Monday 13 April 2015

Proudly Inerrant — Chapter 3

Preamble: This the third chapter of a serialized science-fiction novellette concerning failures of fidelity in the transmission of culture. (Previously: Chapter 1, and Chapter 2)

PROUDLY INERRANT
by Cheeseburger Brown


PART I, Chapter 3.

I was prevailed upon to teach at a noble child, so that she wouldn't seem so provincial and derpy when married off to an allied family's dangly equivalent. To become worldly she had to tink on the wider world, and who wastes their time memorizing such bunk except douches?

The dumb kid yawned.

I snapped my fingers. "Snap out of it. Heed me or I'll smack you purple."

She blinked. "I respect you and everything, but who's ever going to care if I tink or not what happens when the sun goes to sleep?"

"Verily that's the point, yo. The sun doesn't go to sleep. It's shining just as bright on the other side of the world."

"Underground?"

"No, on the other side of the world. The world is shaped like a ball, you dig?"

"Sex off!"

"It is, though. Quite a ball indeed. An amazing fact, right? That's why you should heed me. I'm full of that sort of stuff. Your husband will faith you're very worldly if you tink that. He'll tink twice about proclaiming himself best tinker of the house. He'll respect you. You'll see how."

She seemed untinkled but at least she wasn't looking away. "What else is weird like that, douche?"

"Bags of things," I nodded. "Have more tea?"

Once her curiosity was engaged our conversating ranged all over. The pre-founder era is always a subject of interest for childs: the moment of schism is all they teach at school, leaving kids with a vague tink that the pre-founder world was fucked up but uncertain how. All they tink well is that the worst part of the race was banished to eternal war while the best part was choosed to remain living in the world. "What made them so bad?" she wanted to know.

"Mostly it was how they telled lies about the world," I sayed.

"They sayed the world would turn on us, and eat us. Which is totally gay."

"They erred. We can all err. Their primitive wizards mistunk them. Don't be stingy with your pity. They had poor gods -- lesser things, smaller and more fallible than Causation Prime itself. The wizards bickered and their followers becomed obsessed with doom."

"So we kicked them out of the world."

"Well, to be super-specific they pretty much kicked themselves out of the world. While they erred we stood by and watched them go, proudly inerrant."

"What did they look like?"

"Ugly. Sexless. They wore white coats, famously."

"So they were sort of douchey?"

"Of course. That's why you're supposed to wash way well after you've been around me. I handle pre-founder artifacts, and interpret their mysteries for the mayoralty. The dirt of their shame is something I take upon myself as, basically, a sacrifice for the good of our peeps."

"But how can being douchey be both good and bad at the same time?"
 "Poison is in the dose, babby. A city of total douches would lose sight of proper causality and wind up going crazy, like the banished anti-founderites. Equally, a city with no douchey tinkery at all would struggle to overcome normal stuff we use douchism to fight, like toothaches or infertility or contagious liquid dung."

"Eu."

"Truth, right? So it's all about balance, which is what Causation Prime wants."

"Why?"

"Those are the findings of the founders. You can ask your cleric more about that on Sunday."

"Douches don't go to church."

"We're too untouchable. We worship in private. But the cleric visits if I'm way busted, so I can be cleaned in my soul before crossing over."

"So douches do go to Heaven?"

"If they're good and inerrant, yes. One of my older sisters goed to Heaven, but another one was sentenced to expedited Hell. So it way depends on the individual douche and her chooses in life."

"Did they burn her at the stake?"

"Yes, they did."

"Was you there?"

"Sure. Untouchables had a special booth at the back -- for douches and queers."

"I've seen those booths before and always wondered about them. I'm like, what?"

We talked about weather and the seasons, and the sparkles in the sky. We talked about how water, ice and fog can all be the same essence in different disguises. We talked about how the appearance of hair on the face of the sun corresponded to the amount of glowing roar-roars dancing green and blue and red through the overhead nightiness.

"Roar-roars are the breath of the sun, drooling down upon the world. That's douche learning."

"Weird!"

Come sundown nannies comed to the door with veils over their faces and mittens on their hands, and the betrothed was escorted down the hill, past the moon-curse shacks, and back into town. The bride to be would be bathed and anointed; the nannies would be hosed down on the outside and fed buckthorn to purify their insides.

I watched them go. And there, standing on the porch I saw, even though it wasn't nighty enough for even the first stars to come out, that there was a star out. It was ultra pretty.

I goed into the house and comed back with my sky-drawing and a lamp, but by the time I had set up to record the new star I couldn't find it. I ducked down and peeked beneath the easel and there it was near the horizon. I blinked in surprise: it was a falling star!

Verily before my very vision the star faded and vanished. A moment later there was a spill of bloody light beyond the edge of the land. Birds scattered, dots against the orange sky. Dust and smoke and shit made the middle of it all hazy. But basically it was way clear that the star had comed right down to the Earth all the way, and hit the Earth with a wallop of wantonly released excess chi.

I boiled down the main points into a simple melody as I hurried over to the cages where I keep my runners. I popped the latch and let the front queer crawl out and stand up. He was a wiry little thing, and way quick. I taught him the message and he singed it back to me once before sprinting off down the hill.

Exciting events were afoot. Possibly even non-circular events. Squee!


5 comments:

Sheik Yerbouti said...

Chimps at the end there?

Seriously, I'm still in about ten different places regarding what's going on here.

SaintPeter said...

I like that this was a larger bite of the burger. Still pretty confused as to what is going on.

Apparently, in the land of the illiterate, the 4Chan reading 12 year old is king?

radvlescv said...

This sure has a TSAW feel...

radvlescv said...

Hmm... How long did it took for the Sun to go nebula after TDW? Long enough for people to schism about leaving?

Sheik Yerbouti said...

I just realized "roar-roar" = "aurora". I mean, I knew what they meant, but the phonetics only recently dawned upon me.

At first I thought the narrator was male, but now I'm leaning toward female.

And yeah, I thought the whole de-Sol-ization happened faster than that. Apparently it takes a long time to scoop out the creamy filling of an average G-type star.