholly imaginary. Not that everything that I am about to write is imaginary. In fact, some of it is as solid a truth as this chair I sit on. And anyway whoever said that the imagination could not be the truth has never visited the source of their imagination.

My name is – well I’m not going to talk about that. I grew up in Quomboin, the heir to my dead mother’s fortune, which was locked up until I married the girl I had been promised to – the elite and beautiful Laura Marx. She was and is the scion of the other great family of Quomboin. I will tell you all about her and the marriage later.

My mother’s enormous mansion dominates the town of Quomboin. It rests on the brow of a hill and can be seen from all aspects, and I have never been inside it. Tall and dark and beautiful – like my mother – it used to be a nunnery. My mother died when I was born, so I only know she was beautiful from the photo I have of her. The concept of ‘father’ has no meaning these days.

When I was young I used to live as a street urchin in the ancient tunnels that underlay the town, as I had no access to the family fortune. This was the first contact I had with the mafia that ran the city. Again there were two clans – the Arofusto and the Cappa. The Arofusto were in charge – they controlled the coffee trade and ran the police force and were prominent in the town council. The Cappa were the underlings but they had their informers everywhere. They dealt mainly in tea. I became a dealer for the Cappa when I was about eight.

Being a member of the Cappa gave me a certain authority among the other urchins. For the tea and coffee trades were the primary units of currency in Quomboin. I would conduct my trades in an abandoned factory in the bad part of town, near the railway, where all the interesting people lived.

My unit of currency was the Darjeeling blend, that which had the fine aroma of Muscat with a bitter finish. I sold this in one ounce bags, using an antique pair of brass scales, to measure it out. All the other boys used to come to me for their fix. I was rich, for an urchin, but it was a dangerous life.

One day I was riding down a road to my supplier, he lived in ‘the oaks’ estate, a derelict region of town with unsealed roads and packs of wild dogs, when I was ambushed. A group of boys pounced on me as I got stuck in a deep muddy puddle in the middle of the road. Fortunately, my girlfriend of the time was following close behind and raised the alarm. Every one of those boys was shot or drowned in front of me by the Cappa gang, at my request.

When I was 16 or 17 it was necessary to lead a more respectable life so I abandoned my trade in tea and applied for a job in the government. Here I met Gabrielle, she was Jewish, and part android. I used to correct the bias on her transducers for her. We started a strange and exotic affair which lasted many years.

In government I had an insight into the forces that ruled the world. It was often necessary to disguise my Cappa origins, although the old network often helped me in discrete and unexpected ways. One day Gabrielle mysteriously disappeared. My search for her led me into the bowels of the system. Finally I found her records of her imprisonment. The charges against her were obscure, I feared that I may be implicated and gave up the search.

Laura’s father invited me on my 21st birthday to visit him to speak about my marriage to his daughter. He ran an art gallery in town, really a front for some kind of unspecified activity, and was an important person among the Arofusto. However I suspected that he had connections to the Cappa as well. It emerges that he knew my mother well, even intimately. It is arranged that Laura and I are to be married in one month, when I will be given the key to my mother’s mansion and assume an important position among the Arofusto.

At work, Gabrielle reappears but I find when I open her panels that she has been re-wired, re programmed. She makes the old approaches but I fear that she has been placed close to me to expose my Cappa origins. It is necessary to murder her.

I am introduced to Laura but instantly recognise her as an android. I challenge Laura’s father about this. He says we are all androids. takes me to my mothers mansion and shows me a Cappa text. It reveals how the Arofusto are an invention of the Cappa to disguise the fact that they are running everything. The Cappa have everyone micro chipped. It was all my mother’s plan and I am set to inherit everything upon marriage to Laura, which will be the trigger for some unspecified revolution.

Driven by memories of Gabrielle I hack into the systems back at work and seem to find evidence of what Laura’s father has described. I also find a description of the close shave I had when I was younger and the boys attacked me and it seems I was being monitored continually. I come up with a plan.

It is the wedding day. I manage to steal a car and break into the Arofusto church, grab Laura and escape through the tunnel network that I know so well. We emerge at an overflow on the edge of Quomboin. I have programmed everyone’s microchips to download knowledge of the whole conspiracy.

We run to Laura’s father’s gallery which is nearby. He is peculiarly sublimely happy. He says the plan has worked just as it was supposed to, then he kills himself by crushing himself into a painting with a huge mechanical press. Laura turns into a paper doll. Outside everyone seems to be behaving normally. I see Gabrielle and wonder if I have reprogrammed myself.

Diversity

Diversity, it's all about diversity.

I feel like I remember too much, my memories are so many, so confusing. I am one of those people who spends their life staring into space trying to make sense of everything they have seen. It's getting worse as my head fills up, i am drowning in it. Weed has the amazing ability to make the past and future dissapear, maybe that is why it is so relaxing. We still end up staring into space, but absorbed in the moment instead.

Slight wine headache, insects in my eyes obscuring my vision. Mars rover 'curiosity', heh. I would have sent lots of little rover insects that could repair each other when they got broken.

Darjeeling is drinking well today. I have finally weaned myself off compulsory milk in tea. The Europeans applaud. hah - the Europeans! Mess they're in.

"Dear friends, life is much too confusing, I must end it. Hello". (this is a quote from a leunig cartoon). We have lots of ducklings at home, the place looks like curly flat. I do prefer the old, slightly strange curly flat, with whirlpools where people seemed a bit lost, not the sappy modern versions with angels everywhere. I find it easier to believe that the lonely version could actually exist - populated by batchelors and spinsters, maybe. There is a truth hidden there, loneliness is happiness. Or Looniness is happiness.

I cannot write another line without a coffee.

Saros 135

Lunar and solar eclipses occur in cycles called saros cycles. The next lunar eclipse on 10 December (visible in Australia) will be Saros 135. I like to imagine that at the moment of eclipse we arrive at a moment of synchronicity with all the other eclipses in the cycle, like some wormhole opens as the future and the past aligns. The first penumbral lunar eclipse in this cycle occurred april 13 1615, the first partial eclipse in july 1777, and the first full eclipse on nov 7 1957. The cycle will produce total eclipses until July 06 2354, finishing at last in 2877.

I wonder what the world will be like in 2354.. sometimes i have dreams that seem to be about the future. Driving overland on Mars, along dusty straight roads, enormous cars with pressurised insides. Ski slopes - i don't know why i imagine ski slopes. The earth covered in city, with wildernesses inbetween, like parks. Space elevators of a sort - i imagine some kind of foamy material, lighter than air and high tensile strength, creating huge structures that spider into the sky. Zeppelins, flying cars, artificial intelligence, all that.

I would like to think people have become more humane, gentler, cerebral. But that is a forlorn hope - maybe. Won't the school playgrounds always be a ruckus? Maybe there won't be schools.. access to all humanities knowledge will at our fingertips from birth. Having all the answers demands a new religion - I don't know what it is - some mix of philosophy, poetry, and pragmatism. The age of space adventure must come at last - I can't wait for this. The great emptiness awaits - but we can remain connected to humanity down the wire. What will humanity mean after contact with other alien cultures? What if they are human too? I wonder if some kind of technology assisted meditation technique will unlock deeper connection to each other and other worlds, perhaps conquer death, or keep it at bay. If so then our sense of being alone will be banished forever.

Meanwhile, president Obama arrives in Australia today, just outside where I am working at the ay-arsey. The wall street protests get rounded up - not the last we will hear of that, i suppose.

Speck

Sold our little speck of a ka on the weekend. glad to be rid of it and the expense of keeping it on the road, but felt a pang, as it was our first car in Australia, and i remember strapping little Rowan into the back seat when he was just a bean. He helped me wash it yesteray proclaiming that its new owners would find it to be 'splendid!'. which they will.

Had a glass of wine with dad afterwards in Manuka, chatting about his old cars - the customline, the HJ ute. Sad that he sold the ute. I helped him change the engine when i was a kid and learnt all about cars from him. When i was 9 i loved crankshafts more than anything else in the world.