Sortin & sellin

This second half of what I shared the beginning of yesterday is much better the way that I imagined it before writing it – please keep this in mind when you begin to dislike what you're reading: Repeat to yourself "I actually LOVE the author's intention; what I'm seeing here is only the vulgar husk."

P.S.

In other news: my Public Private Diary is fully printed; also I made a list of my latest novels that have been printed but not included in any collection.

§

Within a few hours, we see shining thru the clouds and descending from the firmament an airborne robo-butler, leading in his wake a massive swarm of holy cherubs.

“Myala, look – the drones are here! And stodgy Kohault dispatched a Devlin-christ at the fore!”

We can’t stop laughing.

The Devlin motions with its arms, and some subgroups of cherubs situate two divans on a high place that serves as our new frame’s focal point.

“Please sit upon these thrones of glory,” the Dev­lin announces in a synthetically smooth voice.

Myala and I comply. We mount and recline upon the divans.

“Before ye now will be gathered both types of detritus,” the Devlin butler-drone declares with dutiful deference, half-bowing to us felines on our divans as he recites his memorized speech. “We shall separate them one from another, as an herdswoman might divide her sheep from her goats.”

I turn toward Myala and remark: “Old Kohault did a good job programming.”

The Devlin continues: “We shall heap the goats at this area to the right, and the sheep over here on the left.”

I raise my mighty voice and interrupt: “Just to clarify, by ‘sheep’ you mean the bloodied smocks littering the landscape; and by ‘goats’ you mean the recurved horns of the ibex?”

The Devlin bows slightly further and sez: “That is correct. Pardon my trope, symbol, metaphor, figure of speech, or what you will. By sheep I mean smocks; and by goats I mean horns. Forgive the confusion.”

Holding back laughter, “You are forgiven, O my Devlin,” I announce bombastically. “Why did I break my very best machine, if not to be able to grant you a pardon for speaking too poetically!? Yes, indeed, you are forgiven!” Then, after laughing heartily at this exchange, I mutter a pseudo-prayer to Kohault under my breath: “Nice touch, Doctor K. — I misjudged you.”

The Devlin-christ butler-bot now bows even lower, while hovering there in the sky before us, causing it to loop around and do a full somersault before righting itself.

We laugh even harder from our divans.

“Stop! Enough!” I shout between breaths. “My sides are aching. Just do your job and vamoose — I’ll tip you with fish!”

The Devlin’s eyes turn red: “Your wish is my command.”

I now lean over to Myala and ask: “We do have a hearty amount of seafood on hand, don’t we?”

“We can certainly spare him some fish,” Myala sez.

The robo-butler and his army of cherubs now set to work separating the smocks from the horns. They finish in fifteen minutes flat.

“Good! Very good!” I say as the last few smocks and horns are being sorted. “Well done, my faithful servants. Behold, Myala has a treat for your leader . . .”

My shadow-lover Myala, still reclining on the divan, makes a gentle sweeping-motion with her forepaw; and a mighty wind comes and splits the nearby river, causing two sizeable herring to leap up and land directly in the Devlin’s arms. As he stands there cradling these creatures with a pleased look on his robo-face, Myala proclaims:

“Now those are special fish, understand? They will automatically regenerate. You can either throw a feast and feed 5,000 guests; or you can eat them every day and they’ll remain fresh and full for 5,000 successive meals.”

The robot-butler shakes his head in disbelief; and his perfect hairstyle does not move, for his hair is like a soft and shiny helmet. “If I could weep, I would weep in gratitude.”

“Thanks for helping us sort out this stuff,” Myala sez; then, with her paw, she makes the “begone immediately” signal.

The Devlin-christ leads his cherub army back to wherever they are regularly stationed.

Myala and I now gaze upon our newly organized stores that are ready for sale. I hold up my manual-focus, 35 mm camera, and I frame the sight of the ibex horns in the viewfinder. Then, before snapping the shot, I bellow playfully:

“Come, ye blessed items of merchandise, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

I press the shutter-release button. Then, after turning the film-advance wheel, I pivot toward the other pile of rubbish and frame the formerly white lab smocks.

“Depart from me, ye cursed,” I shout, “into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels!” — Again, I click the shutter-release.

Facing Myala, I remark: “OK, I got the photos taken. Now we just need to develop them, scan them, and upload them onto the World Wide Web. And these bloody smocks shall go into everlasting punishment: but the recurved horns into life eternal.”

So, after developing the pictures, we seek out an island where I imagine the filmmaker Ingmar Bergman might live; and we go from door to door asking a question of every resident who’s willing to listen:

“Do you have a scanner hooked up to your desk­top computer; and, if so, will you teach us how to use it?”

Finally, we meet one guy who answers yes. (He even looks passably like the film­maker Ing­mar Bergman.) So I introduce myself as Bryan the Tyger, and then I extend my forepaw toward my true love and announce:

“This is my soul-mate Myala — she’s a Black Panther from Planet Jupiter, that’s why she’s aglow.”

And the Bergman knockoff whose house we are currently standing in shows us to the back room where he keeps his computing devices atop a billiards table. He instructs us on how to use the software program that interacts with the scanning bed; and we end up making a scan of both photographs: the first being a landscape pervaded by ibex horns, and the other being a landscape draped with rumpled smocks. Then he shows us how to save our files, and he advises us to title them uniquely. So I name the first picture of the horns “Horny-Pic-1”; and I name the other picture “Smox-on-the-Rox” (because the terrain where we staged the photograph is quite rocky).

“We need to upload these images onto a website so that we can sell the items that are depicted within them,” I say. “Do you have access to the Internet?”

“No,” the Bergman lookalike replies.

Myala whispers to me now: “I don’t believe this guy — I think he’s just trying to weasel out of helping us.”

After a lengthy exchange of impassioned whispers, I convince Myala to humor the man’s untruth: “He’s been helpful enough; we can upload these things elsewhere.”

So we leave and go walk along the shoreline in the frigid Nordic regions, where I imagine a young George Eastman might like to hang out. (For those who don’t know, George is the entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream.) Eventually we meet a cool teen who resembles a youthful version of the film producer George Eastman. This kid explains that he can use his mobile device to move our products.

“My name is Eastman. I do psychedelic drugs all the time, so I’m used to talking to deific Tygers; that’s why I’m not afraid of you.”

“Great. Please call me Bryan.”

“Nice to meet you, Bry,” he high-fives my paw; then he turns to my soul-mate: “And you are?”

“Myala,” she high-fives the youth.

“And may I ask after the name of your type of being, in case I live to tell my friends about this long strange trip?” Eastman addresses Myala reverentially. “I don’t mean to offend — I’ve just never seen your type of spirit animal before.”

“I’m a Glowing Black Panther from the Planet Jupiter.”

“Ah,” Eastman nods approvingly, “that is awesome.”

Myala smiles.

“She is my Wanderer and I am her Shadow,” I add. “That’s the riddle of our existence.”

Now, after nodding and making the thumbs-up sign, the youth turns his attention back to his phone, while explaining to us what he’s doing: “Here, I’m just gonna screen-grab digital copies of your thumbnail images and enter them into a virtual auction. That’ll be quicker than messing around with higher-quality pics; believe me, nobody cares about crispness of resolution in the horn-and-smock market.”

Flanking his either side, Myala and I gaze perplexedly at the phone’s cramped screen.

Eastman now looks up and asks: “OK, what shall we set as each heap of trash’s starting price?”

Noncommittally, I suggest: “500 caesars?”

So this young man helps me put the two amassments of junk online for sale. And, as soon as they appear on the exchange site, someone bids for both piles — and they meet our asking prices. So altogether we make 1,000 caesars from our herculean dining-labors.

“Wow,” I exclaim, “I can’t believe you were able to sell our offscourings so fast!”

We learn later that this cool teen Eastman himself was the one who actually purchased our merchandise. (Right after setting up our sale page, he logged into his own account and made a bid, which we eagerly accepted.) The reason he wanted the stuff is that it turns out he’s currently producing a sci-fi movie about a prehistoric technocrat in East Africa who resurrects wild mountain goats. So, for all involved, this is a win-win situation.