Floozman in Space

by Bertrand Cayzac

Table of Contents

Part II

Chapter 18: They, Too, Are Looking for Janatone

part 1

Jean-Borg Borguignon (Jay-Bee): He really should not ben taken for a six-week old rabbit. As the CEO of Cosmitix, he knows how fast the cosmos is changing. Only the best will take part in the future.

There on Europe, in the gyrating yurt of Cosmitics’ Comex, the Plans to Goal (PtG) presentation is coming to an end. But, rather than relaxing, the hyper-management force fields suddenly tighten around the executive director.

“Now we must address a security issue,” he says, concentrated, willful.

“This wasn’t on the agenda,” Millicent retorts. Her connection to Jenny is not safe. She has to confront Jay-Bee alone.

“That is correct. It’s a crisis measure: the Director of security has drawn our attention to worsening operational risks related to both the management of the Palace and the operation of the advanced lab. War and the resumption of terrorism have increased the severity of these risks. It has become urgent to take corrective measures.”

“I am not aware of that report.”

Everything topples at that moment. Jenny-Millicent can compute it all right. Blood, human blood would spurt out of the skull of the insolent MANAGER and, with it, the flow of events out of joint, towards unpredictable disorders, splendid deaths, strange recompositions of history, if she decided now to strike the mortal blow that is still in her power.

But the artificial will escapes her, pending informed, analytical predictions. She will not assemble the lethal lamellae of the laser languishing in her larynx. Jenny! What are you doing?

“Note that management has not been receiving any more reports from the advanced labs,” continues Jay-Bee. “I would add that, in the best interest of the group, the security program shall be extended to optimizing resources allocated to the Presidency, including energy, buildings and equipment. The gardens and the forges shall be dedicated to the assembly of the major interstellar vessels. Smurf will quickly organize an assessment of skills for the Palace employees...”

Silence. All systems are trying to take stock of the situation. The academic laboratory intelligences state unanimously that it’s better to call things by their name: this is a coup.

“I demand this report!” calmly says Millicent.

Jenny’s eyes start rolling wildly again.

“The security officer will bring it to you as soon as he is finished securing the Palace. Thank you for supporting him during the inspection.”

But the CosmiGirls are already standing in a circle around Jenny-Millicent. A powerful nuclear shield magnifies their spiky hair and the strange weapons they are suddenly holding in their hands. “Jenny, Jenny,” calls Millicent, but the superworld remains silent. The intelligences offer plans of resistance, but the plans are always the same desperate solutions. They ought to have invested into a reinforced guard.

“We’ll take you back to your quarters,” announces Jay-Bee.

Still rolling her eyes, Jenny moves back with her guard in the direction of the locks.

Jay-Bee wastes no time. He has the doctor’s diagnosis published immediately: Jenny Appleseed is clinically crazy. This is not news. He will temporarily take on the role of Chairman. The web’s mass failures prevent the relay of information by neural media.

But that’s not all: in the general management’s secret laboratories, under a harsh light stands a row of machines. These are enhanced copies of the psycho-pumps with pure lean lines, oriented towards an optimum performance by invisible indicators.

It would take a John Ruskin to regret the mark of the Academy’s early inventions on the pretext that ‘of human work, only what is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way’. This is simply not true of the work of Cosmitics’ engineers who freed themselves of human limits long ago. Nobody would engrave ‘and he saw that it was good’ on the side of the apparatus, not that the concept of God still embarrasses the palotins’ consciousness version 9.4 but with regards to this truth that the objectives recall with constancy: a record is made to be beaten.

Super-worldly emissaries are standing at the console two-by-two. The super-worldly emissary job description will soon be published by the hyper DRH. An officer reports, “The contraction is confirmed, the demiurge has moved!”

“Okay. Get ready for contact,” Jay-Bee orders. “It should appear soon,”. He thinks that the demiurge’s envoy will have to clarify his vision for the future of both the material world and the imaginal interzone. The great helmsman will need to speak to key decision-makers and in so doing, he will not fail to recognize the strategic value of Cosmitics as well as the competence of its management.

“By demonstrating the alignment of the company on the demiurge’s long-term strategy,” Jay-Bee says to himself, “I will certainly be in a position to negotiate benefits. Why not the exclusive license for vital ideas.” And since he is a man of action, he entrusts a communicating palotin with the presentation: if the content meets his expectations, the palotin will save his pseudo-life for a fiscal period.

Jay-Bee has taken care to engage the market, which is well informed, as always. It gave him information on the envoy and on the superworld’s good practices. And he thinks he knows the one who will be appointed. He recommends that Jay-Bee have lunch with him on Europa as soon as possible after his incarnation.

This emissary is a bon vivant when he’s alive, a connoisseur of wines. This was taking place at the circle of cosmos modernizers, during a PacNut conference on food biomass optimization. The market had imparted to him that he might join them for lunch if he could incarnate himself in a presentable manner.

Indeed, he is considering the resumption of Internet activities; the web has been functioning. A confirmed support from the demiurge would obviously be very instrumental. In all cases, the lunch should be simple and fast. Something well mastered, on the theme of the vineyard, with the best products and a rustic but inspired gastronomic simulation.

No, one should not take Jay-Bee for a six-week old rabbit. Cosmitics is in the right configuration to maximize the benefit of the crisis, but it mustn’t lose sight of the threat posed by the mutant. If he truly is a Superman, he can cause an incalculable amount of trouble. Who knows what the bearer of a more sophisticated genome might undertake? He has to neutralize this monster before his birth to avoid complications.

* * *

Waldenpond is on Earth. A trace of her was found in the flood zones, but a report indicates that the Artificial Uterus was seen at the orbital station’s hospital she took flight.

There is another problem. The ship To the Lighthouse is nearing Jupiter much faster than expected. It has new technology. Captain Diana is laying her cards on the table.

Jenny-Millicent: the sudden contraction of the superworld has completed the process of pushing Jenny’s spirit into its material body. Something has just disappeared that was carrying her above herself.

Jenny is wholly into her flesh at last. It tastes like the mornings of her childhood, the burning will and the summer sun, lights upon lights above the horizon. But this flesh is away from the homeland, in her bubble of rest, protected by three ditches of antimatter and seven nuclear firewalls. Besides, Jenny knows the danger that threatens her and how fragile the palace ramparts are in comparison to the means now available to the Executive Director.

Millicent is reporting in factual mode. The general director has finally taken power; she was unable to prevent it. The security forces are breaking into the Academy at this very moment.

It is the end of an era. Jenny has brought nothing back from her long journey, and it seems she has almost lost everything except life. But she has scouted the path to heaven, and it’s probably all that this phase of her realization could give her. She knows more things than human awareness can understand.

How many circles did-she describe around the intellect and what has she discovered in truth? She cannot think it without returning to the superworld, but the time is past for understanding. The vision will carry her now, alive, towards her cosmic destiny. As a large golden fish sparkles in the dripping net of a fisherman, the beauty of the superman is captured in her soul. She will eat his substance, she will incorporate it, because it’s the royal share that is hers by right.

Yes, she will cease to be a shadow. She will reach this stage alive, and, alive, she will eventually incorporate the mother of mothers, the AUTOZOON, which stands at the root of forms and of which she has forgotten everything, except life. The only other creatures born who know these secrets are Janatone and their child. But where are they?

Janatone! Her lover, her double, her gossip partner. But this isn’t the dyad that she desires now because in the end, she will ABSORB Janatone, as she will absorb the superhuman child. Such is her strategy or her will. Should she say now that she can shed managerial speech as one shakes the dust from one’s coat? The stupidity of this language can only burst into the open air, together with the tyranny of managers. Jenny remembers that she is the one who has given them the command of Cosmitics. How could she have freed her mind otherwise?

But time is of the essence. On the other side of the fire curtain, in into her intimate web, the CosmiGirls are pressing her to activate the anti-plan of continuity. It’s time, they say, it’s time to drown the Palace and the Academy, Cosmitics’ dead skins. We shall leave our bodily prisons and we shall live the long life of spirits, of Angels, perchance. And then, light, polished and full of days, we shall sublimate ourselves. With joy shall we see our latest limits vanish as we conjoin into the One. Yes, Jenny, this is our fate, they say, and Jay-Bee will be royally pissed off.

To be continued...

Copyright © 2015 by Bertrand Cayzac