Obfuscation

Part 4

In which Cy takes The Fighter and The Failure to see four children who hack nature beside the Port of Shenzhen. The children implant a printed circuit board beneath the skin of The Failure. The board contains a dial that, when The Failure extends his thumb ninety degrees, causes him to experience a sensation whereby all time is compressed into a single moment. For The Failure, this means recognising again that he is alone.

A sunrise quartet of children flicker

wet pliers and sandpaper across

a tin bench covered in fish scales

down by eastward harbour, a four

hundred km run between cargo

ships, ghosts, bits of circuitry and

surgical gauze betwixt their poly

dancing fingers, it is right here that

Cy wants to demonstrate empirical

proof of concept already in and of the

noumenal world, these kids hacking

nature, not distorting they sez, these

young ones without even looking at

The F and The F, it is peeling back

skin of the blonde songbird to reveal

what is covered up by so much dust

and lace, as cloud strata, architecture

of hope gas that renders dirt and bone

invisible from space, fog of war, know

The Fighter walks in low orbit for this

reason, pure critique of, well so now

The Failure puts his hand onth bench

of fish scales and jump wire, coughs

backwards and says, Bleed Here Now.

The children sew a wafer thin board

‘neath the anatomical snuff box of the

right hand of T. Failure containing what,

get this, they call four dimensional print

lacing with a four - yes, | | | | - terminal

potentiometer that can rotate ninety °

by extending a loom of thumb cartilage.

Spake Cy, the reason this is the word

is not because it will deliver the world

unto a box of broken biscuits. As Olivia

Newton-John stated, let us get ethical.

Say you twist temporal information at

quarter angle, sideways, it means, like

our pile of Bach notes, rather than one

thing happening after another, consider

a sin committed that you seek to later

absolve but there is no later, or before,

what then of morality if no timeline, no

woe to go because consequences and

antecedents are one and the same, if

it all happens at once it means nothing,

stone bronze tin holocene cyberpastoral

ergo a sideways morality, Be Here Now.

The punchline, Cy says, is that if space

time is vertical then ethics aint tall ‘nough

to take the ride, hellooo, she places pink

fingernailed tips on Ekta, hey, into his o’

cheeks, his nasojugal crease, says 000’

earth to Majorali Ekta, hello in thereeee,

then grabs his right hand and pushes his

his thumb all the way to its pole position.

The Fighter and The Failure look at each

other like the thin line of midday (morning

and afternoon rendered now as one) so 4

D becomes two becomes as one, and as

he moves his thumb side on Ekta sighs, so

The Fighter was the story of my youth twas

telling to The Failure that ever have I been.

Of course, I knew all this seven stanzas in. 

Now worry not, Ekta quote unquote laughs,

robots have not taken over yet. This old man,

he loves failure, he has skin that feels scalier.

Sure, I loved the apoplectic fights of younger

days when my skin smooth as rocket behind -

But neither children nor Cy could decode this

solo vox out of the collapsed jumble of audio

Ekta bloomed all at once in static sonic tutti:

Ohm