Floozman in Space
by Bertrand Cayzac
Part I
Chapter 12: Sunt lacrimae rerum
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I have heard what the talkers were talking... There was never more inception than there is now, — Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
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Inside the same time cone — for time can be seen as a cone — but in a different section, Fred’s avatar is ambling in the alleys of a virtual shopping mall. His main indicators are not very bright.
The Earth dollar has risen against the zouz again. What can he do? And how will he pay the mortgage? Wouldn’t it be more rational to put an end to the process that animates him and refund its resources to the system?
A little later, Fred’s avatar’s algorithms take him to the virtual ranch that Janatone created long ago, but economy mode is not compatible with the place. Then he tours the common, low-sensory zones: the flat road, the brown hills of coarse polygons, the stylized enclosures, an orchard in perspective. Soon his promenade brings him back to the main entrance.
A newcomer is standing in front of the portal. He has the look of the young Walt Whitman with his white linen shirt, his well-cut beard and his hat, but Fred does not make use of the information or, better said, he doesn’t know what it is.
The poet's fact-sheet indicates that the avatar has a quasi-living status. He comes close to the wall that separates them. What is he doing? The poet posts a poem. Fred’s avatar can read it without moving, for nothing really moves except the corpuscular and wavelike particles that transmit the data.
Song of the Artificial Womb
It’s a long way to the next water hole,
And you are lives away from home.
Did you know there would be such a toll,
when you set out for a new Rome?Farewell, seedtimes and harvests,
Days and nights of love on earth.
Your heart knows not where it nests,
Far from the waters of its birth.Lo! Ships plying and stars galore,
Your spirit became sidereal.
Nay, you don’t belong anymore
To the race that forged their metal.And you will never return to the garden of roses
Oh, no, no.
In exile you will die like Moses.
Yeah, like Moses.
No more roses.
Oh no, no...
Walt Whitman is standing still. A soft melancholy mingled with worry emanates from him, but, since it is unsupported in economy mode, the feeling eludes Fred. “She is gone. She will certainly die,” he says to Fred.
“Die?!”
“She is no longer adapted to life on your planet. Didn’t you know that?”
“No. Who are you?”
“I am the artificial uterus. Janatone has created a user account for me, too. She was afraid I might get bored. Whitman? It’s mainly for the hat that a photograph in an edition of his poems shows him wearing.”
“Do you write poems?”
“With a low priority and as an amateur, of course. As an imitator would be more accurate. I lack something to be a real poet... At heart, I don’t know if we computers are able to create. Can we freely make something really new happen? And if we can, what does it mean?”
“Yes, what does it mean?” Fred is pensive, his envelope is translucent.
“Well, I seldom write but, today, I am a little destabilized, you understand? And I have only you now, Mr. Looseman... and maybe Dr. Weenie.”
“I write, too,” says Fred. But he immediately realizes his foolishness; that is not what he means. The real Fred did not write, and now he is only a poor avatar in economy mode. Rather, what he wants to say demands to be read, but in another language.
What he is doing is something miraculous. He corrects himself: “No, that’s not right. I was listening to prayers. I was... I am... Wait a second...”
“Excuse me, Mr. Looseman. Have you thought of the errands? I haven’t received the baby food jars, and the situation is far from resolved. I am still physically present in this warehouse, and I can tell you that...”
“I am a great prophet!”
Say what?
As on shores where rock meets and cleaves wavefronts, two high crests of emotion collide and mingle with fury in Fred’s artificial soul. The sensory equivalent of a terrible loss meets a grandeur that belongs only to the enlightened.
Each electron thrown into the vast network underpinning the matrix spins three times on itself: Floozman is back. On the screen, in neural tendrils and retinal lasers, in all communication protocols the good news spreads: Floozman is back.
“But who is Floozman?” ask the younger strata of the web. A pedagogical service provider brings them the information promptly.
Attention young strata: Historical sequence
Floozman is the clandestine leader of a messianic sect contemporary with the financial crisis that marked the first half of the 21st century. According to legend, an angel revealed to him the secret of cosmic money when he was participating as an independent consultant at a congress of financial-risk professionals.
The monetary hypostasis at the heart of Floozman’s doctrine is an equivalent to being. Money is consubstantial with the first emanation of the principle of divine transcendence: the mind that is self-knowing and self-possessed. Cosmic money circulates in the universal soul, where it serves as an instrument for the production of multiplicity.
In this system, as in the innumerable gnoses that inspire it, the universal soul is composed of many individual souls united in the contemplation of intelligence and the prime principle. Souls who conceive the desire to lead an individual life borrow cosmic money to finance their projects.
Since mind provides ideas, numbers, and the invariable laws of physics, enterprises proliferate. The cosmic money supply cascades increasingly through ever-fragmented worlds, down to the realm of matter, where the souls farthest removed from God come to spend it. Since matter is greedy for money, that is to say limitation, it comes into existence temporarily in the form in which we know it, in a constant metensomatosis.
For Floozman and the believers in magic money, evil is the ruin of the souls who darken themselves by making themselves prisoners of matter. This evil is due partly to the hubris of powerful souls who multiply universes in which humbler souls are enslaved for debt.
Angels and prophets have come to liberate the enslaved. They have had at their disposal not only large quantities of cosmic money but also the power to resorb it by trading it for mysterious glory bonds at an exchange rate of 1=x.
The many miracles these angels and prophets accomplished announced the advent of the ultimate Messiah. The messengers expressed themselves in the languages of their times and often in monetary parables. Floozman shall at last reveal himself in the truth of his financial instruments. He shall buy back the whole soul of the world and return matter to chaos in the name of the one who has not been created. His few public appearances have been accompanied by orgiastic celebrations in which cash distribution played a major role.
The personality of Floozman is still shrouded in mystery, but it is probable that the movement had ramifications in the most powerful money-laundering networks of the time. The historical branch is still active today, in the expectation of the Messiah. It is officially hosted by the Old Consulting Consultancy Company, headquartered in Basel.
Historical sequence ends.
“But why in the web?!” Miss Marinella asks from behind World Wide Credit’s firewalls. She has received the signal, and this is the great news she has been long expecting. She is still as pretty as ever with her navy-blue suit, and she does not bear the mark of the avatars. Is she, too, living on life extension? Thank heaven, the Flooz-organization has survived the prophet’s disappearance.
Floozman doesn’t answer. He is on his knees, weeping in front of the portal. “I didn’t know... My heart had hardened. I wasn’t alive. Forgive me, Janatone.”
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To be continued...
Copyright © 2015 by Bertrand Cayzac
